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Kautsky and the `kulak revolution'
When the kulaks threw themselves into their final struggle against socialism, they received unexpected international support. In 1930, Belgian, German and French social-democracy mobilized against Bolshevism, just as a catastrophic crisis was hitting the imperialist countries. In 1930, Kautsky wrote Bolshevism at a Deadlock, in which he affirmed that a democratic revolution was necessary in the Soviet Union, against the `Soviet aristocracy'.
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Karl Kautsky, Bolshevism at a Deadlock (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), pp. 97--98.
He hoped for a `victorious peasant revolt against the Bolshevik régime' in the Soviet Union.
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Ibid. , p. 150.
He wrote of the `degeneration of Bolshevism into ... Fascism ... in the last twelve years'!
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Ibid. , pp. 139--140.
Hence, starting from 1930, social democracy was already toying with the theme `
'. This was the same social-democracy that upheld colonialism, that did its utmost to save capitalism after the 1929 crisis, that sustained and organized anti-worker and antipopular repression and, most significantly, that later collaborated with the Nazis!
Kautsky made a `claim for democracy for all'.
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Ibid. , p. 124.
He called for a wide united front with the Russian right for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic', claiming that `middle-class democracy in Russia has less interest in capitalism than Western Europe'.
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Ibid. , p. 173.
Kautsky perfectly summarized the social-democratic line of the 1930s, struggling against the Soviet Union: a `democratic revolution' against the `Soviet aristocracy', against the `fascist disintegration of Bolshevism', for `democracy for all', for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic'. Those who followed the debates in 1989 will recognize the program and the slogans used by the right-wing forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Fri Aug 25 09:03:42 PDT 1995