Germany 1953: Workers rise against Stalinist rule: Workers' Liberty 3/40:

The articles collected here tell the story of the workers’ revolt against Stalinist rule in East Germany sixty years ago, in June 1953, and the responses of the “Third Camp” Trotskyists of the Independent Socialist League. Three further articles, written between 1946 and 1954, set out the theoretical framework by which the writers understood the imposition of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe after World War Two; and a final article, written just before the German events, sums up what socialists should learn from the experience of Stalinism. Some articles have been abridged. Usages typical of...

Like a brilliant gleam of light in the gathering darkness of the post-war years, the rising of the German working class has already shattered myths and shamed despair. It has already answered a host of questions that had been posed by those who became panic-stricken before the seemingly invincible strength of Stalinist tyranny. These June days may well go down in history as the beginning of the workers’ revolution against Stalinism — the beginning, in the historical view, quite apart from any over-optimistic predictions about the immediate aftermath to be expected from this action itself. Is...

While the sharpest struggles in East Berlin have been lulled, resistance action in the whole of the East German zone, which followed hard in the wake of the Berlin rising, is still continuing with at least sporadic strikes and riots. The Russian occupation authorities have formally executed 22 so far. The first was a West Berliner, Willi Goettling; the twenty-second was the CP mayor of Doebernitz, in Saxony-Anhalt, H W Hartmami, who was accused of knocking down a Volkspolizei cop who had fired or was about to fire into a crowd of demonstrators. Beginning Saturday, completely authenticated...

The unthinkable took place in East Berlin and East Germany: the working class of a totalitarian country, where 30 Russian divisions are stationed, where the Communist Party disposes of all the levers of control, revolted against an implacable dictatorship, left the plants and building-yards, invaded the streets and public places, to cry out their anger and demand — what? Higher wages? No: to demand freedom. This exploit was accomplished by a working class which suffered through 12 years of the Hitler regime, war, and eight years of the “People’s” regime and the Soviet occupation. The June...

The June uprising of the workers in East Germany is one of the great events in modern history. The uprising in Germany will open up new historical opportunities which seemed to have vanished with the defeat of the European labour movements during the last twenty years and the emergence of the Stalinist state. Two world wars, a defeated proletarian revolution in Germany and a “successful” proletarian revolution that failed in Russia, finally the victory of fascism in Germany, coincided with the decay and destruction of the old traditional labour movement in Europe. It seemed to be impossible to...

There have been anti-Stalinist actions before, both outside of Russia and even inside of it. But yet they are not the same thing as the rising that occurred in Berlin. Inside of Russia it has happened any number of times, before, during and since the Second World War. There have been many cases of small isolated strikes, long strikes, by desperate, atomised leaderless workers who would almost rather die than continue to submit any longer to the depredations and abuses of their masters. Invariably, according to all the reports about them, they were blown to bits by the platoons of the GPU. And...

The June uprising of the East German workers demonstrated to the world — and to Moscow — that the Grotewohl-Ulbricht regime was built of sand and rested on water. Since it could no longer pretend to represent anyone but its Russian masters, its usefulness as a pawn in Moscow's game to draw Western Germany out of the American orbit seemed at an end. Nevertheless, Moscow did not sweep the wreckage of the discredited regime aside and attempt to install a new government that could bid for some degree of popular support. Instead, the Kremlin began to do everything within its power to rehabilitate...

The bad blood in Big Three relations that came to public view during the London Conference of Foreign Ministers in September, 1945, reached its boiling point last month as the world lived through a war of nerves reminiscent of the Munich days. [In March 1946 the Greek civil war restarted; there was British-USSR tension in Iran; and Winston Churchill made a speech putting the turm “Iron Curtain” into currency]. If the man in the street did not react with the frenzy of fear that swept the world during the Munich crisis, it was only because humanity is still too numb with the pain of six years’...

There is a paradox — only an apparent one — in the development of Stalinist imperialism. Stalinism arose out of the counter-revolution in Russia under the slogan of building “socialism in one country” as against the perspective of “world revolution” represented by the Bolshevik left wing under Trotsky. An historic internal struggle took place within the party under these different banners, in which, as everybody knows, the Stalinist wing won out. To the Stalinists, the theory of “socialism in one country” which they put forward meant: Let’s keep our eyes fixed on our problems at home; let’s...

When the defenders and journalists of capitalism speak of Stalinist Russia as a “socialist state” they have, from their standpoint, two good reasons for saying so. One reason, the product of ignorance if not malice, is to discredit the cause of socialism in the mind of workers by identifying it with the oppressive police rule of the Stalinist state. The other reason results from their sound class instinct. They have never concerned themselves with the positive aspect of socialism, which is the liberation of the working class from all forms of oppression and exploitation and the assurance of...