The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 7 The Resistance against the Nazi occupation in Russia did not differ at all from the nationalist pattern that characterised all occupied countries. In Stalinist propaganda, Nazism was a product of the entire history of the German people, a people to be destroyed in the name of Holy Mother Russia . The illusions of revolutionary fraternisation with the uniformed German proletarians sent to fight, which still lingered in the memories and expectations of some Russian officers and soldiers, were considered a betrayal punishable by death. The Orthodox Holy Synod resumed its functions, and there was constant reference made to the great generals of the tsarist past, as well as the reintroduction of epaulettes and ranks into the army, which the Bolsheviks had abolished. The singing of the Internationale was replaced by a patriotic anthem. Patriotic war and defeatism ...

Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Page 6 In June 1941, Germany launched its attack on Russia, taking by surprise the army and the air force, much of which was destroyed on the ground, because Stalin had refused to believe the reports that Hitler intended to break the 1939 Pact. From that moment onwards, the war on the eastern front took on massive dimensions and was waged with unprecedented violence. In her essay Le front Germano-Soviétique (1941-1945): Une apocalypse européenne [in A. Aglan and R. Frank, La Guerre-monde , 2015], Masha Cerovic writes that about fourteen million soldiers lost their lives ; more precisely, nine million Soviets, four million Germans, and almost one million among their allies . It is calculated that the Russian population paid a price of over twenty million human lives, including the fallen and those who died of illness and starvation: hundreds of thousands of them were partisans, executed without pity. A hug...

The Analysis of a Defeat From the special series 1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International It was in Lenin’s legacy that the generation of the ’20s and ’30s could have found the theoretical tools to deal with the unprecedented Stalinist counter-revolution and execute an organised retreat for the world party. Socialism in one country? Lenin had already framed the essential characteristics of that issue in 1915: given that Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism , it could be assumed that the victory of socialism would be possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone . What that first unequivocally means is that either the socialist revolution is replicated internationally, or it is inevitably defeated. Moreover, since the revolution had begun in backwards Russia, in 1917 it was already predictable that the time given to this inception in one country would be very short. Of course, ext...

The Fourth Congress From the special series 1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International The historian Branko Lazitch wrote that the IV Congress, compared to the first three, placed itself in a regressive line : while the I Congress held the perspective of working in anticipation of an imminent future world revolution, the IV Congress acknowledged that such an objective had fallen out of reach and they had to learn to conduct political activity over much longer timeframes. Arrigo Cervetto comments: In a way it is true. After having tried the revolution with a communist party, Lenin wants to prepare the revolution with a Leninist party. His job is to prepare this party . Italian fascism Karl Radek was commissioned to give a report focused on “The Capital Offensive”: the Italian events represented the most serious defeat that socialism and communism have suffered since the beginning of the world revolution . But the speaker denied that a paralle...