USSR

On the morning of December 14 1970, thousands of workers from the Gdansk shipyards downed tools and began marching into the city. Their objective was the local regional office of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), the party that had ruled the People's Republic of Poland since 1952. The protestors were met by police units and fighting between the two sides lasted into the evening.

Abstract: In March 1939, Republican soldiers who had been training as aviation pilots were stranded in the USSR along with the sailors of several vessels from the Spanish merchant navy. They were prevented from leaving and in 1941 were arrested and sent to Novosibirsk Transit Prison. Also detained were several civilians who had been working with children evacuated from the Civil War.

This is an English translation of the original Serbian. Further editing by libcom from the translated version.

Polish Revolt of 1956

A Note on the Use of the Word 'Soviet'

Neil C Fernandez

IT IS NOT out of love for nostalgia that we are commemorating the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Hungary '56 was a prime example of the working class itself reaching for power: doubly significant, it took place in one of the mythical 'workers' states'.

Class struggle Against Bolshevism

Cajo Brendel

(From original Echanges et Mouvement- london pamphlet) Editor's note :

Don't Forget Vorkuta: A Soviet Holocaust

June 2003

Introduction

The Novocherkassk Tragedy, June 1-3 1962
by Piotr Suda

I

Part of a wave of unrest which hit the USSR in the IPO, Lower Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Ukraine and Belorussia, the strike was one of the most significant of the 1930s, winning reforms nationally as a result of the threat it posed to the Soviet authority.

Details are included from Columbia University Research Project interviews with participants which are a nice complement to the information in our other Hungary '56 articles.

[11,000 words]

For a short history, we recommend our article The Hungarian Uprising, 1956 on libcom.org/history.

They confront the fact that state-capitalism, the state-management of production and society, the rule over society by the class of the state, the bureaucracy, is still almost universally confused with "communism" as Marx defined it, due in part to the conspiracy of silence and distortion which unites the capitalists of both "East" and "West".

Article source: The Council Communist Archive - www.kurasje.org

The largest collection of Mattick's work is at the Paul Mattick homepage - http://www.home.no/mattick/

'Bolshevism and Stalinism' was originally published in Politics Vol. 4 - no. 2 - Mar/Apr 1947.

It’s crucial to understand why Russia was capitalist in 1980, or 1930, or 1920, if we wish to understand what capitalism really is, and what can and must be revolutionized in Russia as well as in Britain in the XXIst century.

“But we do not fear you or your hangmen. Soviet 'justice' may kill us, but you will never kill our ideals. We shall die as anarchists and not as bandits.”
- The anarchist Machanovskii at his trial before the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal, 13th and 22nd December 1922

Following the destruction of the Hungarian anarchist movement by the fascist regime of Admiral Horthy, anarchist groups began to re-emerge around the veteran libertarian called Torockoi, who was 80 years old in 1945. The first libertarian action was against occupying German forces by an anarchist student group.

A Siberian Makhnovschina?

Academics like Paul Avrich, along with militants like Voline, Gorelik and Archinov, have given us only a sketch of anarchism in Siberia. The important role of anarchism there has remained obscured.

The Cultural Cold War

In 1966, the most notorious prisoner in Britain was sprung from jail. George Blake was a British double-agent serving 42 years for spying for the Soviet Union. At the time this was the longest jail sentence ever imposed by a British court.