MIM NOTES 195	October 1, 1999

Maoism organizes itself at Russian congress of comrades

by MIM International Minister with reports filed by comrades Fall 
and Thomas

Russian MIM comrades attended the congress of their organization, 
the RCYL(b), in Kirov, August 21-22. They brought Black Panther 
Party materials and other materials from MIM. MIM also sent its 
greetings in English and Russian to the organization attempting to 
break away from Khruschev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev revisionism.

There were three groupings in the gathering. In the words of 
Secretary of Ideology Torbasow, one was "1. Bumbarash-center. The 
basic position consolidated around of the founder of the Komsomol 
P. Bylevskiy and newspaper Bumbarash. In this position it is 
possible to allocate two tendencies: traditionalist Soviet and 
vanguard Maoist. Together we supervised up to half (sometimes 
hardly more) votes."

A second grouping was: "2. Left deviation. Crypto-trotskyists, 
naming itself marxists (not by marxist-leninists), consolidated 
around of the leader of the Kirov branch Salnikov and newspaper 
Komsa. They supervised the fifth part of votes." MIM comrades 
report that crypto-Trotskyists walked out on the organization 
after the organization failed to pass a resolution condemning 
Maoism as a petty-bourgeois deviation.

A third grouping was: "3. Right deviation. The motley group which 
has united workerists and 'crawlers' (the supporters of 
organizational submission of the Komsomol to the RCW Party). They 
supervised sometimes up to a quarter of the votes."

This last point is about the relationship of the RCYL(b) to its 
nominal parent which purged its leader from party membership. 
According to our Russian comrades, this "wing [is] heavily 
oriented towards Victor Tyulkin's Russian Workers' Communist Party 
(RWCP, Russian abbreviation RKRP). They are quite influential 
numerically and organizationally. As things stand now, there is 
less stress in their line on social-imperialism and worship of the 
USSR than on dogmatic, pre-1953, Stalinism (ignoring all further 
developments of Stalinism) and worship of the workers, no matter 
what they do or no matter where they are. At the present moment we 
would quite agree with Oleg Torbasov that these people are similar 
to Workers' World (the U.$. organization) -- and, in our opinion, 
the unholy spirit of crypto-Trotskyism is not as dead as it might 
seem. They don't understand Maoism -- and, it seems to us, hardly 
ever will."

"In Soviet-style party terminology there is the concept of a 
'platform', as distinct from faction (these last were of course 
ruled out by Lenin at the Tenth Party Congress). A platform is a 
group of members in a party sharing its programmatic and 
organizational principles, but envisioning a different way of 
implementing them. A platform, as opposed to a faction, doesn't 
have its own democratic centralism. Usually a platform is centered 
around a founding document of some kind, also called 'platform'. 
Thus, just before the collapse of the USSR there were the 
Democratic, the Marxist, the Bolshevik, and the Initiative 
Platforms in the CPSU -- and the Marxist one (Buzgalin, Prigarin, 
Kryuchkov) said some good, quasi-Maoist (or proto-Maoist) things."

So the two MIM comrades prepared a quasi-programmatic document 
reflecting our understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as adapted 
to Russian conditions. Not all went smoothly. MIM's greetings were 
not universally approved and aside from the crypto-Trotskyist 
resolution against Maoism, the majority was also not sure enough 
about Maoism to extend its relations with it beyond a certain 
level.

Comrade Torbasow defended Maoism along the following lines: 
"Invectives of Kirovites against Maoism show, that the comrades 
are familiar with it by Brezhnevist books. It is visible even that 
they wrongly rank as maoist, Comrade Pol Pot. It is not their 
fault. The early writings of Comrade Mao Zedong in Russian are 
hardly available; late ones were not issued at all, let alone 
writings of his followers. Efforts on correction of this situation 
now are applied" [to publish "Quotations from Chairman Mao"].

Torbasow has also indicated efforts to connect with the movement 
internationally. "The RYCL(b) signed the 'Communique on Mao and 
Peoples War."

"Here I'll limit myself by the brief explanatory: Maoism is the 
third, highest stage of ideology of the international proletariat, 
alternative to Khrushchevist-Brezhnevist revisionism, kept and 
developed in the best tradition of Leninism."

At the 1999 Congress, the Maoists in the RCYL(b) found it 
necessary to struggle against Menshevism in its various forms. In 
the United $tates we have the DSA and the Progressive Labor Party 
(PLP) as the rightist and "ultraleft" expressions of opposition to 
all armed struggles. The common Menshevik argument against Mao is 
that he put too much emphasis on the peasantry and only made China 
capitalist -- to which it can be said what Torbasow did about 
feudalism.

"The statement about the reactionary nature of Maoism in its 
struggle with capitalism is simply ridiculous. Unless Mao aspired 
to restoration of feudalism? Or 'peoples communes' -- a step not 
to integration in agriculture, and to amplification of parcel 
economy. Or, maybe, Chinese communists should have refused seizure 
of power in a rural country?!"

"Maoism is not limited 'to the idea about total war of the 
countryside against the cities.'"

"The famous phrase 'world countryside surrounds the world city' 
repeats the description of tactics of people's war, and is in 
essence deeply symbolic and designates the struggle of colonial 
and dependent countries for the clearing away imperialism. Thus 
not at all is the peasantry given top priority. Maoism was 
promoted not only in backward, but also in the advanced countries 
amongst the proletariat."

In organizational matters, the RCYL(b) took the following actions:

"P. Bylevskiy who has reached the limiting age of stay in the 
Komsomol (35 years) has left from a post of the first secretary. 
To him the honourable rank of 'founding-secretary' was 
appropriated."

Oleg Alekseev (Ufa) was elected as the new first secretary of the 
organization as a consensus compromise. At this Congress, some 
humble servants of the international proletariat seem to have made 
some little headway. MIM congratulates its Russian comrades for 
work well done. August 22, 1999 may be considered an historical 
date -- the birth of organized Russian Maoism!