Lesson from history:
Internationalism (Trotsky and the Left Opposition)
versus
nationalism (the Stalinist bureaucracy).

FROM The Stalinist bureaucracy launches a war on the Trotskyist movement - World Socialist Web Site

>... In June 1927, shortly after the crushing of the Chinese Revolution by Chiang Kai-Shek, Trotsky and other leaders of the Opposition were summoned before the Central Control Commission. The Soviet Control Commission tried to indict Trotsky for speeches he had given at the Executive Committee of the Communist International, the highest body of the Comintern. Trotsky angrily rejected the attempt of the Central Control Commission—which had been handpicked by Stalin—to elevate itself over the leading bodies of the International. He forcefully asserted reminded them,

>If you are familiar with the Comintern’s charter, then you should know that I was not delegated there by our party, but was elected by the Congress, and the charter specifically states that the Comintern is not a collection of individual parties, but an international centralized party that elects its Central Committee at the Congress, and not through delegations from individual parties. Therefore, the members of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, in their activities as members of the ECCI, are not accountable to the sections, i.e., to the organs of individual parties. Such is the statute of the Comintern. I would not recommend violating it.[1]

>In the extraordinary session, Trotsky turned what the Stalinist faction had designed as a concerted attack on the Opposition into a counter-assault against the bureaucracy. He bluntly told his accusers that they were sitting there as representatives of that bureaucracy. He also explained, more to the stenographer than to his three Stalinist accusers, the international and class process that had put him in the chair of the accused, and them into the chairs of the accusers. The world revolution had been delayed, and “this,” he said, “is why we have become the opposition.” He continued:

>In 1923 we told it [the Soviet proletariat] that the German proletariat would win soon. Then we talked to it about the impending victory of the general strike in England. None of this materialized. And then came the counter-revolutionary coup in China. All of this has left an imprint on our proletariat. After this, an ebb [of the revolutionary tide] is inevitable, even if it is temporary...[2]

>Trotsky’s conduct and statements at this meeting underscore the extraordinary level of far-sightedness and political consciousness and also the determination with which he engaged in the struggle.
...
The Stalinist bureaucracy launches a war on the Trotskyist movement - World Socialist Web Site

Footnotes:

[1] Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), f. 17, op. 171, d. 87, l. 83
[2] Ibid., l. 144.

SOURCE: Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928–1933; Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition (Rogovin, 2019)

READ the Author’s introduction to "Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928-1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition" - World Socialist Web Site

1929, Stalin's 50th birthday - "party leaders" was crowded out by glorification of a single leader "who headed the communist movement of the entire world."

After all the opponents of the bureaucracy had been suppressed* there was a qualitative development in the cult-of-personality around Stalin.

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* the Right Opposition led by Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov would be removed from the leadership at the 16th Party Congress (Jun. 26 – Jul. 13, 1930).

At a meeting on 19 Sep. 1930, some in the Right Opposition called for a coup to oust Stalin. Bukharin opposed this. (I have never seen any suggestion that anyone in the Left Opposition did likewise.)

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1917 - October 25 - 1920. For the first time in human history, the October Revolution dared to demand from the eternal oppressors of the working people retribution for the blood and tears of hundreds of generations of slaves. The world cannot forgive such courage. We will not surrender to a dying world of oppression and violence. We will carry our bright banner to the red halls of peace and labor. We will win!

This 2020 article - Are you a Trotskyist? - was just put on the IG account of Red Flag, the newspaper of Socialist Alternative (Australia)

The article says :

>Trotsky misjudged the strength and stability of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, describing it as “a sphere balanced on the point of a pyramid” which would soon fall down due to its own instability. Contrary to his prediction, Stalinism emerged from WWII strengthened. Because Trotsky believed that Stalinism would rapidly disintegrate across the globe and workers would be driven back to genuine revolutionary politics, Trotsky announced the formation of a Fourth International to replace the bankrupt Comintern. But the Fourth International did not quickly attract millions, or even many thousands, of followers. While Trotsky underestimated the challenge involved in breaking masses of workers from the Stalinist parties, he was right to attempt to build political organisations around his ideas.

SOME QUESTIONS:

1. IT SAYS: "the strength and stability of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia"?

• Where did Trotsky misjudge this? Or is this the trope that Trotsky's predictions didn't come to fruition. Trotsky was a Marxist whose estimates of the future always stressed the decisive role of the Marxist leadership. Mechanistic predictions were the method of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
• ALSO: Why is it "Russia" and not the "USSR" or "Soviet Union", the original constitution of which was agreed on 31 December 1922? Do they think the difference doesn't matter?

2. IT SAYS: "Stalinism emerged from WWII strengthened. Because Trotsky believed that Stalinism would rapidly disintegrate across the globe and workers would be driven back to genuine revolutionary politics, Trotsky announced the formation of a Fourth International to replace the bankrupt Comintern."

• Where did Trotsky say "the formation of a Fourth International to replace the bankrupt Comintern"?
• Where did Trotsky claim that "Stalinism would rapidly disintegrate across the globe and workers would be driven back to genuine revolutionary politics"?
• [I'm honestly asking. I have never read anything like this.]
• ALSO: the implied timeline is very odd. World War Two in Europe started on 1 Sep. 1939, the Fourth International was founded A YEAR EARLIER in Sep. 1938 and it was called for by Trotsky SIX YEARS EARLIER in Jul. 1933 because "... The Moscow leadership has not only proclaimed as infallible the policy which guaranteed victory to Hitler, but has also prohibited all discussion of what had occurred. And this shameful interdiction was not violated, nor overthrown. No national congresses; no international congress; no discussions at party meetings; no discussion in the press! An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it." [SEE BELOW]

Almost all of Trotsky's major works are online - all his major statements are - but the article has no references.

Leon Trotsky: To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew (July 1933)

>Theoretically, the collapse of the German Communist Party still left two courses open to the Stalinist bureaucracy: either a complete review of the politics and the regime; or, on the contrary, a complete strangulation of all signs of life in the sections of the Comintern. The Left Opposition was guided by this theoretical possibility when, after advancing the slogan of a new party for Germany, it still left open the question of the fate of the Comintern. It was, however, clear that the next few weeks would bring an answer and there was far too little hope that the answer would be a favorable one.

>Everything that has taken place since March 5: the resolution of the presidium of the ECCI on the situation in Germany; the silent submission of all the sections to this shameful resolution; the anti-fascist congress in Paris; the official line of the émigré Central Committee of the German Communist Party; the fate of the Austrian Communist Party; the fate of the Bulgarian Communist Party, etc. – all this testifies incontestably that the fate of not only the German Communist Party but also the entire Comintern was decided in Germany.

>The Moscow leadership has not only proclaimed as infallible the policy which guaranteed victory to Hitler, but has also prohibited all discussion of what had occurred. And this shameful interdiction was not violated, nor overthrown. No national congresses; no international congress; no discussions at party meetings; no discussion in the press! An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. To say this openly and publicly is our direct duty toward the proletariat and its future. In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.

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FYI: The origins of Socialist Alternative (AUSTRALIA)

>The organisation was formed in 1995 following a split in the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), the Australian affiliate of the International Socialist tendency, led by the British Socialist Workers Party. This tendency broke from Trotskyism and the Fourth International in the late 1940s after its founder Tony Cliff rejected both Leon Trotsky's characterisation of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state and his call for the international working class to unconditionally defend the gains of the 1917 revolution—the nationalised property relations and the state monopoly of foreign trade—in the event of an imperialist attack. Cliff instead described the USSR as "state capitalist" and adopted a posture of neutrality between the US and what he termed "Russian imperialism". Cliff's positions—which falsely endowed the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy that had emerged out of the isolation of the economically devastated workers' state with a historically necessary and enduring role—amounted to an adaptation to the stabilisation of capitalism and the apparent strength of Stalinism in the aftermath of World War II.

2008: Australia: State provocations, security and Socialist Alternative - World Socialist Web Site

IMAGE: Trotsky, standing in the center, at the Third Congress of the Communist International, June-July 1921

October 8, 1923 Letter from Leon Trotsky to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Russian Communist Party

This translation was first published in the International Workers Bulletin, issued by the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party (US), on October 18, 1993.

>...
11. The Xth Party Congress [in March 1921] proceeded under the sign of workers’ democracy.[18] Many of the speeches delivered at that time in defense of workers’ democracy seemed to me to be exaggerated and to a certain degree demagogic, in view of the incompatibility of fully developed workers’ democracy and a dictatorial regime. But it was absolutely clear that the clamping down during the epoch of war communism would have to give way to a broader and more lively party collegiality. However, the regime which fundamentally developed even before the XIIth Congress, and which after the congress became much more reinforced and fully formed, is much further away from workers democracy than the regime during the most severe periods of war communism. The bureaucratization of the party apparatus has reached unheard of proportions by applying methods of secretarial selection. If during the cruelest hours of the civil war we argued in the party organizations and even in the press about the use of specialists, about a partisan versus a regular army, about discipline and so forth, then now there is not even a hint of such an open exchange of opinions about problems which are truly troubling the party. There has been created a very wide layer of party workers who are part of the apparatus of the state or the party and who simply refuse to hold any party opinions, or at least ones that can be openly stated; it seems that they consider that the secretarial hierarchy is the apparatus which creates party opinion and makes party decisions. Beneath this layer of those withholding their own opinions is the wide layer of the party masses, before whom each resolution stands already in the form of an appeal or a command. In these ranks of the party there is an enormous amount of dissatisfaction, some of which is absolutely legitimate and some of which is caused by incidental factors. This dissatisfaction is not being dissipated through an open exchange of opinions at party conferences or by the pressure of the masses on the party organizations (the election of party committees, secretaries, etc.), but is building up in secret and leading therefore to internal abscesses. At a time when the official, i.e. secretarial, apparatus of the party presents an ever greater picture of an organization which has achieved almost complete homogeneity, reflections and judgments about the sharpest and most painful issues simply bypass the official party apparatus and create conditions for illegal groupings within the party.
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[BOLD = white-on-blue IMAGE 2]

[18] The Xth Congress of the RCP(b) took place in Moscow 8-16 March 1921. At it, among other things, a resolution was adopted “On the Questions of Party Building,” which spoke of the need for the democratization of inner-party life (cf. Stenograficheskii otchet desiatogo s’ezda RKP (b) [The Stenographic Record of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b)] Moscow 1963, pp.559-571).

READ ALSO:

On the Founding of the Left Opposition (1993, David North)

>"The response of the American pseudo-left to the US war against Iran has tested its political character, and the results are damning. ..."

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From Port Huron to postmodernism: The class politics of the “New” Students for a Democratic Society - World Socialist Web Site

... On February 28, as the US government launched its criminal war against Iran, the “New” Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gathered for a regional conference at Wayne State University in Detroit. The group, which presents itself as an “antiwar protest” organization, did not issue so much as a statement on the attack. Its only response was to tack the words “no war” onto the list of demands for a protest against ICE.

SDS and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) leader Jackson Robak (the Maoist FRSO founded the “New” SDS in 2006) justified this approach in the Detroit Free Press, saying:

>Just as we are fighting across the state of Michigan for a sanctuary campus campaign to keep our students safe from Trump’s aggressive attacks, we see the same thing as he attacks Venezuela, as he attacks Iran, and we need to say 'No.'

The systematic destruction of a country of over 90 million people is itself one front in an unfolding imperialist world war, which includes the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the preparations for war against China. Yet it is treated by the “New” SDS as one more item in a string of “aggressive attacks,” to be acknowledged with a perfunctory slogan while the group proceeds with business as usual. This is not an aberration. More than six weeks after the war began, there was still not a single statement opposing it on the national SDS website.

To understand why, it is necessary to examine the political and class history of both the original SDS and the “New” SDS. The defining feature of both is the substitution of other social forces for the working class as the agency of revolutionary change.

... MORE

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/05/04/ikaa-m04.html

SUB HEADINGS

From Port Huron to the Weather Underground

The intellectual consolidation of defeat

The “New” SDS and the FRSO

Conclusion

White House sends delegation to deliver war ultimatum to Cuba - World Socialist Web Site

... According to Axios, US officials warned that Cuba’s leadership has only a “small window” to enact US-backed reforms before conditions “irreversibly worsen.”

Cuban officials have acknowledged the meeting. Alejandro García del Toro, a senior Foreign Ministry official, stated that “assistant secretaries of the State Department” participated on the US side, while Cuba was represented at the vice-ministerial level.

Active military preparations are already underway. According to reports by CiberCuba, the US Navy has flown at least two surveillance missions using the high-altitude MQ-4C Triton drone in less than a week. The aircraft was detected circling the island on April 17 and again on Monday, based on publicly available tracking data.

These reconnaissance flights are widely understood as precursors to potential military action.

Trump himself has repeatedly declared that Cuba is “next” following US operations targeting Iran, as his administration announces a “Greater North America” doctrine to reassert dominance across the hemisphere.

The internal situation in Cuba, meanwhile, is marked by both concessions to imperialist pressure and growing fears of imminent attack. Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga recently declared that “there are no limitations” on investment from the Cuban diaspora, explicitly appealing to Cuban exile capitalists in Miami, many of whom have historically backed terrorist attacks and coup attempts against the island.

This appeal underscores the extent to which the Cuban government is seeking an accommodation with US capital. Havana has repeatedly signaled its willingness to implement an unrestricted opening to foreign investment and allow US officials to directly oversee the process, effectively offering to oversee a US-dominated export-oriented economy.

The Castroite government also freed over 2,000 prisoners in the largest release in a decade and even invited the FBI to the island to investigate the incident in February where heavily armed Cuban-American terrorists on a US-flagged speedboat were killed by Cuban security forces.

The desperation of sections of the Cuban elite was revealed in an extraordinary episode following the April 10 meeting. Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro reportedly attempted to bypass official channels by sending a private letter to the White House via a businessman courier, Roberto Carlos Chamizo González. The courier was intercepted in Miami and sent back to Cuba, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

... MORE
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/21/mgaz-a21.html

"War is the continuation of policy by other means" Von Clausewitz, 1832

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The Nazis never made any secret of their plans to destroy the "Judeo-Bolshevik" Soviet Union. So why wasn't the USSR prepared?

In "Mein Kampf" in 1925 Adolf Hitler announced

>... We National Socialists have deliberately drawn a line under the pre-War tendency of our foreign policy. We are where they were six hundred years ago**. We stem the Germanic stream towards the South and West of Europe, and turn our eyes eastwards. We have finished with the pre-War policy of colonies and trade, and are going over to the land policy of the future.**

>Fate itself seems to wish to give us our direction. When fate abandoned Russia to Bolshevism it robbed the Russian people of the educated class which once created and guaranteed their existence as a State. The Germanic clement may now be regarded as entirely wiped out in Russia. The Jew has taken its place. It is as impossible for the Russian to shake off the Jewish yoke by his own strength, as it is for the Jew to keep control of the vast empire for any length of time. His character is not that of an organizer but of a decomposing leaven. The immense Empire will one day collapse."
p. 258 My struggle ["Mein Kampf"] (Hitler, 1925) Free Download

So it would seem obvious that everything should be done to prevent the Nazis from coming to power and, if they do, to do everything to prepare for war.

And yet ...

• From 1928 to 1933 the Comintern^ declared capitalist breakdown and revolution were imminent and social democracy was the main prop of capitalism which had to be dealt with first. [^- COMmunist INTERNational, founded by Lenin in 1919 but degenerated after Lenin's death in Jan. 1924 as the effect of the Stalin/Bukharin theory of socialism-in-one-country were expressed in foreign policy as well]
• Both major workers parties in Germany - the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Germany Communist Party KPD - had mass memberships, a plethora of sub-organizations, armed militias and nominally anti-fascists programs. The Comintern had installed its preferred leadership in the KPD after the debacle of the calling off of the 1923 insurrection.
• Aug. 1931 KPD SUPPORTS NAZI REFERENDUM AGAINST SPD STATE GOV.: In August 1931, after the SPD rejected its demands, the KPD supported the NSDAP backed "Red Referendum" (the KPD name) to remove the SPD state government in Prussia.
• Oct. 1931 KPD SUPPORTS NAZI VICTORY In early OCTOBER 1931 KPD leader Hermann Remmele welcomed a Nazi victory. He told the Reichstag “Herr Bruening has put it very plainly once they (the Fascists) are in power, then the United Front of the proletariat will be established and it will make a clean sweep of everything. (Violent applause from the Communists)” [REF: Stalinist Zig-zags on the Question of the “United Front” (Trotsky, 1932)]
• APR. 1933: (AFTER HITLER APPOINTED) COMINTERN SAYS "an open Fascist dictatorship ... will hasten Germany's progress towards the proletarian revolution" On 1 April 1933 (a week after the Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial powers) the Executive of the Comintern wrote that the KPD had done everything correctly and, MOST SIGNIFICANTLY, “The establishment of an open Fascist dictatorship, which destroys all democratic illusions among the masses, and frees them from the influence of the social-democrats, will hasten Germany's progress towards the proletarian revolution.” p.90 Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 (Carr, 1982) [FREE BORROW] The leaders of the KPD, SPD and (from 2 May 1933) the unions all passively accepted the destruction of their mass organizations. Workers formed secret resistance networks, despite this betrayal.
• 1937-1938 GREAT TERROR KILLS HALF THE RED ARMY OFFICE CORPS: almost two-thirds of the 1,863 officers holding general-grade military ranks in 1936 were arrested; almost a half were executed. This included Marshal Tukhachevsky who had been advocating preparations of the Red Army to defend against an invasion.
• AUG. 1939 GERMANY NEEDS TO GO TO WAR AS INTERNAL CRISES WORSE BUT USSR SIGNS "NON-AGGRESSION PACT)" At the signing [OFFICIAL RECORD] 'HERR STALIN spontaneously proposed a toast to the Führer, as follows: "I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health." ...' From 1 Sep. 1939 the Comintern instructed Communist Parties around the world to cease all anti-fascist propaganda and instead condemn the "inter-imperialist war" [ASIDE: Trotsky had warned from 1933 that Stalin would seek an "understanding with Hitler". In Oct. 1938 Trotsky wrote "We may now expect with certainty Soviet diplomacy to attempt rapprochement with Hitler at the cost of new retreats and capitulations which in their turn can only bring nearer the collapse of the Stalinist oligarchy."]
• DEC. 1940 NO ASSESSMENT IS MADE OF GERMAN TACTICS IN POLAND (1939) OR FRANCE (1940) "The Soviet military leadership demonstrated its collective inability to grasp the operational and strategic lessons of the defeat of Poland and France at the week-long command conference that was convened on 23 December 1940." [REF: Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941 (Roberts, 1995)] The Red Army stuck to its pre-war doctrine that there would be time to mobilize in the initial period of an invasion.
• 1941 WARNING OF IMPENDING INVASION DENIED AS "WRONG" BY STALIN. The NKVD spy networks in Germany and Japan delivered to Moscow accurate reports of Germany preparations for an impending invasion. The Red Army command asked Stalin for mobilisation to prepare but only limited actions were taken. "On 13 June 1941 asked permission to alert and deploy Soviet forces as a precautionary measure, Stalin responded the following day: 'You propose mobilisation and moving troops to the western border? That means war! Don't you understand that?'." [REF: Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941 (Roberts, 1995)]
• 22 Jun. 1941 OPERATION BARBAROSSA BEGINS, THE LARGEST MILITARY INVASION IN HISTORY WITH A TOTAL FORCE OF UP TO 3.8 MILLION PERSONNEL INVOLVED.

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KEY REFERENCE

Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941

Cynthia A. Roberts

Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 47, No. 8 (Dec., 1995), pp. 1293-1326

https://www.jstor.org/stable/153299

[p. 1 for free, BEHIND A PAYWALL]

EXTRACTS

1940, DECEMBER

- The Soviet military leadership demonstrated its collective inability to grasp the operational and strategic lessons of the defeat of Poland and France at the week-long command conference that was convened on 23 December 1940. Since the conference was devoted in part to evaluating the German victories, it is remarkable that the issue of the initial period of war was almost completely neglected. Although setting strategy was the party leadership's prerogative, the professional military was not entirely averse to discussing operational and strategic issues; the underestimation of Germany's war-fighting potential was at least as significant as political taboos on debating strategic concepts

- Although Zhukov chose to skirt the issue of Soviet offensive operations during the initial period of war, it was taken up by General P.S. Klenov, the chief of staff of the Baltic Special Military District. Mildly reproaching Zhukov for discussing offensive operations without reference to strategic context, Klenov characterised the initial period as the 'most crucial of a war'. Klenov did not believe, however, that an attempt to invade the Soviet Union could proceed along the same lines as in Poland.

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- ... It is revealing that Klenov, in his rejection of Isserson's heterodox ideas, avoided any reference to the German campaign in France. Zhukov referred to France, but incongruously rationalised its defeat by suggesting that it was a weak state, notwithstanding the fact that prior to May 1940 France was generally regarded as 'strong'.  ...

1941 (MARCH-JUNE)

- ... Persistent efforts by Zhukov and other top officers to achieve these readiness goals did yield some results. In mid-March 1941 Zhukov and Timoshenko approached Stalin with a request to call up reservists to fill out the divisions in the border military districts. Stalin at first refused the proposal as potentially provocative, but relented two weeks later and permitted the induction of 500 000 reservists. Several days later, Stalin permitted another 300 000 reservists to be recalled to the Red Army.

In meetings held on 10, 12, 19, 23 and 24 May, Zhukov and Timoshenko pressed Stalin to expand these efforts still further.  Zhukov maintains that he informed Stalin that the western military districts would not be able to withstand a German attack and that several armies should be brought forward from the interior. According to Zhukov, after several 'long and rather heated' discussions with the dictator, Stalin again relented, but cautioned that the troop movements be carried out in strictest operational secrecy.  This opened the way for important mobilisation and redeployment measures. On 13 May the General Staff issued a directive for the transfer of four armies and one rifle corps stationed in the northern Caucasus, Volga and Ural military districts to the Dnepr-Western Dvina line to form a Front of Reserve Armies.

However, Stalin was unwilling to go very far beyond these measures and carefully scrutinised subsequent proposals for their provocative content. Attempts in June by M.P. Kirponos, the commander of the Kiev Military District, to cautiously alert the district and move troops closer to the border were detected by the NKVD and immediately reined in. And when Timoshenko on 13 June asked permission to alert and deploy Soviet forces as a precautionary measure, Stalin responded the following day: 'You propose mobilisation and moving troops to the western border? That means war! Don't you understand that?'.

CONCLUSION

Despite Stalin's gross blunders on the eve of war, the extent of the disaster of 22 June 1941 cannot be explained solely by Stalin's failure to heed warnings of the impending invasion. The Red Army also jeopardised Soviet security. During the Red Army's formative years rational calculations and organisational interests fused with ideologi cal beliefs to produce an organisational ideology that predisposed it toward the offensive. This bias was in turn dogmatised, blocking organisational learning. By the early 1930s it was an article of faith, operationalised in Soviet war plans, that if the Soviet Union were attacked the Red Army would not surrender 'one inch' of Soviet territory to the aggressor.

This goal and the complementary objective of transferring the war to enemy territory reinforced the central planning assumption of the Red Army that a significant time interval would separate the initiation of hostilities and the engagement of the main forces of the belligerents. Although the German victories in the West in 1940 challenged the validity of this paradigm, the Red Army continued to hold that Blitzkrieg could not be effective against the Soviet Union. Wedded to a faulty conceptualisation of the initial period of war, the Red Army avoided any reassessment of key values and preferences. Although a competing paradigm emerged in the ranks of the Red Army after the defeat of Poland, its proponents were far too few in number to constitute an effective voice. Soviet military leaders continued to overestimate the army' s capacity to launch counter-offensives just as they had failed to assess objectively the striking power of Blitzkrieg.

Reformers such as Tukhachevsky might have had an impact on some military outcomes had they not been cut down by the purges. But it is questionable whether they would have been willing or able to alter the offensive orientation of the Red Army or its neglect of a strategic defence. Indeed, both of these self-defeating positions had been conceived by the innovators themselves.

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“The Socialist Equality Party (UK) opposes the arrest and persecution of Dr. Ranjeet Brar, general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Maintaining its irreconcilable political differences with the Maoist CPGB-ML, the SEP denounces this anti-democratic act aimed at suppressing and intimidating anti-war speech and sentiment.”

The US witch-hunt against Chinese scientists and the death of Danhao Wang - World Socialist Web Site

We are publishing here the report given by World Socialist Web Site writer Stephen St. Clair to a public meeting of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan held April 21.

We gather today in the shadow of a profound tragedy: the death of Danhao Wang, a brilliant 30-year-old postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan. On March 19, Dr. Wang took his own life after being subjected to hostile questioning by federal agents.

His death is the direct consequence of a systematic government- and university-sponsored political operation targeting young Chinese researchers. This xenophobic purge, deeply intertwined with the capitalist military-industrial complex, is part of the broader attack on the democratic rights of all immigrants, students and working people. Today we will examine the profound complicity of academic institutions in this state repression and outline the urgent need to mobilize the working class and young people in a unified political struggle against the anti-Chinese pogrom, which is bound up with the criminal war against Iran and preparations for war against China, the drive to dictatorship, and the capitalist system which is the root cause of these evils.

We must begin today by speaking of the death of Danhao Wang. Dr. Wang took his own life, falling from an upper story of the G.G. Brown Laboratory building on North Campus. According to statements released by the Chinese Consulate in Chicago, Wang had been subjected to hostile questioning by federal agents the day before his death. Within days, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the encounter as unprovoked investigation and harassment, denouncing the US government for terrorizing lawful international residents in the name of national security.

... MORE

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/23/gotk-a23.html