5th March – anniversary of the death of Comrade Stalin

Stalin in Moscow Metro

Stalin in Moscow Metro

More on the ‘Revolutionary Year’

View of the world – 2023

Ukraine – what you were’nt told – 2022

Ukraine – what you’re not told – 2023

5th March – anniversary of the death of Comrade Stalin

On 6th March 1953 Moscow Radio announced ‘The heart of Josef Vissarionivich Stalin, Lenin’s comrade in arms and the genius-endowed continuer of his work, has ceased to beat.’

The same day the following article, written by a prominent leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), was published in the Daily Worker.

Stalin: A great servant of mankind who belongs to the ages

by Andrew Rothstein

Josef Vissarionivich Djugashvili (Stalin) was born in the little Georgian town of Gori on 21 December 1879.

His father was a shoemaker, who put him to the local church school in 1888, and to the theological seminary at Tbilisi (Tiflis) in 1894.

After studying in secret Marxist groups (formed by students and Russian Marxists in exile), Stalin joined the first Georgian social-democratic organisation in 1898, and helped to set up illegal Marxist groups among railway shopmen, writing leaflets and organising strikes.

In 1899 he was expelled from the seminary, on hints from the police, and began earning his living by giving lessons and taking readings at the Tiflis observatory, while continuing intense secret activity among the workers.

As leader of the revolutionary minority in the Georgian social-democratic organisation, Stalin came into conflict with the majority, who wished to confine its activities to propaganda; and in December 1900, directly Lenin‘s Russian paper Iskra began to appear (illegally), Stalin became its ardent supporter.

After March 1901, however, he had to go ‘underground’, organising a May Day demonstration at Tbilisi in defiance of the police, starting the first Marxist illegal paper in Georgian (Brdzola) and being elected to the Tbilisi committee of the Social-Democratic party.

Loyal to Marxist principles

In 1902, at the Black Sea port of Batum, he organised a secret printing press, wrote leaflets, led strikes, and marched at the head of a workers’ political demonstration – the most dangerous action possible in tsarist Russia. On 5 April 1902 came his first arrest.

By this time, Stalin was already widely known for his irreconcilable loyalty to Marxist principle, his powers of theoretical analysis, his blunt, close-grained logic, his energy and tirelessness.

At the very dawn of his activity, in an article, The Russian Social-Democratic party and its immediate tasks (pp9-30) the 22-year-old Stalin wrote (of the years 1895-96):

‘The struggle began to reduce the working day, abolish fines, raise wages, etc. The social democrats knew well that the development of the working-class movement was not confined to these petty demands, that the aim of the movement was not these demands, that they were but a means to the end.

‘These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.

‘The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist state with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.’ (November-December 1901)

Stalin’s next 15 years were rarely paralleled, even in Russian revolutionary annals. Prison in Georgian jails for 18 months was followed by exile in eastern Siberia until January 1904. He escaped. A year of publication of illegal newspapers, writing pamphlets, propaganda among workers, culminated in leadership of the great three weeks strike of Baku oil workers (December 1904). It ended in the first collective agreement in Russian industrial history.

Ending national barriers

Stalin enjoyed three more years of ‘freedom’ – underground – in which he took a full part, by Lenin’s side, in the great 1905 revolution, in fighting anarchism in Georgia (1906) and in winning over the entire Baku working class from the Mensheviks (1907-8). Stalin’s, remarkable theoretical writings of these years – on the national question (pp31-54) (1904) on dialectical materialism and the state (1906-7) – were in Georgian, and only became generally available 40 years later.

On the national question, he wrote in 1904:

‘The proletariat of Russia has long begun to talk of struggle. As you know, the aim of every struggle is victory. But for the victory of the proletariat the uniting of all the workers without distinction of nationality is necessary.

‘Clearly, the breaking down of national barriers and the close gathering together of the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish, and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of Russia. Such are the interests of the proletariat of Russia.

‘But the Russian autocracy … persecutes the ‘alien’ nationalities of Russia. The autocracy deprives them of essential civil rights, oppresses them on all sides, sows distrust and hostility between them in Pharisee fashion, incites them to bloody conflicts, showing thereby that the sole aim of the Russian autocracy is to promote quarrels among the nations inhabiting Russia, sharpen national dissensions among them … and thus dig a grave for the class-consciousness of the workers, their class unity …

‘It is clear that the interests of the Russian proletariat, sooner or later, inevitably had to clash with the reactionary policy of the tsarist autocracy.’

In Anarchism or Socialism, after a brilliant exposition of dialectical and historical materialism developed by him 30 years later (in Chapter IV of the History of the CPSU), Stalin went on to show how the class struggle of the workers cannot, if it is victorious, but lead to the establishment of the political supremacy of the proletariat over the capitalist class.

He continued:

‘The socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the socialist revolution must lead to.’

And what of the socialist society for which such a revolution would be the foundation? Stalin wrote:

‘There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people … There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired …

‘All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.’

Thus he gave a picture of the Soviet Union 30 years ahead.

Organised first issue of Pravda

Then followed a long series of arrests and escapes:

– March 1908 – arrest and exile to the Vologda province, in Northern Russia;

– Escape in June 1909, re-arrest in Baku (March 1910) and exile to Vologda again;

– Escape (September 1911) and re-arrest the same month in St Petersburg, to be sent a third time to Vologda;

– Escape once more (February 1912).

He made a tour through Russia on behalf of the central committee of the Bolshevik party (to which he had been elected in absence at the famous Prague conference of the party in January).

Then he organised the first issue of Pravda (5 May). He was re-arrested that same day and exiled to Narym, in a remote district of Siberia.

He escaped once more (September 1912) and directed the Bolshevik party’s election campaign for the fourth duma (including several lightning appearances to speak at meetings in the factories).

He made two visits to Lenin at Cracow, but once again was re-arrested (February 1913). This was followed by four years exile in uttermost Siberia, near the Arctic Circle. This final political test ended only when tsardom fell in March 1917.

But these 15 years meant far more in Stalin’s life than his terrific battle with the tsarist authorities. They were the years of his struggle, as Lenin’s disciple and supporter, for the Bolshevik party.

After the second congress of the Social-Democratic party in 1903, he sided irrevocably with Lenin against the opportunist Mensheviks.

Revolutionary use of parliament

In the 1905 revolution, he tirelessly advocated armed insurrection, and fought for Lenin’s conception of the working class taking the lead in this essentially democratic, non-socialist revolution, in order to ensure that it would be carried through to the bitter end and clear the way to the struggle for socialism.

In December that year, at the first all-Russian conference held by the Bolsheviks at Tammerfors, in Finland, Stalin had his first meeting with Lenin.

He combated the Mensheviks at the subsequent fourth Social-Democratic congress (Stockholm) in 1906, up and down Georgia in 1906-7, at the fifth congress (London) in 1907, and thereafter at Baku, as already mentioned. ‘My second revolutionary baptism,’ Stalin called this period later on.

Throughout these and succeeding years, in jail or out of it, Stalin stood for Bolshevism against the Mensheviks and their off-shoot, Trotsky.

He was against the tendencies to ‘liquidate’ the illegal party during the years of reaction (1908-10), or to drown it in an unprincipled all-in bloc of everyone calling themselves social democrats, as Trotsky proposed in 1912.

He stood for revolutionary use of parliament by the workers, and for socialist principles in the question of subject nationalities during the years of working-class revival (1911-14).

He stood for revolutionary opposition to imperialist war (1914-17).

After the overthrow of tsardom, he was the first to back Lenin in the fight for Soviet power and the socialist revolution.

Stalin’s outstanding writings in these years – his Instructions to a Social-Democrat MP (pp81-83) (adopted at workers’ meetings in the election campaigns of 1907 and 1912), his Notes of a delegate (pp47-80) (1907) and Letters from the Caucasus (pp179-201) (1909) directed against the Mensheviks, and his Marxism and the National Question (1913) – take their place among the finest socialist writing of all time.

In the 1907 election campaign, the instructions adopted by the Baku assembly of worker electoral delegates (the workers were not allowed to vote directly for their candidate, like the landowners and rich merchants) declared, on Stalin’s suggestion:

‘The main task of the Social-Democratic group in the state duma is to promote the class education and class struggle of the proletariat, both for the liberation of the working people from capitalist exploitation, and to play their part as political leaders.’

The Instructions of 1912 (pp257-259 – adopted at mass meetings of the workers in the largest factories of St Petersburg – proclaimed:

‘We send our deputy to the Duma, instructing him and the whole Social-Democratic group of the fourth Duma to spread our demands far and wide from the Duma tribune, and not to engage in empty play at legislation in the bosses’ Duma.

‘We would like the Social-Democratic group of the fourth Duma, and our deputy in particular, to bear high the banner of the working class in the hostile camp of the black Duma.

‘We would like the voices of the members of the Social-Democratic group to resound from the duma tribune on the ultimate aims of the proletariat, on the full and undiminished demands of 1905, on the Russian working class as the leader of the people’s movement, on the peasantry as the most reliable ally of the working class, on the liberal bourgeoisie as the betrayer of national liberty.’

Stalin’s work, Marxism and the National Question, which was highly praised by Lenin, contains many passages of the highest importance for socialists.

Voice of brotherhood and unity

On the duty of the working-class movement in a period of reaction (at that time the Marxists called themselves Social Democrats), he wrote:

‘At this difficult time a high mission fell to the social democrats – to give a rebuff to nationalism, protect the masses from the general ‘trend’. For only social democracy could do this, opposing nationalism with the tried weapon of internationalism, the unity and indivisibility of the class struggle: and the more strongly the wave of nationalism advances, the more loudly should be heard the voice of the social democrats for the brotherhood and unity of the proletarians of all the nationalities of Russia.’

On the definition of a nation:

‘A nation is a historically evolved stable community of people which has arisen on the basis of community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up, manifesting itself in community of culture … Only the presence of all the features, taken together, gives us a nation.’

On the attitude of Marxists to the rights of nations:

‘Social-democratic parties in all countries proclaim the right of nations to self-determination. The right of self-determination means that only the nation itself has the right to determine its destiny, that no one has the right forcibly to interfere in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions, to violate its habits and customs, to repress its language or curtail its rights.

‘This is what essentially distinguishes the policy of the class-conscious proletariat from the policy of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to aggravate and fan the national struggle.’

In August 1917 came his historic declaration (pp166-200) at the sixth party congress:

‘The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the very country that will pave the way to socialism. No country has hitherto enjoyed such freedom as there has been in Russia, no country has tried to adopt workers’ control of production.

‘Moreover, the base of our revolution is broader than in western Europe, where the proletariat stands utterly alone, face to face with the bourgeoisie. Here the workers are supported by the poorer strata of the peasantry.

‘Lastly, in Germany, the machinery of state power works incomparably better than the imperfect machinery of our bourgeoisie, which itself is a tributary of capitalist Europe. We must abandon the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.’

Won victories in every field

Directly he returned to Petrograd on the overthrow of the tsar, in March, Stalin had been put in charge of the reborn Pravda. In May, he was elected by the central committee of the Bolshevik party to its newly formed political bureau.

In October, he was leader of the ‘party centre’, appointed to organise the workers’, sailors’ and soldiers’ insurrection of 6-7 November, which overthrew the power of capitalism in Russia and transferred power to the Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Soviets).

After November 1917, Stalin’s history was the history of the Communist Party and of the Soviet state. His official posts can soon be listed:

– People’s Commissar for Nationalities (1917-23);

– People’s Commissar for State Control – later called Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (1919-22);

– Member of the political bureau of the party from May 1917 and General Secretary from 1922;

– Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (prime minister) from 1941 onwards;

– Chairman of the State Committee for Defence (war cabinet), and Supreme Commander-in-chief during the second world war;

– Leader of the presidium of the central committee elected at the 19th party congress last October [1952].

But even more significant is the record of political, economic and military leadership which brought Stalin to the front rank of history.

In the civil war (1918-20), the Communist Party again and again sent him to reorganise and gain victories, where treason or incompetence had brought catastrophe.

It was to commemorate one such victory that Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad. It was Stalin’s historic plan for a breakthrough to the working-class areas of the Donetz coalfield and the port of Rostov, adopted by the party leadership in preference to Trotsky’s treacherous scheme for an advance through kulak territory, that defeated the White armies of Denikin.

In 1921, at the tenth party congress, Stalin made a memorable report (pp9-30) on the national question. His work in this sphere ever since 1904, unique in any country, made him the natural reporter, at the two Soviet congresses in December 1922, on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was there decided.

The speeches on this occasion, included with other works; make his well-known Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, the greatest contribution to socialist theory and practice in this field.

Preserved party from disruption

Stalin fought, when Lenin’s active life ended, for preservation of the party against disruption by Trotsky and his following (1923-24), by the Zinoviev-Kamenev group (1925-26), and by the amalgamated opposition bloc (1926-27).

It was an integral part of the fight to build up a socialist large-scale industry, capable of transforming the whole economy of the USSR and making it independent of the capitalist world which went on in those years.

It developed into the fight for the famous five-year plans after 1927-28.

Here of no less historic significance was his fight against the right opposition (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) from 1928 onwards – for collective farming, the liquidation of the kulaks (rich peasants) as a class, and the fulfilment of the five-year plans.

Stalin inspired and organised the great wave of socialist emulation which began in 1929 and reached a new height in the Stakhanov movement (1935). Stalin, in his address to a conference of the first Stakhanovites (pp89-110) at once pointed out the significance of this movement as a step toward future communist society.

His speeches and writings during these years are collected in his fundamental work, Problems of Leninism.

At the 17th congress of the Communist Party (pp288-388) (January 1934), a year after Hitler’s advent to power, Stalin made a challenging remark on Marxism, which went straight to the roots of his own magnificent steadfastness:

‘It is said that in some countries in the west Marxism has already been destroyed. It is said that it has been destroyed by the bourgeois-nationialist trend known as fascism.

‘That is nonsense, of course. Only people who are ignorant of history can say such things. Marxism is the scientific expression of the fundamental interests of the working class. If Marxism is to be destroyed, the working class must be destroyed. And it is impossible to destroy the working class.

‘More than 80 years have passed since Marxism came into the arena. During this time scores and hundreds of bourgeois governments have tried to destroy Marxism. But what has been the upshot? Bourgeois governments have come and gone, but Marxism still goes on.

‘Moreover, Marxism has achieved complete victory on one-sixth of the globe.’

Socialist democracy in constitution

The vast economic and social transformations by now accomplished made it possible to effect the further advance to a full socialist democracy in the constitution associated with Stalin’s name, and written under his guidance (1936).

In the course of his speech on the new Soviet constitution, Stalin drew a brilliant contrast between capitalist and socialist countries, of amazing importance today:

‘Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes.

‘Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) is in the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.’

The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union written under his editorship and with his own distinctive chapter on Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), was an outstanding development of socialist theory, already greatly enriched by the speeches and writings previously mentioned.

Combined theory with practice

Stalin was indeed, from first to last, an exponent of the Marxist art of combining theory with practice at the level of genius.

This genius displayed itself to the full when, at the Eighteenth Party Congress (pp355-430) (March 1939), Stalin put before the party and the Soviet peoples the practical economic problems involved in going forward from Socialist society – now solidly founded and fast developing – to communism, the form of the society in which each would contribute according to ability and would receive according to need.

Stalin said on this occasion:

‘As regards technique of production and rate of growth of our industry, we have already overtaken and outstripped the principal capitalist countries.

‘In what respect are we lagging? We are still lagging economically, that is, as regards the volume of our industrial output per head of population … We must outstrip them economically as well. We can do it, and we must do it.

‘Only if we outstrip the principal capitalist countries economically can we reckon upon our country being fully saturated with consumers’ goods, on having an abundance of products, and on being able to make the transition from the first phase of communism to its second phase.’

But the USSR had little opportunity to put Stalin’s stirring programme immediately into effect.

During the second world war, Stalin’s military strategy on fronts of unprecedented length and depth, combined with the solution of gigantic economic and political problems, ranged his name above that of the greatest captains of all time. His wartime speeches and orders of the day were a prime political factor in winning the war.

His far-sighted and consistent diplomacy, displayed at the Moscow and Teheran conferences (1943), the settlement with Poland and the armistice agreements with Finland, Rumania and Bulgaria (1944), and at the Crimea and Potsdam conferences (1945), laid the real foundations of the United Nations.

Post-war plan of reconstruction

Then came the difficult years of making good the terrible destruction caused by the war – a problem made far worse by the increasingly open hostility of the rulers of Britain and the USA (behind the scenes it had made itself felt long before), and by a great drought in 1946 of which they took full advantage to try political and economic blackmail against the USSR.

Stalin, true to his lifelong principle, took the bold course of trusting the workers. His election speech of 9 February 1946 was a programme of reconstruction, and a call to complete it and resume the advance to communism.

‘The main tasks of the new five-year plan are to restore the afflicted districts of the country, to restore industry and agriculture to their pre-war level and then to exceed this level to a more or less considerable degree …

‘As to plans for a longer period, our party intends to organise a new powerful upsurge of the national economy which would enable us, for instance, to raise the level of our industry threefold as compared with the pre-war level …

‘Only under such conditions can we regard our country as guaranteed against any accidents. This will require perhaps three new five-year plans, if not more. But this task can be accomplished, and we must accomplish it.’

It rallied the entire Soviet people as no other single statement could have done, and they responded by the triumphant over-fulfilment of the postwar five-year plan of reconstruction in 1950.

In 1946, also, began the series of Stalin’s postwar statements of peace policy, addressed directly to the people of the world, which played a leading part in exposing the lying campaign of the warmongers in the USA and in Britain and in rallying the peoples to the defence of peace.

In 1946 and 1947 came his replies to questions put (Replies to Questions put by Mr. Elliot Roosevelt, in an Interview – in later vols SW) by the Sunday Times’ Moscow correspondent, the president of the United Press of America, Elliott Roosevelt (pp130-134), son of the late president, and Harold Stassen (pp141-158), the Republican politician.

In these, he underlined that conditions for peaceful cooperation between the USA, the USSR and Great Britain.

He emphasised the necessity of prohibiting the atom bomb; putting the use of atomic energy under strict international supervision; rooting out fascism in Germany and re-establishing Germany’s unity as a democratic state; and meetings between the heads of the three great powers.

The latter point – first made in December 1946 – was repeated by Stalin (in answer to American correspondents) no fewer than four times.

The fact that all of them were left without a response only illustrated the stubborn optimism of ‘the man in the taxi-driver’s cap’ – as the soldiers of the British eighth army called him in the war years.

At the same time, Stalin replied trenchantly to blatant falsehoods about the Soviet Union’s alleged war preparations. His stinging rejoinder (pp262-268) to Clement Attlee in this respect (February 1951) will long be remembered.

New contributions to Marxism

Stalin’s last years were also notable for their new and distinctive contributions to Marxist theory.

In July and August 1950, came his writings on the Soviet discussions regarding the science of linguistics. They discussed a field far wider than that of the special subject which had made them necessary – the question of the economic basis of society and its superstructure, the history of nations, and other important questions which affected a number of other studies, notably history, philosophy and economics.

But undoubtedly the greatest contribution of all came on the very eve of the end, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written during 1951 and the early part of 1952, was published on the eve of the 19th congress (pp424-429) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, last October.

At the end of a long life of unsurpassed service to the working class and to humanity as a whole, Stalin saw his youthful dreams of a socialist society fulfilled, socialism in the USSR going ahead with giant strides, rising at great speed in the peoples’ democracies of Europe and coming well within the perspectives of People’s China.

The problems involved in the advance to the higher stage of socialism – communism – which Stalin had already touched on in the pre-war years, now required deeper treatment.

Handbook for the new generation

Summoning together all his vast experience and knowledge of the working of a socialist society and all his wonderful gifts as a creative Marxist, Stalin brought them to bear on these problems. He produced a guide and handbook for the new generation that is determined to build and work in a communist society.

From the many passages of importance in this work, one is the statement of the prerequisites for communism which is likely to serve as the signpost for years to come:

‘It is necessary, in the first place, to ensure a continuous expansion of all social production, with a relatively higher rate of expansion of the production of means of production …

‘It is necessary, in the second place, by means of gradual transitions carried out to the advantage of the collective farms, and hence of all society, to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and – also by means of gradual transitions – to replace commodity circulation by a system of products exchange, under which the central government, or some other social-economic centre, might control the whole product of social production in the interests of society …

‘It is necessary, in the third place, to ensure such a cultural advancement of society as will secure for all members of society the all-round development of their physical and mental abilities …

‘For this it is necessary, first of all, to shorten the working day at least to six, and subsequently to five hours … It is necessary, further, to introduce universal compulsory polytechnical education, which is required in order that the members of society might be able freely to choose their occupations, and not be tied to some one occupation all their lives.

‘It is likewise necessary that housing conditions should be radically improved, and that real wages of workers and employees should be at least doubled, if not more.’

This great book, analysing both the today and the tomorrow of the peoples already living in socialist society – and, indeed, of those who will yet exchange capitalist wage-slavery and exploitation for socialist freedom – was, as it were, Stalin’s bequest to the international working class.

Sixty years’ service to mankind

Thus ended a great and heroic life, seeking to the last to make its nearly 60 years of revolutionary service to the cause of mankind’s emancipation a source of practical guidance to those who came after.

In the same way Stalin himself had drawn strength and guidance from the man whom he always called his master – VI Lenin – and from the teachings and experience of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Of this gigantic figure in world history we may say what Engels said at Marx’s graveside in Highgate 70 years ago:

‘His name and his works will live on through the centuries.’

More on the ‘Revolutionary Year’

View of the world – 2023

Ukraine – what you were’nt told – 2022

Ukraine – what you’re not told – 2023

The Stalin Society – publications

Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union

Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union

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The Great ‘Marxist-Leninist’ Theoreticians

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The Stalin Society – publications

The Stalin Society was formed in 1991 and for many years had regular meetings which often involved a formal presentation related to the life and work of JV Stalin but also topics about the history, social and economic aspects of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some of those presentations, which were published in a printed format, are reproduced below.

It is not clear what the current situation is with the Society. There does not seem to have be any activity, either on the website or with public meetings, for more than two years now.

The pamphlets are listed in order of when they were presented to the Society.

The truth about the so-called ‘Hitler-Stalin Pact’ of 1939, translated from Roter Morgen, No 9, September 1989, Roter Morgen is the organ of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany). Published by the Stalin Society, 5 pages.

The German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact of 1939, Bill Bland, presented in London in February 1990, 14 pages.

The Spanish Civil War, Ella Rule, London, March 1991, 44 pages.

Lenin and Stalin on Opportunism, C and K Majid, London, January 1993, 15 pages.

Nikita Khrushchev – his role in the anti-Stalin campaign, Cathie Majid, London, June 1993, 18 pages.

The origin and development of Revisionism in the CPGB, Part 1, London, September 1993, 23 pages.

The enlightenment’s roots in Socialist Realist Theory and aspects of Revisionism in the late twentieth century, Helena Stevens, London, November 1993, 24 pages.

Let us salute the Soviet workers, translated from the Iraqi Review ‘Al-Marxi’, No. 30, November 1993, distributed by the Stalin Society, London, 8 pages.

The origin and development of Revisionism in the CPGB, Part 2, London, February 1994, 24 pages.

The truth about Stalin, Wilf Dixon, a talk given to the Secular Society in Leicester, October 1994, 12 pages.

Albania and China, Kamal Majid, London, April 1995, 35 pages.

The importance of forming a Party, Kamal Majid, London, July 1995, 26 pages.

The role of the revolutionary newspaper in the struggle today, John Green, London, July 1995, 10 pages.

Education in the Soviet Union, Ella Rule, London, June 1996, 8 pages.

George Orwell – anti-Communist, champion of Trotskyism and State informer, Joti Brar, London, February 1998, 16 pages.

Women in the USSR, Ella Rule, London, March 1998, 16 pages.

Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union, Mario Sousa, translated and presented by Ella Rule, London, March 1999, 31 pages.

Marxism-Leninism and the arts, Bill Bland, London, September 1999, 14 pages.

Health in the USSR, Carlos Rule, London, February 2000, 15 pages.

Marxism and law, the struggle over jurisprudence in the Soviet Union, Bill Bland, London, March 2000, 22 pages.

Bourgeois democracy and Fascism, ‘Social democracy objectively represents the moderate wing of Fascism’. JV Stalin, ‘Concerning the International Situation’, September 1924, Harpal Brar, London, May 2000, 37 pages.

The Soviet novel, Ella Rule, London, July 2000, 26 pages.

The role of the individual in history, Ivor Kenna, London, October 2000, 11 pages.

The fight against bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Carlos Rule, London, September 2001, 48 pages.

Imperialism’s interest in Afghanistan, Ella Rule, London, October 2001, 19 pages.

The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth, John Puntis, London, June 2002, 27 pages.

The Katyn Massacre, Ella Rule, London, July 2002, 25 pages.

A brief history of the Working-class Internationals, Ella Rule, London, October 2002, 37 pages.

A personal account of experiences in the German Panzers at the Battle of Stalingrad, Henry Metelmann, 60 years after the Soviet victory at Stalingrad – the turning point in the war against Nazi fascism, London, February 2003, 20 pages.

The purges of the CPSU in the 1930s, edited by Ella Rule from ‘The class struggle during the thirties in the Soviet Union’, 2005, 20 pages.

Robert Conquest dies – but his lies live on! Grover Furr, August 2015, reproduced by the Stalin Society, 4 pages.

Housing in the USSR, Katt Cremer, London, October 2016, 10 pages.

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Tskaltubo’s abandoned Spas, Springs and Sanatoria

Imereti

Imereti

More on the Republic of Georgia

Tskaltubo’s abandoned Spas, Springs and Sanatoria

Introduction

For reasons that can only be guessed at you can’t look at a British newspaper, go to the BBC website or by looking for information about the Georgian town of Tskaltubo without coming cross articles, pictures or videos about the ruined health spa buildings (which were hugely popular in Soviet times and even after the so-called ‘collapse of Communism’) in the town.

It’s not that these buildings have been in the condition they are found today for a short period of time. They fell into disrepair when relations turned sour between Georgia and Russia over the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which led to open warfare in August 2008. The fighting war only lasted 5 days but the consequences have been around for much longer.

One of those consequences which has had a direct impact on the town of Tskaltubo was the use of the former spa resorts and hotels as homes for some of the thousands of refugees.

I don’t know exactly in what state these buildings, some of them huge and which had been the holiday home for hundreds in their heyday, were in the summer of 2008 but a refugee crisis that could have been handled with some sort of compassion seems to have been left totally to individual initiative and lacking any semblance of organisation.

By that I mean to imply that those who arrived first took what was useful to themselves and there was no communal approach to make the fullest – and most efficient – use of the structures of the former hotels.

Under the ideology of the Soviet Union (when it could still have been considered a Socialist state) the emphasis in such establishments would have been placed on the communal areas. This would have meant that the lower floors (including basements) would have been devoted to dining and concert rooms, general meeting areas and facilities for leisure activities (such as cinemas and theatres) and extensive kitchens to cater for so many people in a relatively short space of time.

It would have been on the upper floors where the bedrooms would have been found – but they were likely not all to have had en suite facilities (this was an invention even the likes of Britain took some time to adopt) and certainly no means of cooking.

Yet these were the spaces the refugees rushed to and which they then adapted to cater for the individualistic lifestyle they were attempting to establish. No doubt, in the process, any useful materials would have been looted from the communal areas below making them virtually useless at any time in the immediate future.

By all accounts there were many more refugees from the conflict in Tskaltubo than there are now but I visited at least seven of the old resort sanatoria which still had a substantial population in the autumn of 2019.

What dismayed me (but which the cretinous film crews and semi-professional photographers that have been swarming all over the place in recent times) was the very degradation and filth that characterises the communal areas. Some of this decay can be witnessed in the slide show a the end of this post. There could have been many more examples but I started to become both angry and depressed at recording such wanton vandalism and thoughtlessness that had made the living conditions of so many people so much worse.

I had the ‘opportunity’ of only visiting one person’s home – that of an old Abkhazian woman who tried to sell over-priced booze and cakes to any foreigner, like myself, who pointed a camera in the direction of the buildings. She was in the sanatorium I have called ‘It’s my business’ as I haven’t been able to discover its proper name and that was the phrase she used all the time during the few minutes I was in her ‘home’. I was given to believe that there are women like her in some of the other refugee occupied hotels.

It was truly sad to see how the fine entrance halls, staircases, dining and concert rooms – with decorated and vaulted ceilings – and the general communal areas had been allowed to arrive at such a state of filth and decay. Nothing that was considered communal was of consideration at all. This also meant there was no lighting in the entrances and stair wells meaning torches were a necessity once it got dark. Such a situation would do nothing in creating a feeling of safety and security

Wooden parquet flooring had been torn up, presumably to be burnt for cooking and/or heating. Anything of use on these lower floors – such as floorboards – had also been torn up leaving the surface below to degrade and in the process creating holes into the cellar. And the general lack of concern for an area that was ‘not their’s’ meant rubbish started to accumulate – and here I not just talking about historic rubbish but contemporary plastic drinks bottles. I suppose once the collective decision to live in shit has been accepted any more shit is neither here or there.

Broken water pipes and dangerous electrical wiring was everywhere and added to the build up of inflammable rubbish creating a haven for disease and vermin as well as storing up problems for the future.

The refugees from the 2008 war could have lived in relative luxury. They chose not to but to live in dirt and degradation.

But the Western European pricks with their expensive cameras and drones to provide an overall view of these once magnificent buildings don’t see anything other than an opportunity to demonstrate their cultural superiority.

But there’s also a political aspect of this highlighting of these sad ruins. Such a situation is always described with reference to the Soviet past implying that it was the Socialist system that was in some way responsible for the consequences of the present.

It is conveniently forgotten that even the Revisionist Soviet Union ceased to exist 30 years ago (and it hadn’t been a socialist country for more than 40 years before that), that in the years since the so-called ‘fall of Communism’ the ‘superior’ economic system of capitalism has singularly failed (as it could but not do) to resolve the ‘problems’ that existed under Socialism.

Even though the present Russian leadership and all its robbing hangers-on would have ended their days in a Siberian gulag at the time of Socialism they are considered to be tainted with the ‘evil’ of Communism. Any attack on Russia (as indeed is any attack on the now capitalist China – witness the way matters are being twisted over the management of the present (2020) coronavirus crisis when if it had broken out in the capitalist west free market economic forces would have prevented any effective measures to contain the outbreak – can anyone believe that any British government would put London in lock down?) has nothing to do with what policies they are pursuing at the present time but a propaganda effort to make sure that they get punished for being the first country that had the effrontery to challenge the capitalist system and establish a workers and peasants socialist republic.

And the targets for this denigration of any idea of establishing revolutionary socialism are the very people whose only long term guarantee of freedom from exploitation and oppression is the making of such a revolution – that is the workers and peasants of the world.

At the same time it has to be recognised that there are some very strange examples of how those people who had been brought up in a socialist system react to the environment around them when those systems (for various reasons) have collapsed.

Present day Albania is a prime example where the people seemed to have accepted the destruction of the very economic basis of their country for nothing in return. There’s a definable correlation between the vast migration of Albanians from their country to elsewhere in the world to the existence of an almost limitless number of abandoned and looted factories in the country. Added to that the division of the land into small plots virtually killed off a national agriculture.

But it isn’t just in the post-Communist countries that we see people destroying the vestiges of a past social system and reverting to a more basic economy. When the Roman Empire retreated from Britain in the 4th century the remaining Britons were incapable of taking any lessons from the invaders and reverted to a life style similar to what they had followed more than 400 years before. Lessons in hygiene and sanitation which the Romans had developed (of course only for a few) were forgotten and diseases related to such poor or non-existent sanitation were to kill millions in the subsequent centuries – cholera doing its worse well into the 19th century in Europe.

A look at some of the buildings, both those being now used as refugee accommodation and those that were visiting Soviet workers would visit to take ‘advantage’ of the curing radon infused waters and mud.

Sanatorium Aia

Aia

Aia

This is one of the newer buildings that make up the whole complex of Tskaltubo, i.e., constructed in the 1960s or 70s when demand for places at the spa town continued to rise.

As is the case in all the buildings the gardens and approaches immediately surrounding Aia hasn’t been cared for in years. The ground floor which housed the communal areas and dining rooms had been stripped of anything decorative and all you are left with is the bare concrete floors. Where it was coming from I don’t know but there was a lot of standing water. This water would have come from inside the building suggesting that the pipes (fresh water or sewage) are not in the condition they should be. I would also have thought a breeding ground for mosquitoes in the summer.

Aia also demonstrates something which is common in all the buildings, some of the finest dating back to the 1940s (or earlier), and that is the efforts to grab more living and storage space from the limited amount available. Many of the balconies had been blocked in with various scraps of wood or metal thus grabbing a few more square metres for the inhabitants.

Aia is basically a shanty town in the air.

Another common addition was the satellite dishes. I haven’t seen a great deal of Georgian television but I would be surprised if they are served up anything more edifying than the mind-numbing generic productions that dominate most country’s TV output.

As I was walking around this building the woman who directed me to the decoration in the old dining room also suggested that I go to the first floor where there was a woman who would sell the chacha and cake. Each building, it seems, has one.

The Tile Mosaics

Aia - Grape Harvest

Aia – Grape Harvest

I don’t know why but I was expecting more internal decoration in the hotels than was the reality. Previous to my visit to Aia I seen the facade of Spring No. 6 – which has the bas relief depicting a visit of Joseph Stalin to the town. Many of the older buildings do have the lavish use of marble, parquet flooring, chandeliers and a general feeling of opulence but there was no real presence of the Socialist Realist art that I was expecting. Apart from at Aia – where there are two examples.

The first is in the area that would have been the dining room where one wall is covered with colourful tiles depicting the whole of the wine growing process. In the centre, and by far the largest characters, are two young Georgian woman reminiscent of the statue of Mother Georgia in the hills above Tbilisi. There is some damage, some of it which looks deliberate, but considering the circumstances in which the mosaic has to cope it is in a surprisingly good shape. There’s no protection from the elements, the damp conditions can’t help and it can get cold in Tskaltubo in the winter.

There’s another tile mosaic high up on the wall that would have looked down on the hotel’s garden. This depicts musicians and dancers in traditional Georgia dress. Unfortunately, this has not fared as well as the one in the dining room, many tiles have fallen away and it also shows signs of serious staining and water damage.

Sanatorium Imereti

Imereti

Imereti

This was one of the grand creations of the early days of Tskaltubo as a spa resort. Built slightly up the hill from the main park which was the location of the bath houses Imereti is a neo-classical structure – not the utilitarian of the later Aia.

To approach the main entrance the visitor had to go up a sweeping, double set of steps to arrive at an imposing facade. Once in the building the entrance hall has marble classical columns which direct the visitor to a wide and high staircase that would lead to the bedroom floors.

At one end there is a rotunda that housed a concert room with a vaulted ceiling and an internal circle of narrow columns, breaking up the space.

It would have been an impressive sight to a visiting Soviet worker. Now it’s a ruin in which no one should live – not even the cow that was feeding when I visited.

At the back of the building was a square where visitors would have congregated on warm summer evenings but now some of the space has been used as small vegetable gardens and the communal clothes washing area.

Sanatorium ‘It’s my business’

'It's my business' Spa Hotel

‘It’s my business’ Spa Hotel

Try as I might I haven’t (yet) discovered the true name of this building – hence the nickname based on the phrase used by the Abkhazian woman I met on my visit.

This is another of the really large and impressive early buildings. (Although I haven’t seen any dates for the construction of all the spa buildings a large commemorative urn that sits on a table in the main entrance to Spring No. 6 has pictures of many of the spas in Tskaltubo in full operation. The urn is dated 1961. The later Revisionist leaders of the Soviet Union went for utilitarianism rather than style.)

This takes its influence from early Italianate buildings, with large blocks of stone being used at the lower level and the square column topped towers that rise up on either side of the main entrance.

Apart from the ‘standard’ large communal rooms there are internal patios (with now derelict fountains) at the back together with roof gardens. Now all filthy with mould and overgrown with weeds.

It’s a long time since the lift in the main entrance was used and various side rooms are being used as plastic rubbish bins.

One interesting external decoration is the bas relief (I assume metal) high up on the east wall of the building, looking down on the terracotta mosaic of telephone workers.

Sanatorium Medea

Medea Sanatorium

Medea Sanatorium

This is one of the most impressive of the sanatorium which takes its architectural influence from the classical period. In a sense the area of the main entrance is purely decorative and serves little function. It’s more the impression the visitor got (and still gets – even though now in disrepair) when approaching the building.

The stone clad circular entrance has an external stair on either side which leads to a first floor colonnaded area. This is open on all sides and serves, really, no practical purpose. From here there is access to the main building but everything appears somewhat mundane after the initial reaction provided by the approach from the road. If this area does have any practical use it’s as a viewing platform of the area of the park and the hills around Tskaltubo.

As in some of the other hotels there are also patios and roof areas where visitors in the past would have enjoyed the summer warmth.

The not so interesting accommodation which is off to the left of the main decorative entrance is yet another that is being occupied by refugees. I can only imagine that the conditions on the lower floors are the same as in the places already mentioned. After a while it gets draining and depressing going into the different buildings to witness the same level of decay. It becomes even more depressing when you know that these are peoples’ homes and that some have been there for years and it seems an intrusion to constantly make a record of the squalor which surrounds them.

(I perhaps haven’t mentioned that there are a number of the old hotels which are completely empty of any refugees – or any other occupants with problems in finding a proper home – which are like blots on the landscape of the town. There is supposed to be an intention to develop some of these buildings but some are so huge and the clientele numbers will never reach anything like what was achieved during Soviet times that so many of these plans will remain pipe dreams.)

In front of Medea’s accommodation block there’s a small, circular fountain which is surprisingly deep considering there would have been many children in the area. Obviously this fountain is nothing more than a dirty, waterless hole now and the statues (of a young girl on an ‘island’ in the centre and four young, naked boys kneeling on the rim) are in reasonable, if not perfect, condition.

Sanatorium North-west

North-west Sanatorium

North-west Sanatorium

This is another building whose true name I have been unable to discover. It sits just outside the main park, in the north-west, beside the road that goes around the park. This one was, in fact, the first one I visited and it didn’t look that bad from a short distance, much of the building being shielded by the mature pine trees that separate the building from the road.

Once close up the same signs of decay mentioned before emerge. Like many of these hotels the entrances are impressive this one having a stone balustraded stairway on both sides of a small (now totally ruined) fountain, reached by a few flights of steps from the road.

The two storied building to the right of the entrance would have been the communal area and is a total ruin, to the extent that all the windows have been removed. On top there’s an open yet covered roof patio, again providing an outside area to enjoy the warmth of the sun.

Where there are people living they have followed the same practices as already mentioned. All of these buildings are architecturally unique but they have been reduced to the lowest common denominator by the addition of the makeshift additions and adaptations as well as the ubiquitous satellite dishes.

Sanatorium Iveria

Sanatorium Iveria

Sanatorium Iveria

This is the sanatorium which is located furthest from the main park and the area of the baths but in many ways is one of the most attractive. There are not that many pictures of this building in the slide show as after I had squeezed my way through the corrugated sheets supposedly preventing access I didn’t have much enthusiasm to explore more.

I assume that this building would have been used to house refugees in the past but there is no one living there now. Added to that all the doors and windows have been removed so this might have been a tactic used by the local/national authorities to prevent the re-colonisation of these buildings when the previous inhabitants had either been rehoused somewhere more appropriate of had found an alternative themselves.

Unique in its design it has hexagonal stairwells at various points along the facade which are surmounted by small columned, hexagonal towers. The main entrance door is very distinctive in that it is under a very tall columned loggia, which extends two floors in height.

The ground floor entrance and the beginning of the main staircase is also in a better condition than many, much of the blue paint of the walls remaining as well as the plaster work on the ceiling being in a good condition. Probably why it has appeared in most articles about these sad buildings.

Spas, Springs and Baths

As well as the hotels a number of the spas, that are predominantly located in the central park, have also fallen into disrepair. These are in a different category to the hotels and resorts that were used to house refugees after the Russian-Georgian conflict. Tensions between the two countries increased, the spas and bath-houses that were built to cater to thousands were receiving fewer and fewer visits and after the war there was no where for them to stay.

Present day visitors can still take the water (and mud) treatments in Springs No. 1, No 3 and No 6. Numbers 1 and 3 are relatively modest buildings where Spring No. 6 is a much larger and grander structure. It is also the Spa that contains the extremely luxurious spa that Stalin used on his visits to the town.

Spring No. 4

Spring No. 4

Spring No. 4

There’s not a great deal that can be said about Spring No 4. It’s a one level, square building, probably built in the 1950s but today (of all the buildings from the glory days of the Soviet Union) it is the most difficult to enter and it is protected by substantial locked gates. Whether it is hiding some particular gem I have yet to discover. It can be found at the northern end of the park, close to the Palace of Sport.

Spring No. 5

Spring No. 5

Spring No. 5

Spring No. 5 is a little bit more decorative that No. 4 – probably indicating it was built some years earlier.

As I type this I start to think that probably the change in the architectural styles indicate the the simpler, concrete structures, of both the hotels and the spas, were part of Khrushchev’s attack on the Socialist developments that were achieved under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The magnificent Metro stations that were in major cities such as Moscow and Leningrad also started to become more mundane and ‘normal’. This change in approach started very soon after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (of 1956) where Khrushchev – in a secret speech – denounced the great Marxist-Leninist leader of the party and implicitly all that had been achieved in the years since 1917.

The words Khrushchev and culture didn’t, and still don’t, really belong in the same sentence. He had no concept that what was produced for the workers and peasants should have been as good, well constructed and attractive as – or even better – than that produced for the wealthy. But he was a mere manager and started the thinking in the Soviet Union that was to soon lead it to revert to being a bastion of capitalism – even when under the name of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

It’s the largest of the abandoned springs and is second only to number 6 in size. The impressive loggia over the front, principle entrance is its main attraction but the large, individual tile faced baths which shoot off from the main corridor indicate it was a centre for water treatment.

Spring No. 8

Spring No. 8

Spring No. 8

Spring No. 8 is another interesting construction. Probably from the late 1950s it’s a low, one level, circular building which doesn’t seem to have a special entrance. In the middle of the concrete ceiling there would have been a large glass dome (long gone), both bringing in natural light and the heat when the sun was shining.

The very layout and decoration of this building indicates to me that it was designed for children. They could play in the warm waters, supervised, whilst their parents might have been having treatment for whatever their medical ailment might have been.

Tskaltubo's Springs and Sanatoria

Tskaltubo’s Springs and Sanatoria

 

 

 

Click on image to download a much larger pdf version

 

 

Key to Map

  • 1 Sanatorium Iveria
  • 2 Sanatorium Shakhtar
  • 3 Sanatorium Imereti
  • 4 Sanatorium ‘It’s my business’
  • 5 Sanatorium Metallurgist
  • 6 Sanatorium North- west
  • 7 Spring No. 4
  • 8 Spring No. 5
  • 9 Sanatorium Savane
  • 10 Spring No. 8
  • 11 Sanatorium Medea
  • 12 Sanatorium Aia
  • 13 Sanatorium Sakartvelo

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