Issuing body: 7th Plenum of the International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Fourth International
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RESOLUTION ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE COUNTRIES OF THE "BUFFER ZONE" (7th Plenum of the IEC, 9–18 April 1949)
1. In the course of 1948, important changes took place in Eastern Europe. The nationalisation of industry, of the banking system, and of the communications and transport system has been practically completed in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; it is in the process of completion in Poland and Hungary and has advanced considerably in Romania. Wholesale trade is likewise being brought under state control in most of these countries. Only retail trade and agriculture remain for the most part in the hands of private owners. The development of the cooperative system in these two spheres has been increasingly withdrawn from the influence of bourgeois elements as a result of intensified state intervention, but it continues to move within the framework of small-scale capitalist production. Finally, foreign trade, carried on for the most part by state firms, continues to depend heavily, especially in the most advanced buffer-zone countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary), on relations with Western countries, among which Great Britain tends to replace the United States as the most important supplier and customer. The evolution of Finland and of the Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria, which likewise form part of the USSR's "strategic buffer zone," has however been very different from that of the other buffer-zone countries and must be treated separately.
2. The economic changes mentioned above are matched by a series of highly significant political and ideological changes. The last opposition political parties have been eliminated in all these countries (again, with the exception of Finland and the occupation zones in Germany and Austria, which are following a distinct evolution). The liquidation of independent social democracy was completed there with the fusion of the PPS and the PPR in Poland. The last few months have been marked by the attack on every church independent of the state, the last potential rallying centre for political opposition. The totalitarianisation of social life has thus been completed, depriving above all the proletariat — the only class that has retained a minimum of social cohesion in these countries undergoing full transformation — of any possibility of expressing its concerns and interests. At the same time, the Stalinist parties have carried out an ideological turn. Instead of characterising the buffer-zone countries, as in the past, as countries transitional between "capitalism" and "socialism," they now characterise both the state and the economy of these countries as "socialist." This ideological turn has been completed by the new thesis identifying the "people's democracy" regime with the "dictatorship of the proletariat," in flagrant contradiction to all past assertions.
At the same time, the social contradictions, violently suppressed by the Stalinist dictatorship, have begun to express themselves within the Stalinist parties themselves, creating the most serious threats both to the monolithism of international Stalinism (relations with the Kremlin) and to that of the various Stalinist parties of the buffer-zone countries. The absolutist and bureaucratic methods, together with the fundamental orientation of the Soviet bureaucracy, trampling on the most immediate interests of the masses and of the buffer-zone economy for its own benefit, have provoked such tension within the Stalinist apparatus itself that the Kremlin has been forced to resort to preventive action (Tito) or to a terrorist reaction against leading elements of the buffer-zone apparatus (Koçi [Xoxe], Kostov — printed in the source as "Koce, Kostov"). This crisis of Stalinism can only spread and deepen as the economic, social and national contradictions in the buffer zone become more acute and as the Kremlin attempts to impose its absolute and direct control over the communist parties everywhere.
I. The stages in the evolution of the "buffer zone"
3. As indicated by the theses on "The USSR and Stalinism" adopted by the 2nd World Congress of the Fourth International, the particular situation of the buffer-zone countries is a function of a series of specific historical developments in these countries:
a) the weakening (Finland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria) or the near disappearance (Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia) of the former possessing classes and the collapse of their state apparatus in the course of the war, military defeats, Nazi occupation, partisan warfare, Russian occupation, etc.;
b) the decisive economic, political and military weight obtained by the USSR in these countries as a result of its military victories;
c) the revolutionary upsurge developing in some of these countries alongside the ending of the war (Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria); the channelling (Yugoslavia, Bulgaria) or the strangling (Poland, Czechoslovakia) of this upsurge by the Russian army or by the native Stalinist parties, or by a combination of the two.
The decisive factor that allowed the evolution of the buffer zone to be what it has been was imperialism's non-intervention in these countries, which in practice abandoned their bourgeoisie, weakened to the extreme, to the overwhelming politico-military superiority of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Only this non-intervention explains why the resistance of the dying possessing classes of these countries could, up to now, be progressively liquidated by the Stalinists through cold methods, without any broad mobilisation of the masses being necessary. But this imperialist non-intervention was in turn a function of a determined historical conjuncture:
a) from 1944 to 1946, it corresponded to the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam agreements and constituted the price world imperialism paid Stalin for the crushing of the German proletariat and for his active assistance both in strangling the Greek and Italian insurrectionary movements and in reconstructing the capitalist state and economy of every country on the continent outside the buffer zone;
b) from 1947 to 1949, it corresponded to the politico-military balance of forces of the Cold War as it presented itself on the European continent, that is to say above all to the overwhelming superiority of the Russian army over any other armed power in Europe, and to the permanent instability of the capitalist regime outside the buffer zone (constant strikes and unrest, etc.), which made any direct intervention on behalf of the vanishing bourgeoisie of the buffer zone perfectly illusory and materially impossible.
4. Within the framework of this concrete historical conjuncture, the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy and of the Stalinist parties in the buffer-zone countries has likewise passed through two distinct stages:
a) A first stage lasting until the end of 1947, during which the Stalinist bureaucracy sought above all an empirical solution to immediate problems. During this period, the emphasis of this policy was placed on using the resources of the buffer-zone countries to alleviate, as far as possible, the effects of the reconversion crisis in the USSR itself. This is why, on the one hand, an entire apparatus for exploiting these countries for the benefit of the Soviet bureaucracy was set up (armistice conventions, treaties, reparations, seizures of former German property, joint companies, preferential-tariff trade treaties, etc.), while, on the other hand, each of these countries was more or less left to its own devices as regards the immediate problems of its own economic reconstruction. During this stage, the bourgeoisie in general retained very strong, if not predominant, economic positions in all these countries with the exception of Yugoslavia — and nationalisations remained confined to enterprises seized by the workers at the end of the war and left without legal owners. This stage may be characterised by the efforts of the Stalinist bureaucracy and of the native Stalinist parties to use capitalist relations of production for their own benefit.
b) A second stage began as soon as the Stalinist ban on these countries' participation in the Marshall Plan was announced, but it developed fully only at the start of 1948. During this stage, marked moreover by the resolution of the most dangerous immediate post-war problems for the Soviet economy, the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy in the buffer zone consisted essentially in consolidating its predominant positions in these countries over the longer term, thwarting the efforts of American imperialism to draw them back into its own orbit. Falling within this new orientation of the Soviet bureaucracy are above all: the liquidation of strong positions held by the native bourgeoisie in industry and trade; the initiation of an effort at economic development and "planned" industrialisation of these countries; the curbing of the kulaks' hold over agriculture. However, this new orientation of the Soviet bureaucracy could not eliminate from the economy of the buffer-zone countries the structural difficulties of planning resulting from Stalinist policy in the preceding stage: the existence of the Soviet mortgage on the economy of these countries; the narrow national confines within which they remain enclosed; the capitalist character of agriculture; the apathy, and often the passive hostility, of the proletariat in the face of bureaucratic efforts at "planning," etc. This is why "planning" retains its entirely hybrid character and still differs structurally, fundamentally, from Soviet planning, which is itself a bureaucratic deformation of genuine socialist planning.
These variations in the bureaucracy's policy do not correspond solely to changes in the objective situation. Bureaucratic empiricism reflects, beneath a mask of immediate concerns, the absence of historical perspective and the impossibility of adopting a fundamental orientation. This in turn corresponds to the bureaucracy's concrete relations with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is because it wanted above all to strangle every revolutionary possibility that it was led to conclude temporary compromises with the bourgeoisie; it is because its privileges are historically incompatible with the maintenance of the capitalist regime that it had to embark on a course of gradual, bureaucratic "liquidation" of capitalist forces in the buffer zone.
5. Just as during the first stage the Soviet bureaucracy had come to realise empirically that a progressive integration of the buffer-zone countries into its own economic system was impossible so long as the native bourgeoisie retained substantial economic power, so too the bureaucracy is today beginning to learn from painful day-to-day experience that this same integration remains impossible without the elimination of the structural barriers that it has itself imposed on any genuine planning of these countries' economy.
The experience of the Tito schism has served to show it the danger that Stalinist parties in power in the buffer zone might become transmission agents for contradictory social forces developing as a result of growing economic difficulties. The danger of growing imperialist pressure, as a function of the completion of the first stage of the Marshall Plan, of a relative recovery of West German industry, of American rearmament, etc., works upon it in the same direction. Thus a third stage is taking shape in the evolution of Stalinist policy towards the buffer zone, characterised up to now by the following signs:
a) measures for growing economic coordination among the various countries, measures that have resulted in the establishment of the Council for Mutual Aid [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance] and that appear to be developing in the direction of a pooling of resources available for export and of a customs union;
b) initial measures to remove or ease the Russian mortgage on the economy of these countries (sale to Bulgaria of German assets seized by the USSR in 1944; reduction of Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian reparations; the grant of a gold and foreign-currency credit to Poland and Czechoslovakia, etc.).
However, these measures only sketch out the possibility of a new stage of Stalinist policy towards the buffer zone and cannot, either in themselves or through the plans drawn up thus far, running to 1952, fundamentally alter the structural obstacles to a "planning" of the buffer zone, even within the limits of Soviet planning.
II. The social nature of the countries of the "buffer zone"
6. From the foregoing it may be deduced that the buffer-zone countries — leaving aside Finland and the Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria — today constitute the very type of a hybrid, transitional society, undergoing full transformation, its contours still blurred and imprecise, whose fundamental nature is extremely difficult to sum up in a concise formula.
The most exact definition that can be given of the social nature of these countries is a definition proceeding by description. These countries appear as a society in which:
a) the transition between capitalism and Soviet society results not from a proletarian revolution but from politico-military upheavals that have eliminated the big bourgeoisie and the greater part of the middle bourgeoisie;
b) only capitalist survivals remain in small industry and in trade;
c) agriculture remains capitalist, both by its property regime (absence of nationalisation of the land) and by its dominant mode of exploitation (small private ownership);
d) foreign trade, a de facto if not a legal state monopoly, cannot free itself from the pressure and pull of the capitalist world market, owing to an insufficient material base for even bureaucratic planning in each of these countries;
e) facing a peasantry, a breeding-ground of capitalist forces, stands a proletariat that has had no significant part in the crystallisation of the new social situation and which, for that very reason, possesses no important subjective bond with the present state, Yugoslavia excepted;
f) except in rare instances, the formation of a native bureaucratic stratum around the ruling Communist Party bureaucracy is only at its initial stage;
g) the extreme Bonapartist and police form of the state reflects both its historical origins and the present prostration of the fundamental classes of society;
h) however, this Bonapartist form of the state is distinct both from classical Bonapartism (in the final analysis an instrument of the bourgeoisie) and from Soviet Bonapartism (an instrument of a workers' bureaucracy in a post-capitalist society), and constitutes above all an instrument of domination by the Soviet bureaucracy, an expression of international relations of force superimposed upon given class relations by doing violence to their normal expression.
7. What are the factors that determine the social difference between the buffer-zone countries and the USSR?
a) On the economic plane: the nationalisation of large-scale industry, of the banks, of the means of communication and of wholesale trade creates conditions that are necessary but not sufficient for planning, even in a deformed bureaucratic form as in the USSR. The narrow national frameworks within which each of the buffer-zone countries is enclosed, their lack of sufficient material resources to permit a development of the productive forces, the mortgage that the Soviet bureaucracy has imposed on the economy of these countries, the predominantly agricultural character of these countries which, in the absence of nationalisation of the land and under the predominant regime of small private farming, reproduce capitalism every day at the level of the village, the dependence of these countries on the capitalist world market to obtain the material means for their industrialisation — the sum of these factors creates a situation in which the greater part of the production of these countries is still destined for a capitalist market (whether domestic or foreign), and for that very reason is subject to the influence of all the oscillations of the world capitalist conjuncture and to the play of the equalisation of the average rate of profit. The conditions of fusion between the petty-bourgeois peasant market, state-owned industry and the capitalist world market, which Lenin and Trotsky depicted as a danger for the USSR in the period of the NEP, constitute today the determining situation of the buffer-zone countries. This finds expression in the fact that, in the advanced buffer-zone countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary), foreign trade accounts for about half of national income and that, not only today but even in 1952 (according to current plans), more than half of this trade will be with the Western countries, from which must come the decisive elements for the industrialisation of these countries. It also finds expression in the fact that these countries have in almost every case been obliged to compensate foreign capital for its nationalised property in the buffer zone and to recognise former debts, thereby imposing an additional burden on their already extremely strained economy.
b) On the social plane: because the present situation is not the result of a victorious proletarian revolution but of the successes of the Soviet bureaucracy on the politico-military plane, won both against the bourgeoisie and against the proletariat; and because, too, the formation of bureaucratic castes is only at its initial stage, it follows that, Yugoslavia excepted, it is highly improbable, if not excluded, that a civil war would be necessary to reverse the present orientation of these countries towards structural assimilation to the USSR. The same applies to the structure of the state. Except in the case of Yugoslavia, the state apparatuses of the buffer zone do not result from a violent destruction of the former bourgeois state apparatuses but from their "conquest" by the Stalinist parties with the help of Russian pressure and a series of successive purges. It follows that this apparatus is still today saturated with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements, especially within the army, the diplomatic service and the economic leadership. In the period following the October Revolution, proletarian control over the bourgeois cadres in the service of the workers' state, together with the democracy of the Bolshevik Party, checked the harmful influence of these elements on the direction of the state and of the economy. At the present stage of the buffer zone, which arose not from a proletarian revolution but from manoeuvres of the bureaucracy, any such control is completely lacking, thereby increasing the weight of bourgeois elements in the apparatus, which also reflect the structural differences between the economy of the buffer zone and that of the USSR. It may likewise be said that a return of the buffer zone to the capitalist orbit would not require the destruction of the present apparatus but its "purging" in the opposite direction.
c) On the political plane: the fate of these buffer-zone countries is not yet decided, not only in a historical sense as with the USSR, but in a much more immediate sense. The whole set of currents at work in world politics today — the Marshall Plan, the relative "reconstruction" of West Germany, American rearmament, the economic prospects of American imperialism and of the Soviet five-year plan, the development of the struggle of the proletariat and of the colonial peoples — all these factors will decide, in the months ahead, the immediate fate of the buffer-zone countries. As the political and strategic plans of imperialism and of the Stalinist bureaucracy indicate, it is highly improbable, if not excluded, that a war would be needed to bring some of these countries back into the imperialist orbit. This reason, added to those indicated above, makes it appear mistaken to modify from today our appraisal of the social nature of these countries, while clearly indicating the process of their structural assimilation to the USSR and the stages of this assimilation already accomplished. This is why the tasks of the Fourth International in these countries remain in general as they were enumerated by the 2nd World Congress, and it is only in the eventuality specified in point 9 that a revision would be called for.
8. The whole of this description amounts to this: that the buffer-zone countries — apart from Finland and the Russian occupation zones in Austria and Germany — find themselves in the process of structural assimilation to the USSR, but that this assimilation is not yet complete. The social differences between the USSR and the buffer zone enumerated above are qualitative in nature, although from a quantitative point of view the society of the buffer-zone countries is closer to Soviet society than to that of "normal" capitalist countries, just as the USSR itself is quantitatively much closer to capitalism than to socialism. It is only in this sense that we can continue to define the buffer-zone countries as capitalist countries in the process of structural assimilation to the USSR. This definition, necessarily terse and too concise to develop the various aspects of the buffer zone, thus essentially means that in the course of the process of structural assimilation of these countries the dialectical leap has not yet taken place. It insists at once on the historical origins of the present situation and on its still undecided social physiognomy, but in no way implies the presence in power of a bourgeoisie as the ruling class in these countries. This definition implies that the situation of the buffer-zone countries also differs from the situation of a "normal," "classical" capitalist society. It serves exclusively to situate these countries in relation both to capitalism and to the USSR, Marxist sociology excluding the existence of economies and states that are neither capitalist nor Soviet (workers' states or degenerated workers' states).
9. To what extent can this structural assimilation be completed to the point where our appraisal of the social nature of the buffer zone would have to be modified? The factors enumerated above indicate at the same time the concrete obstacles to the completion of this assimilation and the conditions under which this assimilation would in fact be consummated. They could be reduced to a single factor: the achievement of effective coordination and of a planning of the whole economy of these countries organically linked to that of the USSR, capable of reversing the present tendency, which is determinant, of these countries' dependence on the capitalist economy. This could occur, for example, in the event of the abolition of the national frontiers between the buffer-zone countries.
It is indeed the existence of these frontiers that extremely limits the material base on which a planned economy would have to be built and that at the same time requires the maintenance of a series of state apparatuses which, owing to their origin, cannot but be saturated with bourgeois elements. At the same time, the abolition of national frontiers would give a real impulse to a development of the productive forces and would constitute, even if carried out by the conservative Stalinist bureaucracy, a progressive act of great historical importance, genuinely comparable, in Trotsky's words, to the unification of Germany by Bismarck and the House of Hohenzollern. Such an abolition of frontiers, whether accomplished through the incorporation of some or all of these countries into the USSR, or through the constitution of a Balkan-Danubian federation formally independent of the USSR but a genuine unified framework for the planning of the economy, can be defined as a decisive point in the process of structural assimilation of these countries to the USSR, at which the social nature of these countries undergoes a qualitative transformation. On the plane of the state, it would require the disappearance of the present hybrid state apparatuses and the constitution of a state apparatus of a new type, doubtless modelled on that of the USSR. It is in relation to this achievement that other changes in the situation moving in the same direction should be assessed: the eventual nationalisation of the land, the start of the collectivisation of the land, the establishment of a common plan for the economic development of the buffer zone, the reversal of its economic and trade relations with the West, etc.
All of the foregoing constitutes a probable variant of an objective historical process and in no way a desirable objective of action for the revolutionary proletariat. In specifying the conditions under which the assimilation of the buffer zone to Russian society would be completed through Stalinist action, the Fourth International, while in that case modifying its attitude towards the buffer zone in the event of war, would in no way retreat from its struggle against the police oppression of the masses of the buffer zone by the Soviet bureaucracy and its agents. It is precisely in the conditions of a development along the lines indicated above that the struggle of the Fourth International for independent Polish, Czech, Hungarian, etc., soviet republics would take on its full meaning, linked to a merciless denunciation of all the elements of national oppression that the bureaucracy is introducing and will introduce into the buffer zone. Faced with the Stalinist perspective of a bureaucratic integration of the buffer zone into the USSR, the Fourth International puts before the masses of the buffer zone the revolutionary perspective of the integration of independent soviet socialist republics into an independent Balkan-Danubian federation and into the Socialist United States of Europe.
III. Particular cases
10. It is in the case of countries forming part of the USSR's "strategic buffer zone," but which have at the same time followed a particular economic and political evolution, that the contradictory, combined, non-rectilinear character of the whole evolution of the buffer zone appears most clearly. The case of these countries also shows how much one must guard against peremptory generalisations and how necessary it is to follow step by step the evolution of the actual situation of each particular country. The case of Yugoslavia lies at one extremity of the spectrum formed by the nuances that differentiate the situation of each buffer-zone country. Of all the buffer-zone countries, Yugoslavia was the only one in which the liquidation of the greater part of the former possessing classes took place, along with the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus through the action of the masses — namely, the partisan war, which took on in this country the character of a genuine civil war. From this fundamental difference between Yugoslavia and the other buffer-zone countries follow particular differences on a whole series of planes: the real basis of the Communist Party among the masses; a fundamentally different attitude of the masses towards the new state; different relations between the Yugoslav Communist Party and the Soviet bureaucracy; the possibility of a genuine differentiation of the workers' movement following the Tito crisis, despite the undeniable existence of a police regime in the country. Although the sum of these factors eliminates none of the structural obstacles to genuine planning, and for this reason renders the Yugoslav economy still qualitatively different from the Russian economy, it undoubtedly makes this country, on the social and political plane, the one closest to the Soviet structure. The defence of Yugoslavia against the campaign of slander, economic blockade, etc., waged by the Soviet bureaucracy is grounded in our appraisal of the workers' movement of this country, of the origins of its state, and of the revolutionary possibilities opened up by this workers' movement and the origins of this state, which take precedence over purely economic considerations.
11. Finland lies at the other end of the buffer-zone spectrum. Facing a bourgeoisie barely shaken by the war and formally retaining its economic and state positions; facing a more developed proletariat, which, as a result of a series of historical developments, is not very malleable to Stalinist manoeuvres; and facing also an imperialist support more resolute towards the Finnish bourgeoisie than towards any other bourgeoisie of the buffer zone, the Stalinist bureaucracy has confined itself to imposing on Finland an economic tribute and to occupying certain strategic positions, otherwise leaving the country to evolve within the framework of an almost normal bourgeois economy. This found its political reflection in a regrouping of conservative forces resulting, after an inevitable transitional period, in the expulsion of the Stalinists from the government coalition and in the elimination of the first positions they had won in the state apparatus following the USSR's military victory. Of course, Finland's evolution cannot be regarded as any more definitive than that of the rest of the buffer zone. The international situation could compel the bureaucracy to increase its pressure on this country and to a new, desperate effort at military resistance on its part. The case of Finland is nonetheless of considerable interest, above all because it demonstrates that the bureaucracy has in no way attempted or managed to impose a single pattern of evolution on the buffer zone as a whole, and because it illustrates the fact that a certain internal conjuncture, a certain prostration of the fundamental social classes, was a necessary condition for even the temporary success of Stalinist manoeuvres in the buffer zone.
12. The occupation zone in Austria closely resembles Finland. The Soviet bureaucracy has had to confine itself to seizing a few economic pledges (former German properties) and to occupying important strategic positions, but it has been able to influence neither the general economic orientation of Austria, which is evolving within the framework of a normal capitalist economy included in the Marshall Plan, nor the social and political evolution that has eliminated the Communist Party from a share of bourgeois power. As in the case of Finland, the international balance of forces was the decisive factor in this evolution, but concrete relations between the classes were likewise a major obstacle to Stalinist manoeuvres.
Finally, the German occupation zone constitutes another special case, situated halfway between that of the buffer zone in general and that of Austria. The decisive characteristic of the situation in East Germany is the seizure of the most important sector of industry by the USSR and its transformation into Soviet property, carried out alongside large-scale dismantling. Nationalisations affect, alongside this Russian sector of the economy, a substantial but not exclusive part of large-scale industry and wholesale trade, and there remains a middle bourgeoisie drawing off a considerable share of national income. Finally, the formation of a bureaucratic stratum, raised above the proletariat and acting as an extended arm of the Russian bureaucracy, is more advanced there than in the other buffer-zone countries. If the situation of East Germany remains undecided, it is because, more than any of the other buffer-zone countries, it depends first and foremost on the international situation, namely on an eventual solution of the German problem as a whole and on the particular orientation of the USA and the USSR towards this problem. It cannot yet be said whether the Soviet bureaucracy is determined to keep its positions in East Germany come what may, or whether it would be prepared to treat them as a bargaining chip, both to preserve the rest of the buffer zone and to gain a degree of influence over German affairs as a whole (the slogan of unification, etc.). Under these conditions, the status of the occupation zone, as well as the orientation of its evolution, remains more indistinct than the status and orientation of the rest of the buffer zone, and the tendency towards structural assimilation to the USSR is less pronounced there.
As regards its tasks, the Fourth International continues to defend there the positions of the theses of the World Congress and considers that any measure of the Soviet bureaucracy, including the eventual — and in any case highly doubtful — incorporation of East Germany into a Balkan-Danubian federation, must be fought and regarded as reactionary in relation to the destruction of German unity and the paralysis of the German proletariat that it provokes.
IV. The theoretical significance of the evolution of the "buffer zone"
13. The appearance of new transitional regimes, as is the case with the buffer-zone countries — transitional between capitalism and the USSR — is neither the effect of chance nor the result of negligible historical accidents. Only incurable doctrinaires can conceive of capitalism and socialism as fixed entities, given once and for all, to which a living, contradictory and rich historical process, crystallising ever-new combined forms, should correspond. In reality, the appearance of mixed transitional regimes, of a combined character, is the clearest expression of our historical epoch, defined by:
a) an ever more advanced decomposition of capitalism; the conditions of the prolonged delay of the world revolution, an essential function of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist leadership of the world workers' movement;
[b) — omitted or lost in the original numbering, as in the source text, which proceeds directly from "a)" to "c)"]
c) the existence of the USSR, not only as a power that continues to polarise the revolutionary aspirations of a significant part of the world proletariat, but also as a state power possessing a politico-military weight of its own, with its own logic of expansion.
It is only in the light of these three factors that one can understand the appearance and evolution of a new, combined phenomenon such as that of the Soviet "buffer zone," and at the same time limit its real historical significance.
14. The recognition of the existence of such transitional regimes in no way calls into question our appraisal of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, nor our appraisal of Stalinism as a force dissolving the USSR and as a force organising the defeats of the world proletariat:
a) The appraisal of Stalinism cannot be made on the basis of localised results of its policy but must proceed from the whole of its action on a world scale. Considering the state of decomposition presented by world capitalism, even today, four years after the end of the war, and considering the concrete situation of 1943–1945, there can be no doubt that it was Stalinism which, on the world scale, appeared as the decisive factor that averted a sudden and simultaneous collapse of the capitalist order throughout Europe and Asia. In this sense, the "successes" won by the bureaucracy in the buffer zone constitute at most the price that imperialism paid it for services rendered on the world arena, a price moreover constantly called back into question at the next stage.
b) From the world point of view, the reforms carried out by the Soviet bureaucracy in the direction of an assimilation of the buffer zone to the USSR weigh incomparably less in the balance than the blows dealt by the Soviet bureaucracy — also and above all through its action in the buffer zone — to the consciousness of the world proletariat, which it demoralises, disorients and paralyses through the whole of its policy, rendering it even in part permeable to the imperialist campaign of preparation for war. From the point of view of the USSR itself, the defeats and demoralisation of the world proletariat brought about by Stalinism constitute a danger incomparably greater than the strengthening represented by the consolidation of the buffer zone.
c) In the buffer zone itself, where the objective and subjective conditions were ripe for an immediate overthrow of capitalism in 1943–1944, Stalinist policy led to the temporary strengthening of anti-proletarian forces, created a thousand new obstacles on the road to the abolition of capitalism, and thereby brought about the whole painful and jerky process of assimilation, stretching out over a number of years and rendering the proletariat, for the most part, apathetic and even hostile, where the revolutionary movement would have achieved the liquidation of capitalism in these countries in a much shorter time and at a minimum cost.
d) As a result of the very expansion of the Soviet bureaucracy under the concrete conditions mentioned, the objective contradictions in the situation of the buffer zone tend to make their way into the Soviet bureaucracy and economy themselves, multiplying tensions and antagonisms that are already numerous and preparing the ground for the development of centrifugal tendencies of various kinds (the Tito tendency on the one hand, the Gomulka-Akermann [Gomułka] tendency on the other).
15. Historically, the conditions mentioned above not only indicate the reasons for the appearance of transitional regimes, but at the same time delimit the limits of the viability of the Soviet bureaucracy:
a) on the social plane, the overthrow of the Soviet bureaucracy remains inevitable within the framework of a world decision of the class struggle, unavoidable in the long run one way or the other;
b) on the politico-military plane, this same overthrow likewise remains inevitable if the world proletariat fails to break imperialism in time, this eventuality also entailing the fall of the bureaucracy.
The appearance of transitional regimes of the buffer-zone type thus expresses only the character of an interlude represented by the historical stage running from 1943 to the present: an interlude between the lowest point of the world retreat of the proletarian revolution and the new world revolutionary upsurge, which has thus far only been sketched out; an interlude between the Second World War and the final clash between imperialism and the USSR. It is only within the framework of this time-limited interlude that the buffer zone and all the phenomena connected with it appear in their true, provisional and temporary aspect, and that the true nature of Stalinism appears more pronounced than ever, in the sense indicated by the Fourth International.
*
The vote on this resolution, which was accepted in its general line as a basis for discussion within the International until the next Plenum of the IEC, was accompanied by the following statements:
Statement by Comrade Jérôme (Raptis): "I consider that the resolution does not answer positively the question of the class nature of Yugoslavia, and that the analysis given of this country should logically have led to the conclusion that Yugoslavia has ceased to be a capitalist country."
Statement by Comrades Colvin and Ali (Ceylon and India):
"a) The resolution does not address the differences in the development of events in Yugoslavia and the questions arising from them;
b) Yugoslavia is a degenerated workers' state;
c) although the process of structural assimilation has continued in the other buffer-zone countries, these changes are still quantitative in nature and these states remain in a transitional state as defined in the resolution adopted at the 2nd World Congress and in the present resolution."