A tribute to Vadim Rogovin by Barbara Slaughter

"We live in a world of lies, and Vadim has devoted his life to the search for historical truth"

On May 12, 1997 the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a meeting in Moscow to honor Vadim Rogovin, a leading researcher at the Institute, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Barbara Slaughter, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain, made the following remarks at the meeting.

We live in a world of so much suffering and devastation. In the advanced countries the conditions facing workers are worse than those of a generation ago. All the reforms gained after the Second World War are being destroyed before workers' very eyes-the health service, education, pensions. Wages and working conditions are being forced down and permanent unemployment is a fact of life.

In Britain unemployed youth between 16 and 18 receive no money from the state. Thousands of young people are homeless and are forced to live by begging on the streets of the major cities. You may think I am exaggerating, but anyone who travels to London and looks beyond the bright lights of the West End will know I am speaking the truth.

Frankly, the working class is confused and bewildered. Why have its old parties failed it? What is the alternative? Is there an alternative?

That question was posed in Russia 80 years ago, when, in the midst of the First World War, the Russian proletariat overthrew the bourgeois state and took power. It was an example to the proletariat all over the world and it profoundly moved the British working class.

My home is in Leeds, an industrial city in the north of England. There the first meeting of over a thousand delegates from all over the country gathered to celebrate the October Revolution. The hotels in the city refused to accommodate them. So workers threw open their homes and invited the delegates in as honored guests.

It is well known that Winston Churchill, one of the most astute politicians of the period, sent an expeditionary force, along with the bourgeoisie of 13 other countries, to crush the revolution. It is not so well known-but it is a source of pride among the most advanced elements of the British working class-that the expeditionary force was finally withdrawn because of demonstrations, strikes and boycotts organized by the British working class.

The Russian Revolution provided a beacon of hope for workers all over the world. It is so often forgotten in the discussions about Bolshevik violence that the revolution occurred in the international context of horrendous and senseless slaughter, when a whole generation of youth was butchered on the battlefields of Europe, both east and west-countless numbers of working class youth and young intellectuals, including some of our finest poets.

It was in this context that the October Revolution was seen as a renewal, a promise of a better world, not just for Russia, but for the whole of humanity.

Thus all the more terrible was the disillusionment produced as a consequence of the Stalinist murder of the revolutionary generation that had led the Russian working class to victory. It created confusion and disorientation among workers when these heroes were tried and shot as enemies of the people. It strengthened the grip of the reformist parties, like the British Labour Party, which equated Stalinism with Bolshevism.

Today in Britain thousands of class-conscious workers are beginning to understand the true nature of the Labour Party. It has become thoroughly and openly a party of the bourgeoisie. Hundreds of workers are looking for a way out of this political impasse. Thousands more will follow.

The working class is confronted with the necessity to turn back to the past, to history, to understand what has happened in this century, and, most particularly, what happened to its most significant event-the October Revolution.

That is why Vadim received such an enthusiastic response when he came to Britain and raised the question: "Was there an alternative to Stalinism?"

His lectures at the universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Sheffield and London were attended by hundreds of people. In all those places the professors insisted, "Nobody is interested in this question here. Don't expect many people to turn up." And everywhere they were amazed at the attendance. In Glasgow we had to switch to a larger lecture theater at the last minute because the audience could not be accommodated.

Everywhere the audiences took Vadim to their heart. Notwithstanding the language barrier, they hung onto his every word. It was clear that his lectures were based on patient and meticulous work that no one else was doing-perhaps no one else dared to do, even now. We live in a world of lies and Vadim has devoted his life to the search for historical truth.

In Australia, Vadim gave a wonderfully successful series of lectures in Melbourne and Sidney. One of them was entitled, "Leon Trotsky and the fate of Marxism in the USSR." He ended the lecture with these words:

"Many people say that the collapse of the regimes both in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe means the death of communism. In reality, what died was not communism, but ruling elites and regimes which had nothing in common with Marxism. The fundamental ideas of Marxism, the ideals of social justice, social equality and internationalism, cannot die internationally as long as there exists a division between those who are privileged and those who have nothing."

This is profoundly true. And it is why I am here today-not just as a representative of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain, but of all those students, workers and youth who heard Comrade Vadim speak, and who recognize his great contribution to the international workers movement.

I speak as a person who has devoted more than 50 years of my life to the cause of socialism. I began my political life in 1945 when I joined the Communist Party, influenced, like so many youth at that time, by the tremendous sacrifices of the Soviet working class in the struggle against fascism.

I left the Communist Party in 1956. Khrushchev's speech to the 20th Congress had already sparked a tremendous intellectual and moral crisis within the ranks of the Communist Party. And when the tanks were sent into Budapest to suppress the Hungarian Revolution, I wanted no part of it.

The questions that faced me then, which remain the most profound questions of the twentieth century, were, "How did Stalinism develop?" and "Was there an alternative?"

At that critical time in my life, it was only the writings of Leon Trotsky that provided me with a new and richer orientation and renewed my belief in the grandeur, the beauty and the necessity of the socialist ideal. At that time, in the midst of the postwar boom in the West, I was one of very few. Now, 40 years later, there are many and there will be many more. So it was a great event for us to meet and discuss with Vadim Rogovin and hear his lectures.

I also had the privilege of traveling to Germany last December, to hear Vadim lecture at the Ruhr University in Bochum and Humbolt University in Berlin. These were historic events and will be acknowledged as such in the future.

I know I speak for so many of Vadim's friends in England and throughout the world, in honoring his life and his great achievements on his sixtieth birthday.