The following item under the heading "Stalin's role mst not be distorted" appeared in the Daily Worker of 23rd June, in the form of a despatch from the paper's Moscow correspondent. It is interesting because it raises questions not posed before in relation to Stalin, Cee, his ‘errors and waverings during the 1908-9 discussion on philosophical questions, ' (comrades should read Materialism _and Emprirocriticism by Lenin to see what this was about). The report reads:
"The Six-volume Soviet Communist} Party history now in preparation “must be quite free of any exaggeration of either positive or the negative role of Stalin Pravda writes in a leading article today. It must ‘widely portray Lenin's closest comradés and pupils, the leading Bolshevik workers, who with him built and strenzthened the Party, led the masses to revolution and the building of a new socicty.'
' The authors of the new work, says Pravda, should show how the transition to Socialism 'comes not of itself but as a result of the titanic struggle and toil of the masses of the people led by Marxist-Le~inst parties.' In telling its heroic and victorious story the new work must sho. the Party'itself discovered its own errors, drew the lessons from temporary failures ud defeats and found the right road to victory."
"Pravda calls for thorough objective study of all the material that has recently come to light on Stalin's errors and waverings during the 1908-9 discussion on philosophical questions; on aspects of the struggle against the liquidators 5 in March and April 19173; during the Sixth Congress; and on the South and Scuth-Vest fronts during the Civil War.
"The historians, Pravda continues, ‘mst tell of Stalin's responsibility for the repression against the Party, State and military cadres before the war and also show Stalin's errors on questions of forieg policy, of the direction of agriculture and on other questions.' The alt of the personality 'slowed down but. could not halt the progressive development of Soviet society, could not change the nature of Socialist society, nor shake the Party's organisational, political and theoretical foundations,.'