Stalin fought tsarism and propagated Marxism during Lenin's lifetime; after he became a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party headed by Lenin he took part in the struggle to pave the way for the 1917 Revolution; after the October Revolution he fought to defend the fruits of the proletarian revolution.
Stalin led the CPSU and the Soviet people, after Lenin's death, in resolutely fighting both internal and external foes, and in safeguarding and consolidating the first socialist state in the world.
Stalin led the CPSU and the Soviet people in upholding the line of socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivization and in achieving great successes in socialist transformation and socialist construction.
Stalin led the CPSU, the Soviet people and the Soviet army in an arduous and bitter struggle to the great victory of the anti-fascist war.
Stalin defended and developed Marxism-Leninism in the fight against various kinds of opportunism, against the enemies of Leninism. The Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites and other bourgeois agents.
Stalin made an indelible contribution to the international communist movement in a number of theoretical writings which are immortal Marxist-Leninist works.
Stalin led the Soviet Party and Government in pursuing a foreign policy which on the whole was in keeping with proletarian internationalism and in greatly assisting the revolutionary struggles of all peoples, including the Chinese people.
Stalin stood in the forefront of the tide of history guiding the struggle, and was an irreconcilable enemy of the imperialists and all reactionaries.
Stalin's activities were intimately bound up with the struggles of the great CPSU and the great Soviet people and in separable from the revolutionary struggles of the people of the whole world.
Stalin's life was that of a great Marxist-Leninist, a great proletarian revolutionary.
It is true that while he performed meritorious deeds for the Soviet people and the international communist movement, Stalin, a great Marxist-Leninist and proletarian revolutionary, also made certain mistakes. Some were errors of principle and some were errors made in the course of practical work; some could have been avoided and some were scarcely avoidable at a time when the dictatorship of the proletariat had no precedent to go by.
In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement.
Stalin's merits and mistakes are matters of historical, objective reality. A comparison of the two shows that his merits outweighed his faults. He was primarily correct, and his faults were secondary. In summing up Stalin's thinking and his work in their totality, surely every honest Communist with a respect for history will first observe what was primary in Stalin. Therefore, when Stalin's errors are being correctly appraised, criticized and overcome, it is necessary to safeguard what was primary in Stalin's life, to safeguard Marxism-Leninism which he defended and developed.
It would be beneficial if the errors of Stalin, which were only secondary, are taken as historical lessons so that all Communists parties all over the World might take warning and avoid repeating those errors or commit fewer errors. Both positive and negative historical lessons are beneficial to all Communists, provided they are drawn correctly and conform with and do not distort historical facts.
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