The degeneration of the Soviet Union into a dictatorial parody of socialism, at the hands of Stalin’s counterrevolutionary clique of bureaucrats, is one of the great tragedies of world history.

Today, our critics use this example to argue that communism always results in a small clique at the top controlling everything.

But as Jerome Mellatus, leading French communist, explains: the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy was a product of the backwardness of Russia and the failure of the world revolution. Lenin spent the last years of his life fighting this degeneration in vain. 

To avoid repeating history, we must build communism on healthy foundations.