Moscow Paper Sees Gorbachev in Similar Struggle : Soviets Stress Lenin’s Criticism of Stalin

In an apparently unprecedented move, a Soviet newspaper Sunday published V. I. Lenin’s deathbed denunciation of dictator Josef Stalin and equated the fierce struggle waged by the founder of the Soviet state with the one being fought by leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The article, in the English, French and German-language editions of Sunday’s Moscow News, was the sharpest to date in an accelerating process of de-Stalinization and the boldest linkage of Gorbachev with Lenin, who is revered with almost religious devotion.

The article quoted Lenin’s letters, known as his “Last Testament,” about efforts to overcome the pressing issues of the day, such as the problem of nationalities, the cumbersome state apparatus and stagnating bureaucrats.

Urged Party Overhaul

The letters called for an overhaul of the Communist Party and government structure to combine centralized government with “expanding democracy everywhere in all spheres.”

Editor Yegor Yakovlev of the Moscow News said the documents describe “what was going on then and at this moment in this country.”

In the letters, which Lenin dictated from his deathbed, he attacked Stalin as having the “fatal” qualities of being spiteful, rude and in too much of a hurry.

“Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a secretary general,” Lenin wrote. “That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post.”

Stalin became general secretary of the party in 1922, and later became supreme ruler of the Soviet Union after defeating rivals in a power struggle. Lenin, who headed the government but held no formal senior position in the party, died in 1924.

Lenin said Stalin’s flaws could not be considered a “negligible detail, for it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.”

“Lenin was right, tragically right,” Yakovlev wrote.

Western diplomats believed it was the first time that a Soviet newspaper has published the letters, which were contained in a 1961 edition of Lenin’s collected works, although Stalin has come under increasing criticism under Gorbachev.

The article equated Gorbachev’s struggle to crank up the stagnating bureaucracy and to breathe new life into every aspect of the society with the battle Lenin waged in the first years after Communist power was established in 1917.

Gorbachev’s speeches have shown increasing frustration with the pace of reform.

Members of the artistic and scientific communities recently have debated whether democracy is possible in the Soviet system and note as a positive first step the criticism of Stalin.

Attack on Bureaucrats

It followed by days an article in the monthly literary review Novy Mir, in which a leading writer launched a broad attack on what he called home-grown socialist bureaucrats for resisting changes.

It also criticized the excesses of Stalin, whose purges led to the death of tens of thousands of innocent Soviets.

One Western diplomat called Sunday’s article indicative of the “free-for-all” in the latest process of de-Stalinization, begun by Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in the 1950s.