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International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
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International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
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The collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was preceded by the rapid collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the GDR. The ICFI analyzed the collapse of Stalinism, above all, as a new stage in the crisis of imperialism which had broken at its “weakest link”: the autarkic, parasitic regimes of Stalinism. The result was the breakup of these deformed workers states into a series of a new nation-states on a capitalist basis. In Yugoslavia, capitalist restoration was accompanied by the systematic fueling of ethnic tensions, resulting in violent ethnic clashes and the intervention of imperialism.

The fact that imperialism and the bureaucracies were able to resolve this crisis in their own interests and restore capitalism, testified to the profound damage that Stalinism had done to the socialist consciousness of the working class over the preceding decades.

East German border guards seen through a gap in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down a segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate, Berlin [Source: AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File]
David North, 17 February, 1989
The Fourth International and the Yugoslav Revolution

This chapter from the book The Heritage We Defend reviews the discussions within the Fourth International about the nature of the Yugoslav revolution and the political and sociological characterization of the deformed workers states that were established across Eastern Europe after World War II. The book was written in 1987, just two years before the collapse of these regimes.


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David North, 17 February, 1989
The Crisis of Stalinism and the Perspective of World Socialist Revolution

This report was given to the Fourth National Congress of the Workers League, held February 17–19, 1989 in Detroit. It gave a Marxist assessment of the first stages of the breakup of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, examining the dangers facing the working class of capitalist restoration and the responsibility of the International Committee to raise the consciousness of the working class and make it aware of Its historic tasks.


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David North
Imperialism Breaks at its Weakest Link

This report was given by David North to a membership meeting of the Workers' League (predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the US), held in Detroit on January 6, 1990. It analyzed the relationship between the breakup of the Stalinist regimes and the crisis of world capitalism.


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Timeline
Poland and Czechoslovakia
Wolfgang Weber
Poland 1980–1981: The Solidarity Movement and the Perspective of Political Revolution

This book traces the historical and social origins, the international context and the unfolding of the struggle of the Polish working class in 1980–81. It also analyzes the political forces at work in the mass Solidarity movement, as well as the intervention of the Pabloites in Poland, aimed at blocking this movement from assuming an independent, socialist character. 


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David North, 1 DecembeR 1989
What next in Czechoslovakia?

In November 1989, mass demonstrations erupted against the hated Stalinist bureaucrats in Czechoslovakia. The collapse of the Stalinist regime of Milos Jakes brought to power an unstable alliance of the Stalinist bureaucracy with right-wing petty-bourgeois political groups attempting to restore capitalism.


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The intervention of the BSA in East Germany

On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, known as the GDR), a state with 17 million inhabitants, was disbanded 41 years after its founding and incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany on a capitalist basis.

The ICFI intervened in the crisis of Stalinism in the USSR and East Germany on the basis of the program of socialist internationalism and fought for a political revolution by the working class against the bureaucracy. The German section of the ICFI distributed thousands of leaflets and volumes of Trotskyist literature among workers in the GDR. We are publishing here the most important statements and documents from this intervention, which laid an important basis for the building of the Trotskyist movement in Germany and across Europe.

Manifesto by the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter
The crisis in the GDR and the tasks of the Fourth International

This statement was adopted by the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter, then the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, at a special conference on January 26, 1990. It elaborated the political orientation of the Trotskyist movement to the events in East Germany.


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Statement by the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter
On German reunification

This statement by the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter, predecessor of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, was published on October 21, 1990. The unification of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) on October 3, 1990 marked an end to an important chapter in the history of the German and international working class. It required the drawing of a political balance sheet, not only of the last 12 months, but of a whole historical period.


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Peter Schwarz, 1 December 1989
Ernest Mandel defends Stalinism

In response to the BSA’s intervention among workers and young people in East Germany, Ernest Mandel, a leader of the Pabloite United Secretariat, denounced the BSA on German public television.


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Statement by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei
30 Years of German unity

This statement was published by the German section of the ICFI, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of German reunification. It draws a balance sheet of the devastating results of capitalist restoration and reviews the intervention of the ICFI in the crisis of Stalinism three decades ago.


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The breakup of Yugoslavia and the Balkan Wars

Marxism, Opportunism and the Balkan Crisis

The following statement was originally published by the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1994, in the midst of the 1992-95 civil war in Bosnia. In light of the present NATO bombardment of Serbia, the issues addressed below—the history of the Balkan region, the attempts made to free it from manipulation by the major imperialist powers, and the struggle of the Marxists to unite workers of all ethnic and religious backgrounds to establish a socialist federation—have an immense and immediate significance.

International Committee Fourth International•

Yugoslavia: Its Meaning for World Labor

In determining its own independent attitude toward the events in Yugoslavia and the growing threat of war, the working class cannot afford to base itself simply on moral revulsion and certainly not on the distorted propaganda of the capitalist press.

Workers League Political Committee•