219. The central issue posed by these developments was the crisis of political perspective in the working class. The inability of the working class to formulate its own response to the restoration of capitalism was rooted in the impact on its consciousness of decades of domination by the Stalinist and social democratic bureaucracies, together with the genocidal assault waged by Stalin against the representatives of revolutionary Marxism. It could only be overcome through a struggle to renew the socialist culture that had given rise to the October Revolution, and to make available to advanced workers all the strategic lessons of the 20th Century. David North’s Report to the 12th Plenum of the ICFI in 1992 explained:

The intensification of the class struggle provides the general foundation of the revolutionary movement. But it does not by itself directly and automatically create the political, intellectual and, one might add, cultural environment that its development requires, and which prepares the historical setting for a truly revolutionary situation. Only when we grasp this distinction between the general objective basis of the revolutionary movement and the complex political, social and cultural process through which it becomes a dominant historical force is it possible to understand the significance of our historical struggle against Stalinism and to see the tasks that are posed to us today.^[1]

220. While the bourgeoisie reacted to the dissolution of the USSR with a triumphalism expressed in Fukuyama’s “The End of History,” many of the political tendencies that had previously been convinced of the permanence of Stalinism joined the demoralized chorus of “the death of socialism.” Not a small number of those who were anxious to abandon and curse Marxism had no desire to confront the political issues behind the collapse of the USSR—least of all the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism.

221. At its 12th Plenum, the ICFI recognized the critical importance of refuting the big lie that Stalinism is socialism or Marxism, exposing the political genocide committed by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR and defending historical truth. It declared:

To answer the lie that Stalinism is Marxism requires that we expose the deeds of Stalinism. To know what Stalinism is one has to show whom Stalinism murdered. We have to answer the question: against what enemy did Stalinism strike its most terrible blows? The greatest political task of our movement must be to restore historical truth by exposing the far-reaching political significance of the crimes which Stalinism carried out.^[2]

222. The defense of historical truth against falsifications and the struggle for the revival of a socialist culture within the working class were inseparable. After its March 1992 plenum, the ICFI launched a campaign to refute the claims of the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification. Since 1992, it has systematically worked against the falsifications of historians such as Martin Malia, Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Pipes, Dmitri Volkogonov, Geoffrey Swain, Ian Thatcher, Robert Service and Jörg Baberowski, embodied in the works of Mehring Books.

223. The falsification of history targeting Marxism and Leon Trotsky has recently taken the form of a pre-emptive attack by various academics aimed directly at discrediting Trotskyism and the ICFI. Between 2018 and 2023, British academic John E. Kelly published two books dedicated to proving Trotskyism “irrelevant,” while in 2024, Zionist-funded Irish academic Aidan Beatty published a piece of hack work targeting Gerry Healy and the ICFI based on fabrications and lies in the guise of a “biography.” In a comprehensive refutation of these political attacks, the International Committee explained the objective motive behind them:

Under conditions of an intensifying global crisis and a radicalization of the working class and students, the ruling elites—sensitive to emerging threats to their rule—fear the revival of interest in Marxism and the perspective of world socialist revolution.^[3]

224. Beginning in 1993, the IC initiated a close collaboration with Vadim Rogovin, a leading Soviet Marxist sociologist and historian. Until his untimely death in 1998, Rogovin, working with the ICFI, completed the seven-volume series Was There an Alternative?, which examined the Left Opposition as a genuine revolutionary alternative to Stalinism, and gave a series of lectures internationally between 1995 and 1998. Rogovin’s work documented a critical historical fact. As North noted after his death, “… what sets Vadim’s work apart from virtually all others is his insistence that the principal purpose and function of the terror was the elimination of the Trotskyist opposition to the Stalinist regime.”[4]