I reported from a meeting of the British Stalin Society last year, where one elderly "comrade" tried to rally the meeting by declaring, "We still have Cuba and [North] Korea. We are not beaten yet!" He was right. Not only are there Stalinists in power today; there are apologists for them here in Britain.
For evidence of this, we only have to look at the most popular Stalinist nation on earth: Cuba. Every time I write about this, I am inundated with letters from enraged (and no doubt perfectly nice) hippies explaining that Cuban communism is all about being nice to children and cuddling small puppies who resemble Lassie.
Yet Fidel Castro recently, for the billionth time, explained his beliefs, and they are not so benevolent. Stalin "showed great wisdom," explains the billionaire leader of a bitingly poor nation. He continues: "Stalin established unity in the Soviet Union [by suppressing ruthlessly all the surrounding nations, and, for example, deporting the entire population of Chechnya to Siberia, as Fidel doesn't add]. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity [by butchering all his opponents]. He gave the international revolutionary movement a new impetus. The USSR's industrialisation [through forced labour] was one of Stalin's wisest actions."
Fidel runs his country on precisely the same lines as his hero. Amnesty International's latest reports detail the plight of the "prisoners of conscience" (otherwise known as democrats) and notes than even now, the number of people harassed "directly by the state," including "political dissidents, independent journalists and other activists," is increasing. It is worth remembering the name of just one victim of Fidel, plucked from among many: Bernardo Arevalo Padron has been festering in prison since 1997 because he called Fidel Castro "a liar" for failing (as ever) to stick to agreements on relaxing his authoritarian rule.
Yet still Tony Benn brags about the standards of the Cuban health-care system which, preposterously, he says are "better than America's." (If you are ever taken ill on a flight across the Atlantic, Tony, I suggest you test this by insisting on being flown to Havana rather than New York.) Still John Pilger describes the Cuban revolution as "a crucial model for challenging power." (For a man obsessed with hidden agendas, he very rarely discloses this agenda of his own.)
Fidel runs his country on precisely the same lines as his hero.
Now Hugo Chavez is copying his hero Fidel Castro by turning Venezuela into the next communist hell-hole.
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