The Soviet Union was a strong and large country that had destroyed fascist Germany in the Second World War. The Soviet Union was strong because it was under Stalin’s correct leadership and because the party of the Soviet Union and its people were united behind their leader. Even when the German troops were approaching Moscow during the Second World War, Stalin stayed in Moscow, giving leadership to his army and people. He even held a parade then in celebration of the anniversary of the victory in the October Socialist Revolution. He straightened out the difficult war situation, organized counteroffensives and dealt crushing blows to the enemy and ensured the historic victory of the Soviet Union. This fact alone is enough to prove that Stalin was a great leader.
After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev seized power by the method of intrigue and pursued a revisionist policy. Under the pretext of opposing the “cult of personality”, he disparaged Stalin, weakened the party systematically and dulled the revolutionary spirit of party members and working people by neglecting ideological education among them. In the years subsequent to Khrushchev’s days, the party’s ideological work was also neglected. In consequence, people gave up the idea of working for the revolution and were infected with the growing bourgeois, revisionist idea of taking an interest only in money, villas and cars, and a corrupt and dissipated way of life became rife in society. Because people were not given a revolutionary education, economic construction was not successful, either. In the Soviet Union, because of the party’s ideological degeneration and because of widespread subjectivism and bureaucratism in party and state activities, the party became divorced from the masses of the people, was unable to give political leadership to society, and ended in a failure to defend socialism from the imperialists’ anti-socialist offensive. If the party of the Soviet Union had strengthened itself and solidly armed its members and other people in ideology, the Soviet Union would not have crumbled overnight even though the renegades from the revolution appeared in the party.

In July last, I met a delegation of war veterans from the Russian Federation who were on a visit to our country to attend the 40th anniversary celebration of the victory in the Fatherland Liberation War. The head of the delegation had been in our country after the liberation of our country. He was a hero of the Soviet Union. In the past he had been on intimate terms with me and Comrade Kim Jong Suk. At that time I had given him a pocket watch as a present and had a photograph taken with him. He brought that photograph with him on his last visit. Talking with him for the first time in many years, I asked him whether I should address him as comrade or as Your Excellency. He asked me to call him comrade. I said if I was to call him comrade, he should be in possession of his party membership card. He said he was still keeping it. I asked how was it that the 18 million communists allowed the Soviet Union to perish. He answered that the disaster happened because the party of the Soviet Union neglected ideological education.
The socialist countries in Eastern Europe perished because they had been extremely servile towards the Soviet Union. In the past, the people of the Eastern European countries used to say “A” if the Soviet Union said “A”, and they used to say “B” if the latter said “B”. Formerly the people of the German Democratic Republic had adulated the Soviet Union to such an extent that an anecdote had it that if rain was forecast in Moscow, Berliners walked under umbrellas even though it was fine in Berlin. The parties of the Eastern European countries also practised bureaucratism and neglected the ideological education of their people. That was why socialism collapsed in these countries as soon as socialism in the Soviet Union collapsed.

— Kim Il Sung, Works, vol. 44, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1999, pp. 239-241.

Courtesy: Francesco Alarico della Scala