International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the West African Region and Mali

Since 2010, the West African region and particularly the sub-Saharan zone has been marked by the armed interference and intervention of the imperialist powers. The objectives of those actions are:

* Political, geostrategic and military, related to the struggle for the redivision of the world and of the African continent.

* Economic (access to the petroleum of the Gulf of Guinea and the Ivory Coast; to the uranium of Niger and the precious metals that abound in the region; to solar energy; cacao, coffee, etc.

* The struggle of the Anglo-Saxon (U.S. and Great Britain) and French imperialists to prevent the penetration into the region by new actors such as China, India, Brazil, etc.

* The will of the imperialist powers to crush any type of protest by the popular masses, who are condemned to misery and lacking in political freedom, as well as the repression that they suffer carried out by the corrupt puppet powers, and their desire to crush any revolutionary insurrectionary movement.

The military-political crisis after the military coup d’état of the National Committee for the Defense and Restoration of the State (CNRDE) of March 22, 2012, as well as the military occupation of the North of Mali, begun January 22, 2012, which covers two thirds of the national territory, an occupation carried out by the National Movement for the Liberation of AZAWAD (MNLA) and the “jihadists” (AQMI, ANSAR, DINE, MUJAO, BOKO, HARAM…) must be put in this context

The military-political crisis in Mali has grave consequences for the neighboring countries, particularly Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, etc. and the group of the countries of the west African region (destabilization of States, proliferation of arms, massive displacement of populations towards the South of Mali, and thousands of refugees in other neighboring countries).

The military-political crisis in Mali is also a threat to the interests of imperialism, particularly French imperialism, in that country and the whole region. That is why there are preparatory maneuvers for an open military intervention that the troops provided by the members countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) can carry out, with the consent and logistical support of the great imperialist powers (France and U.S.A.) and of the UN under the pretext of “making a secure transition,” of “restoring constitutional life” and of “restoring Mali’s territorial integrity.” This is a reactionary plan by the imperialist powers and their allies in the region to maintain and reinforce their domination.

Faced with this serious situation, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO):

* Denounces and condemns the puppet powers that have opened their territories (particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal) to the troops of imperialist aggression.

* Denounces and condemns the proclamation of independence of the State of AZAWAD by the MNLA, instrument of French imperialism.

* Denounces and condemns the crimes perpetrated against the peoples of the North of Mali by terrorist group AQMI and the Islamist groups ANSAR-DINE, MUJAO and the MNLA.

* Supports the brave resistance of the peoples, particularly of the youth, against oppression and medieval and obscurantist practices.

* Denounces and condemns the reactionary plan of the ECOWAS in Mali.

* Calls on the proletariat and peoples of the imperialist countries, particularly France, to support the Malian people in their struggle for a revolutionary solution of the military-political crisis.

* Calls for solidarity and support for the struggle of the peoples of the West African region against imperialist domination and their African lackeys.

Tunisia, November of 2012.

Source

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the Situation in Syria

The plenary of the ICMLPO, held for the first time in Africa, reaffirms its support for the right of the Syrian people to live under a democratic regime: a regime that guarantees freedom, equality, social justice and dignity, as well as assures the unity and total independence of the country, including the recovery of the Golan Heights occupied by Zionism since 1967.

The ICMLPO:

1. Denounces the dangerous development of events in Syria. The popular movement of protest has been transformed into a destructive civil war. The bloodthirsty repression is striking the people, and since the beginning, the Assad regime has rejected any democratic reform that would satisfy the aspirations of the Syrian people. This situation is the consequence of the foreign reactionary, imperialist and Zionist intervention, through Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which masked by the so-called “Free Syrian Army” and under the pretext of “saving the Syria people”

2. We reaffirm that this war has nothing to do with the interests of the Syrian people and their aspirations. On the contrary, it serves the reactionary forces of the country, the region and internationally. Syria is at the moment the place of confrontation between, on the one side the U.S., France and Israel and Arab and Turkish reaction that are trying to subject Syria to Western rule and make it break its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. On the other side, Russia and China are supporting the regime to preserve their strategic interests in Syria and the region, after having lost their influence in Libya.

3. We reject all intervention by NATO in Syria under any pretext, given the dangers that this represents for the Syrian people, the peoples of the region and world peace in general. The Conference calls on the Turkish people to oppose Turkey’s intervention in Syria. It sends a call to the workers and peoples of the Western countries, in the first place of the United States, Great Britain and France, whose leaders are threatening military intervention in Syria, to pressure their governments to stop them from carrying out their criminal strategy that caused disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, etc. in the past

4. It is up to the Syrian people, in all cases, to determine their own future. The ICMLPO calls on the Syrian patriotic and democratic forces to unite to save their country from the claws of the Assad regime and the armed gangs and to prevent the foreign powers from mortgaging their future and making use of a part of their minorities to undermine their unity. The ICMLPO calls on those forces to strive to build a new, democratic, secular, independent and united Syria in which the different religions and nationalities live together in freedom and equality.

5. Calls on the patriotic, democratic and progressive forces of the region to urgently mobilize and to undertake the necessary measures of solidarity to support the patriotic and democratic forces of Syria, forces that must act to end the slaughters perpetrated against the Syrian people, to stop the destruction of the country and prevent the foreign intervention, to facilitate dialogue among its inhabitants to achieve their aspirations and break with the tyranny and foreign domination.

Organisation pour la construction d’un parti communiste ouvrier d’Allemagne

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers du Danemark – APK

Parti Communiste d’Espagne (marxiste – léniniste) – PCE(ml)

Plateforme Communiste d’Italie

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France – PCOF

Organisation Marxiste Léniniste Révolution de Norvège – Revolusjon !

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Turquie – TDKP

Parti des Travailleurs de Tunisie – PT

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d’Ivoire – PCRCI

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Buses from 40 Russian cities remind of Stalin on the Day of Victory over Nazism

A total of 40 cities in the former Soviet Union (including Moscow, St. Petersburg-Leningrad, Stalingrad-Volgograd, Kiev, Minsk, Tallinn and Riga) decorate their buses with the image of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, on the occasion of the upcoming May 9, commemorating the Day of Victory over Nazism by the Red Army in the so-called “Great Patriotic War.”

The Soviet Union at that time led by Stalin, was also the country that suffered more casualties for the liberation of Europe with a total of about 10,600,000 (6,829,437 3,300,000 killed in action and prisoners of war died in captivity), the country that actually did retreat to the Nazi troops since the victory of Stalingrad, time to which the British and Americans waited to see if Hitler did the work for which the multinationals had created: destroy the workers’ state.

However, the Red Army forced the Yankees and English to run a hurry, while the Germans left them practically free step while focusing its efforts on the eastern front, to prevent the Soviet people got too far west in their release Europe. Despite the joint efforts of capitalism and fascism, the Soviets entered the first in Berlin battle that killed some 360,000 Soviet soldiers, well above the German casualties.

The organizer of the campaign “Victory Bus” Viktor Loginov, said that these buses will be operational on 6 May, although he pointed out that still need to gather about 150,000 rubles (3,805 euros) to ensure the successful launch of the campaign. So far, workers have been involved heavily with their contributions.

This initiative was first held in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 2010 and is intended to “deal with counterfeiting over the Soviet Union.” The organizing committee members have said they do not belong to any political or public organization, but the Russians are quite sick of the lies organized by the West and capitalism against Stalin and World War II.

The first, against Stalin, curiously are the same as Goebbels invented for their anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns, the latter, those created by Hollywood and similar industries lie to the gullible think that was the Americans who defeated Hitler (in rather than their financial backers, as actually happened).

And, if something does not bear ever endured or the capitalists, is to remember what they had been after 1917, when Soviet workers showed that the pattern and the capitalist are not essential for the construction of a state that also become the leading world power, economic, social and military and how it came to defeat in 1945 his attempt to end communism by Hitler and Nazism.

Source

Lenin on the Colonial Question

First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. . . .The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed force.[...]

Comrade Quelch of the British Socialist Party spoke of this in our commission. He said that the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in their uprisings against British rule. True, the jingoist and chauvinist-minded labour aristocrats of Britain and America present a very great danger to socialism, and are a bulwark of the Second International. Here we are confronted with the greatest treachery on the part of leaders and workers belonging to this bourgeois International. The colonial question has been discussed in the Second International as well. The Basle Manifesto is quite clear on this point, too. The parties of the Second International have pledged themselves to revolutionary action, but they have given no sign of genuine revolutionary work or of assistance to the exploited and dependent nations in their revolt against the oppressor nations. This, I think, applies also to most of the parties that have withdrawn from the Second International and wish to join the Third International.

— V. I. Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions, July 26, 1920

Marx & Engels on Colonialism in India

“The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked”

The Future Results of the British Rule in India
New-York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853

“However infamous the conduct of the sepoys [the native Indian troops rising up against colonial rule, who were accused of atrocities], it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed an organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.”

The Indian Revolt
New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857

“We have here given but a brief and mildly-colored chapter from the real history of British rule in India. In view of such facts, dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps be led to ask whether a people are not justified in attempting to expel the foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects. And if the English could do these things in cold blood, is it surprising that the insurgent Hindus [Indians] should be guilty, in the fury of revolt and conflict, of the crimes and cruelties alleged against them?”

Investigation of Tortures in India
 New-York Daily Tribune, September 17, 1857

Marx and Engels opposed colonialist "justice," shown suppressing the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (or "Sepoy Mutiny") in this Punch cartoon

“I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures. But when you have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country, which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to withhold it from its fabrication.[...] The railway-system will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry. This is the more certain as the Hindus [Indians] are allowed by British authorities themselves to possess particular aptitude for accommodating themselves to entirely new labor, and acquiring the requisite knowledge of machinery.[...] Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labor, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power.

All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?

The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus [Indians] themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.”

The Indian Revolt
New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857

By and by there will ooze out other facts able to convince even John Bull [Britain] himself that what he considers a military mutiny is in truth a national revolt.

Indian News
New-York Daily Tribune, August 14, 1857

[T]he cheapness of the articles produced by machinery, and the improved means of transport and communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign markets. By ruining handicraft production in other countries, machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great Britain. [...] A new and international division of labour, a division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying the other part which remains a chiefly industrial field.

Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt in New York
April 9, 1870

In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, is in store for the British government. What the English take from them annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to the Hindus, pensions for military and civil service men, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc., etc. – what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have gratuitously and annually to send over to England – it amounts to more than the total sum of income of the sixty millions of agricultural and industrial labourers of India! This is a bleeding process, with a vengeance! The famine years are pressing each other and in dimensions till now not yet suspected in Europe! There is an actual conspiracy going on wherein Hindus and Mussulmans co-operate; the British government is aware that something is “brewing,” but this shallow people (I mean the governmental men), stultified by their own parliamentary ways of talking and thinking, do not even desire to see clear, to realise the whole extent of the imminent danger! [...] Tant mieux! [So much the better!]

Marx to Nikolai Danielson in St. Petersburg
February 19, 1881

You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as what the bourgeois think. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies. In my opinion the colonies proper, i.e., the countries occupied by a European population, Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand the countries inhabited by a native population, which are simply subjugated, India, Algiers, the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat and led as rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will develop is difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very probably, produce a revolution, and as the proletariat emancipating itself cannot conduct any colonial wars, this would have to be given full scope; it would not pass off without all sorts of destruction, of course, but that sort of thing is inseparable from all revolutions. The same might also take place elsewhere, e.g., in Algiers and Egypt, and would certainly be the best thing for us. We shall have enough to do at home. Once Europe is reorganised, and North America, that will furnish such colossal power and such an example that the semi-civilised countries will follow in their wake of their own accord. Economic needs alone will be responsible for this. But as to what social and political phases these countries will then have to pass through before they likewise arrive at socialist organisation, we to-day can only advance rather idle hypotheses, I think. One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation without undermining its own victory by so doing. Which of course by no means excludes defensive wars of various kinds.

Engels, Letter from Engels to Karl Kautsky In Vienna
London, 12 September, 1882

Enver Hoxha: On Palestine, Zionism and Arab Liberation

WEDNESDAY
JULY 29, 1970

We Have Sympathy & Respect for the Arab People of Palestine

A delegation of «Al-Fatah», Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine, is coming to our country these days for an official visit. Yasser Arafat personally asked our embassy in Cairo for permission to send a delegation.

We have sympathy and respect for the Arab people of Palestine, because they are a brave people who are suffering. At the moment they are the only Arab people who are fighting all round the borders of Israel, while some Arab leaders, from those of Egypt to those of Lebanon, are merely talking, holding conferences, preparing… for compromises, etc.

The Palestinians, expelled from their land by the British colonialist government and from UNO in favour of Israel, are living in tents, in great hardship, in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. The latest Israeli aggression increased the number of Palestinian refugees, so the only road of salvation left to them was that of the partisan war. And they began it, attacking the Israeli aggressors from outside, from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and from inside, in the territory occupied by Israel.

Thus, thanks to the struggle of the Palestinians, the Palestinian question has become an important national and international issue, which both the friends and the enemies of the Palestinian people are compelled to bear in mind and cannot fail to take into account.

Despite its nationalist tendencies, the «Al-Fatah» organization is progressive and democratic and the biggest and most powerful organization which, at the moment, has a correct line of struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the defeat of the anti-Arab, annexationist policy of the state of Israel, concocted by international Zionism and supported by the imperialists. This organization is not against the masses of the Jewish population whom, in its program, it accepts as citizens of the new Arab state of Palestine.

However, although the representatives of the feudal bourgeois cliques ruling in some Arab countries pose as pro the Palestinians’ struggle, they do not look kindly on this movement of resistance and, since they are unable to liquidate it, want to have it under control.

The resistance of the Palestinians has become a serious political and military obstacle, which these cliques are obliged to take into account. The King of Jordan, an agent of the British and the Americans, has made two or three attempts to liquidate the Palestinian partisans, who are stronger than this sold-out king. At these dangerous moments for the Palestinian guerrillas they ought to fight him to the end, to unite with the people of Jordan, in order to continue the war against Israel and American imperialism.

The Soviets and the Americans are making the law in the Middle East. The Egyptian leadership has fallen completely under the influence of the Soviets. Hussein of Jordan is a dyed-in-the-wool traitor, the Syrians are posing as somewhat «concerned», while the Lebanese trim their sails to the wind.

Nasser agreed in general to discuss the «Rogers Plan», which means to enter into negotiations and compromises and, in the end, «to make the peace» so greatly desired by Israel, in favour of that country and its American patron and in disfavour of the Arab peoples, especially the Palestinian people, against whom the savage attacks of the gendarmes of the ruling cliques sold out to foreigners, will commence later. With the signing of the «peace» the Soviets will turn this into a «colossal victory» for themselves. They will try to remain in Egypt and to dominate it. There is the danger that the Egyptian ports may become the ports of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet which emerged from the Black Sea. From the Mediterranean the Soviet revisionists intend to extend their colonies in Africa «in peaceful ways», in order to cross the seas and reach India. This is how they dream of achieving the empire of Alexander the Great, by conquering the peoples through the threat of arms from land and sea, through rubles and through their demagogy of a falsified socialism.

The «Soviet-American peace» in the Middle East will be a defeat for all the Arab peoples and an especially great obstacle for the Palestinian people. This kind of «peace» is a victory for the Soviet-American imperialists in general and for Israel in particular.

What will happen with the Palestinian people will be what happened with the Albanian people before the First World War. As is known, at that time large parts of Albania were divided by the imperialists of Europe among Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. And after they had thoroughly dismembered our Homeland at the Conference of London and through secret treaties, the Tzar’s Minister, Sazonov, in order to satisfy the appetite of Prince Nikola of Montenegro demanded that the city of Shkodra be handed over to the latter. On this occasion, one of the other wolves, the representative of French imperialism, said something which went down in history: «Sazonov wants to set fire to Europe to fry an omelette for Montenegro».

The enemies of the Arab peoples, the American imperialists and Soviet revisionists, will act and speak in a similar way when it comes to the question of the territorial rights of the heroic Palestinian people.

Only the armed struggle through to victory settles accounts with the wolves who attack peoples.

From “Reflections on the Middle East”

“My Life With Enver” Nexhmije Hoxha’s Memoirs (Part 3)

(Above) Anti-fascist demonstration in Tirana where Nexhmije saw Enver for the first time. They would later meet in a Partisan safehouse.

Young Nexhmije.

Enver Hoxha in disguise during the war.

Later years: Enver and Nexhmije.

Later years: Enver and Nexhmije.

9. In Kucaka. Another Yugoslav emissary

In Kucaka, near Korca, I met-up again with Enver. It had been a long time we had seen each other and we spent some time talking. He told me about the problems that they had encountered in Vlora with the anti-party and factionist Sadik Premte, whom I had known very well in Tirana. I had met him at some of the bases where illegals were sheltered. He was a cynical man who would be a destructive influence on the work with the youth elements. I reported to Enver about the terror exercised in Tirana, the general situation and the many searches that had taken place, including his sister’s house and the room where we used to stay together.

After we spent some time together, Enver asked me:

“Can you find something to do? Or perhaps you could go outside and check around, as now we have a meeting with a comrade coming from Yugoslavia”.

I went out onto the porch where I found Fiqret Sanxhaktari who had traveled from Korca, where she had been transferred after the mistake in kidnapping the daughter of Man Kukaleshi. This was done in order to blackmail him for he was the most notorious spy in Tirana, serving the fascist invaders and their collaborators. Fiqret would sometimes deal with the typing of documents for the Central Party Committee. As we were sitting and talking, we saw a tall man coming down the stairs. He was dressed in a well-sewn military kaki suit. He was followed by a young lady, she was well built, good-looking and in the same type of kaki suit; partisan trousers and jacket. Under her arm she had a workbag. Both of them walked past without turning their heads as if we weren’t there. I asked Fiqret who they were. She told me: his name was Svetzer Vukmanovic, his nickname was Tempo, whereas the lady was his secretary, but they also say she was his wife. Her name was Milica.

When I saw Enver again, I told him about the two guests who didn’t even greet us.

He smiled and added:

“They are angry with me”.

Being somewhat surprised I asked him why they were angry. Enver explained to me who Tempo was and what he wanted to do in Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. Enver has called Tempo the wandering ambassador of Tito, who entered Albania through Montenegro, and sometimes through Macedonia. Tempo, it seemed, would put forward as his personal ideas the statements and orders received for the establishment of a General Big Inter-Balkan Headquarters in which Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece would be involved. Enver has described Vukamanovic Tempo exactly as he was – arrogant, stubborn, a wild anti-Albanian Serb chauvinist of the first class.

During the comings and goings of this “political Mafioso”, Enver had had hot debates with Tempo regarding his scornful and unfair criticism him in relation to the Party and our partisan Units. Tempo suggested that we set up proletarian partisan brigades, similar to those in Yugoslavia. According to him we had to establish the General Headquarters. Actually we had already decided about this at the First National Conference of the Party. Tempo wanted to do this because he needed to establish the General Balkans Headquarters, which would be led by Tito during the war. Whereas later….. ., Later there would be other plans, on “political integration”, party, government and the Balkan Federation, (“certainly with Tito leading”). The great Dimitrov was not satisfactory enough for the appetite of this megalomaniac, who wasn’t satisfied with the Federation of the Yugoslav Republics, which were artificially created by the superpowers, at the expense of other nations and nationalities.

The debate in Kucaka between Enver and Tempo reached a point of no return. On one of the trips Tempo undertook, he asked that Koci Xoxe go with him. Apparently they understood each other very well. On the way to Greece, Koci had reported everything in the world to Tempo and had spat out all the anger he kept inside against Enver Hoxha.

When these two were due back in Kucaka from Greece, it turned out that they hadn’t done much. In fact, Tempo immediately wanted to convene a meeting with those comrades present there. He didn’t mention why, but at that meeting I remember he brought up much criticism, especially against Enver. These facts are already known since Enver described them very well in his memoirs. It is also a well-known fact that when involved with such talks, the woman who had been introduced as Tempo’s secretary interfered.

Enver told her:

“You stay where you are, don’t behave like Geraldine. . (former Albanian Queen).”

This incident caused the secretary to burst into tears and made Tempo angry.

It is not true that Enver was “harsh with women”, as one foreign author has written; on the contrary. But, Enver was not the sort of person to tolerate scorn and unfair criticism, even from Tempo. Not even from people of higher rank, as time showed later.

From what I remember, Enver, after Kucaka, didn’t meet Vukmanovic Svetozar Tempo again during the war. After the war they met during the visit Enver paid to Belgrade in June 1946, as well as later in Moscow, when the Khruschovites fixed up some negotiations. They also met in July 1947, when Enver returned from his visit to the Soviet Union, where he had had his first meeting with Stalin and he found Tempo leading a delegation composed of military personnel.

10. The General Headquarters and Enver Hoxha approach Tirana

Below, Balli Kombetar is translated as “National Front”(not to be confused with the Anti-fascist National Liberation Front) and its members as “frontists”. The National Front, created in 1942 and led by Mithat Frash, was an Albanian reactionary organization which, during the final years of the war, opted to collaborate with the Italian and German forces in Albania, thus opposing the Anti-fascist National Liberation Front.

In Labinot, from the 4th until the 9th of September 1943, the Second National Liberation Conference was convened. The decisions that were made there, are quite famous in the history of the National Liberation War of our people. This conference approved the establishment of the General Headquarters of the National Liberation Army, the creation of large partisan units, an extension of the activities of the National Liberation Councils of the Front and, the upgrading of their role within the nuclei of the new popular government. The conference condemned the treachery of the representatives of the National Liberation Front in Mukje led by Ymer Dishnica and Mustafa Gjinishi. These two, instead of arranging for the involvement in the war of the National Front and Legaliti forces, became victims of their traps. They began to consider themselves not only as equal members concerning the future of the country (in spite of them not participating in the war), but they were also given the opportunity of taking the lead as saviours of the nation.

Abaz Kupi, who until that moment was riding two “horses”, left the front and tried to ingratiate himself with the invaders, to save his own life as he expected the British would bring back King Zog. Enver made another attempt to organize another ‘tete a tete’ with him, in Shen Gjergj, at the house of their common friend, Shtepanajt. Nothing was achieved, though. Bazi of Cane left the front, and joined the deserter nationalists from the Peza Conference. But now the Front attained a broader stage of development, not only in its base but also in the General Council. Its’ members were well-known personalities in our country; such as politicians, progressives , antifascist fighters, and high rank military, etc.

During the conference, important events took place. During a break, we heard on the radio Italy has capitulated. It is understandable what it meant for us. The second bit of news was: German forces having reached Greece had invaded through Korca and, anywhere else they were able to set foot they would instigate massacres. In Borova, a village in Kolonja, they had killed elderly people, women and children. They had also burnt down the whole village.

The capitulation of Italy meant the surrender of the Italian army in our country. This was one of Enver’s primary concerns. Disarming the Italian army meant that their arms were to be surrendered to the Albanian National Liberation Army. All frontists and non-frontists were eager to get their hands on the arms and arm depots of the Italian army. The other side of the coin was related to the protection of the defeated army, their self-protection, and turning them into an anti-fascist power, to serve our liberated country against fascism. How could it save itself from being massacred by the mad Hitlerites, who had now been left in a mess by their former ally?

The conference issued a call to the Italian armed forces, and Enver Hoxha himself signed the order concerning the protection of Italian army.

I can not leave without mentioning here that this attitude of Enver, especially for the Italian anti-fascists and communists and many other Italian progressive personalities, was remarkable for its long lived effects. Their gratitude was later to be expressed through their solidarity, petitions, publications, public manifestations. When I was arrested at the time when Berisha was infected with power fever, he kept me in an isolated prison cell for more than 5 years. He also persecuted my family harshly for a long period. This was due, only to the fact that I was the wife of Enver Hoxha. I am very thankful to those Italian friends who did what they did for me in those difficult days created by the anti-democratic regime of Berisha.

The news of Italy capitulating caused an indescribable happiness and enthusiasm for all delegates, partisans and peasants who were on duty. To those who took out and fired off their pistols, even knowing that they might draw the attention of the enemies who were located in the area.

While talking unemotionally to the comrades, Enver told them that Italy’s capitulation was truly a victory for our struggle, though it created new situations, which required caution and all of us to be well prepared, since the new enemy was even wilder. Consequently, our war against them had to be more intense. The Nazis, he said, in order to protect their positions in Greece and other countries in the Balkans from being threatened, will attack Albania too, so the path of the war for liberation is a long one. . . .

This was the major concern of Enver in those days. His concern was an even more comprehensive one, regarding the development of the situation at the war fronts in Europe. Furthermore, the opening of the second front by the Anglo-American allies was being held back. Enver thought the allies might land in Italy aiming at detaching this country as well as the Balkans from Germany and after that, it was likely that the Germans would be attacked from the direction of France as well as from other directions also. So they would be caught and wouldn’t have the chance to breathe. He thought that, with regard to the Balkans, the second front in this sector would be left with the National Liberation Forces of the respective Balkans countries. The increase and extension of the National Liberation Movement in Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia and their successes, showed that the movements were capable of accomplishing this overload successfully.

The new perspectives and duties emerging for the future of Albania immediately after the conclusion of the Second National Liberation Conference took into account these developments.

The General Headquarters and Enver Hoxha as political commissar (and, at the time General Secretary of the Albanian Communist Party), moved towards Tirana. They stopped nearby Arbana, a village situated in a free area of Peza, where the command of the Peza partisan group was situated. It was lead by the well-known patriot and fighter Myslym Peza. This move of the headquarters to a few kilometers distant from the capital city, was related to the military and political situation that would need to be created in case of any possible landing of allies in the Balkans, especially in Albania.

As soon as he arrived in Arbana, Enver called for Gogo Nushi, who was once a member of the Central Communist Party Committee and political secretary of the party for the Tirana Region. After having been informed about the situation of our forces and the enemy forces in the capital city, Enver spoke of the possibility of the allies landing in the Balkans and Albania and asked to know how many armed fighters could be prepared in order to support a coordinated attack of partisan forces from the surrounding hills.

Soon after returning to Tirana, Gogo Nushi convened the Tirana Regional Committee in which I participated in my capacity as political secretary of the Communist Youth for Tirana. There, he presented the issues and requirements raised by comrade Enver when they had conversed. We debated for a long time, taking into account the delicacy and importance of the questions involved. I don’t remember exactly which official reply was delivered from this meeting apart from the problem regarding “guerrilla units not being sufficiently equipped and prepared to undertake such a significant action”, but the people and youth were prepared for this attack and would support the guerillas.

I was not at all optimistic about the success of this attack at that time, concerning the Liberation of Tirana and taking power. Therefore, I wrote a letter, a long one, I might say, to Enver about this. It is dated 22nd September 1943. Fortunately and surprisingly it is one of those letters saved from my correspondence with Enver during the National Liberation War. Nevertheless, I was only able to save some of Enver’s letters during the time when we were outlawed. These are approximately 13 and have a documentary value. They are so dear to me.

In the letter sent to Enver, amongst other things, I wrote:

“Guerrilla Units of the city are available but you should be aware that they are not trained and are in-experienced. And this first trial is a very dangerous one. Our units and the people certainly will help and support the entry of our army into the city, but I am not very confident about the military support they can provide. They could hinder the movements of the enemy, they can fight it, and can capture positions in the city, but without units they won’t be able to confront the enemy. First we should be reinforced with more automatic weapons, tanks, etc, since, it is unimaginable they can acquire adequate experience in two or three days. The enemy is a strong military power and the bastards (the Albanians) serving them, have shown them how to escape and hide, if they are chased or attacked in the city. But the enemy forces are equipped with motorcycles and sufficient numbers of tanks for them to occupy one of the main roads of the city, which is unreachable by any of our groups or units. I don’t know much about war strategy and I don’t know what your situation is, but Tirana cannot be taken unless the roads to Durres and Elbasan are destroyed. As for the burning of the city and the widespread terrorising of the people, I don’t see that the enemy would have enough forces and opportunities to be able to manage this. . . . Apart from the weapons that have been provided to our units, it is evident that a large part of the population has also been armed. This has become more obvious during the past two nights when there has been quite a lot of shooting. It seems that the people are testing their guns and revolvers. Tirana can be taken, but the question is, whether or not we can hold it. I am doubtful of this, and losing, control of the city will mean a great political and military loss…”

Then in the letter I wrote to him about our work with the National Liberation Councils, with the evacuated groups of people from Durres, and with the Youth etc. I also explained to him the ongoing activities of the National Front and those for the revitalization of certain elements from the ranks of the high level official intelligentsia.

Until this time they had been apart but they were now thinking that, on the ‘eve’ of the English American allies landing, it was the moment to found “social-democratic” parties etc, and to ask for their participation without even helping us in the armed struggle.

In the second part of my letter I wrote to Enver about some of my concerns related to our personal relations. With Enver away from Tirana, the two of us could only communicate through letters. But Enver had a tendency to send me very brief letters that were not at all satisfactory to me. Even when there was a chance to meet-up with each other (as was sometimes the case with particular meetings or conferences of a national character), my young heart would break as the meetings with Enver were rather limited and short. There was more time taken to say goodbye, than spend time together. When we would participate in very important meetings such as those of Peza, Labinot, Permet, Helmes etc, those were the best occasions for me. At least I could see him with my own eyes and would satisfy my longing. However, during those days the two of us were not able to be alone together very much to talk. This was due not only to the fact that he was very busy with work, but also because the war conditions and Party norms wouldn’t allow him (nor I, for that matter) to detach himself from his duties and spend some hours together as two youngsters in love would want.

So, in no way should we attract the attention of comrades or delegates, regarding the interest that Enver showed with regards to me or our relationship. Our relationship was known only to our two families and to the principal leaders of the Party.

Under these circumstances, in an unconscious way, I could feel the “difference” both in age and political maturity between Enver and myself. I mention age because, being that much younger than he, I required him to write letters to me more often; longer and more intimate ones. Due to my age, this was just a whim of mine, but in those difficult moments Enver didn’t have the chance and time to reply to these girlish wishes, as I would have liked. However, be it from love, or be it from being always distant from him, I wanted Enver to write more and more to me, so that through long and intimate letters I could feel him closer, talk to him, feel from far away through the lines of those letters, his heart beating . . .

For example; he had left a very short letter for me in Zaloshnja, near Skrapar, in May 1943 when he had left Tirana to go to Vlora. On that specific occasion, he had gone there in order to visit Kucaka near Korca. He knew I would be there to participate in the first Conference of the Albanian Communist Youth, but since I hadn’t arrived, he had only jotted down a few lines for me… . When I arrived, I was given this piece of paper and, to tell the truth, I was glowing with happiness. This happiness soon turned into anger because the letter was a very brief one. During the months of July and August, I spent some time in Skrapar where I received four other letters from Enver. These were sent to me from Labinot and Vithkuq, but they too were very short letters and even contained work directives and personal requests. In two letters he would justify himself saying he was very busy with work and would promise me that some other time he would find the time to write me longer letters.

So, sadness and boredom captured my soul, because I missed Enver and I missed his letters as well as his caresses, which were so indispensable for the heart of a young woman in love. Some time would pass before I got used to it. Certainly, despite, my soul going through pains and suffering, I found the strength, hope and faith to wait until the day, the so much expected day, of freedom, when we would be together forever. I tried to keep myself away from those gloomy moods and sadness and managed to adjust myself to new conditions, away from Enver. These months were very different from the first ones, when we had just met and fallen in love with each other in Tirana. During those days, I had many occasions and opportunities to meet Enver quite often and I would stay and talk with him for long periods, be it at his sister’s place or in any of those bases where we could find shelter, as I have previously described in these memoirs.

Our Communist Party was never against true love or against stable relationships and the establishment of healthy families. But during the Nation Liberation War, attention had to be paid to our youth. They had to be monitored, since there were already claims by our enemies in their propaganda, deceitful lies regarding the morality of the communists. On the other hand, our people were widely sensitive to the behavior of our youth within society. It was only due to the discipline exercised by the communist party in the partisan army, which encouraged even the most conservative from different regions, to send their daughters and sisters to war with complete trust in the healthy morality of the communists and the partisans. There were only two or three occasions when this discipline broke down, as in the case of comrade F.S. in Tirana and that of another comrade from Gjirokaster. The only penalty was that they were expelled from the Party. There was also another occasion where comrade Ramize Gjebrea in Vlora was tragically executed. Our partisan women became friends and sisters who would heal the wounds of partisans, would nurse the sick, knit pullovers, sew their socks etc. In such a fraternal and sociable atmosphere, round the fire for freedom, our healthy love nurtured and strengthened our love for freedom. It laid the foundations of many partisan families, created right after liberation.

I will stop at a painful occasion when our comrade, Ramize Gjebrea, was shot by the firing squad. She has been written and spoken about very frequently. Enver in a letter addressed to Nako Spiro regarding this matter among others, would say:

“In spite of that little devil not behaving well, the punishment was really harsh …. .”

This issue became notorious amongst the comrades of the Brigade, who were alarmed at the observations of the work of Ramize, and regarded in it as an offence and discredit to the army and Party. Thus, they made their hasty decision without first asking the Central Committee. According to Enver, this issue should have first been discussed with the Central Committee since he knew that Ramize used to be Nako Spiro’s fiancé, and he certainly had the right to have his say. Ramize’s attitude was harmful (but not to the extent that warranted such extreme measures) not because she loved, but because she didn’t show stability in the love and the relation she had with Nako, even though he was her free choice. With her new love she went beyond the norms of morality, which were expected during the war by the Party and by society.

“The issue of free love”, Enver wrote to Nako, “is a very delicate issue, and some comrades seem not to have understood this. Concerning the delicate issue of love, comrades of the Party and the Youth should pay strict attention, since this issue is cuts both ways. If the issue of free love is misunderstood by our comrades, then we pass easily into whore-mongering. On the other hand, it could also be transformed into a celibate lifestyle. This issue has to be clearly introduced to the Youth and the Party through conferences, because we are not a religious organization, and we should consider all our work with a progressive perspective”.

11. Frequent correspondence with Enver

The period from March until September, 1943 was overwhelmed by important political and military events within the country and also in the international arena. The first Conference of the Albanian Communist Party appointed Enver as Secretary General. This upgraded his responsibilities with regard to the strengthening and establishment of the role and activities of the Party at the level of contemporary demands, as well as for the guidance of the Front of the National Liberation Antifascist War. He had to travel to Vlora in very dangerous times, in order to destroy an anti-party fraction of led Sadik Premte. This time was a period characteristic of the establishment of large fighting groups, partisan brigades and the organization of the General Headquarters, which would guide and take the National Liberation Army towards general rebellion.

The opening of the second front by the allies was expected. Mussolini fell. At this time, organizations of those groups called nationalists, such as the National Front and others, called National Zogist Boards, etc, started to revitalize and make their moves in order to occupy a place under the rising sun of freedom. The Communist Party and the leadership of the National Liberation Front required “the fathers of the nation” to become involved in the war with concrete actions against the new invaders, the Nazi Germans. For this reason the Mukje Meeting was organized, but it was set on a wrong track because of political myopia and the tolerance shown by the communist party delegation and the National Liberation Front (headed by Ymer Dishnica and Mustafa Gjinishi).

These two legimtised political heads of organizations that had not only never fought against the invaders, but had even entered into collaboration with the invaders in both secret and open agreements with them. They wanted to show themselves as being the saviors of Albania without even firing a shot! They wanted to lead the government of a liberated Albania even though it was the blood and the war of the people’s best sons, who had taken the responsibility of freeing the country.

In these circumstances, Enver was fully mobilized. According to his letters addressed to members of the Central Committee in Tirana, Gjirokastra, Vlora, Elbasan etc, (the correspondence of this period of time has been published in the first two editions of his works, dealing with the National Liberation War ), he was very concerned about what was happening and what was to be done. Under such conditions, with an overload of work and numerous problems, Enver didn’t even have the time to eat or sleep properly, whereas I, in my romantic mood and nature, wanted him to write to me “long and special letters … .

In the letters addressed to Nako Spiro, Ymer Dishnica and Gogo Nushi in Tirana, Enver was dissatisfied with the quality of work of these comrades from the Regional Committee, the Youth and Party organizations. After the capitulation of Italy and during the euphoric atmosphere it created, certain things were tolerated, “which could cost the future and war of Albania much”, Enver stated in his letters. Young partisans and illegals would enter and exit Tirana and its outskirts, as if the city were liberated. The secret locations of the shelters for the illegals were compromised, as if (along with the capitulation of the Italians) the administration of collaborators, agents, spies and mercenaries had been disbanded. But this administration was still intact, somewhat disarranged, but awaiting its new masters, the German Nazis.

During this period, the Mukje Meeting was organized. Instead of enabling the involvement of those nationalist organizations that had remained outside the National Liberation Front in the armed war against Nazi fascists, it turned into a complete fiasco, quite contradictory to the objectives defined and formulated in the platform of the Central Committee of the Albanian Communist Party. Enver’s Papers and correspondence of those days, which were surprisingly published (as were the activities of the Central Committee and of Enver; such a thing was not done by any of the communist parties of Central-Eastern Europe), show how much caution and attention he paid to the elaboration of the Mukje Meeting’s Platform. Enver prepared the Communist Party delegation headed by Ymer Dishnica and Mustafa Gjinishi. However, when they fell head over heals into the “trap” set by the National Front who established a “Committee for National Salvation” under their leadership, and also released a pamphlet, Enver ‘hit the roof’ and shouted out “Treachery!”.

Enver was kind and considerate with comrades. This is also evident from his correspondence with them, through the friendly jokes he made with them. But when the Party line was violated and political mistakes were made, he didn’t care to know who made the mistakes but took the necessary actions.

The same happened with me, too. Being a member of the Central Committee of Youth, Political Secretary of Youth for Tirana and as such, a member of the Regional Party Committee, the criticism of Enver rolled like thunder over my head, even harder than in the conversations we had had in Labinot. The criticism continued when he came to Arbana and has been written down in the correspondence of that period. I can’t hide it, being an only daughter, brought up in a small family, a quiet one living in full harmony – I wasn’t used to being scolded. Also, I was never seriously criticized in my revolutionary life (not politically at least), apart from general remarks on every day work with our Youth, etc. But this time it seemed that I was overwhelmed by Enver’s criticisms. As I said, I wasn’t used to criticism, and my reaction to them was a great shock deep in my soul, since I took them very seriously. Being criticized made me feel that I had committed some really bad error. The criticisms addressed to me were related to the mistakes made at the Mukje Meeting and the Regional Committee of Tirana not having intervened in time in order to avoid those mistakes. They were also related to the euphoric attitude of the youth following Mussolini’s collapse and the capitulation of fascist Italy. In addition, it had to do with our sub-standard propaganda, especially against the National Front’s demagogy and with the other so-called nationalists who saw an opportunity to try to take power.

All of these criticisms were quite correct and acceptable, so I wrote a letter to Enver about them: “I am especially sorry that I can not give more to the Party”. What I couldn’t understand and what made me go through a very difficult spiritual period, was Enver criticizing me even for things I wasn’t responsible for, such as the issue of Mukje. It is true, I was an intellectual with responsibilities in Tirana, I was also member of the Party circuit for Tirana, but I had never been convened to any of the discussions to exchange ideas about this issue, between Ymer Dishica, Gogo Nushi and Nako Spiro, all three of them members of the Central Committee. Even at the Regional Committee, nothing was mentioned about this meeting, or about what was going to be discussed or developed there. Despite this, what upset me more were the instructions Enver gave to comrades in letters or meetings “an order for them to scold me anytime I would make a mistake.”

Why would Enver do this? Apparently he was worried that I might become selfish due to my youth and to the relationship we had. So, in two letters he had sent to comrades’ of the Central Committee of Party for Tirana, Ymer Dishnica and Gogo Nushi, Enver had used certain criticisms and severe expressions regarding me. This happened not a long after we had fallen in love, and I was somewhat upset. I felt offended since they seemed unfair to me. I still have a short letter, the size of a business card, with relation to this. Ymer Dishnica addresses it to Enver, saying: “What you are writing about the delegate is unfair, but apparently you want us to praise her… .”

Upset by these criticisms which I wasn’t able to swallow anymore, on September 2nd, 1943, I wrote him a long letter in which I said (among other things):

” . . The concern and the way in which you criticized me during our recent conversation in Arbana, has led me to believe that you are rather dissatisfied. Some unthinking words indicated that you are disappointed.

. . . I don’t understand why comrades are told to always scold me when I make mistakes! They should treat as they do with all the others. In my opinion, not for one moment, have I thought to be coddled just because I am your fiancé.

I have tried to take lightly and laugh at the other instances where you have harshly criticized me, but tonight, I didn’t really appreciate the instruction that you gave Gogo.

My Enver – towards the end of the letter – you should shake hands in all seriousness, and stop treating me harsher than the others, since you are closer to me than they are, apart from your Party relations …. .”

To this letter, dated September 22nd 1943, Enver answered from Arbana of Peza, on September 24th. He started his letter focusing on the second part of my letter. He wrote:

My Nexhmije,

Your letter really hurt me, and you appear to be very upset with me and my attitude towards you. I understand your psychological situation very well and I know your sensitive nature. Certainly there are moments where I do overdo my criticism towards you, but this shouldn’t make you feel upset. Don’t take my criticism that deeply as to feel tortured by my words, ‘I thought you were more clever”. Don’t think I am disappointed with you etc.

Childish!

I wouldn’t want my wife to get upset in such a way. I may have been over-critical but it should be taken as constructive rather than as something upsetting to you as you mentioned. It would be better if you were to assume less in the meaning of my words, some of which may have been somewhat inappropriate. They were not intended to upset you; on the contrary, I wouldn’t like you to continue your work in such a state. Your soul should be peaceful and joyful since I have the best of opinions about you. Of course, my criticisms will continue with regards to your work and your development, giving you a helping hand (as you say in your letter), but not scorning you. Don’t feel angry with me for often being severe with you, since, according to the saying: “the ones loving you, scold you”.

Since I do love you (I am saying I love you because you seem to not want to trust me) more than the comrades, I will scold you more”.

I close this chapter – Enver writes – saying once more that

“in the depths of your soul” there shouldn’t be any worries or desperation. My Nexhmije, I believe you do this favor to me”.

And, right there, my Enver without any ceremony, proceeds:

“Now I will start chasing you out”…. .

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about this “thunder” in the blue sky. At the time, I cried, but later, anytime I happened to read this letter, with regards to the above unexpected “jump”, I would feel like laughing. I remember and miss a lot the jokes related to our correspondence.

He: “I have written to you more than one thousand letters….passionate ones, whereas you…”

I: “You lost all of my letters during the war, whereas I preserved yours, despite the Nazi Fascist terrors all over Tirana.”

I am going back to that part of his letter, in which he had decided to educate and temper his wife.

“The unit will attack the Germans where they least expect it and the guerrillas in the city will attack at the right moment They will therefore extensively support the operation from outside and you will be surprised…”.

…First thing, that they should know is hat they will be the guards of the city maintaining order, in order to stabilize the situation, to organize food supplies for the people and to manage communications, etc.

In your communications, you don’t have to go on using clichéd comments: “Try to explain concretely without using big words, e.g. Frontists say:

“Germans are leaving Russia of their own free will” “partisans are killing the Italians surrendering to them” etc., etc. don’t be too meticulous, just give them a thorough dressing down, since they don’t wear gloves when they fight us”.

Subsequently, Enver gave directions and instructions as to the function of the National Liberation Councils in the new situation and on the role of the youth. Naturally, he ends his letter with kisses and longing hugs.

This period of 3-4 months, this “duel” of letters seemed like summer rain, leaving no traces. To the contrary, it helped us to get to know each other better, our characteristics, nature, personalities etc.

After a few months had passed; during the harshest Nazi German reaction in Tirana, the circuit of the Party with Gogo Nushi and other comrades of the Central Committee received orders to take action in the outskirts of the city and the surrounding villages. I remained inside the city in order to keep up the connections with the Regional Committee as well as with comrade Gogo. He in turn would keep the connections with the regions and circuits of the Central Committee. However, this period didn’t last long as the other comrades of the circuit and propaganda material had returned to the town. A little later Nako Spiro made a proposal to the Central Committee of the Party the result of which was that I was assigned a new task. In one of Enver’s letters from this period he wrote, that I would be appointed to work in the function of Organizational Secretary of the Central Youth Committee. I remember him adding these words at the end:

“I firmly believe and am fully convinced that you will do a perfect job. You will also cover the sector on Women…”.

Our correspondence continued like this until December 1943. At this time it was interrupted because of the situation created by the operation of the invading Nazi forces and their mercenaries against our National Liberation Units and the liberated areas. A difficult situation was created for the General Headquarter of the Albanian National Liberation Army and even for the British Military Mission of Gen. Davies. It was a time when Tirana was undergoing one of the most difficult periods of the Nazi invasion. It culminated with the massacre in February 4th 1944, when, in the night, 84 people were taken from their houses, shot dead, and left on the roads. They were young, elderly, good nationalists, anti-fascists and communists.

The National Front also, benefited from this ferocious reaction. They attracted some elements from our Youth Organization who were frightened. At this moment the Germans offered to these young people scholarships to attend school in Germany. I had to visit some of these young people in their houses, in order to talk to them and try to convince them not to accept the Nazi’s offer. This would be tantamount to treachery towards the war that they had started.

The leading comrades of the Party didn’t interrupt their activities and contacts with the people for a moment. They continued putting themselves in danger, because the majority were guerillas and were wanted and followed by the enemy. Tirana also felt the huge weight of wild terror, but, with an insurmountable feeling of love for the country, the people successfully overcame this trial. Tirana houses remained safe bases and fond warm places for the Party comrades, for the guerillas and freedom fighters. These houses gave everything to fighting the war and eventual victory, continuing to help us hide and protect us during the times of the extreme controls exercised by the enemy and its spies. The people continued to attend our meetings even in those hazardous days of danger and terror and they never broke their connections with the people of the Party and the National Liberation Front.

In the meantime the General Headquarters of the Army was able to escape the siege of the enemy. They had managed to escape many difficulties, which I am not going to mention now as it is not appropriate. Much has been written about them. When part of the headquarters were able to reach some free areas of Korca, Enver wrote an urgent letter to Gogo Nushi, requesting information about the situation in Tirana and other regions of the country.

Gogo could have replied immediately with all the information requested by Enver and sent it through a messenger in the way which had been agreed in advance, but in this case, he showed his generosity in front of the comrades. I cannot forget the moment when this kind person, as we all knew him, with his big heart, said to the comrades:

“What if we send this information with the Delegate. This way we use one stone to kill two birds”,

he said smiling.

I hadn’t even thought of such a thing. I couldn’t hide my excitement and my heart was beating rapidly. A slight blush all over my face heated me. I betrayed myself in front of the comrades. They immediately understood Gogo’s aim and looking at me in an affectionate way, agreed. So I would have the good luck to take Enver the letter with the extensive information. I wasn’t guilty of being overwhelmed by strong emotions. It had been six months that Enver and I had been apart, and very often I was forced to keep within myself, deep in my soul, worries related to my beloved. Hundreds of questions would go round my brain: “How is he?”. “Where is he?”. “Is he alive?”. “How is he dealing with the frost and the situation in the snow covered mountains?”, There were all of these worries about Enver and his comrades in addition to others concerning the wild wolves, and the Nazis, which I had to overcome in an atmosphere of pressure and terror. This situation forced us to move around the city daily with revolvers in our bags. At night we would sleep lightly since we had to be on the lookout for the enemy and sometimes we slept fully clothed with revolvers and grenades under the pillows, prepared for any eventuality.

It was the beginning of March. Gogo and Nako prepared the letters and the information, whereas I could hardly wait to leave so as to complete this task and meet Enver. Together with the information about everything that had happened and our activities in Tirana, I would also be a pleasant surprise to Enver. I would stay with him for some time in Panariti in Korca.

——————————————————-END THIS SELECTION———————————————– 

PCMLE: 2011 – A Year of Youth Mobilization & Struggle

En Marcha, January 5, 2012

The crisis of capitalism and its effects on the world worsened in the 2011, the demonstrations, protests and launched shots of places young people and made them key players in an intense struggle against unpopular regimes and policies demanding democracy, freedom and better living conditions.

The first country to move was Tunisia, which together with the leftist movement led to the overthrow of dictator Ben Ali Zine el Abidinee, for the January 14 fight was the center of Egypt against Mubarak’s government, who left office in spite of the help they received from U.S. imperialism, under pressure from workers, youth and workers in the streets demanding his departure.

As a Sunday May 15 young men called themselves the “outraged” completely filled Puerta del Sol in Spain and 150 seats, meeting under the cry of “real democracy now.” Despite trying to be evicted by the police, the youth confessed to have no more fear, “The voice of the people is not illegal,” shouted the protesters after hearing this news. They realized that failure is not the economy, is not corruption, is the capitalist system that unleashes the infamous dictatorship download the crisis on the shoulders of the people sparking outrage in Spain.

Education was the right on to South America, high school students in Argentina were the first at the Southern Cone ignited massive mobilizations in Buenos Aries expanding to the rest of the country, they ceased not put on alert the government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

The Chile government repression stirred the minds of students and workers who were brutally suppressed, the style Pinochet, the student movement called for a national day of action twice for 18 and 19 October, and demonstrated in different cities, to demand a free, quality education, looking at new measures as “cacerolazo” already reaching 7 months of continuous protest.

By September hundreds of young Americans filled the area of​Trinity Place in New York, meeting under the slogans “Enough of corruption,” “curb cuts” and “do not market our future.” Despite the police evicted the outskirts of the Wall Street Center. There is no force to press the voice of young people and so many fans of all ages acted on behalf of “a new society that gives priority to people over the economic and political interests.”

The youth became in 2011 an example of combat. Threats and other attacks on freedom not undermined the rebellious spirit of youth, much less have failed to intimidate his liberating power. Spain, Greece, Libya, England, Chile and the U.S. were built and continue to ignite the flame of youth protest and the workers and peoples and give added strength to continue fighting for higher wins.

Source

Alliance (Marxist-Leninist): Where We Stand – Beria and the Berlin Rising of 1953

Laverenti Beria

Flag GDR -Bust Lenin

Walter Ulbricht

Fifty years after, the risings and riots, of the working class in June 1953, across the German Democratic republic (GDR) – notably in Berlin, remain controversial amongst Marxist-Leninists. Some argue this was a genuine revolt of the German working class. Others, supporters of post-Stalin USSR, argue they were imperialist provocations. Alliance Marxist-Leninist will argue that:

i) They were a genuine resistance by the German working class against a revisionist bureaucracy; that the revolt was precipitated by a criminally ultra-leftist policy of Walter Ulbricht;

ii) Lavrenti Beria representing the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Politburo, urged a sectarian Ulbricht back towards a path described by J.V.Stalin;

iii) Beria agreed with Stalin that the German state was in the special circumstances of post-war Europe, a buffer against imperialism.

The Charges Against Beria

When the revisionists led by Khrushchev, took control of the USSR state, they were hampered by waverers (Malenkov and Molotov), but actively resisted by staunch Marxist-Leninists (Beria). Unless Beria was eliminated, the state would return towards its Marxist-Leninism. Charges against Beria, were laid out in secret sessions of the full Central Committee of the CPSU(B) from 2-7 July 1953, some four months after the death of Stalin, but only two weeks after the June 16-17 anti-communist uprising in East Berlin.

The leading charge concerned the establishment of a secure intelligence base for Marxist-Leninist vigilance. Another series of charges alleged traitorous relations with Tito and attempts to normalize relations with Yugoslavia (Amy Knight: Beria Stalin’s First Lieutenant; Princeton 1993; p.206). But a prominent charge regarded Beria’s advocacy of a “unified Germany”. Leading the charge against Ulbricht’s sectarian polices was Beria, who was “indignant when I (Ulbricht) opposed the policy concerning the German question in 1953”: Knight Ibid; p. 192). Several sources point to the significance of this charge:

“The Soviet leadership offers the following reasons for the charges against Beria. . . . ‘ that he advocated the creation of a unified Germany as a “bourgeois, peace-loving nation” (1:162) and the abandonment of East Germany’s status as a separate, socialist state;” [On the Crimes and Anti-Party, Anti-Government Activities of Beria.] Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2-7 July 1953, from Izvestia CC – CPSU:1991, 1:140-214 & 2:141-208. New Evidence on Beria’s Downfall, by Rachel A. Connell.

“New accounts confirm that Beria did want to trade German reunification for neutralization.” ‘New Evidence on the East German Uprising of 1953; ”Paper #3: Reexamining Soviet Policy Towards Germany During the Beria Interregnum, “Cold War History Project” by James Richter.

What were Stalin’s views on East Germany and West Germany? We trace this through the famous wartime Allied Heads meetings of Tehran (November 1943); Yalta (February 1944), to the post-war Potsdam meeting (July 1945). Here, Stalin was face to face with Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt, and at Potsdam, President Truman.

Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin at Yalta Conference

The Potsdam Conference

Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at Potsdam

Stalin’s German Policy

It is alleged that Stalin held barbarous views on Germany. For example, it is said that during a dinner conversation at the Tehran Conference, the conversation turned to Germany. Stalin, concerned that the future Germany might once more attack Eastern Europe and Russia, joked that German officers be liquidated:

“To prevent this catastrophe…. from 50,000 to 100,000 German officers must be liquidated, and the Allies must retain control of strategic points around the world in order to stop German operations. Was Stalin joking about shooting 100,000 officers?… Churchill took Stalin seriously…..Roosevelt thinking that he could smooth things over with a joke of his own, proposed that instead of 50,000 officers being shot, they should shoot only 49,000. By now Eden, sensing that in his anger Churchill would make remarks he would later regret, tried to signal that it was just a joke.” Eubank K; Summit at Tehran – The Untold Story; New York, 1985; p. 314-5.

Charles Bohlen, the USA diplomat and interpreter, corroborates that Stalin’s remark was a joke. Nonetheless, this “joke” has been converted into the “fact” that Stalin demanded the heads of 100,000 soldiers. Furthermore, that he was responsible for the subsequent division of Germany into East and West. British and USA imperial inspired histories, take as a given that at the end of the Second World War, Stalin was intent upon destroying Germany:

“Stalin and Roosevelt were both strongly in favor of splitting up Germany in order to render here helplessly weak. Churchill did not think that this was an important issue”.Martin Kitchen: British Policy towards the Soviet Union During the Second World War; London 1986; p. 175.

But the reality is not quite so clear. Firstly, even shrewd enemies of the USSR, recognized the situation that Russia had found itself over the war years. As Averell Harriman, the USA Ambassador to Russia, warned:

”Our difficulties with the Russians if any, will be that their present intent towards Germany is tougher than we have in mind, particularly in regard to the magnitude of reparations. Their measure of Germany’s capacity to pay reparations in goods and services appears to be based on the concept that the Germans are not entitled to a post-war standard of living higher than that of the Russians”. W.A. Harriman, and E. Abel. Special Envoy to Churchill & Stalin 1941-1946: New York; 1975; p. 249.

Harriman had no difficulty in believing the sincerity of Stalin’s views, and from where they arose:

“Harriman felt that Stalin’s fear of a resurgent Germany was entirely genuine.. “I am satisfied that his concern was real..“
Harriman & Abel; Ibid; p. 273.

At Tehran, Stalin did not push the agenda of a division of Germany. Instead he “did not think much of either” of the leaders’ plans, preferring that of Roosevelt – over Churchill’s Danubian Confederation; if he had to choose between the two:

“Roosevelt talked of dividing Germany into five separate states . . . Churchill’s .. plan was less sweeping. He agreed that Prussia should be detached from Germany. . .. Stalin. . . did not think much of either idea, though he said that of the two he preferred Roosevelt’s. The trouble with fitting any part of Germany into a larger confederation, was that this would merely encourage…. And recreate a great national state”; Harriman & Abel Ibid; p. 280-281.

At Yalta, Roosevelt revealed that the British insisted upon a French role in Germany:

“The British were attempting to build France up into a strong power to hold the eastern frontier while the British assembled a large force.”….Stalin asked if Roosevelt thought that France should have a zone of occupation in Germany, The president dmitted that it was “not a bad idea, but he added that it was only out of kindness”; Stalin & Molotov agreed”; Eubank K; Summit at Tehran; NY 1985; p. 475.

Roosevelt’s dismemberment of Germany became accepted. Again, the “given version” that Stalin pushed for dismemberment of Germany, is false:

“The myth that Europe was divided up in the Crimea (Yalta). Is totally inaccurate… The Soviet side expressed its doubts that dismemberment was realistic. As a result it was decided in Yalta to refer that question to the European Consultative Commission.” Berezhkov, V.M., At Stalin’s Side. His Interpreters Memoirs; New York; 1994; p.275

The crux of the Yalta discussions was on reparations. Both the USA and the UK imperialists tried to deny significant reparations to the USSR. The USSR was devastated by the fascist invasion, contrary to either of the other two allies. The imperialists wanted the post-war poverty of the USSR. Therefore, Stalin explicitly linked the division of Germany to the question of war reparation.

The Famous Raising of the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei ; May 2 1945

Race to the Elbe –Anglo-American Attempts at a Separate Peace

Between the Yalta and Potsdam meetings, with the end of the European war, only two major things had changed in the relationship of the Three Big Powers to each other.

The first was the territorial control of the European theater.

Russian insistence on a Second Front had long been resisted, but when the imperial Allies saw that the Russians were sweeping across Europe towards Germany, they agreed to set up a Second Front, which radically changed the situation. Initially:

“The European Advisory Commission (EAC) had negotiated the zonal agreements anticipating that the Red Army might control much of Germany”; Eisenberg, Carolyn; The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-1949; Cambridge 1997; p.72.

However after the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 (In Ardennes against the USA and British) – the German High Command started to move forces away from confronting the USA:

“The Nazi leadership unexpectedly shifted strategy. In a dramatic attempt to check the Russian advance, they began moving their armies from the Western Front and reducing their resistance to SHAEF (the Allies). By the end of March less than 30 German divisions were facing the Americans, and British, while more than 150 divisions were battling the Soviets in the East”;
Eisenberg Ibid; p.72.

Moreover, the Germans began making overtures of a separate peace with the Americans & British. Although this was quite against the protocols of Yalta, the Americans and British responded positively:

“Ambassador Harriman has communicated to me a letter … from Mr. Molotov regarding an investigation being made by Field Marshall Alexander into a reported possibility of obtaining the surrender of part or all of the German army in Italy. In this letter Mr. Molotov demands that, because of the non-participation therein of Soviet officers that this investigation to be undertaken in Switzerland should be stopped”;
March 25 1945; President Roosevelt to Marshall Stalin; In Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministries of the USSR, and the Presidents of the USA, and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45; Moscow; 1957; Volume 2: p. 188.

Against American protestation, Stalin was explicit about violations to the Yalta Agreement, and danger to the Russian troops. He charged this “engendered distrust”:“

”I must tell you … that the Germans have already taken advantage of the talks with the Allied Commanders to move three divisions from Northern Italy to the Soviet front. The task of coordinated operations involving a blow at the Germans from the West, South and East, proclaimed at the Crimean Conference (Yalta –Ed) is to hold the enemy on the spot and prevent him from maneuvering, from moving his forces to the points where he needs them most. The Soviet Command is doing this. However, Field Marshall Alexander is not. This circumstance irritates the High Command and engenders distrust”; Premier J.V.Stalin to President Mr. F. Roosevelt; p. 190.

As President Roosevelt prevaricated, Stalin became ever more explicit:

“You are quite right … that “the matter now stands in an atmosphere of regrettable apprehension and mistrust”. I realize that there are certain advantages resulting to the Anglo-American troops from these separate negotiations in Berne .., seeing that the Anglo-Americans troops are enabled to advance into the heart of Germany almost without resistance, but why conceal this from the Russians, and why have the Russians, their allies not been forewarned? And so what we have at the moment is that the Germans on the Western Front have in fact ceased the war against Britain and America. At the same time they continue the war against Russia, the Ally of Britain and the USA”; Marshall Stalin to the President Mr. Roosevelt; April 3 1945.

Stalin understood that the game was about control of key industrial parts of Germany:

“It is hard to agree that the absence of German resistance on the Western Front is due solely to the fact that they have been beaten. The Germans have 147 divisions on the Eastern Front. … They are fighting desperately against the Russians for Zemlenice, an obscure station in Czechoslovakia, which they need just as much as a dead man needs a poultice, but they surrender without any resistance such important towns in the heart of Germany as Osnabruck, Mannheim and Kassel”; Premier Stalin to President Roosevelt April 7 1945; p. 198.

Churchill, Truman and Stalin at Potsdam 1945

The Atomic Bomb Changes the Geopolitical Reality

The second major change, between Yalta and Potsdam, was the atomic bomb.
Prior to this, the USA and the British relied upon the USSR to destroy fascism. Will Thorp, Deputy Assistant Sec. State Econmics had said:

“It is by now a commonplace, that Germany cannot commit another aggression so long as the Big Three remain united”;
The essence of the US pre-atomic security policy for Europe was just that – an agreement sealed at Yalta for joint control of Germany by the US, and the USSR (together of course with the lesser great powers retain, and with the still lesser power France).”
Alperowtiz, Gar; The Decision to Use the Atomic bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth; New York; 1995; p. 278.

By the time of Potsdam, the maneuvering of the imperialists changed. The USA and the British were aware of what had happened, and why the USSR needed help in re-building. As President H. Truman said:

“What you have to remember about Russia and its fear of another war is that the Germans slaughtered 25,000,000 people not connected in any way with the military. They ruthlessly wiped out everybody from the Polish border to Leningrad and Moscow”; President Truman April 1946; cited; Alperowtiz; G; Ibid; p.289.

Now, with the Russians forced to fight arduously into Berlin, the USSR was no longer indispensable for the ruthless Allies. Having made commitments at Yalta, for reparations to the USSR, the USA tried to renege on their promises:

“The fundamental question in dispute at Potsdam was … whether to fulfill Roosevelt’s Yalta understandings whereby the Soviet Union was to receive reparations of roughly ten billion dollars from Germany. . . . The position the US delegation now took was “No”. The basic Roosevelt position was simply abandoned… Indeed, although Red Army help to control Germany had once seemed essential, the US now became quite cavalier in its negotiations… Nor is there any doubt about what produced this revolution. At Potsdam, US leaders explicitly stated their private judgment that the atomic bomb had given them power to control all security problems – including the once central German threat”; Alperowtiz, G; Ibid; p. 281.

In fact, at Potsdam, despite the pressures put on by the imperialists, Marshall Zhukov notes that Stalin had resisted pressures to divide Germany:

“The question of the Germany into three states: Southern Germany, Northern Germany, Western Germany raised for the second time by the US and British delegations came in for serious debate. The first time they brought this up at the Yalta Conference it was rejected by the Soviet delegation.. . . At Potsdam, Stalin again rejected this: “We reject this proposal, it is contrary to nature: Germany should not be dismembered, it should be made into a democratic, peace loving state. . . I must say that Stalin was extremely scrupulous with regard to the slightest attempt by the US and British delegation to take decisions to the detriment of the Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the German people. He had particularly sharp controversy with Churchill…”
Zhukov G: Marshall of the Soviet Union; Reminiscences and Reflections” Moscow 1984; vol. II, pp. 447; 449-50.

By the end of the Potsdam Conference, it was clear that the Americans were determined to place an imperialist presence in West Germany. This meant that the German state was inevitably to be divided. One aim of the imperialist was to limit the amount of reparations to the USSR, so they insisted that all reparations were to be made from the Zones of occupation. Thus, the USSR was excluded from the Saar and the Ruhr industrial belts. Molotov pointed out that the bulk of the wealth of Germany was in the zones to be occupied by the imperialists, but to no avail. The implication of ‘separate’ reparations was the division of Germany:

“In view of the American aims, the gravest flaw in the reparations scheme was its threat to German unity. …. both Molotov and Ernest Bevin (British Foreign Secretary -Ed) had pointed out the incompatibility of Byrnes’ (James Byrnes, US Secretary State -Ed) proposal with the plans for economic integration”;
Eisenberg, C Ibid; p. 114.

Despite the devious tactics of the imperialists, the Russians led by Stalin and Molotov were determined to try to achieve a unified Germany. To this end, they “gave ground”. So much so that the Americans found themselves in a difficult diplomatic position:

“In a personal letter to General Eisenhower, Ambassador Walter Bedell-Smith described the US delegation’s discomfort. Observing that Molotov had begun to make concessions, Smith reflected that “the difficulty under which we labour is that in spite of our announced positions, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification in any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seemed to meet most of our requirements”. The real problem was the Soviets would interfere with the German contribution to the Marshall Plan. However the US was in an exposed position, and it would “require careful maneuvering to avoid the appearance of inconsistency if not hypocrisy”;
Eisenberg ibid; p. 359.

Molotov pointed out that that the US and Britain were retarding the recovery of the Western controlled Germany. He openly stated that:

“The question of the creation of a Government for the Western zones has already been decided by the USA”;
Eisenberg Ibid; p. 357.

By 1948, the:

“Americans and British were resolved: There would be two Germanys. For the foreseeable future eastern zone would be left to the Russians, while the western zones would become a separate state. Together the two powers devised concrete plans for making West Germany a reality”; Eisenberg; Ibid; p. 363.

The imperialists began to further sabotage the plans made together with the Russians for a peaceful and united Germany. They attacked the joint quadripartite currency reform plans. In this tense climate, the Russian representatives in the city of Berlin and the Russian zone, created an opening for the Americans. Marshall Sokolovsky for the Russians on the Allied Control Commissions adjourned the Commission, in effect walking out. This gave the USA General Clay a reason not to submit to Russian approval for currency reforms.

The tension rose still further when USSR General Dratvin imposed on April 1 1948, a traffic blockade from the western zones to the eastern zones. Again, provoking this rupture played into Americans hands. Therefore, the Americans refused to call the Allied Control Commission to discuss matters. This bluff became the propaganda coup of the Berlin airlift. Meanwhile, Clay charged that the Russian were creating a separate East German Government, a false charge that Assistant Sec. State Lovett relished to:

“Clearly shift responsibility to Soviets for splitting Germany”; Eisenberg Ibid; p. 396.

Yet, even now, Stalin continued to work for unification, as witnessed by his famous letter to Senator Henry Wallace, who had argued for unification of Germany. Stalin:

“Despite the differences in economic systems and ideologies the coexistence of these systems and the peaceful settlement of differences between the USSR and the USA are not only possible but absolutely necessary”; Eisenberg Ibid; p. 405-6.

On July 14, 1948, a Russian governmental note asking for restoration of unity discussion while easing travel restrictions to and from Berlin was dismissed. Even then, Stalin met with the three Western ambassadors Walter Bedell Smith (USA) Frank Roberts (Britain); and M.Yves Chataigneau (France). He offered them an immediate removal of the blockade, with currency agreements, if immediate discussions re-started on German unity (Eisenberg Ibid; p. 429-30). All to no avail, because again rather conveniently, the Russian representative in Berlin, General Sokolovsky:

“Assumed the initial role of saboteur by reversing concessions that had been offered in Moscow…. The Russians performance disappointed General Robertson who though it so “fantastic” that he had so altered Stalin’s commitment”. Eisenberg Ibid; p. 437.

The division into two German states achieved the imperialist aim of forming a buffer zone for Cold War propaganda. This emphasized the “divisiveness of communist intent”. Stalin had sought to frustrate this goal. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formally established. However, we argue that until his death, Stalin was anxious to re-establish a unified German state. We move to the situation in 1952.

Stalin’s Meeting With the Politburo of the SED

German communists of the former KPD, returned to Germany as the Soviet troops battled in. Under Soviet advice, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the KPD merged to form one party – the German Socialist Unity Party (SED), in April 1946. Stalin had several meetings with its’ leaders. By 1951‑52, thousands of inhabitants of the GDR were leaving across the open inner‑German borderlines in Berlin. The East Berlin government turned the freely passable East‑West German border into a guarded border in May 1952. During 1952, more than 232,000 GDR residents went West.

Stalin clearly disapproved of the policies of the GDR leaders. He warned them that they were undergoing a rapid rate of collectivization, and alienating all the layers of society from peasants, to workers to intellectuals. He also advised them that it was incorrect not to continue to work for a unified German state. Finally, he specifically advised that the GDR was not to be considered a socialist state. He used the formulation “beginning of socialism”. [All these references are cited in full at the Alliance web site http://www.allianceml.com/STALIN-TXT/STALINTOULBRICHT.htm%5D

“Comrade Stalin says that you should say to your workers:

“We have just entered socialism. This is not full socialism yet, because you have many private capitalists. However, this is the beginning of socialism, a little piece of socialism, and a road to socialism. You should show that you are closer to the workers than Adenauer’s government“.

http://www.allianceml.com/STALIN-TXT/STALINTOULBRICHT.htm

Stalin fought for differentials to reflect that there was a ‘lot of private capitalism’:

“Comrade Stalin …Last time it was found that in the GDR, the ratio of workers’ salary to the salary of engineering and technical personnel was 1: 1.7. That is absolutely incorrect. It will doom your entire industry. . . The engineer is engaged in intellectual work. He must have an apartment, decent furniture; he should not be chasing a piece of bread. He should enjoy a standard of living appropriate for a person who is engaged in intellectual work. “Ibid.

Stalin insisted on voluntary collectivization:

“Comrade Stalin …The kulaks should be encircled, and you should create collective farms around them. In our country, organization of collective farms was going on simultaneously with expropriation of the kulaks. You will not need to do it this way. Let your kulaks sit tight, leave them alone. In addition to the kulaks, you have poor peasants in your villages that live right next to the kulaks. They should be pulled into production cooperatives. … You will see for yourself that peasants will visit those collective farms and watch how life will unfold in a new way. I noticed, said Comrade Stalin, that you do not value peasants in your policy…… Do not force anybody to join; if they want to, good. If they do not, do not force them.” Ibid.

Stalin staunchly advocated German unity:

“You should continue propaganda for German unity in the future. It has a great importance for the education of the people in Western Germany. Now it is a weapon in your hands, and you should always hold it in your hands. We should also continue to make proposals regarding German unity in order to expose the Americans.” Ibid.

These stipulations are pretty concrete and clear. Yet within 3 months of Stalin’s death, Ulbricht turned ultra-left-wards, as noted by US Diplomat N. Spencer Barnes to the State Department on 30 April 1953 (Uprising in East Germany 1953; Compiled by C.Ostermann; Budapest; 2001; p.75)

And criminally so.

Ulbricht launched what has been called the “socialization“ of East Germany. In the way this was carried out, it resulted in the total alienation of all sectors of the population- including the working class and peasantry. There was a clear reversal away from Stalin’s advice, in the polices being adopted in the GDR under the SED:

“In a 2 May 1953 memorandum, Semyonov, …within the Soviet establishment, advised Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that because “The Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the democratic forces in the GDR have already strengthened and matured enough to manage independently the leadership of the country,” the maintenance of overt political control by the Soviets could be sharply reduced. . . . Thus, in Semyonov’s opinion, there was no need to do anything but “to create more favorable conditions for socialist construction in the GDR.”;
Working Paper #11: The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback, by Christian Ostermann http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=441

Ulbricht ensured that a Central Committee resolution on higher quotas for workers was passed, instructing that:

“All necessary steps to remedy the abuse in the sphere of work quotas … and to raise those of importance… by an average of at least 10% by June 1, 1953”;
A. Baring Uprising in East Germany June 17 1953; Cornell 1972; p.21-22

This overall leftist strategy was resisted by Beria. The ground was laid for a revolt, which would play into the hands of the imperialists. Since the death of Stalin, Khrushchev was determined to move the state of the USSR into a position subordinate to USA imperialism. Ulbricht’s policies played into this overall strategy.

The “Beria Plan” to reverse Ulbricht’s Ultra-leftist Policies

Beria tried to reassert Marxist-Leninist control after the death of Stalin. He was aware of the dangerous situation in Germany. On May 27 1953, the Presidium of the Soviet Council of Ministers met to discuss the situation in East Germany. The Council of Ministers, warned of an imminent crisis, and blamed the incorrect polices of the SED. The document is known as the “Beria Document”. It was dated prior to the June 11 rising. [See Council of Ministers of the USSR Order; “On Measures to Improve the Health of the Political Situation in the GDR”; 2 June 1953. No. 7576-rs; Moscow, signed by Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Malenkov. Hereafter: USSR Order 7576-rs. http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=26760

The “Beria Document”, as Ulbricht and the SED called it, was a retreat from ultra-leftist “socialization”, and was forced upon the SED. However, it did not go as far as Beria had wanted. Mainly this was in regards to Beria’s fight to unify Germany:

“Divisions in the Presidium prevented the leaders from making a decision … Molotov reports that Beria tried once more to get him to accept reunification, but when this failed withdrew the proposal…. “Malenkov favored reunification as a neutral country because he considered the division of Germany artificial and contrary to the historical development of that country. . .. Molotov, by contrast, focused on the traitorous character of Beria's proposal ….” Richter, Ibid.

Albeit that USSR Order 7576-rs was not, in its final form, exactly as Beria had hoped, the document was scathing about the SED policies. It bluntly stated that the situation had been created by the serious alienation of the German workers, peasants and intelligentsia, by the “incorrect political line”. This had resulted in a “very unsatisfactory political and economic situation”:

“As a result of the incorrect political line. . . There is serious dissatisfaction with the political and economic measures carried out by the GDR among the broad mass of the population, including the workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia. This finds its clearest expression in the mass flight of the residents of the GDR to West Germany. ..over the course of four months in 1953 alone over 120,000. Many refugees are workers. .. It is remarkable that among those who have fled to West Germany in the course of [the first] four months of 1953, there are 2,718 members and candidates of the SED and 2,610 members of the Free German Youth League. “USSR Order 7576-rs.

It was emphasized that the SED was following ultra-leftist decisions following the Second Conference. The polices flagged as incorrect, included a forcing of the pace of industrialization, and the forced collectivization, as well as simple abuses of restriction of ration cards to “person in the free professions”:

“The social-economic measures which have been carried out … include: the forcible development of heavy industry, which also lacked raw materials; the sharp restriction of private initiative, which harmed the interests of a broad circle of small proprietors both in the city and in the country; and the revocation of food ration cards from all private entrepreneurs and persons in the free professions. In particular, the hasty creation of agricultural cooperatives in the absence of the foundations [necessary] for them in the countryside led to: serious difficulties in the area of supplying the population with manufactured goods and foodstuffs; a sharp fall in the mark’s exchange rate; the ruin of a large number of small entrepreneurs-artisans, workers in domestic industries, and others. It also set a significant stratum of the populace against the existing authorities. The matter has gone so far that at present more than 500,000 hectares of land have been abandoned and neglected, and the thrifty German peasants, usually strongly tied to their plots, have begun to abandon their land and move to West Germany en masse.”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

In addition, serious errors were made in ideological work, especially in regards to the clergy and to the intelligentsia:

“Serious errors have been committed with regard to the clergy, evident in the underestimation of the influence of the church amongst the broad masses of the population and in their crude administrative methods and repression. The underestimation of political work amongst the intelligentsia should also be admitted as a serious mistake…”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

The Order bluntly insists that the SED must acknowledge error, and prescribes remedies:

“All of this creates a serious threat to the political stability of the German Democratic Republic. In order to correct the situation that has been created, it is necessary:
To recognize the course of forced construction of socialism in the GDR, which was decided upon by the SED. as mistaken under current conditions.“
USSR Order 7576-rs.

Largely, the proposed remedies fell into two main categories – either they reversed the ultra-left attacks on the peasantry; or they condemned repressive measures aimed at either the clergy or intelligentsia:“

2. .. to halt the artificial establishment of agricultural production cooperatives, which have proven not to be justified on a practical basis and which have caused discontent among the peasantry; To check carefully all existing agricultural production cooperatives and to dissolve both those which were created on an involuntary basis as well as those which show themselves to be non-viable. . . c) to renounce the policy of limiting and squeezing middle and small private capitalas a premature measure. . . . . To restore food ration cards to private entrepreneurs and. . persons of the free professions.
d) to re-examine the five-year plan for the development of the national economy ofthe GDR with a view to curtailing the extraordinarily intense pace of development of heavy industry and sharply increasing the production of mass consumption goods, as well as fully guaranteeing food for the population in order to liquidate the ration card system of providing foodstuffs in the near future;
f) to take measures to strengthen legality and guarantee the rights of democratic citizens; to abstain from the use of severe punitive measures which are not strictly necessary. To re-examine the files of repressed citizens with the intent of freeing persons who were put on trial on insufficient grounds. To introduce, from this point of view, the appropriate changes in the existing criminal code;
g) . . . To assign special attention to political work among the intelligentsia in order to secure a turnabout by the core mass of the intelligentsia in the direction of active participation in the implementation of measures to strengthen the existing order. At the present and in the near future it is necessary to put the tasks of the political struggle to reestablish the national unity of Germany and to conclude a peace treaty at the center of attention of the broad mass of the German people both in the GDR and in West Germany. At the same time, it is crucial to correct and strengthen the political and economic situation in the GDR and to strengthen significantly the influence of the SED in the broad masses of workers and in other democratic strata of the city and the country. To consider the propaganda carried out lately about the necessity of the GDR’s transition to socialism, which is pushing the party organizations of the SED to unacceptably simplified and hasty steps both in the political and in the economic arenas, to be incorrect. …
h) To put a decisive end to [the use of] naked administrative methods in relation to the clergy…To end the oppression of rank-and-file participants in the religious youth organization “Junge Gemeinde,” moving the emphasis of gravity to political work among them..”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

Finally, there remained lip-service towards German unification:

6. Taking into account the fact that at present the main task is the struggle for the unification of Germany on a democratic and peace-loving basis, the SED and KPD, as the standard-bearers of the struggle for the aspirations and interests of the entire German nation, should ensure the use of flexible tactics directed at the maximum division of their opponents’ forces and the use of any opposition tendencies against Adenauer’s venal clique. For this reason, inasmuch as the Social Democratic Party [SPD] of West Germany, which a significant mass of workers continues to follow, speaks out, albeit with insufficient consistency, against the Bonn agreements, a wholly adversarial position in relation to this party should be rejected in the present period. Instead, it should be attempted, where possible, to organize joint statements against Adenauer’s policy of the division and imperialist enslavement of Germany. “
USSR Order 7576-rs.

The Rising

Although the Ulbricht leadership of the SED resisted, it had to make some retreat. However, it refused to make any retreat on the 10% work increase in norms for the working class. In fact, they were confirmed on June 13. Yet it did make massive improvements in the conditions of the intelligentsia and middle classes – that of itself icreated suspicions. It was called the “New Course”.

“To make matters worse, the only segment of the population which seemed to have been excluded from the concessions of the “New Course” were the workers: the arbitrarily-imposed higher work norms remained in force.“
[Study of the Instigation, Outbreak and Crushing of the Fascist Adventure of 16-22 June 1953], 20 July 1953, Ostermann, Paper 11; Ibid.

Signs were evident from even the 2 June of worker unrest (Report of Sokolovskii, Semyonov & Yudin: In “Uprising in East Germany 1953”; Ostermann ibid; p.258].

The confused sudden retreat, yet with no amelioration of the workers work norms soon triggered worse. On 16 June 1953, hundreds of East Berlin construction workers staged a demonstration, calling for a general strike the next day. Only now did the SED retreat question of work norms. Too late. On 17 June 1953, huge riots (up to 300,000 strong) and protests broke out. Soviet military force was required, to suppress them.

American aims at undermining German unity were enhanced. The Americans carefully refrained from military steps. The provocative Ulbricht strategy, both anti-working class and peasantry – ensured the failure of any attempts at a united German state for the foreseeable period.

“The Eisenhower Administration came to devise a psychological warfare strategy which effectively capitalized on the instability in the GDR. … while undermining any potential Soviet initiative for German unity as well as the new leadership’s “peace offensive,” …, the American response to the East German uprising could best be characterized as a superb exercise in “double-containment.” . . . It undermined Soviet exploitation of German nationalism by squarely keeping Moscow and East Berlin on the defensive while, at the same time, containing German nationalism by boosting the election success of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his policy of “Westintegration.””

http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=441

In the process some 40 were killed (Report of Sokolovskii, Semyonov & Yudin: In Uprising in East Germany 1953; Ed Ostermann ibid; p.284].

The Arrest of Beria

As Andrei Gromyko expressed it:

“Beria’s dismissive judgment of the GDR was enough to get him kicked out of the leadership.”
Gromyko, Memories; p. 317; Cited Amy Knight: Beria Stalin’s First Lieutenant; Princeton; 1993; p. 274.

Molotov later denied the most serious charges against Beria:

“As far as the accusations that Beria was an agent of a foreign country are concerned, they are untrue. He was loyal to the Soviet Union to a fault”. “
An Interview with Molotov “ Literaturuloi Sakartvelo, 27 October 1989; Cited in Knight, Ibid; p. 274.

From 2-7 July the full Central Committee endorsed the arrests of Beria and his supporters.

The fall of Beria, naturally had repercussions in East Germany:
“In East Germany, according to the communist official Heinz Brandt, the news of Beria’s arrest was hailed with satisfaction: ‘With Beria’s fall the scales had been tipped against Hernstadt and Jendretzky and the New Course, and for Walter Ulbricht. .. Beria along with Malenkov, had been the principal initiator of the new course as a policy… the German reformers were now doomed along”: A..Knight, Ibid; p. 216.

Zaisser and Hernstasdt were expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee, leaving Ulbricht with essentially no rivals. The victory of the revisionist in the East German party was assured.

CONCLUSIONS

The German rising of 1953 was precipitated by the criminal ultra-left policies of the East German SED party. It played right into the hands of the USA imperialists. It achieved the ends of ensuring a divided Germany, and a militarized Western Germany under Adenauer – on behalf of the USA imperialists. Beria tried to stem the tide, but was unable to turn the policies back sufficiently towards the path outlined by Stalin, in his discussion with the SED party leadership. It is difficult not to see Ulbricht as a conscious enemy of the working class of Germany. We will pursue this analysis in further detail in the next issue of Alliance theoretical journal.

Source

Communist Ghadar Party of India: Condemn the murder of Gaddafi and the re-colonisation of Libya!

Statement of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 6th November, 2011

The Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the cold blooded murder of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi by the US-led NATO forces, as part of their unjust and criminal aggression and re-colonisation of that country.

The right to judge, reward or punish a political leader belongs to the people of that country and not to any foreign power. The murder of Gaddafi is an act of blatant violation of the right of Libyans to determine their own destiny.

The NATO forces rained death and destruction on Libya and its people from the air for over seven months. They have ruthlessly destroyed the economic infrastructure of Libya, — the schools, hospitals, highways, telecommunication networks, the irrigation and drinking water network. Countless people have been killed in these seven months. The imperialists of NATO armed their agents in Benghazi. They guided mercenary forces through their intelligence agents on the ground and bombings from the air to crush the people’s resistance to the capture of Libya. The final act of the murder of Gaddafi was also masterminded by the NATO forces. They bombed with sophisticated drones and fighters a cavalcade of vehicles of Colonel Gaddafi, which was leaving his home town of Serte. The NATO forces ensured the capture of Colonel Gaddafi followed by his brutal execution by their agents, without any trial of any kind.

For over seven months, Obama of the United States, Cameron of Britain, Sarkozy of France and Merkel of Germany have been calling for the blood of Gaddafi. They arrogantly rejected the proposals of the African Union and various Latin American governments to assist in a negotiated settlement of the Libyan crisis. They have now declared that the murder of Gaddafi marks a “new beginning” for a “democratic” Libya. The peoples of the world can have no illusions on this score.

The peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq have direct experience of the “regime changes” carried out in their countries in the name of promoting “democracy”, through brutal aggression, assassinations and wars of occupation. They have seen the rape and plunder of their land, labour and resources, and the murder of countless patriots in the course of the aggression and occupation. What has happened to Iraq and Afghanistan is what is being promised to the Libyan people under the signboard of democracy. What is going to be implemented is the cold-blooded colonial and imperialist plan to recolonise Libya and establish foreign imperialist control over its rich natural resources, particularly oil. This recolonisation will be carried out through the offices of a puppet regime that is being put into place.

The actions of the US-led NATO coalition in Libya confirm that these imperialist powers do not respect the fundamental premise of the foundation of the UN in the course of the Second World War in which the fascist aggressors were defeated — that the sovereignty of each people and country is inviolable, and each country has the right to follow its own economic and political system, free from outside dictate. The US-led imperialist coalition of NATO has arrogated to itself the right to refashion a new global order in which all countries and peoples must accept their unquestioned dictate.

The imperialist powers are trying to make people accept that the right of nations to self-determination, a principle established and agreed upon internationally in the 20th century, can be violated for “humanitarian” reasons. They use their control over the media to paint whosoever they select as being the biggest threat to humanity, so as to justify blatant aggression and violation of national sovereignty. All political parties and organisations of the working class and peoples must unite in defence of the right of nations and peoples to self-determination. We cannot and must not accept any violation of this right under any pretext.

The murder of Gaddafi and the recolonisation of Libya are a message to the African peoples that the Anglo-American imperialists and other European powers are initiating a new scramble for the recolonisation and redivision of Africa. It poses a grave threat to the freedom and independence of all the African countries.

The peoples and governments in our subcontinent must wake up to the reality and threats to peace and independence in our region, where US imperialism has violated the sovereignty of Iraq and Afghanistan, and is openly threatening Iran and Pakistan.

We must resolutely defend the sovereignty of every state, nation and people, and contribute to the struggle to stay the hands of all imperialist aggressors. An attack on one is an attack on all!

Let us demand that the Government of India must not give legitimacy to the re-colonisation of Libya by western imperialist powers in the guise of building democracy.

Source

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire: The PCRCI denounces the attack against the Libyan People and the Assassination of Qaddafi by NATO

The intervention of the hawkish coalition led by France, Britain and the United States of America has just led to the assassination of Qaddafi October 20, 2011 after the overthrow of his regime. Following this plan, the authors pretend to be embarrassed. Neither the NATO command, nor the French, English, American, or their creation, the National Transitional Council (CNT) dare take on the assassination. After Jubilee October 20, 2011 with the announcement of the death of the former Libyan leader, French President Sarkozy made ​​step back in October 21, 2011 stating that no one can rejoice in the death of another . The Secretary General of the UN, meanwhile, hailed a “historic transition for Libya,” October 20, 2011. The story will assess the “history” of such an act of aggression.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN, the October 21 request for an investigation. Why this seeming embarrassment? The imperialist powers want to reduce the general feeling of disgust widespread among African people, shedding crocodile tears. Yet it is impossible to hide the fact that a mission intended to protect human lives ended in a flood of blood with a bonus, an act against the person of Gaddafi akin to a war crime. Every reason to believe that Gaddafi was captured and then coldly shot. Although people were afraid of compromising revelations certainly Gaddafi court. The Libyan people he had undertaken to get rid of its dictator, Qadhafi? This is possible, but the seizure of power by the CNT focused at arm’s length by NATO that led from start to finish the battle for the Libyan regime change is far from embodying the interests of the Libyan people who will soon not realizing it.

It is clear that the NATO intervention aimed to prevent the contagion of revolution Tunisia to Libya. If the Libyan people had really begun to take steps to make the revolution, it comes from him being stolen. The revolutionary struggle of the Libyan people is just beginning because it is misleading to call the coup revolution of NATO and the CNT, which has served as an alibi. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire is engaged with the Ivorian people for the democratic revolution against imperialism and is ready to provide support to similar initiatives elsewhere in Africa and the world. He denounces so this imperialist aggression against the Libyan people and condemns the cowardly assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.

Abidjan
October 23, 2011
The Central Committee

En Marcha on Libya

Gaddafi’s murder puts an end to its contradictory policy

After the siege of Sirte by rebel forces and the continuous support of the NATO bombing, dropped the last bastion of resistance to Gaddafi and with it came his lynching and death.

At the closing chapter of this macabre American imperialist intervention and its European allies, which began in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, the brunt of the savagery of NATO, which fell to Libya UN resolution 1973 gave the green light for murder of thousands of children, youth, women and elderly innocent and the destruction of hospitals, schools and homes of poor people by planes from the U.S., France, England, Italy, Canada, Qatar and Spain 14 000 attacks carried out under the cynical pretext to protect civilians.

War of aggression that took advantage of the discontent of the masses secular and Islamist Libyan mobilized to demand the resignation of Gaddafi for his corrupt and repressive dictatorial policy in 42 years of dictatorship submitted to the people and their political opponents, the miserable conditions of life, prison and exile.

This does not justify the genocidal actions of the U.S. and its followers against the Libyan people, other than by oil, gas and water, for their benefit; impede the flow of oil to China and strategic control of northern Africa and the Near East.

Muammar Gaddafi was characterized by contradictory political and ideological position and winding with democratic reforms undertaken as dictator from 1969 to overthrow the King Idrissi, presented as experiences and examples of the third way (or socialism or capitalism), but history of the transformation of Libyan economy popular capitalism, privatization of public enterprises and foreign oil producers and distributors, such as Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, Repsol of Spain, Total of France, BP of the UK, Petrobras of Brazil, more the U.S. Marathon Oil, Amerada Hess, Conoco-PHLLIPS, OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM, EXXON-MOBIL and the China National Petroleum, and the opening up and encouraging foreign investment.

The open door policy to the highest bidder and its weight would encourage authoritarian dictatorial corrupt economic ambition that would lead to rapid personal enrichment and family, with the acquisition of a fortune as gold reserves, foreign exchange and investment exceeding 200 billion dollars (Los Angeles Times), which doubles annual industrial production over Libya before the U.S. intervention.

In this position fro the imperialist governments of England and Italy and of Spain fought to curry favor with Gaddafi for their investments and oil business. He was invited to the treat-as did Berlusconi, or were “official visit” with the list of prayers and investment proposals.

All under the supervision and consent of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) neoliberal recipes applied against the economy of poor households and workers, that paid for the first turns of the Libyan people.

Muammar Gaddafi humble home in the Bedouin, formed by the English with an anti-political conception, governed, enriched and betrayed his people and from 1986 he was a partner of Fiat, the Italian companies and Infinvest, Swiss and French and strut NATO in the region.

The story of betrayal does not forget that most computers, weapons and equipment of repression that Gaddafi had at his disposal were supplied by the U.S., Britain, France and Spain, whose members, with his murder, was charged dearly for his politics and ideology contradiction in which he embarked and which he died.

Libya, imposed arbitrary arrests and torture

In Libya, things have not changed at all, at present there are cases of torture to extract confessions or simply as a punitive measure, risking that the practices of the past be repeated in the present, when the arbitrary arrest and torture was marked the whole Gaddafi.

Amnesty International (AI) accused the interim government of Libya, coordinated by the National Transitional Council (CNT), making arbitrary arrests and practices of torture and abuse against soldiers and followers of Muammar Qaddafi.

The organization claims that the majority of detainees are imprisoned without the respective orders of the prosecutor and executed by military authorities or non-competitive.

Sub-Saharan African suspected mercenaries constitute between one third and half of those arrested are also vulnerable Libyan Tawargha region, which was the basis of gadafistas troops. On the other hand a number of children are detained together with adults and women arrested in this process and put under surveillance of men who play the role of guards.

Communist Party of Mexico Marxist-Leninist (PCM-ML): Iran& the new source of imperialist war

These days it meets the security council of the United Nations Organization (UNO), consists of China, the United States, Russia, France, Britain plus Germany, who is a permanent member of this organization. Among the topics to be discussed is that of Iran, who asked to stop uranium enrichment, arguing that this is used to produce nuclear weapons.

At that, following the threat from the United States to make a military incursion “preventive”, now they call it a military invasion against Iran is preparing, under the pretext of stopping the threat, because it is speculated that the alleged weapons produced in Iran go into the hands of terrorists.

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, which has sunk further into poverty as a result of the imperialist invasion of the Americans and their European allies, where hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands fleeing to other countries in the Middle East for no be victims of the war, now plans to do the same with Iran, the argument, the fight against terrorism. To “protect democracy and world peace”, are used to war.

Since Bush has not quite been able to convince the Americans to make a military attack on Iran, which tries to do at all costs, he can not ignore the fact that Iranian territory are large reserves of natural gas and oil plus it is committed to its tendency to monopolize nuclear power, set representing a large booty, especially for a country like the United States, which depends on the hydrocarbon reserves of other countries.

Because of this, Yankee imperialism makes use of all tools available, why resort to the UN, who has always been subordinated to the interests of imperialism and has not played more than a puppet role in conflicts between countries, always safeguarding the interests of the financial oligarchy.

The UN, on the one hand criticizes Iran, Lebanon and Syria are making weapons, countries that certainly have not aligned to the American policy, so they are considered part of the “axis of evil” and hotbeds of terrorist groups , but at the same time, it is unable to criticize the military-industrial complex the world’s largest, and the use of weapons of mass destruction that have used the Yankees and their allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the fact that progress in Israel As military technology.

Another argument against Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents, the Afghans, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in addition to being accused of meddling in internal affairs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which threatens peace in the region, the fact is that for years, who has interfered in internal affairs of other countries and has been Yankee imperialism. One example was the assistance they provided the government and the American army to the Afghans against the Soviets, the nod to the Iraqi invasion of Iran during the Bush administration, these, just to name a few, and that Yankee imperialism has been characterized by meddling in internal affairs of several African and Latin American countries.

One way to pressure the Iranian government to stop enriching uranium, is the threat of an economic embargo already living higher than the cancellation of credit to Iranian companies. To put pressure on other countries to line up in favor of imperialism and their clearance to a higher pressure and economic sanctions prepared to countries whose companies to maintain investment with Iran.

It would be rare for U.S. imperialism and its allies use the political conflicts in Iran, which look like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan to help opponents of the current government to unleash major internal conflicts which may allow a ‘pre-emptive raid ” or “humanitarian aid” in the way of the facts would mean the presence of peacekeepers from the UN, better known as blue helmets, as already happens in other countries in the Middle East and the Middle East.

Faced with accusations of American imperialism and the members of the Security Council of the UN, arguing that Iran defends right to use uranium to make electricity, which did not use the uranium for nuclear weapons production, arguing that it are taken as valid before the judges, since Iran does not submit fully to the designs of imperialism, although it is not an anti-imperialist and democratic country.

The threat Iran becomes dormant when one considers that the geographic region in which it is, is surrounded by countries and places where troops or peacekeepers Yankees such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Turkey . For powerful countries with nuclear weapons, as is the case of Pakistan and countries in the region are staunch allies of American imperialism, as in the case of Israel.

PCMLE: “The real emancipation of the peoples is the revolution and socialism”

From En Marcha, #1545
Organ of the Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
August 19 to 25, 2011

As part of the work that the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations is carrying out, last July a meeting of the Latin American parties took place. At the meeting were the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil, the Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Labor of the Dominican Republic, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador, the Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist-Leninist) and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela.

After evaluating the work that these parties are carrying out in each of the countries and discussing the most important events that are taking place in the region and the world, the meeting approved a Political Declaration that we reproduce below.

U.S. imperialism and its European allies: France, England, Spain, Italy, are trying to manipulate the just struggle of the Arab peoples, to channel the indignation of the working masses and the youth towards a change of names, maintaining the economic and social structures and the weight of dependency.

After reviewing the latest events in our countries, in Latin America and the world we declare:

1. The stories told by imperialism claiming that there is a recovery from the crisis are falling apart every day, with the increasing numbers of unemployed, the decrease in production, the worsening of the fiscal deficits and the increase in the foreign debt in most of the countries of Europe, in Japan and the U.S.A., which seriously affect the supposed stability of the capitalist system and sharpening its inherent contradictions. This prolonged crisis that is affecting all the countries of the world shows not only the failure of the recovery policies implemented by imperialism, but also the decay of the system, which is mortally wounded and incapable of guaranteeing the well-being and freedom for which humanity is struggling.

2. The struggle of the working class, the working people, the youth and the peoples is spreading all over the world. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Syria, Yemen and other countries of North Africa and Asia Minor are an example of the struggle against the reactionary dictatorships and governments, who with the applause of the bourgeoisies and the imperialist powers have sunk these peoples into the deepest crisis, hunger and the cruelest misery, despite the immense wealth generated by the exploitation of oil, gas and other natural resources. In addition, with the complicity of the UN they resort to military intervention, to the bombing of the civilian population in Libya, using the pretext of the fight against tyranny, all with the aim of guaranteeing the established order and the continuity of all its profits that are the product of colonization and exploitation of these peoples. We completely reject the foreign intervention in Libya. It is up to the Libyan people themselves to resolve the problems of their country. No more military aggression and intervention in Afghanistan and Palestine! We Communists raise the banner of self-determination, sovereignty, well-being and freedom!

3. Active and valiant opposition to imperialism and the reactionary governments is also alive in Europe. In Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Ireland, France, England and other countries of Europe there has been a general rejection of the reduction in wages, the pension reforms, the increase in taxes, privatizations and the reduction of the budgets for health care, education, housing and in general of all the legislative programs by which the crisis is being placed on the shoulders of the working masses. Numerous strikes and mobilizations are showing an important revival of the working class and youth that is again speaking out for unity and the political initiative to confront the recovery policies and to reject the reactionary governments. The great mobilizations of youths that are taking place in Spain and other European countries deserve particular mention, which show the exhaustion of bourgeois democracy and the search for roads to social liberation.

4. In Latin America the struggle continues, it is showing a greater advance and development. The structural adjustment policies implemented by most of the governments in the last years have not achieved their expected objectives, much less do they represent measures aimed at the well-being of the masses. The different struggles that are developing in our countries calling for higher wages, labor stability, respect for the right to association, negotiation, collective contracts and strikes, the rejection of outsourcing, the demands for health care and education, greater rights and liberties are arousing the ever greater participation of numerous organizations on the continent that do not kneel before the measures of the bourgeois governments and that struggle for political freedom for the people. The student youth in Chile together with the working masses and the Mapuche people are carrying out large mobilizations in defense of freedom, public education and democracy. The desire for change is breaking through in our various countries, large contingents of the masses are participating in the political struggle and are taking up the banner of working for the victory of democratic and progressive governments that really promote the defense of sovereignty, respect of human rights, well-being and political freedom. The democratic and anti-imperialist tendency in Latin America is an unquestionable fact that is opening the way, is growing and offering numerous possibilities for the advance of the revolution.

5. The rise through elections of several democratic and progressive governments in Latin America constitute important steps in that direction. Nevertheless today, the existence and continuity of these governments is threatened by the rightist offensive of imperialism and the local bourgeoisies that have not given up the privileges that they have enjoyed in our countries for centuries. The offensive of imperialism and the oligarchies has reversed the direction of several of those governments, which have been transformed into open defenders of the capitalist system, of foreign domination; into a form of the old ways of governing, into those who carry out repression against the working masses and the youth, into prettifiers of representative democracy and promoters of developmentalist and reformist measures. In fact, these governments and history show that real change, the social revolution and national liberation cannot be carried through to the end under the leadership of bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes and parties. That responsibility belongs to the working class, the working masses, the peoples and the youth, to the revolutionary party of the proletariat, to the genuinely revolutionary organizations and parties.

6. Imperialism, its allies and servants, the local bourgeoisies in all the countries are persisting in their reactionary policies of repressing the struggle of the working masses, of the indigenous peoples and the youth by fire and sword, at the time that they try to co-opt the social movement by means of social welfare policies and one reform or another. One expression of those policies is the presence of U.S. imperialist troops and those of their Latin American servants in Haiti. In the same way it is continuing the trade embargo against Cuba and actions aimed at subverting the Venezuelan process. The persecution, jailing and assassination of social fighters and revolutionaries are irrefutable testimony of the fact that the struggle continues and that repression, however harsh and bloodthirsty it may be, cannot do away with the ideals and the determination to fight for social and national liberation. We emphatically express our solidarity with the comrades who are suffering repression and torture in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru. In particular we demand the freedom of the Ecuadorean student leader Marcelo Rivera, who remains in prison, accused and condemned as a terrorist by the Correa government, for defending university autonomy.

7. The betrayal by the government of Rafael Correa and the struggle of the Bolivian workers against “the gasolinazo” in Bolivia are making clear not only the real limitation of these governments, but also the need to make clear to the working class and the social and mass organizations what is the real road to social change. Experience shows that neither reformism nor class conciliation can lead to change. Real change, the genuine emancipation of our peoples is the revolution and socialism, which is only possible if there is a revolutionary political vanguard capable of pushing through a genuinely revolutionary program at the head of the struggles of the working class, the working masses and the peoples.

8. The continuity and development of the struggle of the workers, the peoples and the youth in the countries of Latin America is guaranteed by historical tradition and the present combats, the perspective is the developing along the road of the social revolution. Our Continent is and will be the scene of great liberating struggles and we Marxist-Leninist communists will fulfill and affirm our position as shock troops of the revolution and socialism.

9. The strengthening of the right-wing, corporatist and social welfare policies in most of the governments of Latin America will not make us back down from the search for true social and national emancipation. We Marxist-Leninist parties of Latin America reiterate our commitment to link ourselves boldly and decisively to the struggles that the working class, the working people, the peasantry, the youth, the women and the peoples in general are developing, as well as our irrevocable decision to advance in the unity and leadership of their struggles, winning them for the revolution and socialism.

10. We make the words of Lenin ours: “If in the course of the struggle we win the majority of the workers to our side – not only the majority of the exploited, but the majority of the exploited and oppressed – we will really win”.

July, 2011

Opposition MDC was formed to revive colonial domination

Never before, at any point in the history of this country, has the subject of elections haunted people’s minds as did the 2002 presidential elections.

The final week preceeding these elections was taken up by national debate during which the electorate was concerned over who would win.

What each one of the five candidates stood for had become universal knowledge.

However, victory by Zanu-PF over the MDC was certain. The ruling party had the strong advantage that it was a revolutionary Africanist party which fought the war of liberation.

Predictions about the Zanu-PF victory were not based on moral issues only, but also on the political experiences in Mozambique and Angola as well as other countries of the Sadc region.

The imperialist countries, however, only conceived their defeat as a temporary setback. Forces of imperialism soon sought re-entry into the liberated countries through the more insidious strategy of creating and establishing constellations of power in the form of client political parties. The experiences in Mozambique and Angola were, however, that the puppet parties were rejected at elections. The people of the sub-region have an awareness of the West’s strategy of perpetuating imperialist hegemony by using blacks as fronts.

The strategy is the revival of colonial domination by replacing white actors with black actors, making it easier to enter and control the geopolitics of the region. White liberals and black victims of imperialist nostalgia were recruited into the revival project for imperialism.

Taking advantage of the national decline in radical nationalism, following the leftist ideological thaw, the MDC party was formed to revive the ideals of conquest and domination.

In its formative stages, the MDC activists hid behind labour, as members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions ZCTU harassed the Government through the organisation of mass strikes. They also hid behind the constitutional reform movement. Mr Morgan Tsvangirai was the National Constitutional Assembly chairman during its inauguration. Mr Tendai Biti, Mr Munyaradzi Gwisai, and Professor Welshman Ncube were among the key figures of the NCA who subsequently became key figures in the MDC.

Apart from Mr Gwisai’s socialist rhetoric, the prevailing discourses emerging during and after the formation of the opposition party were leaning towards friendship with capitalism. The MDC was easily integrated into the imperialist system under the broad strategy of the West in which comprador parties are seeded in the local political systems.

Like the Renamo and Unita movements in Mozambique and Angola respectively, which were controlled by imperialists, the MDC set to use the electorate to implement in Zimbabwe, anti-African policies that resumed the dispossession and alienation of blacks. The party symbolised the tenacity and the relentless aspirations of the British in their quest for reviving white privileges in Zimbabwe.

The imperialist tactics used in Mozambique and Angola in the form of Renamo and Unita were being renovated for redeployment as democracy in Zimbabwe. Mr Tsvangirai completed the ill-conceived tripartite in the sub- region comprising himself, Alfonso Dhlakama and the late Jonas Savimbi. These represent the offals of our three nations.

As happened in Angola, Mozambique and later in Namibia, Zimbabweans emerged from racial oppression through a fierce blood-letting struggle. In return for the struggle, the blacks set to restore all that was lost. The return of stolen land, for instance, began in earnest. Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa completed the historical military struggle of their people through elections, making the institution of elections important as a political conflict resolution instrument.

The concept of elections and democracy are intrinsically associated. Holding elections, and participating in elections usually evokes notions of democracy. Democracy evokes notions about the rule of law. It is generally accepted that governments that ascend to power through popular elections are legitimate institutions that rule by the permission of the people. These governments have the mandate of the people. Mandate may include, among other things, agrarian reforms which may be popular at home and unacceptable elsewhere.

By its very character and origin, imperialism is not a local persuasion and, on the whole, inherently contradictory to local views on the accumulation of wealth. For Zimbabwe, cultural, economic and political development policies of the Government have a national character and inexorably anti-imperialist. Elections as vehicles to State power and its legitimation have become the sine qua non of reactionary interests in the geopolitical system of Zimbabwe.

Through the MDC as a comprador party, the British government of Tony Blair hoped to institute imperialist policies using the local electoral system. Another dimension of elections and also by association of democracy, is revealed in the institution’s susceptibility to political and ideological intrigues of foreign elements. The 2002 presidential elections were for imperialism the finest opportunity for retrograde voting by the Zimbabwean electorate. It was to be in the history of Zimbabwe a period of the “legitimate return” to the ideas of colonialism.

The Zimbabwean electorate as a reasoning public rejected the MDC in the same way their counterparts in Mozambique and Angola rejected Renamo and Unita. Renamo could not be rewarded for waging the most barbarous war on the African continent, destroying lives, property and infrastructure on which the Mozambicans socially and economically depended for their livelihood.

The Angolans did not vote for Savimbi to reward him for destroying the country. The sophisticated British propaganda machine at the MDC service attempted in vain both within Zimbabwe and on the international scene to poach the true meaning of the liberation struggle and reconstruct the old ideologies of the white man. Mr Tsvangirai could not be rewarded for betraying the nation.

Despite the presence of the Western narcissus in the local political arena, the MDC lost the elections.

Political Resolution of the XIth of the CC of the PCMLV

After evaluating several plenary sessions during the global situation, we reaffirm our view that we move in successive cyclical crises which are expressed as economic reality, which is deepened especially in the imperialist countries, such as determining component of the general crisis of capitalism, which also of economic base of political and social, creating conditions for moving to a new stage, mixed by wars and revolutions, with high conflict and total decomposition of capitalist society. It is clear that the situation remains tense in the world, continues to deepen the crisis of global capitalism. Riots, demonstrations, war characterize the current moment of world reality.

Expression of this situation is the deepening of the imperialist war against Libya are, we see daily attacks against this country are increasing, and increasingly critical support of the international bourgeois institutions becomes more evident. The bombings are constant and assumptions are civilians who after all end up paying with their lives intemperate attacks of the imperialist forces NATO , Orphans, mothers weeping for their children, this is the scenario that world imperialism has built in this North African country. Unabashedly, the imperialists stole the Libyan people’s money was deposited in European banks, in order to put to the disposal of its interest warmongers. Use the money to strengthen a government coalition made up of reactionary pro-Yankees. About 200 billion dollars of Libya’s international reserves were blocked and placed at the service of imperialism, in addition to this stolen oil, the major facilities and fresh water reserves in this country.

This initially appeared as a political agreement between the imperialist powers to attack Libya, example of this was the position of China and Russia who did not realize their power of veto to prevent the invasion, then the situation worsened, the resistance the Libyan people are maintained over time, setting a problem to be solved by the imperialist powers who doubt the military intervention by land to stop these terrible negative balances and a high political and economic costs.

We understand that this aggression, as well as others made covertly, are part of the imperialist struggle for a new division of the world and are the basis on which to structure the new relationship between world powers, which leads to more wars. The deepening U.S. economic downturn will lead to more conflicts and even wars among the imperialist powers to resolve its economic contradictions.

Another country that is suffering the ravages of imperialist interference, it is Syria, where the imperialists operate in a different format, a little more discreet, are acting from intelligence agencies, on behalf of groups opposed to President Bashar Al Assad. The characteristics of the Syrian government suggests a family relationship in the areas of power, as in the case of the brother of the president who controls one of the divisions of the army and his brother who controls the intelligence services. Some try to locate the essence of this situation on tribal or ethnic differences, trying to hide the fact that regardless of their ethnic peoples seek structural changes that allow them a chance to get a better life. But improving the brevity of life is impossible in a system where the interests of capitalism are the ones that take precedence over the interests of the people and workers in general, it is clear that the intelligence services of imperialism have been mixed in with the riots try to work the ground for possible future interventions.

The acts of sabotage that the governments of Israel and the U.S. made in this country to seek also weaken Iran, Syria partner in oil and industry, hence the conflict to pursue the control of oil reserves and energy, not only this country, if not the entire region.

Importantly, the position taken by China and Russia to Libya with a complicit silence was modified with respect to the situation in Syria, as the worsening social conflict in this country, both exercised their weight as members of the Security Council to make it clearly did not support any intervention in Syria. This is due to a very momentous, Syria offered its territory to transport fuel to other countries, including Russia, making clear that Russia is involved when the conflict is economic interests are at stake with an intervention . Just to mention some good data to say that at the beginning of 2000 the trade exchange between Syria and Russia exceeded 100 million dollars, and for 2005 exceeded $ 300 million, and has continued to increase. Although it is noteworthy that these figures, in general trade of these countries, expressing only a small part of Syria’s debt to Russia, bringing the cumulative three billion dollars. This is complemented by a major military exchange. Syria even has a Russian military base on its territory, which of course must also defend the Russian government when assessing their positions and interests. A similar situation occurs with China in turn is carving the way to deepen political relations with Syria, which promises not only an intensification of efforts to control these countries, and another part of the imperialists, if not also possible contradictions between them.

In Europe, continues to advance the tension, we see the conflict in Greece again takes place in the international news, as workers have returned to the streets to develop their protests against economic measures imposed by international agencies. In Italy, the third largest economy in the euro area is expected to increase the impact of the crisis. France, imperialist country that currently is playing important role in the aggression worn in North Africa as some of the so-called Maghreb countries were colonies of France, so this, now try to regain influence and control as before, on these countries to try to secure their resources.

The Communist League: Response to ‘Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?’

For the original article, “Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?” look here.

Dear Comrades,

Our delegate has reported to us the decision of the ‘Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party’ to publish in the Committee’s journal the article entitled ‘Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?’ the author of which is Comrade Ted Talbot, a former member of the Committee.

We have now read and considered the article concerned, and we give below some of the reasons why we consider that this article is contrary to established and agreed Marxist-Leninist principles. We feel that the article should not be published unless together with a critical commentary.

The ‘Traitors Thesis’

The article concerned begins by attacking what its calls the ‘traitors thesis’, which, according to the article,

“… . at its crudest.. .argues that the USSR was on track for socialism until the death of Stalin when a group of traitors to socialism, who had managed to worm their way into the top echelons of the Party, took control”. (Why did the Soviet Union collapse?’ p.1).

The article attributes this thesis to Cathy Majid, apparently on the basis that attacks on its content will be more acceptable if it is said to emanate from a source whom members of the Committee have learned from their own experience to distrust.

In fact, since the 1960s this so-called ‘traitors thesis’ has been a key thesis dividing Marxist-Leninists from revisionists.

At this time, for example, the ‘People’s Daily’, the principal organ of the Communist Party of China, published the seminal article ‘Leninism or Social Imperialism?’ which stated:

“How was it possible for the restoration of capitalism to take place in the Soviet Union… and.. .to become social-imperialist? If we examine the question from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism,… . we shall be able to understand that this was mainly. . . the result of the usurpation of the Party and government leadership by a handful of Party persons in power taking the capitalist road”.

(‘Leninism or Social Imperialism?’, in: David Milton, Nancy Milton & Franz Schurmann: ‘People’s China: Social Experimentation, Politics, Entry onto the World Scene: 1966 through 1972′; New York; 1974; p. 454).

By October 1964, the differences between tile Soviet and Chinese parties had become, in the words of the Albanian Marxist-Leninist leader Enver Hoxha,

“…this great historic battle between Marxism and revisionism”.

(Enver Hoxha: ‘An Open Letter to the Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 3; Tirana; 1980; p. 631).

In his letter to the Committee dated 4 August 1998, Comrade Powell (Comrade Talbot’s close collaborator) endorses this characterisation, speaking of

“…the great struggle waged by the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania during the 1950s and 60s against Soviet-style revisionism”.

(Harry Powell: Letter to Committee of 4 August 1998; p. 1).

And chides the ‘Partisan’ comrades for allegedly having been

“…enthusiastic supporters of Soviet social imperialism right up until its final collapse in the early 1990s”.

(Harry Powell: Letter to Committee of 4 August 1998; p. 1).

At the recent Congress of the ‘Communist Party of the Soviet Union’, Viktor Ampilov endorsed the ‘traitors thesis’, declaring that

“The break up of the first state of workers and farmers in the world started with the revisionism of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”.

(Viktor Ampilov: Political Statement at the Congress of the CPSU. In: ‘North Star Supplement’; p. 1).

and in a lecture at Kim 11 Sung University in Pyongyang in October 1992, Nina Andreyeva, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Bolshevik Communist Party, declared that the AUBOP held

“… the degradation of the CPSU into Right opportunism and revisionism started from the end of the 50s when the leadership of the Party and state was seized by Khrushchev and his associates. The starting point of the degeneration of the CPSU into opportunism was its 20th Congress”.

(Nina Andreyeva: Lecture at Kim Ii Sung University, Pyongyang (6 October 1992), in:

‘Unpresented Principles’; Leningrad; 1992; p. 305).

Thus, the so-called ‘traitors thesis’ is completely in accord with the general outlook of’ the International Communist Movement.

We must, therefore, draw the Committee’s attention to a paper submitted to the December 1997 conference of the organisation ‘International Struggle – Marxist Leninist’ by Ted Talbot and Harry Powell, which lays down the following important principle for ‘a serious pre-party grouping’, namely that

“…at the initial stage of its existence,.. .certain basic theoretical principles need to be agreed. In particular adherence to the general outlook of the International Communist Movement”.

(Ted Talbot and Harry Powell: ‘International Struggle – Marxist-Leninist’, No 4, 1998; p. 41).

The article ‘Why did the Soviet Union collapse?’ is in clear violation of that principle.

Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

For the Communist League response to this article, see here.

by Ted Hankin

INTRODUCTION

One of the most retailed reasons amongst Marxist-Leninists for the demise of the Soviet Union is the ‘traitors thesis’. At its crudest, the traitors thesis argues that the USSR was on track for socialism until the death of Stalin when a group of traitors to socialism, who had managed to worm their way into the top echelons of the party, took control.

“The tragedy of the Second World War Period was that instead of men in the mould of Lenin and Stalin, it was Nikita Khruschev who became the leader of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement.” (Majid, p.1)

Khruschev is said to have taken a “chosen path of capitulation to imperialism.” (Majid, p.3) Why did he ‘choose’ this path: the reader will look in vain for any answer in this booklet, and indeed Khruschev’s poor peasant origins appear totally unexceptional. (Majid, p.1) At bottom, the traitors thesis is a personalist and psychological account. It is a ‘bad man’ theory of history that has a similar methodology to the manner in which bourgeois history is taught in terms of the reign of wicked and beneficial King’s and Queen’s.

The traitors thesis leaves many questions unanswered. In particular, where did the traitors keep coming from? It is true that Stalin was well aware that many of the ruling elite had ideas alien to socialism, and that promotion within the bureaucracy could also be a step closer to the labour camp. However, this could only ever be an extremely arbitrary and short-term measure. Stalin used organisational means to attempt to deal with a recurring political problem. In any case, such a policy could only survive Stalin’s lifetime, as it was reliant on Stalin’s ruthlessness and prestige. The real question is: why were ‘capitalist roaders’ constantly produced and reproduced under a regime, which was supposed to be socialist? What is required is a materialist analysis.

ORIGINS

Precisely due to the extremely adverse circumstances that conditioned the aftermath of 1917: civil war, economic disruption, famine, etc., the Bolshevik regime was forced to implement extremely repressive measures in order to maintain its rule. These measures tended to narrow the social basis of the regime, which had already lost many of its best supporters in the fighting. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion by the early Bolshevik regime was, in Trotsky’s words, “a tragic necessity.” (Lenin and Trotsky, 1978) The Bolsheviks had no choice; they had to recreate the working class.

The adverse situation meant that many procedures had to be enacted in the Soviet Union, which were inimical to the building of socialism. Productive forces theory was strongly represented in early positivist, (Second International), interpretations of Marxism and this tendency was reinforced by the pressing material circumstances. (Carchedi, 1987, pp.5-6)

It is quite clear now, from the experiences in both the Soviet Union and China, that simply raising the level of productive forces without really revolutionising the relations of production is doomed to failure. In particular the masses have to be drawn into the real decision making processes in order to achieve the high level of political consciousness necessary for socialism to be built. The idea that the proletarian state is the bourgeois state turned on its head is entirely incorrect. The bourgeois state relies for its continued existence on only a narrow stratum of oppressors, whilst for its survival the proletarian state must undertake the massive task of bringing the mass of people to political consciousness. As Luxemburg puts it:

“Socialism in life demands a complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule. Social instincts in place of egotistical ones, mass initiative in place of inertia, idealism which conquers all suffering, etc., etc. No one knows this better, describes it more penetratingly, describes it more stubbornly than Lenin. But he is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconic penalties, rule by terror – all these things are but palliatives. The only way to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which demoralizes.” (Luxemburg, p.70)

There is a substantial element of idealism in Luxemburg’s analysis if taken in conjunctural terms. She is writing as if there was no Civil War and famine in the period (1918) on which she is commentating, when it is difficult to see how anyone could have ruled except by the exercise of force. Nevertheless, initial habits die hard and command methods remained when they were no longer necessary for the imminent survival of the Bolshevik regime. Luxemburg’s analysis takes on an added relevance when we note that policies such as one-man management, piecework, and Taylorist work practices have no chance of drawing the masses into the ‘public life’ which she enumerates. Such practices decompose the working class and are bourgeois modes of labour organisation. (Sirianni, p.147)

That important opportunities were missed is illustrated by the extraordinary initial development of the Soviet economy, a development which cannot be explained in bourgeois economic terms of material self-interest. It can only be explained by the fact that Soviet citizens were prepared to make tremendous sacrifices for the future of socialist construction. As Hoffman mentions, “even anti- Stalinist liberals were to describe the Stalinist system as one of totalitarian democracy in order to acknowledge the popular enthusiasm it had aroused.” (Hoffman, 1990, p.16) This reliance, actually partial reliance, on the masses was time limited. In the 1920s:

“Stalin had nothing else to rely on except the masses, so he demanded all out mobilization of the party and the masses. Afterwards when they had realized some gains this way, they became less reliant on the masses. (RCP, 1981, p.4)

The principal contradiction in the former Soviet Union was the encirclement by imperialism. The fundamental contradiction was internal: the failure throughout to revolutionise the relations of production.

American Party of Labor Statement on the Killing of Muammar Gaddafi

No the Colonization of Libya!

With the victory of the NATO-backed rebels and the National Transitional Council, Libya has been colonized once again. Moammar Gaddafi, the leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, has been killed according to the country’s rebel government on October 20th, 2011. Gaddafi was murdered in his hometown of Sirte, a stronghold for his supporters.

From 1911 to 1943, Italy ruled Libya as a protectorate. Under the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the colonialists ruthlessly crushed any national resistance to fascism that would threaten Italy’s imperial interests over this oil-rich country. Now, in 2011, the country is once again under the control of foreign powers. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has states that the war against Libya is “over,” declaring the domination of Libya complete. Libya’s rich natural resources and enormous oil wealth, estimated to be among the greatest on earth, is once again to be siphoned by imperialism.

Gaddafi was executed on the spot in a brutal and arbitrary way, which raises questions about what sort of regime the Libyan “rebels” are going to build, as if the ethnic cleansing of black Libyans and foreign migrants from cities under their control, as well as their cozy relationship with the Western powers and NATO didn’t raise enough already.

A convoy of Gaddafi loyalists' vehicles is pictured destroyed ny NATO bombs and littered with bodies near Sirte

Bodies of killed Gaddafi loyalists around the drain pipe where the Libyan leader was allegedly found

Gaddafi’s Execution

Gruesome images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse have been telecast with glee by TV channels all over the world. The circumstances for his death are reprehensible – he had attempted to flee the bombing assault on Sirte in a military convoy when NATO hit two of the vehicles with a Hellfire missile. The rebel forces allegedly found him hiding in a drain pipe near Sirte. Badly wounded in both legs from the bombs, Gaddafi was captured and executed by rebels.

Photos and cell phone video footage of the event, released shortly after the story of the capture broke, show a wounded and injured Gaddafi with his face and shoulders awash in blood. He appeared to have a wound on his head.

The rebel forces that captured him then began their assault, dragging him from his hiding place and beating the former Libyan leader. Video footage clearly shows Gaddafi grimacing in pain, being humiliated, shoved, beaten and bludgeoned. A dazed Gaddafi is then paraded around in the streets of the city to the sound of the baying mob of rebels, shortly before being shot several times in the head and stomach. Some claim he was shouting, “Don’t shoot!” before he was killed, but no one has verified that claim.

Images from Al-Jazeera show his body being dragged on the ground and paraded through the streets before being taken to a morgue, where rebels flocked to take photographs of the body. Afterwards, his body was taken to Misrata, a rebel stronghold, to be displayed in a freezer. Most reports say he was shot in the head with a 9mm while helpless after being captured and severely beaten. News sources are now changing their story, saying Gaddafi was shot while trying to flee.

Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was given a similar treatment by the “freedom fighters” of Libya. The news is now claiming he was killed in a “firefight” in Sirte, but pictures and video have already emerged of Mutassim lying on a sofa, injured and bloodied after his capture but still alive. Pictures of his executed corpse emerged hours later. Gaddafi’s Defense Minister Abu Bakr Jaber Younes was also killed during the capture, as was Abdullah Senussi and about fifty others.

Mohammed el-Bibi, a 20-year-old rebel fighter who is reportedly the one who pulled the trigger, has been hailed as a “hero,” brandishing a gold-plated gun said to have been owned by Gaddafi. Fittingly, he also donned a baseball cap with the New York Yankees logo. After the shooting, he was hoisted up by rebels, who fired volleys of bullets into the air and loudly chanted, “Allah Akbar.”

Mohammed el-Bibi (right) and another rebel waving a golden pistol allegedly taken from Gaddafi

The barbaric condition of Gaddafi’s death is symbolic, showing the nature of the rebels and giving indications of what life for the Libyan people will be like under their regime. Widespread destruction, poverty, dependence and humiliation, not “freedom” or “democracy,” will be the result of this aggressive attack and occupation of Libya.

Rebels celebrating Gaddafi's death

Lies & Propaganda in the Attack on Libya

Much like other wars the United States and NATO have waged, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war on Libya began with lies. Much like the media told us the war on Iraq was because Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and was going to attack the U.S., they have insisted this is a war to protect innocent civilians. In fact, recent events have shown that the Libyan rebels are not nonviolent, unarmed civilians, and many of the stories of Gaddafi’s atrocities were highly exaggerated.

To begin with, the media ceaselessly compared the Gaddafi government’s actions to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, where ethnic Hutu militia murdered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Since then they have accused Gaddafi of “genocide.” As if that was not enough, accusations of “war rape” and “mass rape” by troops loyal to Gaddafi were spread by mainstream news, backed up by frivolous stories of Gaddafi distributing Viagra to his soldiers to encourage them to rape women.

Months into the civil war and NATO’s campaign, no evidence of a governmentally-sanctioned campaign of genocide or mass rape has been found. In fact, Time Magazine printed a retraction of the Viagra story soon after, and many other news sources admitted there was no evidence of such an action – it was pure warmongering propaganda.

The imperialist coalition of NATO has violated all international laws by waging aggressive and destructive war for their own economic self-interests in the name of “humanitarianism,” as they did in Yugoslavia, as they did in Afghanistan and as they did in Iraq.

Libya and the Arab Spring

Western leaders have tried to say that the revolt in Libya is exactly like the ones happening across the Middle East, including the successful popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, seamlessly integrating the events in Libya into the “Arab Spring” of revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The uprisings of the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia, where protests led to the overthrow of pro-US dictator Ben Ali after twenty-four years in power. In neighboring Algeria, the people also flared up in resistance. Soon after, protests erupted in Egypt against the autocratic neo-liberal Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted from office by the revolution. After these events, the “Arab Spring” expanded in the region, and none of the ruling governments could stop them. In this context, Gaddafi took an opportunist position, claiming that the revolts in Egypt were led by Mossad, the Zionist secret service, and announcing that if he were in Tunisia at the time of the revolt, he would have supported Ben Ali. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and many others have since been the scene of protests and riots by opposition groups.

In contrast to the various revolts however, it has become obvious since the NATO intervention that the revolt in Libya is not a popular revolution or progressive. It is primarily an attack by racist and reactionary elements of Libyan society against the government of the Libyan Jamahiriya. This uprising might have been legitimate at one point, but it has been hijacked by reactionary pro-imperialist factions.

The Gaddafi regime, before its destruction by the rebels, did promote such privatization and neo-liberal policies to the detriment of its people. However, the NTC has not arisen to combat this turn to the right, but to make Libya even more right-wing. Libya has one of the highest GDP per capita in Africa, as well as the highest Human Development Index. Libya under Gaddafi also had free education, as well as free studies abroad, free medical care, free water, almost free electricity and homes funded by the state. Libya under Gaddafi was the most developed nation in Africa and much of the Middle East.

The anti-Gaddafi forces formed a committee named the “National Transitional Council” on the 27th of February, consisting of defecting interior ministers, various neo-liberals and former justice minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who under the Gaddafi regime oversaw and promoted privatization and liberalization policies.

What really reveals the rebels as puppets of foreign powers however, is that they were completely unable to secure victory without the help of NATO. Up until March 7th of this year, the forces of Gaddafi held the rebellion at bay. On March 10th to March 19th, at the request of NTC leaders and with the approval of the Security Council of the United Nations, the imperialist powers imposed a “no-fly-zone” on Libya. As early as March 17th, the United Kingdom and France recognized the NTC as the legitimate government of Libya.

The events came to a head on March 22nd, when the United States, France and Britain deployed a major bombing force to attack pro-Gaddafi targets, afterwards involving all of NATO in the brutal bombing campaign. Since then, the Libyan “rebels” have shown themselves to be a dangerous, crazed hodgepodge of a mob at best, and a ruthless band of killers at worst. They have lynched black Libyans for their skin color and have ethnically cleansed entire cities, all the while waving monarchist flags. Recent reports have even suggested they are rounding up black Libyans and placing them in concentration camps, where widespread rape and executions have been reported.

Omar Mukhtar, led native resistance to Italian colonization of Libya for decades

History of Libya

Libya, a Saharan country located in the heart of North Africa which dared to defy the United States and the European powers, has a fascinating history that is not often reported in the media. The reason being that if they reported on Libya’s past, it would expose how Africa’s right to economic self-determination has continuously been taken away, politically and militarily.

The same NATO countries currently bombing Libya have a history of occupying the country. Libya was a colony of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. After its liberation from Ottoman forces, it became an Italian colony. By 1931, more than 750,000 Libyans had died fighting the Italian occupation. Ironically, both Turkey and Italy are NATO members participating in the attack against Libya.

During World War II, Winston Churchill sought rapprochement with Mussolini, whom he described as a “Roman genius,” claiming that he “rendered a service to the whole world,” calling him “the great law-giver among living men for his anti-Communist stand.”

King Idris the I of Libya

After the war, the Kingdom of Libya under King Idris the I proclaimed its independence on December 24, 1951. Libya became a pro-US and pro-British monarchy. During the reign of King Idris, the Allied powers of Britain, France and the United States (also current members of NATO) enjoyed de-facto control of Libya. The United States built its first air base in Africa, the Wheelus Air Base, on the outskirts of Tripoli for $100 million. The entire country was devastated by the Second World War, which had obliterated what little infrastructure there was in one of the poorest countries in the world. There was virtually no education system or medical care in the country, no stable government and no administrative services.

King Idris & Richard Nixon

In contrast, the West had unhindered access to Libya’s oil and resources. The Wheelus Air Base was used in the Korean War and became a strategic asset for the U.S. Libya was the only source of Middle Eastern oil that wasn’t shut down by the closure of the Suez Canal, and soon the country had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of foreign private investment.

Flag of the Kingdom of Libya under the King - the favorite flag of the rebels

The true nature of the rebellion is shown by the fact that they wave the flag of British and U.S. puppet King Idris the I. After years of poverty under the corrupt monarchy, which sapped the national wealth for the rulers of the Kingdom and not for the people, a bloodless coup was staged by the Free Unionist Officers on September 1, 1969, led by Muammar Gaddafi.

After the coup, the new government assumed full control over oil production and refused to renew licenses for foreign military bases in Libyan territory. 51% of foreign banks and 51% of all oil companies such as Shell, Exxon, Texaco, Socal and Mobil were nationalized by 1973. Oil prices were raised for crude oil when Libya insisted on setting its own prices, and soon agrarian reform and social programs funded by oil revenue helped Libya build itself into the most developed country in Africa. The Western powers have never forgiven the Gaddafi Jamahiriya government for overthrowing their puppet monarchy, and since then Libya has been labeled as one of the “bad Arab states,” with Gaddafi being the lead “bad Arab.”

Where is Libya Heading?

Despite criticisms one might have of the Gaddafi government, NATO has no concern for the Libyan people. Its only mission is the hunger for its world domination.United States Vice President Joe Biden told the press that this invasion will set the stage for future military attacks. “This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past,” he said. With this statement, the brutal power of NATO to violate the sovereignty of states anywhere they want, and to make the law everywhere in the world as they see fit, is put plainly for all to see.

Gaddafi loyalists fight with the green flag standard of the Libyan Jamahiriya

The foreign policy of U.S. imperialism for years to come will be shaped by bloody invasions which back reactionary puppet governments and suit the Western power’s economic interests. Powers like the United States use humanitarian justifications like “human rights” and “democracy” to support local rebellions and portray them as democrats even if they are little more than terrorists, thugs, drug traffickers or worse. Foreign imperialist powers do not intervene in oil-rich countries for “humanitarian” reasons, for but self-interest, for territorial conquests, and to gain new access to markets and resources.

The fighters against reaction and domination, who struggle still against leaders backed by imperialism’s ambition, must now keep in mind that NATO is watching and waiting to strike. Imperialism is out for blood, out to restore the hegemony it has built all over the globe that enforcers like Ben Ali and Mubarak pushed onto their people for decades. This is imperialism’s response to cries for liberation.

The death of Gaddafi will no doubt have the West proclaiming its “victory” over the resistance, but the Libyan people’s heroic resistance to imperialist war has not been in vain, because the world has been watching and all the peoples of the world have learned from their example.

Source

The Communist League: The Soviet-Finnish War

Introduction

After making the Soviet border regions more secure in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine, and acquiring defensive bases in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Soviet Marxist-Leninists turned their attention to the vulnerability of their border with Finland.

After being a Swedish province for 600 years, in 1808 Finland was ceded to the Russian Tsar as a Grand Duchy. After the Russian Revolution of November 1917, Finland declared its independence on 6 December 1917, and this was recognised by Soviet Russia on 2 January 1918.

After the Finnish revolution of 1918 had been crushed by a ‘white’ army under Baron Carl Mannerheim; with the help of German forces, the new right-wing Finnish government actively supported the armies of intervention which were attacking the young Soviet republic:

“During the Russian Civil War, the new Finnish government actively supported the Western nations in their attempt to destroy the Bolshevik regime. On occasion, they even allowed anti-Bolshevik military operations to be mounted from their territory”.
(A. Read & D. Fisher: ‘The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact: 1939-1941′; London; 195P’; p. 372-74).

The Finnish government’s hostility to the Soviet Union had not basically changed since Mannerheim told the London ‘Times’ in 1919 that Finland’s historic mission was to drive Bolshevism from Leningrad:

“I strove deliberately and wittingly to create the foundations for our relations with Russia of the future by military action having for its objects the liberation of the capital of former Russia, together with a territory large enough to permit of the establishment of a stable and healthy minded Russian government, and thus to remove from our frontiers the peril of Bolshevism” .
(C. Mannerheim, in: ‘Times’, 7 October 1919; p. 9).

In October 1939, Ralph Hewins*, the special correspondent of the ‘Daily Mail’ in Helsinki, was still describing Mannerheim as:

” . uncrowned king of Finland”.
(‘Daily Mail’, 17 October 1939; p. 2).

In 1918 the ‘Times’ had drawn attention to the threat to Soviet Russia posed by the strategic position of Finland:

“If we look at the map, we shall find that the best approach to Petrograd is from the Baltic, and that the shortest and easiest route is through Finland, whose frontiers are only about 30 miles distant from the Russian capital. Finland is the key to Petrograd and Petrograd is the key to Moscow”.
(‘Times’, 17 April 1919; p. 14).

On 14 October 1920 the Soviet government signed with Finland the Treaty of Tartu, having, because of its weakness, to accept terms which made its security even worse than before:

“The Treaty of Tartu was most unsatisfactory from the Soviets’ point of view, but they were in no position to resist Finnish demands. Two of its most signifciant provisions were the legalising of the Finnish seizure of the town and district of Petsamo, with its valuable nickel deposits, . . . and the redrawing of the Russo-Finnish border further down the Karelian Isthmus to a mere 18 miles from Petrograd”.
(A. Read & D. Fisher: ibid,; p. 374).

At the 6th Congress of the Communist International in 1928, the Finnish delegate Yrjo Sirola* emphasis’s the danger of Finland being used as a base by one or other great power for an attack on the Soviet Union:

“Comrades, little Finland is of considerable importance in the war preparations of the imperialists against the Soviet Union. Its frontier is only 40 kilometres distant from Leningrad. .. . ..
Finland’s orientation upon England is well known. Considerable sums of British capital are invested in Finland. England has taken a direct part in the reorganisation of Finland’s army and navy. . . .
A vicious (anti-Soviet — Ed.) press campaign goes on uninterruptedly”.
(Y.F. Sirola: Speech in Discussion on the War Danger, 6th Congress of Communist International, in: ‘International Press Correspondence’, Volume 8, No. 61 (11 September 1928); p. 1,081).

A similar threatening picture was drawn by the Soviet Marxist-Leninist Andrey Zhdanov* at the 8th Congress of Soviets on 29 November 1936:

“If in some of these little countries — for example, Finland – feelings of hostility to the USSR are being kindled by larger and more adventurist countries, and preparations are being made to make their territory available for aggressive action by fascist powers, in the long run it is these little countries which alone will be the losers.”
(A. Zhdanov: Speech at 8th Congress of Soviets, in: J. Degras (Ed.):
‘Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy’, Volume 3; London; 1953; p. 226).

Fred Singleton*, in his ‘A Short History of Finland’, points out that:

“The Soviet leaders shared the fears which all Russian leaders have felt since the time of Peter the Great — namely, that a hostile power might use Finland as a base for an attack upon Leningrad. In the 18th century the potential enemy was Sweden. In the 1930s the threat came from Germany”.
(F. Singleton: ‘A Short History of Finland’; Cambridge; 1989; p. 128).

In 1939, having become a Great Power and with the threat of German intervention temporarily removed by the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, the Soviet government sought to rectify the dangerous situation to its security resulting from the Treaty of Tartu.

The Soviet-Finnish Negotiations (1939)

On 8 October 1939 it was announced in Helsinki that the Finnish government had accepted an invitation from the Soviet government to send a special representative to Moscow to discuss:

“Questions of a political and economic character”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; Bristol; 1939; p. 3,773).

The government appointed Juho Paasikivi*, then Finnish Minister to Sweden, as its special representative.
On 9 October 1939, before Poasihivi departed for Moscow, President Kyosti Kallio handed to him instructions, drafted by Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko*, for the conduct of the negotiations:

“If the Soviet Union should make proposals regarding the creation of Soviet Union military bases on the Finnish mainland, or, e.g., on the Aaland Islands, such proposals should be rejected and any discussion thereof refused. The same applies to any proposals referring to frontier adjustments on the Karelian Isthmus. . . . .
If the Soviet Union suggests the conclusion of a treaty of mutual assistance, . . it should be pointed out that such a treaty is not compatible with Finland’s policy of neutrality”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations of 1939″;Helsinki 1940; p. 47, 49).

Leonard Lundin comments:

“On the Finnish side there seems to have been less elasticity. .
The negotiators sent to Moscow enjoyed almost no freedom of maneuver.
They were shackled by strict orders as to w;hat they might or what they might not talk about”.
(C. L. Lundin: ‘Finland in the Second World ‘; Bloomington (USA); 1957; p. 53, 55).

On 11 October, just before Paasikivi’s arrival in Moscow, US President Franklyn Roosevelt* sent a personal letter to the Soviet President, Mikhail Kalinin, expressing:

“The earnest hope that the Soviet Union will make no demands on Finland which are inconsistent with the maintenance and development of amicable and peaceful relations between the two countries and the independence of each”.
(F. D. Roosevelt: Letter to M. I. Kalinin, cited in: ‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations During 1939; 1940; Ibid; p. 97).

Kalinin replied on 12 October:

“I think I should remind you, Mr. President, that the independence of the Finnish Republic as a State was recognised spontaneously by the Soviet Government on December 31, 1917, and that the sovereignty of Finland is guaranteed by the Treaty of Peace between the RSFSR and Finland, signed on October 14, 1920. The above-mentioned acts on the part of the Soviet Government determined the fundamental principles of the relations between the Soviet Union and Finland. It is in accordance with those principles that the present negotiations between the Soviet Government and the Finnish Government are being conducted. Notwithstanding the tendentious versions put about by some who evidently have not the peace of Europe at heart, the sole object of the negotiations in question is to establish close relations between the Soviet Union and Finland and to strengthen the friendly cooperation between the two countries in order to ensure the security of the Soviet Union and that of Finland”.
(M. I. Kalinin: Letter to F. P. Roosevelt, in: ‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . ‘; ibid.,; p. 97).

Round 1

Paasikivi arrived in Moscow on 12 October 1939, when negotiations began in the presence of Stalin and Molotov.

Stalin attended all three rounds of the negotiations:

“The importance they (the Soviet leaders — Ed.) attached to the negotiations is shown by the fact that Stalin participated in all three stages of them”.
(C. L. Lundin: ibid.; p. 52).

The basic Soviet aims in the negotiations were expressed in a memorandum handed by Stalin and Molotov to Paasikivi on 14 October:

“In the negotiations with Finland, the Soviet Union is mainly concerned with the settlement of two questions:
a) securing the safety of Leningrad;
b) becoming satisfied that Finland will maintain firm, friendly relations with the Soviet Union.
In order to fulfil this duty, it is necessary:
(1) To make it possible to block the opening of the Gulf of Finland by means of artillery fire from both coasts of the Gulf of Finland in order to prevent warships and transport ships of the enemy penetrating, to the waters of the Gulf of Finland.
(2) To make it possible to prevent the access of the enemy to those islands in the Gulf of Finland which are situated west and north-west of the entrance to Leningrad.
(3) To have the Finnish frontier in the Karelian Isthmus, which is now at a distance of 32 km. from Leningrad, i.e., within the range of long-distance artillery, moved somewhat farther northwards and northwestwards”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . . ‘; ibid.; p. 49-50).

In order to satisfy themselves that Finland would maintain ‘firm, friendly relations’ with the Soviet Union, the Soviet representatives proposed the conclusion of a Soviet-Finnish mutual assistance treaty. In accordance with their instructions, the Finnish delegation at once rejected this proposal:

“The Finnish representatives said they were unconditionally opposed to the conclusion of a reciprocal aid treaty”.
(V. Tanner: ‘The Winter War: Finland against Russia: 1939-1940′; Stanford (USA); 1957; p. 25).

The Soviet representatives accordingly dropped this proposal.

To achieve points (1) and (2), the Soviet government proposed that Finland should lease to the Soviet Union the port of Hanko and the territory adjoining them, and allow it have a Soviet garrison there for the protection of the naval base.

The total area of the territory requested for these purposes and to achieve point 3 was 2,761 square kilometres, in exchange for which the Soviet Union would cede to Finland territory with an area of 5,529 square kilometres i.e., more than double the area.

Stalin explained to Paasikivi that the motive behind the Soviet proposals was purely defensive:

“It is not the fault of either of us that geographical circumstances are as they are. We must be able to bar entrance to the Gulf of Finland. . . . .
Once a hostile fleet is in the Gulf, the Gulf can no longer be defended.
You ask what power might attack us. England or Germany. We are on good terms with Germany now, but everything in this world may change. Yudenich* attacked through the Gulf of Finland, and later the British did the same. This can happen again. If you’re afraid to give us bases on the mainland, we can dig a canal round Hanko Neck. .
We ask that the distance of Leningrad to the line should be 70 kilometres. That is minimum demand, and you must not think we are prepared to reduce it bit by bit. We can’t move Leningrad, so the line has to move. . . . We ask for 2,700 square kilometres and offer more than 5,500 in exchange”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 27-28).

The essence of the Soviet demands was aptly summarised by Lundin:

“The Soviet leaders were determined, above all, to do two things.
They wished to push the frontier on the Karelian Isthmus back a substantial distance from its closest approach to Leningrad. . . .
They also wished to establish a naval base on the Finnish coast at the mouth of the Gulf, opposite the newly acquired bases in Estonia, so that any hostile shipping coming up the Gulf of Finland would have to run the gauntlet of a cross fire”.
(C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 51-52).

On 14 October Paasikivi offered:

“To discuss those islands which lay closest to the Soviet shore.”
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 26).

But:

“This offer was held to be so trifling as not to be worth the trouble of discussing”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 26).

Round 2

On 19 October, Paasikivi returned to Moscow, this time in company with Vaino Tanner, shortly to become Foreign Minister, and the negotiations were resumed on 23 October.

On 23 October Paasikivi and Tanner handed their reply to Stalin and Molotov:

“So far as the port of Hanko, with the adjoining territory and the Bay of Lappohja, are concerned, the Finnish Government are bound to uphold Finland’s integrity”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations .’; ibid.; p. 53).

On 26 October Tanner wrote to Swedish Prime Minister Per Hansson*, asking:

“Is there any chance that Sweden . . . . will intervene in this matter by giving Finland effective military assistance?”
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 47).

To which Hannon replied on 27 October:

“You must not reckon with any such possibility”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 48).

Paasikivi and Tanner returned to Helsinki on 26 October.

Round 3

On 31 October Molotov made an important speech to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in which he said:

“Our proposals in the negotiations with Finland are modest, and they are confined to the minimum, short of which is it impossible to ensure the safety of the Soviet Union”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . ‘; op. cit,; p. 57).

Paasikivi and Tanner returned to Moscow for the third (and final) round of negotiations, arriving on 2 November.

On 1 November, while they were en route , Finnish Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko said in a speech in Helsinki that:

“Finland could not consent to any arrangement prejudicial to her independence and to her chances of self-defence. . . . It is the Great Powers who make war”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; Bristol; 1939; p. 3,782).

On 3 November ‘Pravda’ criticised Erkko ‘s speech as one which:

“Cannot be appraised otherwise than as an appeal for war with the Soviet Union”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; Bristol; 1939; p. 3,782).

At the third round of the Soviet-Finnish talks, on 3 November the Finnish delegation handed to Molotov their government’s reply:

“The Government of Finland feels obliged to maintain the attitude which it has taken up from the outset regarding the proposal that it should lease the port of Hanko and the surrounding district to the Government of the USSR and place the Bay of Lappohja at the disposal of the naval forces of the USSR for use as an anchorage”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . . ‘, op. cit.,; p. 62).

However, Paasikivi was in favour of seeking a compromise with the Soviet government by offering it a base further to the west:

“Paasskivi was now prepared to recommend that the Soviet Union be granted a base in the west, in which connection he had in mind the cession of Jussaro”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 44).

After a break over the holiday for the anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, negotiations were resumed on 8 November.
On this day the delegation received further instructions from Helsinki:

“Hanko was not to be discussed. . . . The same attitude was to apply to the Soviet Union’s alternative proposal on the islands in the neighbourhood of Hanko. Mention of Jussaro was likewise unconditionally forbidden”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 73).

It was at this point time that Stalin made a considerable concession, suggesting that if the Finns were adamant that Hanko was not negotiable, perhaps some other small island nearby could be leased:

“When we said once more that Hanko could not be discussed, to our great surprise Stalin proposed an alternative — the group of islands to the east of it”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 67).

“Towards the end of the negotiations, Stalin asked whether, instead of Hanko, the Finns would cede three small islands nearby”.
(C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 53).

“Stabbing his finger at a spot on the map of Southern Finland, he asked:
‘Do you need these islands?’
Little red circles had been drawn around three small islands . . . just east of the Hanko Peninsula. He was willing to settle for these if it really was impossible for Finland to part with Hanko itself”.
(N. Jakobson: ‘The Diplomacy of the Winter War: An Account of the Russo-Finish War, 1939-1940′; Cambridge (USA); 1961; p. 136).

On 4 November the delegation telegraphed Stalin’s proposal to Helsinki:

“We asked the Government whether . . . we might offer to the Soviet Union Jussaro in the west”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 68).

The Finnish government took this concession as a sign that the Soviet position was weakening:

“Erkko was triumphant. . . . Stalin was softening. Now was the time to stand firm”.
(N. Jakobson: op. cit,; p. 137).

Although even Mannerhein himself was in favour of conceding Jussaro:

“Mannerheim . . . tells us that he was willing, if need be, to offer Russia . . . Jussaro”.
(C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 54).

the Finnish government telegraphed final instructions to its delegation on 8 November:

“Hanko was not to be discussed. . . . The same attitude was to apply to the Soviet Union’s alternative proposal on the islands in the neighbourhood of Hanko. Mention of Jussaro was likewise unconditionally forbidden”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit .; p. 73).

So, on 9 November the Finnish delegates handed Molotov a Note which declared:

“The Finnish Government does not find it possible to accept the proposal”.
(“The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .”; op. cit.,; p. 66).

“Our opponents went on with their demands on the Isthmus. Yet here we could not undertake to offer any concessions, since we had no authority to do so”.
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 76).

Accordingly,

“At the next — and final — conference with Stalin and Molotov, the Finnish negotiators had nothing left but negative replies to make to inquiries about . . . the Karelian Isthmus and about the islands near Hanko”.
(C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 55).

As the Finnish White Paper expresses it:

“The negotiations reached a deadlock on November 13″.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .’; op. cit.; p. 19).

As Lundin says,

“In the end it was Helsinki which took the responsibility for terminating the negotiations.” (C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 55).

“It was Tanner who suggested that they might just as well agree to disagree”.
(N. Jakobson: op. cit.; p. 137).

The Finnish delegation left Moscow for the last time on 13 November.

Although the negotiations had broken down, Tanner himself testifies that they had been conducted in a friendly manner:

“The Soviet negotiators did not bully. . . . The treatment of the Finnish emissaries was not unfriendly”.
(C. L. Lundin: op. cit.; p. 52).

“The parting was friendly on both sides. Stalin even said: . . . ‘Best of luck!’, and Molotov said: . . . ‘Till we meet again!’:
(V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 76).

It is clear that the Soviet government ‘s proposals were neither a threat to Finland’s independence nor based on territorial expansion, but were designed solely to increase the Soviet Union’s defensive capacity. The Finnish government’s rejection of the Soviet proposals and its categorical rejection of the compromises proposed by Moscow demonstrated that it was being backed by one or more foreign powers to cling to a boundary which represented a serious threat to the security of the Soviet Union.

The Finnish political commentator Martti Turola*, has admitted:

“It simply cannot be overlooked that Finland pursued a dangerously aggressive, menacing foreign policy prior to the war”.
(N. Turtola: ‘Guilty or Innocent? Approaches to the “‘inter War in Research and Memoirs’, in: ‘Yearbook of Finnish Foreign Policy: 1990′; Helsinki; 1990; p. 45).

and the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentropp* wrote in December 1939 that German intelligence was convinced that the backing of a Great Power, namely Britain, was behind the intransigence of the Finnish government in its negotiations with the Soviet Union:

“According to intelligence received, England was responsible for the failure of the Russo-Finnish negotiations last November”.
J. Sontag & J. S. Beddle (Eds.): ‘Nazi-Soviet Relations’; Washington; 1948; p. 130).

Prelude to War (1939)

According to the Finnish government at the time, and to the complaint which it laid before the League of Nations, on 30 November 1930 the Soviet Union launched a sudden and unprovoked invasion of Finland.

The known facts, however, do not support this story.

On 6 October 1939, the day on which Molotov’s invitation was received in Helsinki,

“The main body of the regular army were ordered to march without delay to their pre-arranged positions in frontier districts”.
(M. Jakobson: op. cit.; p. 109).

On 10 October 1939, while Paasikivi was still on his way to Moscow to begin negotiations with the Soviet Government,

“The Ministry of the Interior urged a voluntary evacuation of cities and air raid exercises were held in Helsinki. On October 11, the day the Finnish delegation arrived in the Soviet capital, the government decided to call reserve contingents to ‘refresher courses’, which amounted to disguised mobilisation”.
(N. Jakobson: op. cit.; p. 109).

On 14 October, during the first of the three rounds of Finnish-Soviet negotiations:

“Large numbers of reservists were called to the colours, and on Oct. 14 it was reported that mobilisation was almost completed. A ‘blackout’ was imposed in Helsinki, and ARP measures were introduced in all large towns. Voluntary evacuation of civilians took place from Helsinki, Vupuri, Tampere and Turku, as well as from districts adjacent to the Russo-Finnish frontier. A number of decrees were signed by President Kallio on Oct. 15, . . . including the enforcement of obligatory national service on all citizens between the ages of 18 and 60″.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; ibid; p. 3,773).

On 26 November Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov handed to the Finnish Minister in Moscow, Baron Aarno Yrjo-Koskinen*, a strongly worded note, saying:

“Our troops posted on the Karelian Isthmus, in the vicinity of the village of Mainila, were the object today, November 26, at 3.45 p.m., of unexpected artillery fire from Finnish territory. In all, seven cannon-shots were fired, killing three privates and one non-commissioned officer. . . . The Soviet troops . . . did not retaliate.
The Soviet Government are obliged to declare now that the concentration of Finnish troops in the vicinity of Leningrad not only constitutes a menace to Leningrad, but is in fact an act hostile to the USSR, which has already resulted in aggression against the Soviet troops and caused casualties. . . . .
The Government of the USSR have no intention of exaggerating the importance of this revolting act . . ., but they desire that revolting acts of this nature shall not be committed in future”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .’; op. cit.; p. 70-71).

The Soviet government therefore proposed:

“That the Finnish Government should, without delay, withdraw their troops on the Karelian Isthmus from the frontier to a distance of 20-25 km., and thus preclude all possibility of a repetition of provocative acts”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .’; op. cit.; p. 71).

The Finnish government replied on 27 November, denying that their troops had been responsible for the incident complained of and proposing, firstly, that discussions should take place on the mutual withdrawal of both Finnish and Soviet troops from the frontier and, secondly, that a joint inquiry should be held into the incident:

“It is my duty to reject your protest and to state that Finland has committed no hostile act against the USSR such as you allege.
Although there are no concrete grounds for withdrawing the troops from the frontier-line, as you propose, my Government is prepared, none the less, to open conversations with a view to the mutual withdrawal of troops to a certain distance from the frontier. . . .
My Government propose that the frontier commissioners of the two countries on the Karelian Isthmus should be instructed to carry out a joint inquiry into the incident in question.”
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . . ‘; op. cit.; p. 72-73).

On 28 November, Molotov handed a further Note to the Finnish Minister stating that, in view of the conduct of the Finnish government, the Soviet government considered the non-aggression pact between the two countries signed in 1932 to be null and void:

“In concentrating a large number of regular troops in the immediate vicinity of Leningrad and subjecting that important vital centre of the USSR to a direct threat, the Finnish Government have committed a hostile act against the USSR which is incompatible with the Treaty of Non-Aggression concluded between the two States. The refusal of the Finnish Government, after the criminal artillery fire directed at the Soviet troops, to withdraw their troops a distance of 20-25 km., shows that the Finnish Government desire to persist in their hostile attitude towards the USSR. . . . In consequence, the Government of the USSR are obliged to state that they consider themselves, as from today, released from the obligations ensuing from the Treaty of Non-Aggression concluded between the USSR and Finland”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . . , ; op. cit,.; p. 74).

On the following day, 29 November, Molotov handed a further Note to Yrjo-Koskinen complaining that Finnish attacks on Soviet troops were continuing and effectively breaking off diplomatic relations with Finland:

“Attacks on Soviet troops by Finnish troops are known to be continuing, not only on the Karelian Isthmus, but also at other parts of the frontier between the USSR and Finland. The Government of the USSR can no longer tolerate such a situation. As a result of the situation thus created, . . . the Government of the USSR . . . find themselves compelled to recall their political and economic representatives from Finland”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .’ ; op. cit.; p. 75).

The above version of the facts — that the Finnish armed forces were the instigators of the frontier incidents which had occurred — was confirmed by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in February 1945:

“The Finnish war began in the following way. . . . Some Russian frontier guards were shot at by the Finns and killed. . . . The frontier guard detachment complained to the Red Army troops. . . . Moscow was asked for instructions. These contained the order to return the fire”. (W. S. Churchill: ‘The Second World War’, Volume 6: ‘Triumph and Tragedy’; London; 1954; p. 317-18).

More than twenty-five years after Stalin’s death, most Soviet sources agree that the war was initiated by Finnish forces.

For example, the ‘Great Soviet Encyclopaedia’, published in the 1980s, asserts:

“The Finnish militarists on November 26 entered the path of military provocations at the border. .
On November 29 Finnish troops again staged provocative actions at the border. In response, the forces of the Leningrad Military District . . . launched an offensive on the morning of November 30″.
(‘Great Soviet Encyclopaedia’, Volume 24; New York; 1980; p. 352).

Marshal Kirill Meretskov* confirms that it was the Finns who began hostilities:

“The reckless leaders of bourgeois Finland involved their people in a dangerous political gamble . . . The Finnish leaders . . . were encouraged by the promises of the imperialist powers to assist them with troops and equipment. . .
The Moscow proposal was rejected and our frontier guards received replies in the form of shots. .
On November 26 (1939 — Ed.) I received an urgent report that the Finns had opened artillery fire on Soviet frontier guards near the village of Mainila, killing four and wounding nine men. . Instructions came to prepare a counter-attack. I was given a week to make ready, but in effect the time was reduced to four days, because Finnish detachments crossed the frontier at several points and infiltrated groups of saboteurs behind our lines. . . . At 0800 hours on November 30th regular Red Army forces launched operations to repel the anti-Soviet actions and the Soviet-Finnish War was on”.
(K. A. Meretskov: ‘Serving the People’; Moscow; 1971; p. 102, 103, 108-09).

and Marshal Nikolay Voronov confirms:

“On November 30th fighting provoked by the White Finns broke out”.
(N. V. Voronov: ‘At the Karelian Isthmus’, in: S. Bialer (VA.): ‘Stalin and His Generals’; Epping; 1984; p. 132).

Furthermore, when war broke out again between Finland (now a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany) and the Soviet Union in 1941 — a war known officially and significantly in Finland as the ‘Continuation War’ — it was clear to most observers that Finnish charges that the Soviet Union initiated the conflict were false. The ‘Continuation War’ is discussed in a later section of this chapter.

The Morality of the War (1939-40)

Marxist-Leninists maintain that some wars are just, while some are unjust:

“The Bolsheviks held that there are two kinds of war:
a) Just wars, wars that are not wars of conquest but wars of liberation, waged to defend people from foreign attack and from attempts to enslave them, or to liberate people from capitalist slavery, or, lastly, to liberate colonies and dependent countries from the yoke of imperialism, and;
b) Unjust wars, wars of conquest, waged to conquer and enslave foreign countries and foreign nations.”
(‘History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’; Moscow; 1939; p. 167-68).

The question of which side fired the first shot is, to Marxist-Leninists, irrelevant to the determination of the character of a war:

“The question as to which group dealt the first military blow is of no importance in determining the tactics of the socialists”.
(V. I. Lenin: Conference of the Sections of the RSDLP Abroad, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 5; London; 1933; p. 132).

The question of whether a war is just or unjust is determined objectively, assert Marxist-Leninists, by the effect of that war on the historical development of society towards socialism. If it helps forward that development, it is a just war; if it holds back that development, it is an unjust war:

“We Marxists differ both from pacifists and Anarchists in that we recognise the necessity of a historical study of each war individually, from the point of view of Marx’s dialectical materialism. There have been wars in history which, notwithstanding all the horrors, cruelties, miseries and tortures inevitably associated with every war, had a progressive character, i.e., they served the development of mankind”.
(V. I. Lenin: ‘Socialism and War’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 18; London; n.d; p. 219).

In particular, a war being waged by a socialist state in which the working people hold political power, against a capitalist state is a just war irrespective of who fired the first shot:

“The Soviet Union is the true fatherland of the proletariat. . . This obliges the international proletariat . . . to defend the country of proletarian dictatorship by every means. . . . In the event of . . . a war against it, the international proletariat must answer by bold and resolute . . . alliance with the Soviet Union”.
(Programme of the Communist International, in: J. Degras (Ed.): “Documents of the Communist International;”1919-1943: Volume 2; London, 197l; p. 512-13).

Some Soviet writers agree with official Finnish sources that Soviet forces initiated the Soviet-Finnish War. For example, Nikita Khrushchev says in his memoirs:

“If they (the Finnish government – Ed.) didn’t yield to our ultimatum, we would take military action. . . . This was Stalin’s idea. . . . .
We had fired our salvo, and the Finns had replied with artillery fire of their own. De facto the war had begun. .
(N. S. Khrushchev: ‘Khrushchev Remembers;’, Volume 1; London; 1971; p. 152).

Nevertheless, Khrushchev, at the time of writing, retained a sufficiently superficial Marxism-Leninism, to recognise that this was not relevant to the character of the Soviet-Finnish war and that this was being fought, on the Soviet side, purely for necessary defensive purposes and was a just war:

“We had to guarantee the security of Leningrad, which was within artillery range of the Finnish border and could easily have been shelled from Finnish territory. Moreover, the Finnish government was following policies hostile to the Soviet Union. It was demonstrably flirting with Hitlerite Germany. The Finnish commander in chief, Carl Mannerhein, was a former tsarist general and a sworn enemy of the Soviet Union, Vaino Tanner was an old Social Democrat, but he remained an irreconcilable foe of our Marxist-Leninist ideology until the end of his days. Consequently, Finland represented a real threat to us because its territory could be used by more powerful governments; and it was therefore sensible, indeed crucial, for the Soviet State to take steps to protect Leningrad. . .
Our only goal was to protect our security in the North. . . . Our sole consideration was security — Leningrad was in danger”.
(N. S. Khrushchev: ibid,; p. 150-51. 152).

Indeed, many Western international lawyers accept the view that a state may legitimately intervene in another state where such intervention is necessary to its self-preservation.
Thomas Lawrence* writes in his ‘The Principles of International Law’:

“Interventions . . . are technical violations of the right of independence. . . . Yet in certain circumstances International Law may excuse, or even approve of them. .
The duty of self-preservation is even more sacred than the duty of respecting the independence of others, If the two clash, a state naturally acts on the former.”
(T. J. Lawrence: ‘The Principles of International Law’; Boston; 1915; p. 127).

and Joseph Starke*, in his ‘Introduction to International Law’, agrees:

“The following are, baldly expressed, the principal exceptional cases in which it is claimed that a state has at international law a legitimate right of intervention:
self-defence, if intervention is necessary to meet the danger of an actual armed attack”.
(J. G. Starke: ‘Introduction to International Law’; London; 1989; p. 105).

Many prominent Westerners who were not international lawyers agreed that the Soviet war with Finland was a just war. For example, the writer George Bernard Shaw* wrote in the ‘Daily Mail’ in December 1939, while the Soviet-Finnish War was still in progress:

“Finland has been misled by a very foolish Government. She should have accepted Russia’s offer for a readjustment of territory. She should have been a sensible neighbour. Finland would probably not have refused the Russian offer had she been acting on her own. .
No Power could tolerate a frontier from which a town such as Leningrad could be shelled, when she knows that the Power on the other side of the frontier . . . is being made by a foolish Government to act in the interests of other and greater powers menacing her security.
In Russia’s view, Finland can have no defensible objection to carrying out the exchange of territories which Russia had asked of her unless she is allowing herself to be used by America or the Western Powers”.
(G. B. Shaw, in: ‘Daily Mail’, 2 December 1939; p. 6).

Even Winston Churchill, who had savagely condemned Soviet ‘aggression’ against Finland at the time, changed his view after 1941:

“In the days of the Russo-Finnish war I had been sympathetic to Finland, but I had turned against her since she came into the war against the Soviets. Russia must have security for Leningrad and its approaches. The position of the Soviet Union as a permanent naval and air power in the Baltic must be assured”.
(W. S. Churchill: ‘The Second World War’, Volume 6: Triumph And Tragedy’; London; 1954; p. 318).

The League of Nations Acts (1939)

On 2 December, one day after the full-scale Soviet-Finnish War began, Eino Holsti*, the Finnish delegate to the League of Nations, handed a letter to Joseph Avenol*, Secretary-General of the League, complaining that:

“. . the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . . unexpectedly attacked on the morning of November 30, 1939″.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . .’; op. cit.; p. 77).

and requesting a meeting of the Council and Assembly of the League:

“To ask them to take the necessary measures to put an end to the aggression”.
(‘The Development of Soviet-Finnish Relations . . .’; op. cit.; p. 77).

The League had taken no effective action against countless acts of aggression by Germany, Italy and Japan. But now that the charge was directed against the Socialist Soviet Union, the League sprang speedily into action.

The Secretary-General responded by summoning an immediate meeting of the Assembly and Council (the outbreak of the Second World War on 23 September had produced no meeting).

The initiative was taken by non-belligerent states which supported Finland. The ‘Times’ expressed the motive behind this strategy:

“It is felt that the move (for the expulsion of the USSR — Ed.) had best be made by thoroughly disinterested neutrals. The moral judgment involved would be all the more effective if the belligerents themselves confined themselves to supporting disinterested parties”.
(‘Times’, 9 December 1939; p. 6).

A special committee was set up to consider the Soviet-Finnish dispute. Its members were: Britain, Canada, Egypt, India, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Siam, Sweden, Uruguay and Venezuela. The Soviet Union and Finland –parties to the dispute — did not vote; Peru and Iran were absent, while China, Greece and Yugoslavia abstained from voting. Thus seven states — one half of the Council — voted for the expulsion of the Soviet Union.

As Vernon Bartlett* expressed it in the ‘News Chronicle’:

“The League members are not unanimously happy about the expulsion of Russia.”
(‘News Chronicle’, 15 December 1939; p. 2).

The ‘New York Times’ describes the manner in which, in these circumstances, the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations was stage managed:

“With this division of opinion, the business of getting a unanimous vote or anything like it looked extremely precarious. But that astute and forceful presiding officer Carl J. Hambro’ . . . . managed it majestically. .
As soon as the last of the speakers sat down, he announced:
‘The Assembly will have taken note of all the declarations that have been made. I do not think, therefore, that it is necessary to take a vote by roll-call. If there are no observations to the contrary, the Assembly will vote according to the ordinary method’.
He barely paused for breath, and added:
‘There being no observations to the contrary, I will ask all delegates who are in favour of the report to remain seated’.
It would have taken a brave man to have risen to his feet at that moment and so proclaim himself in favour of Russia. No one moved”.
(‘New York Times’, 15 December 1939; p. 15).

On 14 December 1939 the Assembly of the League adopted a resolution to the effect that it:

“. solemnly condemns the action taken by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . ‘ ; op. cit.; p. 110).

while later the same day the Council of the League adopted a resolution to the effect that it:

“1. Associates itself with the condemnation by the Assembly of the action of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics against the Finnish State, and . . . . .
2. Finds that, by its act, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . has placed itself outside the League of Nations”.
(‘The Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations . . ‘ ; op. cit.; p. 111).

The Finnish Democratic Republic (1939-40)

On 1 December 1939 a Provisional People’s Government of the Finnish Democratic Republic was set up at Terijoki, on Finnish territory occupied by the Red Army, with the Finnish Communist Otto Kuusinen- as its Prime Minister and People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

In a proclamation to the Finnish people, the People’s Government declared that it regarded itself merely as a provisional government:

“The People’s Government in its present composition regards itself as a provisional government. Immediately upon arrival in Helsinki, capital of the country, it will be reorganised and its composition enlarged by the inclusion of representatives of the various parties and groups participating in the people’s front of toilers. The final composition of the People’s Government, its powers and actions, are to be sanctioned by a Diet elected on the basis of universal equal direct suffrage by secret ballot”.
(W. P. & Z. K. Coates: ‘Russia, Finland and the Baltic; London; 1940; p.114.)

and that its primary task was the rout of the Finnish ‘White Guards’, the conclusion of peace and the establishment of friendly relations with the Soviet Union:

“The People’s Government of Finland regards as its primary task the overthrow of the Government of the Finnish White Guards, the rout of its armed forces, the conclusion of peace, and the ensuring of the independence and security of Finland by means of establishing lasting friendly relations with the Soviet Union”.
(W. P. & Z.K. Coates: op. cit.; p. 114-15).

Finally, the proclamation summarised the programme of the People’s Government, which was broadly progressive but not socialist:

“The creation of a People’s Army of Finland.
The establishment of State control over large private banks and large
industrial enterprises and realisation of measures for assisting medium and petty enterprises.
The realisation of measures for the complete elimination of unemployment.
The reduction of the working day to eight hours, with a provision for two weeks’ summer holidays and a reduction in house rents for workers and employees.
The confiscation of the lands belonging to big landlords, without touching the lands and properties of the peasants, and the transference of the confiscated land to peasants having no land or possessing small allotments.
The exemption of peasants from the payment of tax.
State assistance in every form for the improvement of the farms of the poor peasants, in the first place by allotting to them additional land, pastures and, when possible, also forests for their domestic needs, from lands confiscated from large landowners.
The democratisation of the State organisation, administration and courts.
The increase of State subsidies for cultural needs and the reorganisation of schools to ensure the possibility of attendance at schools to children of workers and other needy people; also assistance for the development of public education, science, literature and arts in a progressive spirit”.
(W. P. & Z. Coates: op.Cit; p. 115).

On the day after its formation, on 2 December, the Soviet government signed a treaty with the government of the Finnish Democratic Republic. The main provisions of this treaty, which correspond closely to the proposals made by the Soviet government during the Soviet-Finnish negotiations, are summarised by Vaino Tanner in his book ‘The Winter War’:

“The first article:
relates to the incorporation into the territory of the Finnish Democratic Republic of areas in Soviet Karelia the extent of which comes to 70,000 square kilometres. . . . On the other hand, Finland declares its readiness to effect certain adjustments of the frontier on the Karelian Isthmus, from Leningrad toward the north, ceding an area of 3,970 square kilometres, in return for which the Soviet Union compensates Finland in the amount of 120 million marks for the value of the railway inventory which is now on the Karelian Isthmus and which is to be removed to the Soviet Union.
(The second article:) Finland declares its readiness
(a) to cede to the Soviet Union for a period of thirty years the Hanko Peninsula and the surrounding waters . . and a number of islands lying to the south and east . . ., for the creation there of a military and naval base such as will be in a position to defend from attack the Gulf of Finland, as a guarantee for the security of Finland and of the Soviet Union. at which time there will be granted to the Soviet Union . . the right to maintain there at its own expense a precisely defined number of land and air forces.
(b) to sell to the Soviet Union the following islands in the Gulf of Finland: Suursari, Seiskari, Lavansaari, Tytarsaari, and Great and Little Koivisto; also those portions of the Rybachi Peninsula and of the Keskisaari Peninsula on the shore of the Arctic Ocean which belong to Finland; all at an agreed price of 300,000 marks.
The third article:)
The Soviet Union and the Finnish Democratic Republic obligate themselves to furnish each to the other all aid, including military aid, in the event that any European power attacks, or threatens to attack, the Soviet Union through Finnish territory.
(Under the fourth article the parties undertook to refrain from . participating in any combinations aimed against the other party to the treaty).
(The fifth article:) The parties to the treaty have agreed that they will at an early date conclude a trade agreement and increase the annual exchange of commodities between the two countries considerably above the level of . . . 800 million marks.
(In the sixth article the Soviet Union undertook to supply the Finnish People’s Army on easy terms with arms and other military necessities).
(The seventh article:) The period of duration of this treaty . . shall be 25 years. . “
(Treaty between Finnish Democratic Republic and Soviet Union, in: V. Tanner: op. cit.; p. 102-03).

Western sources portray the Finnish Democratic Republic as a mere puppet government, without any popular support. In fact, as we have seen, Finland had already had a socialist revolution and this had been crushed only with massive foreign help. But socialist feelings, and feelings of sympathy for the Socialist Soviet Union, among the Finnish working people was still strong even after the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40:

“On 22 May (1940– Ed.) a formal meeting . . launched the ‘Finland-Soviet Union Peace and Friendship Society’ — generally known as SNS. . . . .
It met a genuine public demand; meetings in Helsinki and the provinces were packed out, and in only five months SNS had recruited some 35,000 paying members in 115 local branches, in the face of every kind of official obstruction. . . SKP (the Communist Party of Finland — Ed.) rightly claims that this shows the existence in Finland of a substantial body of opinion which welcomed friendly relations with the Soviet Union.
On 23 December the courts declared that SNS was an illegal organisation”.
(A. F. Upton: ‘The Communist Parties of Scandinavia and Finland’; London; 1973; p. 225-26, 229-30).

But, when the existing Finnish government sued for peace, the Soviet Marxist-Leninists, having no desire to conquer Finland but only to make its own frontiers more secure, were happy to make peace and the Finnish Democratic Republic wound itself up.

The War (1939-40)

In April 1939 Boris Shaposhnikov*, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, was:

“Ordered to prepare plans for the event of a military clash with Finland”.
(I). Spring: ‘Stalin and the Winter War’, in: ‘Yearbook of Finnish Foreign Policy: 1990′; Helsinki; 1990; p. 39).

Shaposhnikov concluded that a military defeat of Finland would be:

“A far from simple operation and one that would require not less than several months of tense fighting, even if the imperialist powers did not participate directly in the conflict”.
(K. A. Meretskov: op. cit.; p. 10506).

In June 1939 the Chief Military Council, chaired by People’s Commissar for Defence, Kliment Voroshilov*, rejected Shaposhnikov’s views and plans as too pessimistic. Voroshilov was backed in this view by Mekhlis*, head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army:

“While Mekhlis* as head of the Red Army’s Political Directorate, undoubtedly encouraged the view that the war would be a walkover, his views should not be taken as simply reflecting the outlook on the matter in November 1939 of Stalin”.
(D. Spring; op. cit.; p. 40).

Kyrill Meretskov, then Commander of the Leningrad Military District, was then ordered to prepare new plans for possible war with Finland, making use of the resources of the Leningrad Military District only. Meretskov objected that:

“A few weeks for an operation on such a scale were not enough”.
(K. A. Meretskov, in: D. Spring: op. cit.; p. 39).

Voronov agreed with Shaposhnikov and Meretskov that a campaign against Finland would be a more difficult one than Voroshilov and Mekhlis conceived:

“Stalin knew that there had been arguments about the difficulty of the campaign in the Military Council. Shaposhnikov, Meretskov and Voronov had all warned that the campaign should be taken seriously”.
(D. Spring: op. cit.; p. 40).

When events revealed that Voroshilov had encouraged an underestimation of Finnish military strength, Stalin (according to Khrushchev) ‘justifiably’ placed the main blame on Voroshilov:

“Stalin was furious with the military, and with Voroshilov –justifiably, in my opinion. . . . Voroshilov deserved to bear the brunt of the blame for the way the Finnish war was going.”
(N. S. Khrushchev: op. cit, ; p. 154).

As a result, Stalin:

“Rearranged the entire leadership of his armies”.
(E. Engle & L. Paananen: ‘The Winter War: The Russo-Finnish Conflict: 1939-40′; London; 1973; p. 121).

On the Finnish front, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, until then Commander of the North Caucasus, Kharkov and Kiev Military Districts, was:

“Put in charge of our troops in the Karelian Isthmus, replacing Meretskov”.
(N. S. Khrushchev: op. cit.; p. 154),

“General Timoshenko was appointed to be in charge of the ‘southern front’, as it became known “.
(E. 0′Ballance: ‘The Red Army’; London; 1964; p. 150).

While Meretskov was demoted to command of the 7th Army alone. Later, on 8 May 1940 Voroshilov was demoted from People’s Commissar for Defence to the newly created post of Chairman of the government’s Defence Council, and at the same time made a Vice-Premier, being replaced as People’s Commissar for Defence by Timoshenko:

“Voroshilov ended up by being relieved of his duties as People’s Commissar for Defence”. (N. S. Khrushchev: op. cit.; p. 154).

The difficulties experience by the Red Army in its war with Finland were due:

In the first place to the fact that the Soviet troops had to break through or outflank an extremely strong line of fortifications built across the Karelian Isthmus in the form of the ‘Mannerheim Line’:

“Unlike the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim positions are not a string of great fortresses, the loss of any one of which would rob its defenders of enormous strength.
They are rather a series of trench and machine-gun positions ranged behind waves of anti-tank barriers made of granite blocks. Only a small part is formed of concrete gun positions and pill- boxes. The waves of defences stretch right back across the twenty miles from Summa to Viipuri”.
(‘Daily Express’, 21 February 1940; p. 6).

“These fortifications consisted of an advanced zone, three to eight miles deep, along the Soviet border, containing pillboxes and blockhouses, equipped with machine guns, anti-tank guns and field artillery, and guarded by tank traps, barbed wire and land mines. A second zone — the main one — ran in a wide arc from its western anchor’, Koivisto fortress. .
This zone was narrower along the eastern . . . sector (about two miles) and much wider (six or seven miles) in the centre and on the gulf sector. It consisted mainly of ferro-concrete fortifications armed with heavier artillery, each fort capable of independent defensive action. The larger forts measured some 30 by 50 feet with walls five feet thick, often protected with armour plate and embedded in the ground to depths reaching 25 feet. All were protected by traps, mines, wire and trenches.
The important railroad junction of Viipuri, with its five railroad lines, was protected by a special fortified zone (the third zone) some 25 miles in circumference. Further west were two separate fortified zones — Helsinki and Turku”.
(W. P. & Z. K. Coates: ‘The Soviet Finnish Campaign: Military and Political: 1939-1940′; London; 1940; op. 17-18).

“The second line of the Mannerheim fortified zone is described here (in Helsinki — Ed.) as even stronger and better situated for defence than the corresponding part of the first line.” (‘Times’, 29 February 1940; p. 8).

Indeed, many Western military experts insisted that the Mannerheim Line was ‘almost impregnable’:

“It is quite probable that the Red Army will never breach the Mannerheim Line in the Karelian Isthmus”.
(‘Times’, 19 December 1939; p. 8).

“As an old campaigner in Finland, I can state that it will be almost impossible for the Russians to break through the Mannerheim defences by a frontal attack”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 27 January 1940; p. 1)

“Even in the unlikely case that the Russians were able to get a hold on some of the advanced positions in the Mannerheim Line, they would still have an almost impregnable chain of strong points to overrun before they were through”
(‘Times’, 13 February 1940; p. 6).

and Mannerheim himself told his troops on 17 February 1940:

“You may rest assured the enemy will never succeed in breaking our lines.”
(‘Observer’, 13 February 1940; p. 9).

Secondly, the war was fought in extremely difficult conditions of terrain and climate:

“Just now the operations in the far north around Petsamo are for the most part being conducted in darkness; while in the centre, opposite the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, daylight is only a matter of a couple of hours of twilight at midday”.
(‘Times’, 22 December 1939; p. 7).

“The roads were so slippery that our car skidded into the ditch three times, which delayed us considerably but gave us a small idea of what the mechanised Russian units were up against”.
(‘Sunday Times’, 4 February 1940; p. 11).

“Blizzards driving across the Karelian Isthmus and Lake Ladoga have come again to the aid of the Finns in their bitter and gruelling fight to maintain their positions in the Mannerheim Line. . . . Riding and skiing are reduced to the minimum, and almost every sort of transport is at a standstill”.
(‘Times’, 23 February 1940; p. 8).

Until almost the last day of the war, Western press reports from Finland gave the impression that the Red Army was being ignominously defeated. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of theAdmiralty, declared in a broadcast on 20 January 1940:

“Finland . . . shows what free men can do. . . . They have exposed for all the world to see the military incapacity of the Red Army and Air Force. . . .
Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation.”
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,808).

Apart from political prejudice, another factor in the creation of this false picture of the Red Army’s campaign in Finland was that, in general, correspondents were kept well away from the fighting and forced to rely on official, but largely fictional, Finnish communiques.
George Steer*, the ‘Daily Telegraph’ special correspondent in Finland. reported from Helsinki on 17 February:

“By the end of the week the Isthmus offensive will have been raging for a fortnight. . . . I have not been to the front, nor has any other journalist, during that time.”
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 17 February 1940; p. 6).

and Virginia Cowles* cabled a similar story on 10 March:

“No foreign correspondent here in Finland is allowed to visit any front whatsoever when a battle is taking place. All correspondents have been barred from the Isthmus for over a month now. They must rely for their news on the official communique, which is handed out in Helsinki each evening.”
(‘Sunday Times’, 10 March 1940; p. 11).

Thus, when in early March 1940 the Finnish government sued for peace, this came as a surprise to much of world opinion, As G. Ward Price* wrote in the ‘Daily Mail’ on 14 March 1940:

“Public opinion in this country has been startled by the sudden collapse of the splendid Finnish resistance. Almost up to the last we were told that the Finns could hold on till the spring. But for some time the military censorship in Finland has been much stricter than at first and these optimistic expectations were based on insufficient knowledge of the facts at the front”.
(‘Daily Mail’, 14 March 1940; p. 6).

Some military writers, however, did present a more objective picture of the Red Army 5 campaign in Finland. For example, Major Arthur Hooper says in his study of the war:

“These attacks (on the ‘waistline’ of Finland — Ed.) were to draw off as many Finnish reserves as possible and to keep them occupied, and also to deceive the enemy as to the direction of the main offensive. . .
Two immediate preliminary actions were needed to operate this plan. The first was to take the forward zone of the Mannerheim Line in order to remove the artillery and air threat against the Soviet base at Leningrad and to provide space for the amassing of the forces for the great attack. The second was to take Petsamo, the only port the Finns possessed in the Arctic north, to prevent the possibility of intervention by a naval power. . . .
By December 6 this zone was occupied by the Red Army and two days later this army was in contact with the second zone, the main defence system of the Mannerheim Line. . . .
Meretskov’s plan was to make these thrusts, feigning to cut Finland in two, appear so real that the Finns would use their reserves and keep them in those areas in the north long enough for the main offensive on the Mannerheim Line to develop at the end of January. . . .
The Finnish High Command at once despatched some reserves from the south to meet these threats. .
The fierce six-day battle which took place confirmed the impression of the Finnish High Command that the Red Commander was shirking an issue on the Mannerheim Line itself and was trying to turn it from the north. Mannerheim sent some reserves to deal with this move of the Reds and the fighting went on in this battle for many days in February, . . . even during the great offensive of the Red Army on the Karelian Isthmus. The two divisions sent up from the reserves by the Finns were desperately needed later on”.
(A. S. Hooper: “The Soviet-Finnish War’; London; 1940; p. 9, 12-13, 14, 18),

Finally, at the beginning of February, the Red Army launched its main offensive against the Mannerheim Line:

“On February 2nd, 1940, after a heavy bombardment of artillery, supplemented from the air, the full weight of the infantry attack was launched on the Finnish right centre sector of the Mannerheim Line. . .
Tanks and troops advanced under a heavy smoke-screen. Infantry used armoured sledges, 9 feet long and 6 feet wide, with machine guns, and these were pushed forward over the snow by tanks. 130 heavy bombers and many pursuit planes cooperated. .
Day after day these attacks continued, apparently without a hitch, until the line of the Finns started to sag, to be dented, to crumble.
The Red forces gave no respite to the Finns. The pressure was relentless. On February 19th the Red Army was within four miles of Viipuri, while their left wing had reached the coast of Viipuri Bay, thus cutting off the powerful coastal fortress of Toivisto”.
(A. S. Hooper: ibid; p. 18, 20).

A terrific blizzard on the Karelian Isthmus from February 22 to 27 halted the Soviet offensive for a few days, but on the latter date it was resumed. By March 1, Viipuri was surrounded on three sides, and:

“By March 7, the Red left movements were . . . reaching even Kotka, from which a railway runs north to, join the main Helsinki-Viipuri line. This threatened to cut off the southern Finnish army from its base”.
(A. S. Hooper: ibid.; p. 22).

In its efforts to mobilise support for Finland in the Soviet-Finnish war, Western propaganda took great pains to misrepresent the Soviet war aims as embracing the conquest of the whole of Scandinavia:

“Stalin has gone too far to draw back now; and there cannot be any doubt that his vision looks beyond the lovely land of Finland to a Norwegian port on the Atlantic. What a prize Norvik would be!”,
(‘Strategicus’ in: ‘Spectator’, No. 5,824 (9 February 1940); p. 171).

“If Finland goes down, the Russians will march West and Sweden will take Finland’s place.” (‘Yorkshire Post’, 20 February 1940; p. 1).

The then-Finnish Foreign Minister Vaino Tanner declared:

“If in spite of all Finland’s efforts, the Russian masses should reach Tornea on the Swedish frontier, it is wrong to believe that they will stop there”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 19 February 1940; p. 7).

In contrast, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told the 6th Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 29 March 1940:

“Our Government, on its part, considers that the Soviet Union has no points of dispute with Sweden and Norway, and that Soviet-Swedish and Soviet-Norwegian relations should develop on the basis of friendship. As to rumours that the Soviet Union is demanding ports on the west coast of Scandinavia, claiming Narvik, etc., they are spread for anti-Soviet purposes and are so wild that they need no refutation”.
(V. M. Molotov: ‘Soviet Peace Policy’; London; 1941; p. 63-64).

Foreign Aid to Finland (1939-40)

The Soviet military victory over Finland was achieved in spite of substantial military aid to Finland from the capitalist world.

On 5 January 1940 it was announced in London:

“That articles of clothing and equipment originally meant for the British Expeditionary Force would be sent to Finland”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemorary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,868).

and in the same month:

“Export licences for the delivery to Finland of 30 Blenheim bombers were . . . granted by the British government”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,844).

Substantial quantities of weapons were, in fact, supplied to Finland by the Western Powers.
Details of British and French military aid to Finland were published on 22 February 1940:

“150 anti-tank rifles,
10,000 anti-tank mines,
50,000 hand grenades,
25 howitzers,
100 machine-guns,
large quantities of ammunition,
24 anti-aircraft guns,
30 field guns,
4 tanks,
12 6-inch guns,
10 trench mortars,
and equipment, clothing, respirators and tents”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,934).

In the British House of Commons on 19 March 1940, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared:

“No appeal that was made to us by the Finnish Government remained unanswered”. (Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Volume 358; op. cit.; col. 1,835).

He also gave a list of the material promised and sent to Finland:

“Aeroplanes promised, 152; actually sent, 101.
Guns of all kinds promised, 223; sent, 114.
Shells promised, 297,200; actually sent 185,000.
Vickers guns promised, 100; all sent.
Marine mines promised, 500; sent, 400.
Hand-grenades promised, 50,000; all sent.
Aircraft bombs promised, 20,700; sent, 15,700.
Signalling equipment promised, 1,300 sets; sent, 800.
Anti-tank rifles promised, 200; all sent.
Respirators promised, 60,000; all sent.
Greatcoats promised, 100,000; all sent.
Battledress suits promised, 100,000; all sent.
Anti-tank mines promised, 20,000; sent, 10,000.
Ambulances promised, 48; all sent.
The list includes many minor items such as medical stores, tents, equipment, sandbags, steel helmets, sand, etc., and also large quantities of small arms ammunition and, I may add, in fact, that arrangements were made here for the manufacture of very large supplies of ammunition and ammunition cases.”
(Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Volume 358; op. cit.; p. 1,836-37).

Although it was illegal under the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870 for a British subject to serve in the forces of a foreign state, on 14 February 1940 it was announced in the House of Commons that:

“A general licence has been granted to British subjects to enlist in the Finnish forces”.
(Parliamentary Debates. 5th Series, Volume 357; op. cit.; p. 773).

According to a letter from C. T. Garrett, published in the ‘New Statesman’,

” 6,000 Swedish volunteers . . . came into action for the first time a week before the end of the war.
At the time of the peace negotiations there were not a dozen French and English volunteers in Finland. I could find only three English volunteers. Two were domiciled in Finland and had Finnish wives.”
(‘New Statesman’, Volume 19, No. 475 (New Series) (30 March 1940); p. 430).

By February 1939 it was clear that volunteers could not save from Finland from defeat. This could be achieved only if regular forces went to Finland’s aid. So, on 5 February 1940 (as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the House of Commons on 19 March):

“. . . . those plans (for an Anglo-French Expeditionary Force — Ed.) were discussed and approved at a meeting of the Supreme War Council.. . .
The size of the force . . . was about 100,000 men, It was heavily armed and equipped”.
(Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Volume 358, House of Commons: London; 1940; col. 1,838, 1,839).

On 28 February 1940 it was announced that:

“President Roosevelt’s cousin, Major Kermit Roosevelt, who recently joined the British Army, will shortly resign his commission in the Middlesex Regiment to take command of the British Volunteer Brigade in Finland”.
(‘News Chronicle’, 29 February 1940; p. 1).

On 7 March 1940 General William Ironside* gave Marshal Mannerheim an account of the British forces being prepared to come to the assistance of Finland:

“The first echelon, consisting of a Franco-British division, . . . to be despatched to Narvik on March 15. . .
All these were crack troops.. ..
The second echelon would be composed of three British divisions, each of a strength of 14,000 men. . . .
The combined combatant strength thus numbered 57,500 men”.
(C. Mannerheim: op. cit.; p. 385-86).

However, the Allied governments were aware that:

“No effective expedition could arrive in Finland except by passing through Norway and Sweden”.
(Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Volume 358; op. cit.; col. 1,838).

and neither the Norwegian nor the Swedish governments were prepared to allow the passage of foreign troops through their territories. For this reason, in his last Order of the Day on 14 March 1940, Mannerheim attributed the defeat of the Finnish Army mainly to this refusal:

“The precious aid promised us by the Western Powers could not be realised, as our neighbours . . . would not permit the troops of the Western Powers to cross their territory”. (‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,973).

The fact that the Western Powers had been prepared to fight on to the last Finn was emphasised in a leading article in the ‘Times’ on 5 March:

“The whole sentiment of this country demands that Finland should not be allowed to fall”. (‘Times’, 5 March 1940; p. 9).

The lawyer and politician Denis Pritt* justly comments that the move to send military aid to Finland despite the fact that Britain was at war with Germany formed part of a move to switch the war against the Soviet Union:

“There is a definite aim to switch the war against the Soviet Union”
(D. N. Pritt: ‘Must the War spread?’; Harmondsworth; 1940; p. 169).

Casualties (1939-40)

Casualties in the Soviet-Finnish War were relatively high.

In his last Order of the Day, Mannerheim somewhat underestimated Finnish casualties (at 15,000) and greatly overestimated Soviet casualties (at 200,000):

“More than 15,000 of you who took the field will never again see your homes! . . . But . . . 200,000 of our enemies are now lying on snowdrifts, gazing with unseeing eyes at our starry sky”.
(‘Times’ 14 March 1940; p. 7).

Official figures of Finnish casualties were:

19,576 killed;
45,357 wounded.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; Bristol; 1940; p. 4,089).

Official figures of Soviet casualties were:

48,745 killed;
158,863 wounded.
(V. M. Molotov: Speech to 6th Session of Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 29 March 1940, in: ‘Soviet Peace Policy’; London; 1941; p. 57).

The Peace Negotiations (1940)

On 10 March a communique was issued in Helsinki stating that contact had recently been made between the (Ryti) government of Finland and the Soviet government, with Sweden acting as intermediary, and that on the invitation of the Soviet government a Finnish delegation had left Helsinki for Moscow on 6 March, consisting of Prime Minister Risto Ryti; Juho Paasikivi, General Karl Walden* and Professor Vaino Voionmaa.

“Once the Russians had broken through to the outskirts of Viipuri and had crossed the ice of Viipuri Bay to obtain a firm hold on its northwestern shores, the Finnish troops had poor cover in many places and were terribly punished.
This is why the Finnish High Command sent message after message to M. L. Ryti’s delegation in Moscow, urging peace immediately and at virtually any price. At that moment the Finnish defences were beginning to crack. .
A major military disaster seems to have been avoided only by the precipitate peace. Field Marshal Mannerheim’ s ‘secrecy’ policy had paid big dividends, for at that time no one in Finland save the leaders on her General Staff knew how desperate the Army’s situation had become”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 20 March 1940; p. 7).

Mannerheim records in his memoirs:

“On March 9th I felt compelled to give the government categorical advice to conclude peace. On March 11, the delegation in Moscow received full powers”.
(C. Mannerheim: ‘The Memoirs of Marshall Mannerheim”; London; 1953; p. 387).

In the case of the peace negotiations, as distinct from the pre-war negotiations,

“Stalin did not participate in any of the negotiations”.
(B. Engle & L. Paananen: op. cit.; p. 134).

The peace treaty ending the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40 was signed on 12 March 1940.

The peace terms which the Soviet government was now prepared to accept were more onerous than those offered before the war. Nevertheless:

“The peace terms were not, in the event, unduly harsh”.
(‘Times Review of the Year’s Events’, 2 January 1941; p. vi).

“The aim of the USSR pursued in the peace terms was to render her position in the Gulf of Leningrad secure and to make it impossible that Finland should ever be used (as she was in 1917-20) as a jumping-off ground for an attack on Leningrad”.
(W. P. & Z. K. Coates: 1940; Ibid; p. 133).

The anti-Soviet Foreign Minister Tanner confirmed that:

“No political demands . . . have been presented. The Soviet Union does not interfere in our internal politics. The Kuusinen government has been put on one side”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 3; op. cit.; p. 3,594).

Stephen King-Hall*, in his ‘News-Letter’, admits:

“We did not believe the Russians when they declared that they wanted only certain strategical positions to secure their Baltic flank, but subsequent events have supported their contention”.
(S. King-Hall: ‘King-Hall News-Letter’, No. 223 (17 October 1940); p. 2-3).

and the Helsinki correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ wrote:

“Finland will maintain her independence, and there is no tendency in official quarters to believe that Russia will cease to respect it”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 27 March 1940; p. 5).

The Peace Treaty, in fact, provided that:

“Article 1:
Hostilities between the USSR and Finland shall cease immediately.

Article 2:
The State frontier between the USSR and the Republic of Finland shall be established along a new line in accordance with which the territory of the USSR will include the entire Karelian Isthmus with the town of Viipuri and Viipuri Bay with the Islands, the western and northern shores of Lake Ladoga with the towns of Kexholm, Sortavala, Suojarvi, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, the territory east of Merkjarvi with the town of Kuolajarvi, part of the Peninsulas of Rybachi and Sredni — in accordance with the map appended to this treaty.

Article 3:
Both Contracting Parties undertake mutually to refrain from any attack upon each other and not . . . to participate in coalitions directed against any one of the Contracting Parties.

Article 4:
The Republic of Finland expresses consent to lease to the Soviet Union for 30 years, for an annual payment by the Soviet Union of 8 million Finnish marks, the Peninsula of Hanko and the waters surrounding it . . . and a number of islands adjacent to it, in accordance with the appended map, for the purpose of establishing a naval base there capable of defending the entrance to the Gulf of Finland from aggression; for the purpose of protecting the naval base, the Soviet Union is granted the right to maintain there, at her own expense, land and air armed forces of the necessary strength. .

Article 5.
The USSR undertakes to withdraw her troops from the Petsamo Region, voluntarily ceded to Finland by the Soviet State in accordance with the Peace Treaty of 1920.
Finland undertakes, as provided by the Peace Treaty of 1920, not to maintain in the waters along her coast on the Arctic Ocean naval and other armed ships, excepting armed ships of less than 100 tons displacement which Finland has the right to maintain without restriction. She also has the right to maintain not more than 15 naval and other armed ships of a tonnage not exceeding 400 tons each.

Article 6:
As provided in the Treaty of 1920, the Soviet Union and her citizens are granted the right of unrestricted transit across the Petsamo Region to Norway and back. The Soviet Union is granted the right to establish a Consulate in the Petsamo Region.
Freights in transit across the Petsamo Region from the USSR to Norway, as . . . from Norway to the USSR, are exempted from inspection and control, excepting only such control as is necessary for regulating transit communications. .
Citizens of the USSR travelling across the Petsamo Region to Norway and back from Norway to the USSR have the right of unrestricted transit passage. .
Soviet unarmed aircraft have the right to maintain an air service between the USSR and Norway across the Petsamo Region. .

Article 7:
The Government of Finland grants the Soviet Union the right of transit of goods between the USSR and Sweden, and with the aim of developing this transit along the possible railway route, the USSR and Finland find it necessary to build, if possible in the course of 1940, each party on its territory, a railway line connecting the town of Kandalaksha with the town of Kemijarvi.

Article 8:
When this Treaty comes into force, economic relations between the Contracting Parties will be restored and . . . the Contracting Parties will start negotiations for the conclusion of a trade treaty.”
(Soviet-Finnish Peace Treaty of 1940, in: U. P. & Z. Coates: op. cit.; p. 168-70).

On 29 March 1940 Molotov told the Supreme Soviet of the USSR:

“The meaning of the war . . . in Finland . . . lay in the necessity for safeguarding the security of the north-western frontiers of the Soviet Union and above all of the safeguarding of the security of Leningrad. .
The Soviet Union smashed the Finnish Army and having every opportunity of occupying the whole of Finland, did not do so and did not demand any indemnities for her war expenses, as any other power would have done, but confined her demands to the minimum.
We pursued no other object in the Peace Treaty but that of safeguarding the security of Leningrad, Murmansk and the Murmansk railway”.
(V. M. Molotov: Speech to the 6th Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in: ‘Soviet Peace Policy’; op. cit.; p. 52-53. 62).

The Peace Negotiations (1944-48)

As, during 1944, the German army was forced into retreat from the occupied territories, so the pressure for peace with the Soviet Union grew in Finland.

On l7 March 1944, the Soviet terms for an armistice were handed to the Finnish government, which on 17 March:

“Gave a negative reply”.
(Keesing’s Contemporary Archives”, Volume 5 Op. cit.; p. 6,361).

However, on 7 September 1944 a Finnish delegation — consisting of Prime Minister Hackzell, pefence Minister General Rudolf Walden, Chief of Staff General Erik Heinrichs, and Lieutenant-eneral Oscar Enckell — arrived in Moscow to negotiate armistice terms. The negotiations began on 14 September and were concluded on 19 September, when the armistice was formally signed.

Its principal provisions were:

“1. Finland to withdraw her troops behind the 1940 frontier;
2. Finland to disarm all German land, naval and air forces still on Finnish territory after Sept. 15; to hand them over to the Allied High Command as prisoners of war . . . ; and to intern all German and Hungarian nationals in Finland;
3. Finland to make available to the Allied High Command airfields on the south and south-west coasts of Finland as bases for Soviet aircraft during the period necessary for air operations against German forces;
4. Finland to place her army on a peace footing within two-and-a-half months of the signature of the armistice;
5. Finland, having broken off all relations with Germany, to break relations with Germany’s satellites;
6. Restoration of the Soviet-Finnish peace treaty of March 12, 1940, subject to the changes in the present agreement;
7. Finland to return to the USSR the Petsamo area . . . voluntarily ceded to Finland by the USSR . . . ;
8. The Soviet Union renounces its rights to the lease of the Hanko Peninsula. . . . Finland in return to make available to the USSR, on lease, territory and waters necessary for the establishment of a Soviet naval and air base in the area of Porkala-Udd . . . ;
9. The agreement concerning the (demilitarisation of the — Ed.) Aaland Islands, concluded between the USSR and Finland on 0ctober 11, 1940, to be restored;
10. Finland to immediately transfer to the Allied High Command for repatriation to their homelands all Allied . . . prisoners of war and nationals in her hands. . . . Finnish prisoners of war and nationals in Allied hands to be repatriated to Finland;
11. Finland to indemnify the USSR for losses caused by military operations and the occupation of Soviet territory to the amount of $300,000,000 (Pounds sterling 75,000), payable over six years in commodities, . .;
12. Finland to collaborate with the Allies in apprehending and bringing to trial war criminals. . . .
22. Finland immediately to dissolve all Fascist and pro-Fascist organisations, whether political, military or para-military, . . . and not to permit their existence in the future”. (‘Keesing ‘s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 5; p 6,720).

The peace terms were regarded in the West as ‘moderate’:

“The Russian peace terms were warmly welcomed in London and Washington for their moderation”.
(‘Keesing ‘s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 5; op. cit; p. 6,360).

On 4 March 1945, in accordance with the Soviet demands, Finland declared that it had been in a state of war with Germany since 15 September 1944,

” . when the Germans opened hostilities by attacking the Finnish garrison on the island of Suursari (Hogland) in the Gulf of Finland”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Vo1ume 5; op. cit.; p. 7,263).

Later in September 1945, a special court for the trial of war criminals was set up, and on 6 November nine prominent Finnish politicians, including Ryti and Tanner, were arrested.

On 11 October 1945 it was announced that:

“On hearing about Finland’s critical economic situation, Marshal Stalin had offered her a prolongation of the period for the payment of reparations from six to eight years.”
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 5 ; op. cit.; p. 6,844).

In November 1945 – February 1946 eight Finnish politicians, including former President Risto Ryti, former Premiers Johan Rangell and Edwin Linkomies, and former Finance Minister Vaino Tanner, were tried on charges:

“Either of promoting the entry of Finland into the war in 1941, or of preventing the conclusion of peace, or both”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 5 ; op. cit.; p. 9,341).

All the accused were found guilty and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
On 10 February 1947 the Peace Treaty between Finland and the Allied Powers was signed in Paris.

On 27 February 1948 it was officially announced:

“that Marshal Stalin, in a letter to President Paasikivi, had proposed the conclusion of a mutual assistance pact between Finland and the USSR”.
(‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 6; p. 9,158).

The proposal was accepted by the Finnish government on 8 March 1948, and the pact was signed on 6 April 1948.

Conclusion

That fact that it took the Red Army several months to defeat the Finnish forces was used in many quarters to denigrate the efficiency of the Red Army. As Edgar 0′Ballance* puts it:

“The picture spread abroad was that of an inefficient, bumbling, primitive army, which only with difficulty had managed to subdue a poorly armed foe, one-fifth of its size. . . . This view was widely and gladly accepted, because it was what many people wanted to believe.”
(E. O’Ballance: op cit.; p. 152).

In fact, testifies O’Ballance:

“The strategical plan . . . was reasonably sound. .
Mass assaults were continually going on night and day. To keep this up for four weeks . . . was in itself an extraordinary performance. .
The Red Army soldier came out of this campaign magnificently, and his bravery, his endurance and his fortitude in the face of deadly fire, on short rations and under extreme climatic conditions was amazing. He had warm clothing (contrary to what is frequently alleged”.
(E. O’Ballance: op. cit.; p. 152, 153, 154).

Major Arthur Hooper, in his detailed study of the Soviet-Finnish war, goes even further:

“General Meretskov’s plan, well conceived and boldly executed, was on a scale worthy of the past great masters of the art of war”.
(A. S. Hooper: ‘The Soviet-Finnish Campaign’; London; 1940; p. 24).

and the Military Correspondent of ‘Tribune’ declares:

“In the main attack on the Mannerheim Line there were no indications of serious military weaknesses. The artillery preparation and support was clearly very heavy; there was no relaxation of pressure; the number of strong points and concrete artillery positions, etc., taken by the Russians was announced regularly, and that number increased. . . . There are few large offensives against defended positions in the Great War of which that could be written.”
(‘Tribune’, No. 168 (15 March 1940); p. 9).

As the ‘News Chronicle ‘pointed out after the Soviet victory:

“Those foreign commentators who stated that Stalin had made a fatal mistake in Finland have been proved wrong”.
(‘News Chronicle’, 14 March 1940; p. 2).

The Soviet campaign against Finland was regarded by Soviet military scientists as a model. As Sergey Biriuzov* says, the strategy and tactics adopted by the Red Army in the war with Finland were later successfully applied on a larger scale in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45:

“The storming of the ‘Mannerheim Line’ was regarded as a model of operational and tactical art. Troops were taught to overcome the enemy’s protracted defence by a gradual accumulation of forces and a patient gnawing through of breaches in the enemy’s fortifications”.
(S. S. Biriuzov: ‘The Lesson Learned too well’, in: S. Bialer (Ed.): op. cit.; p. 137).

A number of Western correspondents pay tribute to the tactical skill of the Red Army:

“The Russians are reported to have shown considerable tactical skill in managing their tanks”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 14 February 1940; p. 1).

to its ingenuity and inventiveness:

“The Russians had experimented intelligently themselves, introducing such new devices as armoured sleighs, three-storeyed dug-outs and dummy encampments to draw bombing aeroplanes to anti-aircraft guns. . .
Most of the armament was first-class stuff — anti-tank rifles, machine pistols, machine guns, and a new type of revolver that does not jam. The Russians, indeed, must have a remarkable inventiveness.”
(‘Times’, 18 March 1940; p. 7).

and to the bravery of its soldiers:

“There (on the Isthmus — Ed.) the Russian divisions had fought with a courage which has rarely been equalled by Russian soldiers in this century”.
(‘Daily Telegraph’, 6 March 1940; p. 1).

This did not prevent ‘Daily Herald’ from reporting in February that

“Informed circles in Moscow state that Meretskov and his entire staff were shot soon after General Shtern arrived on the Finnish front from the Far East”.
(‘Daily Herald’, 23 February 1940; p. 6).

A month later, after the war had ended and General Meretskov had been decorated with the Order of Lenin, the press was reporting:

“Decorations awarded today suggest that the Soviet campaign was conducted by a staff presided over by General Meretskov.
General Shtern — reported to have been put in command of the Soviet forces in the later phases of the campaign — is not mentioned, which suggests that he never left command of Soviet forces in the Far East.”
(‘News Chronicle’, 23 March 12940; p. 2).

The final word on the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40 may be given to Read and Fisher:

“In strictly strategic terms, as far as Stalin was concerned. the Winter War had been a success. It had been brief; it had not spilled over into the larger conflict, . . . and, above all, had achieved its purpose, The northern approaches to Leningrad were now secure and the USSR controlled access into the Gulf of Finland”.
(A. Read & D. Fisher: op. cit.; p. 416).

Book Review: “Social Democracy: the Enemy Within” by Harpal Brar

BOOK REVIEW
‘SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, THE ENEMY WITHIN’

Harpal Brar 1995; ISBN 1-874613-04-4

INTRODUCTION

This book is a valuable contribution to the critique of social democracy and its counter-revolutionary role. The first half of the text is concerned with an examination of the origins of the Labour Party (the main party of social democracy in this country) and its record both in government and opposition. Time and again the views of the Labour Party are shown to have coincided with those of the British ruling class on every important issue affecting British imperial policy at home and abroad.

The stance of various revisionist and Trotskyite organisations which, one way or another, take a pro-Labour standpoint are examined in detail. In So doing, Harpal Brar directs effective and withering fire upon those who, whilst styling themselves as ‘revolutionaries’, insist on misrepresenting the Labour Party not only as a party which objectively serves the interests of the British working class, but also as being capable of bringing about the socialist transformation of society.

The author amply demonstrates the truth that the Labour Party is in reality both an imperialist party, and a ‘bourgeois labour party’, as characterised by Friedrich Engels, to whom this work is dedicated on the 100th anniversary of his death.

The second half of the book is comprised of articles from ‘Lalkar’, the paper of the Indian Workers’ Association, which comment upon the coal strike of 1984-5, various other economic struggles over the past fifteen years, and the relationship between social democracy and imperialist war. These illuminate the reactionary role played by the Labour Party in recent battles fought by the working class.

THE LABOUR PARTY SERVES THE INTERESTS OF MONOPOLY CAPITAL

Founded to give the working class a ‘voice’ in Parliament, the Labour Party has never been a true party of the working class, for such a party has to be revolutionary socialist in ideology. Anti-Marxist from its inception, the Labour Party preached the reformist theory that the state was a neutral apparatus which the working class could control in its own interests by obtaining a majority in Parliament. This denial of Marxian teaching on the nature of the state as an instrument of class rule also lies at the heart of those revisionist and Trotskyite organisations which offer support to the Labour Party – for example through such electoral slogans as”…. kick out the Tories and elect a labour government committed to Left policies”.

The Fabian ideology of Labour governments has always led them to operate along lines calculated to make capitalism work profitably during the (infinitely long) period of gradual, piecemeal, social reform. This illusory promise of reform has gained credence through real gains made by the working class. These have been due primarily to the rise in the value of labour power and the fact that the adjustment of wage levels to approach the higher level of the value of labour power have, by and large, been carried out through the reformist negotiating machinery.

The material basis for these gains over the past hundred and forty years have been (indirectly) the exploitation of the working people of the colonial-type countries by the British capitalist class. From the mid-nineteenth century some of the vast super-profits flowing in from colonial-type lands were used to pay an upper stratum of skilled craftsmen above the value of their labour power. This produced unions which rejected class struggle and socialist aims and confined their activities to bargaining on questions of wages, hours etc. However, despite the rise in real wages of the British working class over this period, the rate of exploitation of the workers has significantly increased. Had it not been for the ‘unofficial’ militant class struggle outside the reformist negotiating machinery, the rate of exploitation would have increased still more.

It should be emphasised that at no time has the mass of the British working class shared directly in colonial super profits. ‘Bribery’ of this kind has never affected more than a small upper stratum of the working class, and today this ‘labour aristocracy’ consists principally of the bureaucracy of the labour movement,

Despite the fact that its members are drawn mainly from the working class, and trade unions are affiliated to it, Harpal Brar clearly demonstrates that the Labour Party objectively serves the interests of monopoly capital. The abolition of ‘Clause 4′, the self-description of the party no longer as ‘left of centre’ but as ‘centre’, and the repudiation of all ‘make the rich pay’ programmatic points clearly show that the party’s appeal is directed now to all sections of the people who want a change in government, particularly to sections of the capitalist class who have suffered from the Tory policy of serving financial branches of finance capital, and not the industrial branches. It provides at present the principal reserve party of monopoly capital, which can safely be permitted to form a government at times when the Conservative Party has lost its electoral support.

TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE?

There remains the question of what a worker with a socialist consciousness should do when it comes to bourgeois elections, and here we differ from Harpal Brar, who is opposed to participation in elections.

We believe this position to be both mistaken and dangerous. Despite its limitations, “parliamentary democracy” provides a more favourable terrain for preparing socialist revolution than would exist under a fascist dictatorship, or even a corporate state. It is therefore essential for the working class to defend the democratic rights associated with “parliamentary democracy” against attempts to abolish them.

The right to vote, limited though it is, is one of the democratic rights associated with “parliamentary democracy”. To advise workers not to use this democratic vote is to imply it is of no value, and so to play into the hands of the fascist elements who seek – as part of the ideological preparation for the attempt, when objective conditions require it, to abolish “parliamentary democracy” – to inculcate the view that democratic rights are worthless. Advice to workers not to vote is harmful and reactionary.

WHICH PARTY OF THE CLASS ENEMY MOST ADVANCES THE SITUATION OF THE WORKING CLASS?

Where there is a division over policy between different sections of the monopoly capitalist ruling class, a political Party serving the interests of monopoly capital tends to become the vehicle of one or other of these antagonistic sections to put forward a policy which serves the interests of that section.

In 1970, for example, a minority of British monopoly capitalists had become convinced that their economic future lay in breaking the dependence upon United States imperialism, which had been the dominant feature of the international position of British imperialism since the second world war, and in joining the alliance of Western European powers which had been set up in the form of the European Economic Community. One of the reasons for the “dismissal” of the Labour government in 1970 was that it was tied to what had become a minority section of British monopoly capital which wished to continue the “special relationship” of dependence upon US imperialism.

These differences in foreign policy were overshadowed in 1974 by a more urgent difference in domestic policy brought to a head by the refusal of the miners to surrender to the government’s wage restraints. A majority of monopoly capitalists, now represented by the Labour Party, wanted to move away from the existing system of rigid wage restrictions and towards the building of a corporate state in which trade unions would be incorporated within the machinery of the capitalist state.

Even though the working class was not directly represented in the 1974 general election it was still able to achieve a tactical advantage by influencing the result. When the Heath government resigned, the unity of the miners in rejecting wage restraint, together with the refusal of the rest of The working class to blame the miners for hardship caused by the three-day working week brought about a split in the monopoly capitalist ruling class on this issue and forced a majority of the monopoly capitalists to organise a “dismissal” of that government. The new Labour government then instructed the National Coal Board to reach a settlement with the miners which proved a considerable advance upon what the Heath government had been prepared to allow.

To argue that policy differences amongst the monopoly capitalist class not only exist but have concrete implications for the working class is to accept that it cannot be a matter of complete indifference to the working class which party is elected to government. This is so even if there are only minor disagreements such as that relating to Value Added Tax on fuel regarding which the Tory Party was in favour and the Labour Party opposed.

The increase in cost of fuel would certainly preclude a proportion of elderly people from being able to heat their homes adequately and would undoubtedly, in turn, add to the already huge number of deaths related to hypothermia in winter months, If this became an election issue, a ‘don’t vote’ stance would ignore an issue of literally life and death significance to some sections of the working class. There may only be a shade of difference between the Labour and Conservative Parties, but that ‘shade of difference’ could represent the difference between life and death for tens of thousands of people.

All genuine socialists must advise workers to use their democratic right to vote in an election in such a way as to create the best conditions of the advance of the working class to positions of class struggle and ultimately of revolutionary struggle, which alone can bring about the establishment of a socialist society.

Since the government at the next election will be either Conservative or Labour, both of which parties represent the interests of monopoly capital, both of which represent the interests of the class enemy of the working class, correct tactics require an analysis of whether the situation of the working class would be more advanced by the election of a Labour government or by the election of a Conservative government.

Should, as for example in 1974, the advice be to vote Labour, it must be associated with the categorical statement that the Labour Party is the political tool of big business and can never be anything else. This fact is amply documented in ‘Social Democracy: The Enemy Within’, and we warmly recommend the book to all those who wish to see the social emancipation of the working class.