On the deaths in Stalin’s USSR

In the West, when Stalin’s name is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the “millions of deaths” under his “ruthless regime”. For decades, fascist and capitalist propagandists alike perpetuated this vision of Stalin as a monster, employing the best World War 2 and Cold War propagandists to slander Stalin’s role as a statesman. What is the truth behind this claims? I hope to shed some light on the matter.

As has been now resolved, the varying numbers of deaths under the Stalin administration are a product of propaganda, and have hence been wildly exaggerated. The evidence found in Russian archives, opened up by the capitalist roader Yeltsin, put the total number of death sentences from 1923 to 1953, the post-Lenin Soviet Union, between 775,866 and 786,098^a. To this we must add up the 40,000 who may have been executed without trial and unofficially^b. If we add up the numbers, what we get achieve is 800,000 executions in a period of 36 years, less than the lives claimed by the dictatorship of the CIA-backed anti-communist Suharto in Indonesia in a time span of 2 years. This is not to say the deaths are to be condoned, but it raises an important question: if less lives have been claimed by the Soviet Union under Stalin than Suharto’s Indonesia, why is Stalin demonized to that extent when Suharto is rarely even known among pro-capitalists?

We shall answer this question in a future post about cultural hegemony, let’s now continue with our examination of Soviet deaths. Because the figure of 800,000 executions includes those persons sentenced to death but had, for instance, their sentences reduced^a, this too may be an overestimation. In fact, in a research by Vinton, evidence has been provided indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the USSR, with only 7,305 executions in a sample of 11,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or around 60%)^c. In addition, 681,692 of the 780,000 or so death sentences were issued during the Great Purge (1937-1938 period)^a.

Initially, the NKVD, under Yezhov’s orders, set a cap of 186,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1937 special operation to combat the threat of foreign and internal subversion. The operation was decided upon after the discovery of Bonapartist plots against the government, led by Tukhacevsky, whose links with opportunist factions within the Party caused total panic. The NKVD’s orders had to be carried out by troikas, 3-men tribunals^a. As the troikas passed sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas, and there was an official request in 1938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign quotas of the tribunals^d.

However, even if there had been twice as many actual executions as originally planned, which I would doubt, the number would still be less than 150,000. Many, in fact, may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by authorities before arrest or execution could take place, especially since Stalin, Molotov and Beria later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period (the Great Purge), had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished^e. Soviet records indicate only about 300,000 actual arrests for anti-Soviet activities or political crimes during this 1937-1938 interval. With a ratio of 1 execution for every 3 arrests as originally specified by the NKVD, that would imply about 100,000 executions. Since some of the people sentenced to death may have already been in confinement, and since there is some evidence of a 50,000 increase in the total number of deaths in labor camps over the 1937-38 interval that was probably caused by such executions, the total number executed by the troika campaign would probably be around 150,000^a. There were also 30,514 death sentences passed by military courts and 4,387 by regular courts during the 1937-38 period, but, even if all these death sentences were carried out, the total number remains under 200,000. Such a low number seems especially likely given the fact that aggregate death rates from all causes throughout the Soviet Union were actually lower in 1937-38 than in prior years^f, possibly a result of universal health care, vaccination and an improvement in living standards.

Assuming the remaining 100,000 or so death sentences passed in the other years of Stalin’s administration (1923-1936 and 1939-53) resulted in a 60% execution rate, as per the Vinton sample, the total number executed by the Soviet Union during the period would be about 250,000. Even with the thousands executed between 1917 and 1921, it is plausible that the number of unarmed civilians killed between 1917-1953 amounted to considerably less than a quarter million given that thousands of these victims may have been Soviet soldiers, given that many may have been armed bandits and guerrillas, and given that at least 14,000 of the actual executions were of foreign prisoners of war^c.

A USA former attache to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, has stated that the number executed was really only in the tens of thousands^g, and so it is very likely that the true number of people killed by the Soviet Union over its entire history (including the thousands killed in Afghanistan) is too small for the country to make it even in the top ten in mass murders (unlike the United States of America, but that’s for another day). There were no doubt many innocent victims during the 1937-38 Stalin purge, but it should also be mentioned that there is substantial evidence from the Soviet archives of Soviet citizens advocating treasonable offenses such as the violent overthrow of the Soviet government or foreign invasion of the Soviet Unionⁱ. In addition, the Soviet Union felt itself so threatened by subversion and imminent military invasions by Japan and Germany (which occurred in full force in 1938 and 1941, respectively) that it perceived a need to undertake a nationwide campaign to eliminate potential internal enemies. Moreover, these external threats were further fueled by the fact that the Russian nobility and czarists (over a million of whom had emigrated after the communist revolution in 1917) had given financial aid to the German Nazis in the 1930s for the purpose of using them (once they had successfully taken power in Germany) to help them overthrow the Soviet government^j. Forged documents and misinformation spread by Nazi Germany to incriminate innocent and patriotic Soviets also contributed to Soviet paranoia^k. It must also be remembered that Soviet fear of foreign-sponsored subversion in the 1930s existed within the context of guerrilla warfare fought against the Soviet Union by some of the same groups of people who had fought with the foreign invaders against the Soviet Union in the 1918-22 Foreign Interventionist Civil War. While the 1937-38 purges were very repressive and tragic by almost any measure, they may have helped prevent the fascists from inciting a successful rebellion or coup in the Soviet Union. Such a threat was a very real one given that the German Nazis did succeed in using political intrigues, threats, economic pressure, and offers of territorial gains to bring other Eastern European countries into their orbit, including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as well as Yugoslavia for a short period of time^h, given that the Soviet Union had been subjected to a brutal 1918-22 civil war which was launched by rebels who were supported by over a million foreign invading troops from over a dozen capitalist countries, given that there was a large amount of sabotage committed by Soviet citizens in the 1930s, and given that there were a significant number of Soviet dissidents who were in favor of overthrowing the Soviet government even if it required an invasion by Germany or some other foreign powerⁱ. In addition, many people may have worked independently to sabotage the Soviet Union in the hope that they would thereby contribute to a foreign overthrow of the Soviet Union, especially since Nazi Germany did make extensive efforts to incite uprisings, cause subversive actions, and create ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Despite the Soviet Union’s success in defeating the subsequent invasions by fascist Japan (in 1938) and Germany (1941-44), the danger posed by the Nazi spies and saboteurs in Eastern Europe is illustrated by the fact that the CIA considered them so effective that it adopted virtually the entire Nazi network into its own system of terrorism in Eastern Europe after World War II^l.

Evidence from the Soviet archives indicates that the officials responsible for the political repression of the 1930s sincerely felt the victims were guilty of some crime such as sabotage, spying, or treason, and many of the executions of the Great Purge were reported in the local Soviet press at the time. Even when there was proven to be no direct connection between the accused and the fascist foreign powers, there was often a strong belief that the suspects were foreign sympathizers who were working on their own (without formal direction) to contribute to the overthrow of the Soviet Union. It should also be noted that much of the 1937-38 repression, often called the Great Purge, was actually directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity (such as theft, smuggling, misuse of public office for personal gain, and swindles) that was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time^m. In addition to the executions, there were also many imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands of people were expelled from the Communist Party during the Great Purge for being incompetent, corrupt, and/or excessively bureaucratic, with such targeting of inept or dishonest Soviet bureaucrats being fairly popular among the average Soviet citizensⁱ. Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1930-53 interval are untrue. In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year^a. This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population. It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions^a. Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5%^a, which is below that of the average citizen in Russia under the tsar in peacetime in 1913^f. This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to workⁿ, and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years^o. The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually compares favorably to the 100-hour work weeks that existed even for “free” 6-year old children during peacetime in the Gilded era and industrial revolution^p(shoutout to libertarians), although it may seem high compared to the 7-hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalinⁱ.

In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin’s rule being for political reasons or secret police matters^a. The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin’s Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the Westⁱ. Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and fire fighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin^e, severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%), not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and fire fighters included in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union. In any event, it is possible that the communist countries of Eastern Europe would have become politically less repressive and more democratic (especially over time), if there hadn’t been overt and covert efforts by capitalist powers to overthrow their governments, including subversion conducted in the USSR as late as the 1980s that the USA government admitted to in the 1990s. These efforts at violent subversion were initially carried out mostly by the British (before World War II) and then later more so by the USA through the CIA, which did succeed violently overthrowing a very democratic communist government in Chile in 1973. If the communists had truly been as evil and dictatorial as they are portrayed to be in the capitalist press, the peaceful revolution of 1989 in Eastern Europe (with virtually no related deaths except in Romania) could never have occurred.

Sources:

a: Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence”

http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf

b: Hellmut Andics, “Rule of Terror”

c: Louisa Vinton, “The Katyn Documents: Politics and History.”

d: Amy Knight, “Beria, Stalin’s First Lieutenant”

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1993-804-08-Knight.pdf

e: Robert Thurston, “Life and Terror in Stalin s Russia”

f: Stephen Wheatcroft, “More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s”

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511626012&cid=CBO9780511626012A025

g: J. W. Smith, “Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the 21st Century”

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780765604682/Economic-Democracy-Political-Struggle-21st-076560468X/plp

h: Marshall Miller, “Bulgaria during the Second World War”

i: Sarah Davies, “Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia”

http://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Opinion_in_Stalin_s_Russia.html?id=yTGgOwH_mwgC&redir_esc=y

j: Leslie Feinberg, “The Class Character of German Fascism”

<a href=”http://www.workers.org/ww/1999/fascism0304.php

k: Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky “KGB: The Inside Story”

l: Von Schnitzler, “Der Rote Kana”

m: John Arch Getty, “Origins of the Great Purges”

http://books.google.com/books/about/Origins_of_the_Great_Purges.html?id=R5zx54LB-A4C&redir_esc=y

n: Edwin Bacon, “The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives”

o: R. J. Rummel, “Lethal Politics”

p: Marx and Engels, “Das Kapital”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

q: Numbers taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Soviet_Union, which in turn cites Andreev et al, “Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991″

Source

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO): On the International Situation

The most significant development in the world capitalist economy, since the last meeting of our Conference is undoubtedly the intensification of the symptoms that prove the trend toward a new recession in all fields, after a certain rise in the second quarter of 2009, followed by a period of stagnation. Despite the trend towards a rise in the second quarter, world industrial production shrank 6.6% in 2009 and rose 10% in 2010. The industrial production of June 2010 exceeded its previous level before the crisis of 2008. But starting from the first quarter of 2011, the growth lost momentum and fell to 0.4% in the last quarter of that year. In 2011, world industrial production declined by half (5.4%) compared to the previous year. In the first quarter of 2012, after a weak rise, the growth declined. The growth was 1.8% in the first quarter, 0% in the second and 4% in the last quarter of 20l2. All the data show that, despite fluctuations, a decline persists that began in the first quarter of 2011, which led to zero level in the middle of this year [2012] and is heading for a new period of decline.

Industrial production in the European Union, which is a larger economic power than the U.S.; in Japan, which is third largest world economic power; in India, one of the largest economies in Asia, have had consecutive declines in the third quarter of 2011 and in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to the same period last year. Industrial production in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has also entered into decline in the last two quarters. North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt, and other countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Peru, are in similar situations.

The rate of growth of industrial production in China, in the first and second quarters of 2012, was 11.6% and 9.5%, while it was 14.4% in 2010 and 13.8% in 2011. The downward trend continued in July, 9.2% and in August, 8.9%. China, which grew by 12.9% and 12.3% in the crisis years (2008 and 2009), was, along with India, one of the factors that prevented a further sharpening of the crisis and that allowed the world economy to enter into a new period of growth. The situation in that country has changed considerably. Now it is a country that is accumulating stockpiles in the steel industry, which is facing a slowdown in the construction sector, which has important holes in the financial sector. Those countries that saw lower growth rates despite the stimulus measures to revive the domestic market, are now unable to play the same role as before. The industrial production of Mexico and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), including Russia, continues to grow. However, while the industrial production in the major countries and the volume of international trade are falling, for these countries also, a decrease is expected.

Unlike simple commodity production, a more rapid growth in the production of the means of production, compared to consumer goods, is a condition for expanded reproduction. But with the capitalist mode of production producing for an unknown market, with the sole purpose of obtaining profits, a consistent development of the two sectors is impossible and this is one of the factors that makes crises inevitable. In the last three years, as well as before, these two sectors have not developed consistently. In the first sector, demand has fallen, the volume of growth has fallen, stockpiles are accumulating and capacity utilization has fallen. In 2010 and 2011 the steel industry, an important component of the production of means of production, grew faster than the consumer goods sector. According to data from the World Steel Union, the growth rate in production was 15% in 2010 compared to the previous year, but in 2011 the figure fell to 6.2%. In January raw steel production saw a sharp drop to 8%, and it has stayed at 0.8% in the period from January to May of 2012. In August of 2012 raw steel production fell 1% in relation to 2011. In the same period, raw steel production rose 3.3% in Japan (a significant increase if one takes into account the major fall due to the tsunami) and 2.6% in India. It has fallen by 1.7% in China, 3.8% in the U.S., 4.4% in the EU, 7.1% in Germany, 15.5% in Italy and 3.8% in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). The iron stockpiles in Chinese ports reached 98.15 million tons (an increase of 2.9%) belonging to the steel complexes. And stockpiles of Chinese coal are at their highest level in the last three years.

In manufacturing, a very important element of the production of the means of production, production and demand have declined in many countries. This decline has been one of the reasons for the cooling of industrial production in Germany, for example. In the capitalist mode of production, the agricultural sector, by its level of development and its technical basis, is always behind industry. Agricultural production is largely affected by the natural conditions, climate changes, droughts, storms and other natural catastrophes. Agricultural production is increasingly under the control of the monopolies and the speculative maneuvers of finance capital. In 2010 world agricultural production, including the production of cereals, has shrunk due to various factors such as bad weather or the expansion of plots reserved for bio-fuel production. On the other hand, in 2011, agricultural production has progressed thanks to better weather conditions, and also to increased demand and higher prices due to speculation. For example, wheat production increased by about 6%.

In 2009 the volume of world trade has declined 12.7%. According to data from the World Trade Organization (WTO), that volume registered a growth of 13.8% in 2010, and only 5% in 2011 (according to figures from the CPL, the growth was 15.2% in 2010, and 5.8% in 2011). The volume of world trade has grown by 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, and by 0.9% and 0.5% in the first and second quarter of 2012 respectively. During the first two months of the third quarter (June and July), the volume of world trade recorded a negative growth of -1.5% and -0.2% compared to the previous months.

World industrial production reached and surpassed the pre-crisis level of 2008, in June 2010, while the volume of international trade did not surpass this until November 2011. If we compare the data of July 2012 with the level reached before the crisis of 2008 (that is, April 2008), we see an increase of 9.5% in world industrial production and an increase of 5% in the total volume of growth in world trade.

The data on the increase of the volume of world trade is one of the most important that shows an evolutionary trend, although it does not exactly reflect the volume of growth of world trade. These data show that for the last three years, the world capitalist production has increased rapidly and that the capitalist world is once again facing the problem of overproduction, which is the source of all its crises. Decreased production, closing or reduction in work capacity of enterprises, rising unemployment and poverty; needs in abundance and the restriction of markets are the inevitable consequences of overproduction. The sharp slowdown in world industrial production has been shown above. The events in North Africa and the austerity measures taken in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc., are factors that are aggravating this process and its consequences.

Towards a New Financial Crisis

The crisis of 2008 broke out as a financial crisis, at the same time as the crisis deepened in other sectors, such as industry and trade, it developed with contacts in the finance sector with serious consequences for the following period. The most destructive consequences for the monopolies and the eventual collapse of the financial sector were avoided by transferring of billions of dollars into the coffers of the monopolies by the capitalist States. This rescue operation was only possible by accepting a debt to financial markets with very high interest rates, and the issuance of money into the markets. The end result is an extreme State debt, an increase in the debt and interest burden, a rise in the price of gold and the loss of value (devaluation) of almost all currencies.

Countries at different levels have entered a vicious circle that has elements of new currency and financial crises, in which they can finance their budget deficit, their debts and interests, having to borrow again. The capitalist world began a period of growth starting in the second quarter of 2009, with the weight inherited from the 2008 crisis. However, this period of growth has enabled recipient countries to breathe a little, turn the wheel that was on the verge of suffocating them. The growth of the world economy stopped and even lowered the price of gold for a moment. In some countries, such as China that had a significant growth rate, the ratio of the public debt to GDP decreased. But in other countries, such as Japan and the U.S., a substantial debt has continued, even during the period of growth of the capitalist world economy. The U.S. public debt represents the sum of $16 billion (the debt of Germany, which grew until the second half of this year, is 8 billion). Other capitalist countries are in a similar situation. The increasing debt is almost the condition of financial sustainability and economic growth. And this is the path that is leading directly to a new financial crisis that may profoundly affect all sectors of the economy.

The highly indebted countries have not been able to achieve a period of growth after the financial crisis and the fall in world industrial production that took place between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009; this period has led to a financial crisis that has affected the other sectors of the economy that has led them to bankruptcy. The first example of this process was in Greece, where the weakness was such that the industry, very weak, was largely liquidated when it joined the EU. After the 2008 crisis, in 2009, the economy of this country did not grow, and by the end of the year it was on the verge of bankruptcy. This country, followed by others such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, etc., has not been able to get out of the crisis and stagnation. However, important differences should be noted in its debt in relation to the GDP.

Austerity measures never seen before, except in times of war or crisis as deep as 1929, have been imposed on the indebted countries. The result of these measures has been to impoverish the people, destroy the economy and reduce the internal market and foreign trade. These austerity plans have been applied (despite the opposition and struggle of the working class and peoples) under the control of the creditor imperialist powers, the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and European Union, and above all with the support of the collaborator monopoly bourgeoisie and its representatives, these enemies of the people. They have transferred billions of dollars to foreign banks, completely betraying the national interests. The national pride of the people, their right to sovereignty and independence have been trampled upon. A country like Britain that had a strong financial sector, but since mid-2011 has seen its industrial production and its economy reduced, has been forced to march along with the countries implementing austerity measures.

The significant decrease in the volume of growth of world industrial production, which began in the second quarter of 2011, is developing the elements of a new international financial crisis and is contributing to the degradation of the situation of the highly indebted countries. They failed to enter a period of growth parallel to the process of growth of the world capitalist economy following the crisis of 2008-2009. While the debate over the future of the Euro and the European Union is sharpening, the communiqués on the economic trends of the advanced capitalist countries and the indebted countries have sown confusion in the stock markets, barometers of the capitalist economy. Although world industrial and agricultural production and the volume of international -trade have exceeded the highest level before the crisis of 2008, the indices of the most influential stock markets remain below that level.

Although we are not yet experiencing the outbreak of a financial crisis of major proportions, everything makes it appear that the process is advancing towards such an eventuality. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (FED) has announced that it will not raise interest rates and that it will start a process of purchasing bonds for an amount of $2,000 billion dollars, at the rate of $40 billion per month. Japan has announced a similar measure and has begun a program of buying bonds to the tune of $695 billion.

Germany has had to relax its rigid policy towards the indebted countries and the European fund for the intervention in countries facing difficulties has increased. China, along with measures of revival that it has already applied, announced a new investment package to renovate its infrastructure. The price of gold is rising again. In 2008, the intense intervention of the capitalist States began after the outbreak of the crisis. Now, however, the capitalist States have gone into action before the shocks and bankruptcies at the same level as in 2008 start in the major capitalist countries and worldwide. However, these interventions, which can have some influence on the process of development, cannot change the orientation and the inevitable outcome.

The Sharpening of the Inter-Imperialist Contradictions and the Growing Danger of Conflicts

Uneven, unbalanced development is the absolute law of capitalist development. This process after the crisis of 2008 was not balanced, it deepened the antagonistic contradictions in the evolution and development of the relations between sectors, countries, regions, production and markets, etc. The industrial production of the advanced capitalist countries, including the U.S. and Japan, except Germany (ignoring the high level of 2008), did not reach the level of 2005. Germany, which has exceeded the pre-crisis level and has had a growth in industrial production of 11.5% in 2010 and 9% in 2011, has consolidated its position within the European Union and the Euro zone. Without separating itself from the bloc led by the United States, it has penetrated into new markets, new fields of investment, sources of raw materials, basing itself on its economic and financial strength, and above all, on its technical superiority in the industry of machine construction.

As in previous years, China, both because of its industrial production and its economy in general, was the country that had the most significant growth among major economies. It has modernized and increased the technical basis of its industry, and it continues to reduce the difference in its level of development with the other imperialist powers. Russia is going through a similar process. For the United States and its allies, these two countries, one considered as a vast market and production area with a trained and cheap work force, and the other a solid country, appear today as their main rivals to fight against.

The inevitable result of the change in the balance of power is the great demand for a piece of the pie by the emerging forces, using all means to get it and a new redivision of the world according the new balance of power. The recent development of the world economy is another factor that exacerbates the contradictions and the struggles among the major imperialist powers. Last year in the Middle East, in Africa and the whole world, the rivalry and struggle to expand their sphere of influence has accelerated. The production of weapons, the arms race is intensifying. China and Russia have renewed the technical basis of their arms industry. According to a report by the Congress of the United States, arms sales by these countries have tripled in 2011.

China, which increasingly needs more raw materials, energy and fields of investment for its growing economy, and Russia, which is slowly recovering, are intensifying their expansionist desires and their efforts to get their piece of the pie. Therefore, it is a top priority for the U.S. and its allies to prevent China, a young imperialist power in full development, and Russia, from achieving new markets in the field of energy and raw materials. When the Obama administration states that beginning next year the priority strategic objective for the United States will be Asia, and that the deployment of the U.S. military will be renewed according to the new situation, this is merely affirming that reality. The crisis of the archipelagos shows the level of tension between Japan and China; Japan has declared its intention to improve its military capability. The military maneuvers in the region have intensified.

The consequences of the change in the balance of power in the world have been clearly visible since last year. Russia and China were forced to accept Western imperialist intervention in Libya, even though that intervention was contrary to their interests. The intervention ended with the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, the near collapse of the country, the destruction of its economy, the degradation of working and living conditions, the transfer of the country’s wealth into the hands of the Western imperialist States, etc. Russia and China lost a good part of their positions, including their oil agreements. After the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Mali has been dragged into war and divided. But the main objective is Syria. The attempts by the Western imperialist powers to topple the Syrian regime and put in a puppet government to fully control the country are intensifying. The United States and its allies have mobilized all their forces within Syria and outside of it in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are stirring up the religious contradictions, they use and manipulate the popular discontent towards the regime and they try to prepare the ground for a military intervention as in Libya. Meanwhile Russia is arming Syria, strengthening its military base located in that country and sending more warships to the Mediterranean.

To bring down the Syrian regime, put in place a puppet government, dominate the oil-rich Middle East, control the eastern Mediterranean, block the expansion of China and Russia in the region and expel them as they did in Libya, to encircle Iran, weaken its influence and liquidate its closest allies, are very important objectives. Syria is the only country in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean where Russia has a military base. This small country has become a place of intense struggle between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. The Middle East is a powder keg on the verge of religious conflicts.

Contrary to what they did in Libya, Russia and China are opposing a military intervention that would alter the balance in the Middle East and result in the domination of the United States and its allies over Syria. But they have left the door open for a possible compromise that would guarantee their interests and renew the Syrian regime which is having more and more difficulties to survive.

As the case of Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Libya show, the imperialist interventions that have had the support of the liberal “defenders” of freedom and democracy, of the pseudo-socialist parties that emerged from the former revisionist parties, have resulted in increased military budgets at the expense of the workers, in the destruction of the productive forces of those countries, in many disasters, the impoverishment and decline in all social aspects. The aspiration of the peoples for the right to sovereignty and national independence, democracy and freedom has never been the concern of the occupiers. Their objective was to further prolong their system maintained by the defeat inflicted on the working class in the middle of the last century, a defeat that guaranteed their super-profits, the expansion of their spheres of influence and the weakening of their rivals. The imperialist powers, which are using all means to achieve this goal, do not lack in demagoguery and low maneuvers to disorient the people’s anger.

Now a period of sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions is beginning, which economic-financial and political-military interventions will multiply. It is increasingly important to fight against such intervention, to develop the united fight of the workers and peoples, in both the advanced and backward countries,.

Organize the Resistance of the Workers in the New Stormy Period

The army of unemployed is growing on the world level, especially in countries in total-debt crisis, in the countries in which the economy is declining, stagnating or is in crisis. In Greece and Spain, unemployment has reached 25%. In these countries, unemployment among the youths, including college graduates, reached 50%. In the Euro zone in the second quarter of 2012, the level of unemployment reached 11.2%, according to official figures. In countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where manufacturing has fallen from 9.6% to 7.5% in the first quarter of this year (2012), the number of unemployed continues to grow. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.

In the current period, in almost all fields, from education to health care, drastic measures have been taken, the retirement age has been delayed and pensions have fallen. The gains of the working class worldwide are targeted for cuts or elimination. While direct taxes on the workers are increasing, no measures are taken to disturb the local and international monopolies, when even within the framework of this system one could increase taxes on the banks and the local and foreign monopolies. Wages continue to fall, etc. Many countries are suffering from a process of absolute impoverishment.

In recent years practices have been imposed worldwide such as sub-contracting labor, precarious and part-time work, an increase in the age for retirement, etc. In Germany, for example, one of the most developed countries in the world that has had significant growth rates in industrial production, according to the Federal Administration of Statistics, 15.6% of the population lives below the poverty line, a figure that rises to 26% among the immigrant population.

Last year, on a world scale and in each country, the workers and peoples movement has developed with various demands, in different forms and also at different levels. The struggles carried out in those countries with a “debt crisis” have been outstanding for their broad social base, for their responses and the experiences gained. The miners’ strike in South Africa, the youth movement and the strikes in Chile, the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, etc. are powerful examples of the workers and peoples struggles.

Starting with Greece, Spain and Italy, in various countries with a “debt crisis,” strikes, general strikes and huge demonstrations have taken place. In Greece and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their anger in front of the parliaments on the days when these were voting for austerity measures. But the workers and peoples movement, despite some more advanced attempts, has remained within the framework of peaceful demonstrations, general strikes of one or two days and limited resistance. The strikes of long duration, the resistance or occupation of factories, have been limited to one enterprise or one sector.

The austerity measures have affected not only the proletariat and semi-proletarian masses of the cities and countryside; they have also affected the petty bourgeoisie and non-monopoly bourgeois strata. Even the less dynamic strata, the traditional base of the bourgeois parties, have been mobilized given the current situation. The social base of the struggle against the bourgeoisie in Power and against imperialism has expanded, to the point where in some dependent countries the mobilization has taken the character of a movement of the whole nation, except for a handful of monopolists. The conditions are maturing for the working class and its revolutionary parties, as representatives and the vanguard of the nation, to decide to organize and advance the movement and the united front of the people.

But despite the great movement, the groups of international finance capital and the local monopoly bourgeoisies have not given in (except in the recent delay of the austerity measures in Portugal). They have decided to implement these measures even at the cost of demeaning the image of the parliaments and weakening their social base. However, the masses are realizing through their own experience the impossibility of repelling the attacks with one or two day strikes or through peaceful demonstrations. Sharper forms of struggle and unlimited general strike are beginning to be considered by the more advanced strata.

It is clear that the bourgeoisie in Power, with their hostile character towards the people, is assuming a position of national betrayal. The traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and parliaments have lost credibility and the mass support for those parties is weakening (especially toward those in government that are implementing austerity measures). The social basis of monopoly capital is weakening. Among the masses who have felt their national pride hurt by the imperialists, the discontent, anger and will to struggle against the major imperialist powers, beginning with the United States and Germany, against institutions like the IMF or the EU, and against the local monopoly bourgeoisie that is collaborating with them, is developing.

The trade union bureaucracy and reformist parties and social trends are following a backward line of “least resistance,” not only in their forms of organization and struggle, but also at the level of political demands and platform. Clearly, this attitude is contributing to weakening their influence among the workers. The attacks and harshness of the social conditions are also affecting the lower strata of the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy and are sharpening the contradictions within their ranks.

The struggles in the countries with “debt crisis” are being developed on a program of protest against the bourgeois governments and parties, against institutions such as the IMF and the EU that are imposing draconian measures and they are demanding their withdrawal. At first this was natural and understandable in the context of a spontaneous movement. But the inability to go beyond those narrow limits is one of the major weaknesses of the movement. This weakness can be overcome with the work of agitation that shows the masses the way out of this difficult situation in which the people and the country find themselves, denouncing the social forces that are an obstacle to that way out. This work of agitation is reinforced by putting forward appropriate demands, slogans and forms of struggle among the masses.

Especially in Greece, certain small groups (that also have weaknesses) have proposed relatively advanced demands and platforms. But the forces capable of influencing the movement are not even concerned with organizing the work necessary to promote the fight on all fronts. The absence or great weakness of a revolutionary class party, has been felt strongly, as it cannot influence the movement.

Linked to the evolution of the world economy, the period that is beginning will be one of further degradation of the living and working conditions for the workers and peoples, a period of intense economic and political attacks, of discontent, anger and militancy among workers, as well as sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts. We must draw lessons and conclusions from the recent developments and the historical experience of the working class and peoples; we must advance, renewing our work and reorganizing our parties.

Tunisia, November 2012

Source

Nikos Zahariadis: Tito Clique’s Stab in the Back to People’s Democratic Greece

From For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy!
No. 15 (42), 1 August, 1949

Nikos Zahariadis
General Secretary,
Communist Party of Greece

Every inhabitant of Greece knows very well that monarcho-fascism would not have been able to hold out for a few months had it not been for the all-round and open aid of the American and British imperialists.

Our main difficulties arise from the fact that the Anglo-American imperialists are stubbornly trying to retain a foothold in Greece. The country is highly important to them for strategic reasons, and they are trying to turn it into a vital bridge head against the People’s Democracies and the Soviet Union. Churchill’s old plans in this respect, for instance, are well-known. However, foreign imperialism’s positions in Greece were badly shaken last year by the military defeat of monarcho-fascism in the Grammos-Vitsi area and by the collapse of its strategic plan for 1948. The People’s revolutionary movement and the democratic army extended and consolidated their positions in Peloponnesus, Rumelia, Thessaly and on the islands of Samos and Eubeia.

This placed the monarcho-fascist regime in a critical position. In their reports General Papagos, Vendiris, Tsakalotos and others openly admitted that army morale had been shaken. Hundreds of men and officers were shot. King Paul himself was compelled to speak about the moral crisis in the army. The Athens clique was in severe economic difficulties and the political crisis was steadily sapping the foundations of monarcho-fascism. Both at home and abroad, people who were by no means our friends began to realise that the only way out for the reactionaries was to reach a peaceful settlement and conclude an agreement.

The treachery of the Tito clique was disclosed at the very moment when the crisis of monarcho-fascism was coming to a head. Tito’s treachery meant serious new difficulties for our people’s democratic movement, for it strengthened the determination of the Anglo-American imperialists to retain, at all costs, their hold on Greece for the very purpose of making full use of the Tito clique and extending their base in the Balkans. At the same time the Tito clique’s over to the camp of imperialism raised the deflated hopes of monarcho-fascism.

The people’s democratic movement of our country has never, since the time of the first occupation, known of such a cunning and foul enemy as the Tito clique. The Great Serbia chauvinism of the Titoites in relation to the resistance movement in Greece was evident as far back as 1943, when the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party declared that the people of Aegean Macedonia could only win their liberation within the framework of Yugoslavia. The corollary of this was that it was the prime duty of all Macedonian patriots to fight against the Communist Party of Greece and EAM and instead to collaborate with the Tito agents.

This was the directive followed by Tito’s man in Aegean Macedonia, Tempo (Vukmanovic). This was the directive applied in practice by their chief agent, Goce. Today is it being carried out by Goce-Koramidjiev gang. During all these years the Tito clique sent thousands of its agents into the Communist Party of Greece and into EAM with the job of undermining the Communist Party of Greece and splitting the unity of the people’s liberation movement.

It is clear that Greek reaction and Anglo-American imperialism could not have found a better ally than the Tito clique. The following detail is extremely characteristic: in October 1944 when the British landed in Greece, Tempo at the head of the provocative movement against the Communist Party of Greece, informed the Communists of Aegean Macedonia that he has asked Tito for two divisions to occupy Salonika. This was before the December events; the British were not sure that they could hold Greece. Preferring to see Salonika occupied by Tito than in the hands of ELAS, the British parachuted weapons onto the aerodrome at Grupista. These were sent on to Vapsori by Tito’s agents – Tempo, Goce and Pios – to be used against ELAS. Even during the Hitler occupation Goce and Pios formed groups of Macedonian and collaborated with Tempo. It can be regarded as an established fact that, as a consequence, Evans, former representative of the British military mission in Macedonia, insisted on the network of these groups being extended. It was at the help of these groups that Goce, Pios and Keramidjiev carried out their disruptive activities against the people’s liberation movement in Greece.

In December 1944 Tito, who dreamt of snatching Salonika from people’s democratic Greece, did nothing to help us fight the British, in spite of all his earlier pompous statements. If anything, he stepped up his slander campaign against the Communist Party of Greece, especially Aegean Macedonia.

Tito organised the mass emigration of Macedonians to Yugoslavia thus depriving Aegean Macedonia of its Macedonian population. Incidentally, the Greek monarcho-fascists have been trying to the same thing for many years, hoping to change the ethnical composition Aegean Macedonia. Then again, the Titoites are trying to recruit agents from these refugees who, after the necessary training, are sent to Greece to operate against the Communist Party of Greece, EAM and our people’s revolutionary movement.

Since 1943 the Greek Communist Party and revolutionary movement have been two fires: on the one side the foreign imperialists and monarcho-fascist, on the other- the Tito clique and its executive organ, the Goce- Keramidiev gang which had and still has hundreds of Yugoslav intelligence servicemen in Aegean Macedonia. In 1944, acting on orders from Skopje, Goce crossed over to Yugoslavia with his detachment. Today Goce and Keramidjiev have their headquarters in Skopje.

Time and again the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece drew the attention of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party to the counter-revolutionary actions of these agents, proved by irrefutable documentary evidence, and demanded that their activities should be stopped. The Central Committee of the Yugoslav Party, however, did not do a thing to cut short these provocation actions.

It has been proved beyond doubt that Hristos Vlachos, who in 1947 in Salonika killed Yannis Zevgos, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Greek Party, was an agent of the Yugoslav intelligence, service and had received his instruction from Skopje. He arrived in Salonika on orders of the Yugoslav intelligence, placed himself at the disposal of General Zervas, an agent of the British Intelligence Service, and later murdered Zevgos. Five monarcho-fascist officers, some of them murderers of the people, escaped to Yugoslavia from a war prisoner’s camp with the help of Rankovic. The Central committee of the Yugoslav Party stated that it knew absolutely nothing about this, even though we gave them details of the date and the exact spot where the monarcho-fascists had crossed the border. Border officers and soldiers had informed us that the monarcho-fascists had crossed into Yugoslavia.

We have captured dozens of Yugoslav intelligence officers. In December 1948 two Yugoslav agents, Gunaris Menos and Gallios Mitsos, were detained in Prespa. These agents disclosed the names of the Yugoslav intelligence officers who had sent them and the assignment they had been given.

The Communist Party of Greece has at its disposal other damning proof of the treachery and disruptive activity of the Tito clique against the revolutionary movement in Greece. The nationalist gang of the treacherous Yugoslav leadership was always a mortal enemy to the Communist Party and people of Greece. Recent events are fresh evidence that the Tito clique helped and is continuing to help Greek and international reaction against the Greek people more and more openly.

In its communiqué of July 6, 1949 the General Headquarters of the Democratic Army stated that on July 5, 1949 monarcho-fascist troops used Yugoslav territory in order to bypass units of the Democratic Army in the Kaimakchalan area. The same day the “Free Greece” telegraph agency, basing itself on an official document (the report of lieutenant colonel Petropulos, commander of the monarcho-fascists’ 516th battalion, to General Grigoropulos, commander of the 3rd army corps), reported that on July 4, 1949, that is, on the eve of the day when the monarcho-fascists crossed Yugoslav territory, a meeting of Yugoslav and monarcho-fascist Greek officers had been held in the area of Popovolossi and Kaimakchalan. This meeting was attended by British and American officers. The Tanjug agency did not refute this fact, neither did the representative of the British Foreign Office when asked about this meeting. Again, neither did Tito deny it in his speech at Pola (Istria), on July 10, 1949. Like the Tanjug agency, he merely tried to refute the fact that an agreement had been reached allowing the monarcho-fascist to use Yugoslav territory.

Such was the Belgrade version when the United Nations Balkan Commission in Athens published its communiqué on July 21, 1949. The sole aim of this communiqué was to cover up Tito’s collaboration with the monarcho-fascists, a collaboration that had been laid bare by the General Headquarters of the Democratic Army and the Free Greece radio on July 6, 1949. This communiqué of the Balkan Commission is highly significant since, to begin with, for the first time in its history the Commission admitted that the monarcho-fascists had violated the Yugoslav frontier in the Kaimakchalan area on many occasions. It claimed, however, that this had been done by artillery and aircraft and not by infantry. Secondly, the communiqué admitted that a meeting of monarcho-fascist and Yugoslav officers had been held in the Kaimakchalan area.

After the Tito clique’s betrayal of the Greek people’s liberation struggle had been exposed in the eyes of progressive mankind and the Yugoslav people, the Yugoslav leaders found it necessary to mobilise yet another provocateur. On July 24, following the example of Tito and Djilas, Kardelj also made a statement to Tanjug on the Greek question. He denied everything: the agreement with Tsaldaris, the negotiations in the Kaimakchalan area, and the use of Yugoslav territory by the monarcho-fascists. He concluded by giving the Jesuit assurance that the Belgrade Government “continues to sympathise” with the movement of the Greek people, but that it “cannot force its assistance on them” and that “the agents of the Information Bureau who slandered Tito” are responsible for this.

We have never doubted the sympathy of the Yugoslav people. As for those who are responsible, “The Times” makes it clear when it writes that in his statement at Pola, Tito gave the Americans the necessary guarantees in advance for the dollars which he needs.

In order to mask their treachery, the traitors Tito, Djilas, Kardelj and company would have the world believe that morale of the Greek democrats is at a low ebb and that they are losing confidence in victory. As a matter of fact these Titoites are doing everything to undermine the morale of the Greek democrats. Tito’s treachery and his long-standing subversive activities against the people’s democratic movement in Greece are causing us serious difficulties. Tito has a deadly hatred for the Geek people’s liberation movement and is viciously fighting against it. But he is mistaken, and so are his monarcho-fascist allies and their common masters, if they think that they will be able to crush us.

Throughout Greece – in Rumelia, Thessaly, Peloponnesus, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and on the islands – the Greek Democratic Army is continuing its struggle against the enemy with unshaken courage in the face of enormous difficulties. A broad strike movement covering tens of thousands of factory and office workers is gaining strength in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of peasants who are literally starving to death in the cities where they have been forcibly driven by the monarcho-fascists, hate the Athens Government with all their soul. Reaction in Greece is in the throes of an economic, political and moral crisis from which it can find no way out. The Greek Democratic Army will come face to face with monarcho-fascism in the great battles that will be fought in Grammos and Vitsi.

We are fight because we want peace, because we want to establish democracy and the independence of Greece. Reaction is out for war. It wants to crush us at all costs and is using the Tito clique for this purpose. Thanks to the assistance and solidarity of progressive mankind, including the Yugoslav people, the people of Greece will be victorious both in war and will win a people’s democracy and national independence.

Source

Why Yugoslavia Was Expelled from the Cominform

Below is a commonly-reprinted argument, the idea that the Titoites broke with the USSR over the question of not helping the Greek Communists enough.

Is this true? Not according to Nikos Zahariadis, General Secretary of the KKE and the symbol of Marxism-Leninism in Greece. This Yugoslav-leaning article will be followed by his essay.

— Espresso Stalinist.

Jun 28, 1948:
Yugoslavia expelled from COMINFORM

The Soviet Union expels Yugoslavia from the Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM) for the latter’s position on the Greek civil war. The expulsion was concrete evidence of the permanent split that had taken place between Russia and Yugoslavia.

The Soviet Union had established COMINFORM in 1947 to serve as a coordinating body for communist parties in Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Most Western observers believed the organization to be the successor to the Communist International (COMINTERN had been dissolved by Russia in 1943, in an effort to placate its wartime allies–the United States and Great Britain). With the hardening of Cold War animosities after World War II, however, the establishment of COMINFORM signaled that the Soviet Union was once again setting itself up as the official leader of the communist bloc nations. In addition, the inclusion of the Italian and French communist parties served notice that the Soviet Union wished to have a strong say in political developments outside of its eastern European satellites. Yugoslavia was an original member, but that nation’s leader, Josef Broz Tito, proved to be reluctant in following the Soviet line. Throughout 1947 and into 1948, Tito harshly criticized Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s lack of assistance to communists fighting for power in Greece. When Tito refused to tone down his complaints, Stalin ordered Yugoslavia expelled from COMINFORM.

After its expulsion, Yugoslavia continued to chart a communist, but distinctly independent, pathway in its domestic and foreign policies. The United States was delighted with the Soviet-Yugoslavia split, and actively courted Tito with economic and military aid in the late-1940s and 1950s. [...]

Source

Tito Clique’s Stab in the Back to People’s Democratic Greece

Nikos Zahariadis
General Secretary,
Communist Party of Greece

From For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy!
No. 15 (42), 1 August, 1949

Every inhabitant of Greece knows very well that monarcho-fascism would not have been able to hold out for a few months had it not been for the all-round and open aid of the American and British imperialists.

Our main difficulties arise from the fact that the Anglo-American imperialists are stubbornly trying to retain a foothold in Greece. The country is highly important to them for strategic reasons, and they are trying to turn it into a vital bridge head against the People’s Democracies and the Soviet Union. Churchill’s old plans in this respect, for instance, are well-known. However, foreign imperialism’s positions in Greece were badly shaken last year by the military defeat of monarcho-fascism in the Grammos-Vitsi area and by the collapse of its strategic plan for 1948. The People’s revolutionary movement and the democratic army extended and consolidated their positions in Peloponnesus, Rumelia, Thessaly and on the islands of Samos and Eubeia.

This placed the monarcho-fascist regime in a critical position. In their reports General Papagos, Vendiris, Tsakalotos and others openly admitted that army morale had been shaken. Hundreds of men and officers were shot. King Paul himself was compelled to speak about the moral crisis in the army. The Athens clique was in severe economic difficulties and the political crisis was steadily sapping the foundations of monarcho-fascism. Both at home and abroad, people who were by no means our friends began to realise that the only way out for the reactionaries was to reach a peaceful settlement and conclude an agreement.

The treachery of the Tito clique was disclosed at the very moment when the crisis of monarcho-fascism was coming to a head. Tito’s treachery meant serious new difficulties for our people’s democratic movement, for it strengthened the determination of the Anglo-American imperialists to retain, at all costs, their hold on Greece for the very purpose of making full use of the Tito clique and extending their base in the Balkans. At the same time the Tito clique’s over to the camp of imperialism raised the deflated hopes of monarcho-fascism.

The people’s democratic movement of our country has never, since the time of the first occupation, known of such a cunning and foul enemy as the Tito clique. The Great Serbia chauvinism of the Titoites in relation to the resistance movement in Greece was evident as far back as 1943, when the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party declared that the people of Aegean Macedonia could only win their liberation within the framework of Yugoslavia. The corollary of this was that it was the prime duty of all Macedonian patriots to fight against the Communist Party of Greece and EAM and instead to collaborate with the Tito agents.

This was the directive followed by Tito’s man in Aegean Macedonia, Tempo (Vukmanovic). This was the directive applied in practice by their chief agent, Goce. Today is it being carried out by Goce-Koramidjiev gang. During all these years the Tito clique sent thousands of its agents into the Communist Party of Greece and into EAM with the job of undermining the Communist Party of Greece and splitting the unity of the people’s liberation movement.

It is clear that Greek reaction and Anglo-American imperialism could not have found a better ally than the Tito clique. The following detail is extremely characteristic: in October 1944 when the British landed in Greece, Tempo at the head of the provocative movement against the Communist Party of Greece, informed the Communists of Aegean Macedonia that he has asked Tito for two divisions to occupy Salonika. This was before the December events; the British were not sure that they could hold Greece. Preferring to see Salonika occupied by Tito than in the hands of ELAS, the British parachuted weapons onto the aerodrome at Grupista. These were sent on to Vapsori by Tito’s agents – Tempo, Goce and Pios – to be used against ELAS. Even during the Hitler occupation Goce and Pios formed groups of Macedonian and collaborated with Tempo. It can be regarded as an established fact that, as a consequence, Evans, former representative of the British military mission in Macedonia, insisted on the network of these groups being extended. It was at the help of these groups that Goce, Pios and Keramidjiev carried out their disruptive activities against the people’s liberation movement in Greece.

In December 1944 Tito, who dreamt of snatching Salonika from people’s democratic Greece, did nothing to help us fight the British, in spite of all his earlier pompous statements. If anything, he stepped up his slander campaign against the Communist Party of Greece, especially Aegean Macedonia.

Tito organised the mass emigration of Macedonians to Yugoslavia thus depriving Aegean Macedonia of its Macedonian population. Incidentally, the Greek monarcho-fascists have been trying to the same thing for many years, hoping to change the ethnical composition Aegean Macedonia. Then again, the Titoites are trying to recruit agents from these refugees who, after the necessary training, are sent to Greece to operate against the Communist Party of Greece, EAM and our people’s revolutionary movement.

Since 1943 the Greek Communist Party and revolutionary movement have been two fires: on the one side the foreign imperialists and monarcho-fascist, on the other- the Tito clique and its executive organ, the Goce- Keramidiev gang which had and still has hundreds of Yugoslav intelligence servicemen in Aegean Macedonia. In 1944, acting on orders from Skopje, Goce crossed over to Yugoslavia with his detachment. Today Goce and Keramidjiev have their headquarters in Skopje.

Time and again the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece drew the attention of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party to the counter-revolutionary actions of these agents, proved by irrefutable documentary evidence, and demanded that their activities should be stopped. The Central Committee of the Yugoslav Party, however, did not do a thing to cut short these provocation actions.

It has been proved beyond doubt that Hristos Vlachos, who in 1947 in Salonika killed Yannis Zevgos, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Greek Party, was an agent of the Yugoslav intelligence, service and had received his instruction from Skopje. He arrived in Salonika on orders of the Yugoslav intelligence, placed himself at the disposal of General Zervas, an agent of the British Intelligence Service, and later murdered Zevgos. Five monarcho-fascist officers, some of them murderers of the people, escaped to Yugoslavia from a war prisoner’s camp with the help of Rankovic. The Central committee of the Yugoslav Party stated that it knew absolutely nothing about this, even though we gave them details of the date and the exact spot where the monarcho-fascists had crossed the border. Border officers and soldiers had informed us that the monarcho-fascists had crossed into Yugoslavia.

We have captured dozens of Yugoslav intelligence officers. In December 1948 two Yugoslav agents, Gunaris Menos and Gallios Mitsos, were detained in Prespa. These agents disclosed the names of the Yugoslav intelligence officers who had sent them and the assignment they had been given.

The Communist Party of Greece has at its disposal other damning proof of the treachery and disruptive activity of the Tito clique against the revolutionary movement in Greece. The nationalist gang of the treacherous Yugoslav leadership was always a mortal enemy to the Communist Party and people of Greece. Recent events are fresh evidence that the Tito clique helped and is continuing to help Greek and international reaction against the Greek people more and more openly.

In its communiqué of July 6, 1949 the General Headquarters of the Democratic Army stated that on July 5, 1949 monarcho-fascist troops used Yugoslav territory in order to bypass units of the Democratic Army in the Kaimakchalan area. The same day the “Free Greece” telegraph agency, basing itself on an official document (the report of lieutenant colonel Petropulos, commander of the monarcho-fascists’ 516th battalion, to General Grigoropulos, commander of the 3rd army corps), reported that on July 4, 1949, that is, on the eve of the day when the monarcho-fascists crossed Yugoslav territory, a meeting of Yugoslav and monarcho-fascist Greek officers had been held in the area of Popovolossi and Kaimakchalan. This meeting was attended by British and American officers. The Tanjug agency did not refute this fact, neither did the representative of the British Foreign Office when asked about this meeting. Again, neither did Tito deny it in his speech at Pola (Istria), on July 10, 1949. Like the Tanjug agency, he merely tried to refute the fact that an agreement had been reached allowing the monarcho-fascist to use Yugoslav territory.

Such was the Belgrade version when the United Nations Balkan Commission in Athens published its communiqué on July 21, 1949. The sole aim of this communiqué was to cover up Tito’s collaboration with the monarcho-fascists, a collaboration that had been laid bare by the General Headquarters of the Democratic Army and the Free Greece radio on July 6, 1949. This communiqué of the Balkan Commission is highly significant since, to begin with, for the first time in its history the Commission admitted that the monarcho-fascists had violated the Yugoslav frontier in the Kaimakchalan area on many occasions. It claimed, however, that this had been done by artillery and aircraft and not by infantry. Secondly, the communiqué admitted that a meeting of monarcho-fascist and Yugoslav officers had been held in the Kaimakchalan area.

After the Tito clique’s betrayal of the Greek people’s liberation struggle had been exposed in the eyes of progressive mankind and the Yugoslav people, the Yugoslav leaders found it necessary to mobilise yet another provocateur. On July 24, following the example of Tito and Djilas, Kardelj also made a statement to Tanjug on the Greek question. He denied everything: the agreement with Tsaldaris, the negotiations in the Kaimakchalan area, and the use of Yugoslav territory by the monarcho-fascists. He concluded by giving the Jesuit assurance that the Belgrade Government “continues to sympathise” with the movement of the Greek people, but that it “cannot force its assistance on them” and that “the agents of the Information Bureau who slandered Tito” are responsible for this.

We have never doubted the sympathy of the Yugoslav people. As for those who are responsible, “The Times” makes it clear when it writes that in his statement at Pola, Tito gave the Americans the necessary guarantees in advance for the dollars which he needs.

In order to mask their treachery, the traitors Tito, Djilas, Kardelj and company would have the world believe that morale of the Greek democrats is at a low ebb and that they are losing confidence in victory. As a matter of fact these Titoites are doing everything to undermine the morale of the Greek democrats. Tito’s treachery and his long-standing subversive activities against the people’s democratic movement in Greece are causing us serious difficulties. Tito has a deadly hatred for the Geek people’s liberation movement and is viciously fighting against it. But he is mistaken, and so are his monarcho-fascist allies and their common masters, if they think that they will be able to crush us.

Throughout Greece – in Rumelia, Thessaly, Peloponnesus, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and on the islands – the Greek Democratic Army is continuing its struggle against the enemy with unshaken courage in the face of enormous difficulties. A broad strike movement covering tens of thousands of factory and office workers is gaining strength in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of peasants who are literally starving to death in the cities where they have been forcibly driven by the monarcho-fascists, hate the Athens Government with all their soul. Reaction in Greece is in the throes of an economic, political and moral crisis from which it can find no way out. The Greek Democratic Army will come face to face with monarcho-fascism in the great battles that will be fought in Grammos and Vitsi.

We are fight because we want peace, because we want to establish democracy and the independence of Greece. Reaction is out for war. It wants to crush us at all costs and is using the Tito clique for this purpose. Thanks to the assistance and solidarity of progressive mankind, including the Yugoslav people, the people of Greece will be victorious both in war and will win a people’s democracy and national independence.

Source

Prelude to Genocide: How Capitalism Caused the Balkan Wars

The U.S. claims that the Balkan people are gripped by irrational hatreds. And that the U.S. (the self-appointed “cop of the world”) and their allies have no choice but to step in, bomb, impose, threaten and dictate. The imperialists insist that the people of the Balkans need outside forces to dominate them–to save them from themselves! It is an imperialist self-justification–based on crudely turning history upside down. It blames the people for the suffering imposed on them by capitalism.

The Balkan region of southeastern Europe is a complex “jaguar skin” of different nationalities. The Catholic northern part of Yugoslavia–including Slovenia and Croatia–had longstanding links to Austria and Germany to the north. The southern part of Yugoslavia had long historical ties eastward toward Greece, Turkey and the northern Slavic countries of Bulgaria and Russia.

History has created pockets of national hatreds here–the same way some towns or counties in the U.S. are known as white racist towns. But the hatreds of these rural backwaters did not need to infect and polarize the whole country. But over the last ten years, waves of war have washed over the Balkans, subjecting the masses of people to “ethnic cleansing” by death squads and now large-scale bombing by the U.S. and its NATO allies.

The origins of this warfare are not ancient–they are quite modern. These wars are caused by the capitalist rivalries of various ruling classes of the republics of former Yugoslavia–coldly egged on, armed, and backed by imperialist powers, like Germany, the U.S. and Russia.

This article looks at the history of Yugoslavia since its founding after World War 2. It shows that capitalist development caused tensions and inequalities within Yugoslavia and how reactionary war emerged from the power grabs of various bourgeois nationalist forces there.

Behind the Civil War

The nationalities living in the Balkan mountain area can unite–and they proved it. These peoples created a powerful multinational guerrilla movement during World War 2 to defeat the German Nazis and Italian fascists who occupied the region for three years. The peoples of Yugoslavia pinned down many divisions of Nazi troops–and ultimately freed themselves, guns in hand, in a communist-led resistance war. Modern Yugoslavia was build out of that unity–bringing together six nations and several other significant nationalities.

There was no reason why a new, progressive, multinational unity could not have been built. The key would have been uniting on the basis of the interests of the masses of people–along the road of socialism and proletarian internationalism.

But there was, unfortunately, never any real socialist transformation in Yugoslavia. The leaders of the new Yugoslavia, headed by Josef Broz Tito, betrayed the revolution and took the capitalist road–straight into the embrace of U.S. imperialism. This laid the seeds for the wars of today.

The Titoites broke the Yugoslav economy into small independent units. In agriculture, early experiments in collectivization were reversed–by 1957 virtually all the farms were in private hands. Nationalized industry was “privatized.” Individual factories were officially operating under “workers’ self-management.” But the policy was set by directors, and the real control was exercised by the market mechanism of capitalism. Without socialist planning, profit decided where investments flowed, what was produced, and who got to work. In reality “worker self-management” meant that wages were tied to factory profits–they were a form of piecework. Factories, industries and whole regions were competing with each other and profit was in command. And, more importantly, the proletariat did not have state power. It was impossible for them to revolutionize society.

The World’s First Experience with “Capitalist Roaders in Power”

By 1948 Tito was sharply criticized by the world communist movement, then led by Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile Tito was praised and supported by the imperialists–who were waging all kinds of warfare against revolutionary and socialist forces around the world. Tito claimed that he would walk a “non-aligned” path between East and West. But in fact, his Yugoslavia quickly became dependent on the imperialists–politically, economically and militarily–tied to the world capitalist market while he huddled under the U.S. “nuclear umbrella.”

For the first time in history a victorious armed movement led by supposed communists had come to power, but it set up a capitalist society. This was the first experience with “revisionism in power”–meaning a capitalist ruling class that claimed to be leading a socialist society.

The development of Yugoslavia was closely studied by revolutionaries like Mao Tsetung. In 1955, Khrushchev, a top leader in the Soviet Union, visited Yugoslavia and praised Tito. Within a year, Khrushchev himself had seized complete power in the Soviet Union and took it too down the capitalist road.

In 1963 under Mao’s leadership, the Chinese Communist Party sent an open letter called–Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?–to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In that polemic, Mao’s forces wrote: “The restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia will make all Marxist-Leninists see better and enable people to realize more keenly the necessity and urgency of combating modern revisionism. So long as imperialism exists, there is apparently no ground for saying that the danger of the restoration of capitalism in the socialist countries has been eliminated.”

Capitalist Roots of National Antagonisms

Under the weight of growing debt to the West, the Titoites carried out new “reforms” in 1965. They moved to make their currency convertible to Western currencies–so that investments could more easily flow in and profits could more easily flow out. After 1968, foreign capitalists could invest directly in the private sector. Yugoslavia became the first revisionist country to set up a stock market. These innovations of the capitalist road are now being carried out in the rest of Eastern Europe.

Yugoslav proletarians were sent off as cheap labor for northern Europe–they basically became an “export commodity.” By 1971, over a million Yugoslavs were immigrant workers, over half of them in West Germany.

According to World Bank statistics, the wealthiest 5 percent of Yugoslav households earned 25 percent of the national income in the 1970s, while the poorest 20 percent of the population earned less than 7 percent. This was one of the most extreme income gaps in Europe–in fact, according to the World Bank, even India’s income distribution gap was not as big!

The northern nations of Yugoslavia–Slovenia and Croatia–were more highly developed industrially and agriculturally. The three southern national areas–Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Albanian region of Kosovo–were far more undeveloped and poor. Serbia, the largest national grouping, is in between North and South and is also a relatively poor area. These divisions within Yugoslavia got even more acute because of the capitalist development pursued by Yugoslavia. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Over decades, this created a powerful basis for antagonism between the nationalities of the country and for the growth of reactionary nationalism.

Investment flows where the profits are greatest. The industrial northern nations developed rapidly after 1945, while the poorer southern republics stagnated. When the 1990s started, per capita production in Slovenia was three times as high as it was in poorer regions like Macedonia. By 1970 the per capita income of the average Slovene was over six times that of the average Kosovar. Kosovo lives in Third World conditions–comparable to Bolivia or Morocco–while in Slovenia the standard of living is closer to that of neighboring Austria.

The villages in the poorer peasant regions of the south emptied. People went north for lousy jobs and barrack-like living conditions as “guest workers”–within the supposedly “equal” Yugoslav federation. These “guest workers” make up 15 to 20 percent of the Slovenian workforce and are treated like dirt.

The old phony-communist system of Yugoslavia was based on state capitalism and a complex system of balancing bourgeois national interests. Inevitably, that old federation became strained. Bourgeois forces leading each republic tried to shift wealth toward “their” nations.

Inequality Gives Rise to Political, then Military Conflict

In the 1980s the conflicts intensified because of classic “IMF crisis.” Yugoslavia sank deeply into debt to the International Monetary Fund and other international imperialist lenders–to the tune of $1.8 billion. The lenders demanded that capitalist Yugoslavia take “austerity” measures to pay back the debt, and this inflamed the conflict in the country.

The masses themselves were not especially gripped by national hatreds–certainly not at the beginning. Large parts of the population had intermarried. In urban areas people moved away from religion–which had been a form through which national hostilities had been expressed. Many people no longer identified with one or another nationality–but simply considered themselves “Yugoslavs.” Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia was famous for this kind of multicultural fusion. Today, the masses of people there still fondly remember the days when people lived and worked together peacefully.

Meanwhile, under the surface, the inequalities between Yugoslavia’s regions and the rival ambitions of the different national capitalist forces within Yugoslavia created conditions for an eruption.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, and imperialist power shifted in Europe, it tore old Yugoslavia apart. Warring bourgeois camps sprang out–claiming to protect the survival of different national groups–while they pursued their own interests and sought to divide the people along national lines.

After Tito died, an extremely reactionary movement won the leadership of the state-capitalist forces in Serbia. Led by Slobodan Milosevic, this political current insisted that the time had come for the Serbian nation (meaning the Serbian national bourgeoisie operating within the larger Yugoslavian state) to grab for itself–and impose its will by force. Milosevic, like most ruling class figures in the former Yugoslavia, was a former revisionist–meaning that he had been part of the ruling Yugoslavian party, the “League of Communists,” which was a phony communist, state capitalist government institution.

Some forces argue that the U.S. is attacking Serbia to enforce economic privatization and the elimination of “socialist” remnants in Yugoslavian society. These analyses are completely off the mark.

There is no socialism in Yugoslavia today and there never was. Yugoslavia has been controlled by running dogs of the U.S. and enemies of real communism for its whole history. Yugoslavia built its economy along capitalist and free-market lines over 40 years ago. And today, there is certainly nothing socialist at all about the economy of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation or the politics of local capitalist-nationalist reactionaries like Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic is the top representative of the Serbian capitalist ruling class which is attempting a reactionary power grab in the region–and has collided with some larger interests of NATO’s imperialist/capitalists –especially those ruling Germany, Britain and the U.S.

In 1989 Milosevic made Kosovo a symbol and a starting point of this regional power grab. As he came to power within the Yugoslavian federation he revoked the autonomy that Kosovo had exercised within Serbia. He started to systematically impose a Serbian domination on the Albanian majority of Kosovo. He brutally suppressed a powerful strike among the Kosovo miners, expelled Albanians from the universities, imposed Serbian police and troops on the province–and generally made it clear that his government intended to drive Albanians from Kosovo. There were repeated incidents of police murder, as the cops acted like an occupying force.

All this signaled that military force was being applied to turn Yugoslavia into a Greater Serbia. It greatly accelerated the development of separatist sentiments among the ruling classes of the other nationalities (like Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia). The masses of people feared that they would soon be targeted for their nationality.

The capitalist forces controlling Slovenia and Croatia thought they could get a better deal outside of the Yugoslavian federation. They were encouraged, backed, and armed by newly reunited German imperialism. Once Croatia and Slovenia seceded, the Yugoslavian federation started to unravel. The Federal army command, dominated by Serbian officers, emerged more and more as the real power holding the Yugoslav federation together. Warfare erupted in waves.

First came war between the Serbian-dominated Yugoslavian army and the governments of Croatia and Slovenia that declared independence from Yugoslavia. That war ended with independence for both Croatia and Slovenia.

Then, a three-sided war erupted within the most multinational republic, Bosnia, as Serbian and Croatian militias fought to drive other nationalities out, and annex parts of Bosnia to their republics.

Both the Croatian and Serbian nationalists developed death-squad like forces that carried out “ethnic cleansing”–murderous terror campaigns designed to force the masses of people to flee multinational areas and group with their own nationality.

With major German and U.S. military backing, the Croatian forces were able to fight the Serbian/Yugoslavian army to a stalemate–inside and outside Bosnia. This led to the 1995 Dayton Accords where the U.S. and Milosevic together imposed a defacto partitioning of Bosnia between Croatian and Serbian forces–and cut the very ground out from underneath the Bosnian Muslims (who the U.S. claimed to be helping).

The third wave of fighting has now erupted in Kosovo–as Milosevic moved to defeat the armed Albanian forces resisting his reactionary nationalist moves. The campaigns of suppressing Albanians accelerated. Serbian death squad forces, like “Arkan’s Tigers,” made their appearance with high-level government support. This fighting is particularly troublesome for U.S. interests because it threatens to destabilize Macedonia–and carried a great risk of disrupting U.S./NATO alliances in this region.

This bitter series of Balkan wars is a living example both of how capitalism leads to the domination of one nation over another and how imperialism inflames conflicts among the people into reactionary war.

Reactionary Polarizations

The bitter events of years of civil war and ethnic cleansing have deepened painful chasms between the peoples of various nationalities that can only be overcome through tremendous struggle and revolutionary leadership. Progressive sentiments, opposition to ethnic cleansing and desires for unity are often heard among the masses of people throughout this whole region–along with considerable hatred of reactionary nationalist forces leading the governments of Serbia and Croatia. However, despite that, the political and military initiative has remained in the hands of those bourgeois nationalist forces.

Within these intense and often many-sided conflicts–there are forces who have been fighting for just causes. In particular, the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians of Kosovo have been fighting in self-defense, and have raised just demands for self-determination and independence to guarantee the security of persecuted peoples.

The whole situation in the Balkans cries out for an armed, determined multinational force with a internationalist vision of solidarity between the peoples and a program for defeating reactionaries and building a new society. Unfortunately, there is no Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party in the Balkans today to lead such an armed struggle. One will have to be built. There is no shortcut out of this situation. Support for imperialist intervention and occupation will only deepen the divisions, confusions and sufferings among the people–and it will only strengthen the position of imperialism in the world as a whole to impose its interests on oppressed people.

Many millions all over the world are watching the bitter sufferings of the Balkan people. And there is a way for them to help create the conditions for something better. It is to firmly and forcefully oppose the interventions and intrigues of the U.S. and NATO. It would be a great contribution to the future of the Balkan peoples to make it as difficult as possible for the Great Powers to bomb and occupy, infiltrate local movements and governments, build up their favorite local reactionaries, and impose their interests over the bones of the people.

Source

Forbidding the “G-Word”: Holocaust Denial as Judicial Doctrine in Canada by Ward Churchill

“Where scholars deny genocide, [they] contribute to the deadly psychohistorical dynamic in which unopposed genocide begets new genocides.”

—Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and Denial of the Armenian Genocide” (1995)

Denial of genocide has become a matter of increasing concern in recent years, primarily as a result of efforts by a relative handful of neo-Nazi “scholars” to rehabilitate their ideological heritage by advancing arguments and “evidence” that the Hitlerian Holocaust of the early 1940s never occurred. (1) So insidious has Holocaust denial been considered by many governments that they have criminalized it, and prosecutions of deniers have occurred in France, Canada and elsewhere. (2) The United States bars known deniers from entering the country, and has supported civil litigation against individuals and institutions engaging in such activities. (3)

A related but far less noticed phenomenon has been the efforts of a significant number of ostensibly more reputable scholars to indulge in a sort of reverse denial. According to this group, the Holocaust undoubtedly occurred, but it was something experienced exclusively by Jews. (4) Here, the fates of the Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and others at the hands of the Nazis are routinely minimized and consigned to the ambiguous category of “non-genocidal suffering.” (5)

In their more extreme formulations, proponents of Jewish exclusivism hold not only that the Holocaust was a uniquely Jewish experience, but that it is history’s sole instance of “true” genocide. Exclusivists have gone on record, explicitly and repeatedly, denying that everything from the extermination of the Pequots in 1637, to the Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenians between 1915 and 1918, to the more recent genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo aren’t really examples of genocide at all. (6) Hence, while neo-Nazis deny a single genocide, exclusivists deny many.

There are of course other distinctions to be drawn between Holocaust deniers and those championing the exclusivity of suffering embodied in the Nazi Judeocide. Although their influence often exceeds their actual numbers, (7) the propagandists of neo-Nazism are by any definition a tiny fringe group. Those promoting ideas of Jewish exclusivism, on the other hand, comprise substantial majorities at the very hearts of the academic and media mainstreams. Moreover, their outlook has been adopted as official or quasi-official policy by numerous governments, including most prominently those taking the strongest stands against neo-Nazi deniers. (8) In sum, the Holocaust uniqueness postulations of Jewish exclusivism have assumed the status of an orthodoxy in historical/sociological interpretation, while those of neo-Nazism have not (and hopefully never will).

The reasons for this are not especially mysterious. The magnitude of their people’s catastrophe has generated among Jews an understandable need to find spiritual meaning in the experience, a matter which had led many to an unfortunate perversion of their own tradition in which they, a “chosen people,” were uniquely selected by God to endure the Holocaust. (9) More pragmatically—or cynically—others have realized that such suffering can be translated into a kind of “moral capital” and used to political advantage, particularly in garnering support for the Israeli state. (10) There is thus a clear, and often quite overtly expressed, desire among many Jews to claim an absolute monopoly in terms of genocidal suffering. (11)

For the elites of gentile societies, meanwhile, affirming the pretensions of Jewish Holocaust exclusivism carries with it an automatic absolution: If only the Nazi Judeocide can be qualified as genocide, it follows that only Nazis have ever been perpetrators or beneficiaries of the crime. The point is not insignificant. Genocide has been all but universally decried as a not merely “incomparable,” but an “unthinkable” offense, (12) one defying any possible redemption of those committing it (which is of course why neo-Nazis seek to “prove” their ideological forebears did not engage in it). As the Germans have long since discovered, the citizenry of no nation can take pride in a history besmirched by genocidal comportment. (13) Nor can any citizenry be counted upon to conveniently acquiesce in contemporary policies of genocide carried out in their name.

Far more than mere conceptions of “national honor” are at stake. Among those wishing to see themselves as “good people”—which is virtually everyone—the very term “genocide” provokes such deep and generalized revulsion that any official admission of its descriptive applicability to the national character, even historically, might threaten the hegemony upon which systemic stability largely depends.14 Genocide must therefore be denied at all costs, most often by explaining it away as being or having been something else altogether. For this purpose, constraining perceptions of genocide to the terms set forth by Jewish exclusivism serves non-Jewish interests as readily as Jewish.

Definitional Distortions

Genocide is not an old word, having “naturally” evolved over time to hold meanings contrary to its own. Nor was it meant to serve as a synonym for mass killing. When Raphaël Lemkin coined the term in 1944, he went to considerable lengths in explaining that it was intended to describe policies and processes designed to bring about the dissolution and disappearance of targeted human groups, as such. He wrote “Genocide has two phases, one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.” (15) If these two conditions have been fulfilled, a genocide has occurred, even if every member of the targeted group has survived the process in a physical sense.

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be a disintegration of political and social institutions—of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed at the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed at individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group (emphasis added). (16)

In 1946, Lemkin was retained by the United Nations Secretariat to draft an international convention codifying the crime. Therein, genocide—that is, “policies aimed at eradicating targeted ethnical, racial, national, religious or political groups”—was defined in a twofold way: “(1) the destruction of a group,” and “(2) preventing its preservation and development.” (17) The offending policies were themselves grouped in three categories, all of equal gravity:

· Physical Genocide, meaning outright extermination as well as the imposition of “slow death measures (i.e., subjection to conditions of life which, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion are likely to result in the debilitation and death of individuals; mutilations and biological experiments imposed for other than curative purposes; and deprivation of livelihood by means of looting or confiscation of property).

· Biological Genocide, meaning the prevention of births among the target group (i.e., involuntary sterilization or abortion, as well as compulsory segregation of the sexes).

· Cultural Genocide, meaning destruction of the specific characteristics of the group (i.e., forced dispersal of the population; forced transfer of children to another group; suppression of religious practices or the national language; forced exile of writers, artists, religious and political leaders or other individuals representing the culture of the group; destruction of cultural/religious shrines or monuments, or their diversion to alien uses; destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic or religious value, and objects used in religious worship). (18)

The draft was then turned over to a committee composed of nation-state delegates to be “revised and condensed” before its submission to the U.N. General Assembly. During this process, the United States and Canada, acting in concert, were able to arrange deletion of almost the entire provision on cultural genocide, as well as all explicit references to slow death measures.19 As the matter was finally framed in international law on December 9, 1948, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:”

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (20)

Strikingly, even in this greatly-truncated delineation, only one in five criteria pertain to direct killing. Eighty percent of the legal definition of genocide thus devolves upon nonlethal policies and activities. The responses of the U.S. and Canada to this are instructive. The United States simply refused for forty years to accept the result. Finally, in 1988, embarrassed at being the only country so openly rejecting the rule of law, it attempted a ratification in which it claimed a “right” to exempt itself from compliance whenever convenient. (22)

Canada also submitted an invalid ratification, but much earlier, in 1952. The subterfuge in this case was to write domestic implementing legislation in such a way as to excise from the country’s “legal understanding” those classifications of genocidal policy in which Canada was actually engaged, retaining only those involving “physical destruction… killing, or its substantial equivalents” (that is, Article II(a), (c) and (d) of the 1948 Convention).

For purposes of Canadian law, we believe that the definition of genocide should be drawn somewhat more narrowly than in the [already much narrowed] international Convention so as to include only killing and its substantial equivalents…The other components of the international definition, viz, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group and forcibly transferring children of one group to another group with intent to destroy the group we deem inadvisable for Canada. (23)

In 1985, the parliament went further, removing the prohibition on involuntary sterilization (1948 Convention, Article II(d)) from Canada’s genocide statute. (24) No country, of course, whether it be Canada or the U.S. or Nazi Germany, holds a legitimate prerogative to pick and choose among elements of international law, electing to abide by some and not others. It possess even less of a right to unilaterally “revise” the Laws of Nations in conformity with its own preferences. As the Nazis were informed at Nuremberg, the requirements of customary law are binding, irrespective of whether individual sovereignties wish to accept them. (25)

Nonetheless, taking the cue from their governments, a range of “responsible” scholars shortly set themselves to the task of deforming Lemkin’s concept even further. In 1959, Dutch law professor Pieter Drost published a massive two-volume study wherein he argued that usage of the term “genocide” should be restricted to its physical and biological dimensions, and that cultural genocide should be redesignated as “ethnocide,” a term he erroneously attributed to “post-war French scholars.” (26) Thereafter, biological genocide was also quietly dropped from discussion as writer after writer defined genocide exclusively in terms of killing. (27) Forty years of this continuous “genocide equals mass murder” distortion has yielded an altogether predictable effect, not only on the popular consciousness but on that of many otherwise critical activists and intellectuals. This last is readily evident in the recent release of a book by Native Hawaiian sovereigntist and professor Haunani-Kay Trask, wherein genocide is defined as simply the “systematic killing of a people identified by ethnic/racial characteristics.” (28)

Friends of the Lubicon

Questions arise as to whether, after all this, Lemkinesque understandings of genocide still prevail at all, and if so, whether they retain the capacity to galvanize public sentiment. The answers rest, to some extent, in a handful of examples. In 1968, as part of the Russell Tribunal’s verdict condemning U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Jean-Paul Sartre concluded not only that was the policy itself genocidal, but that colonialism as a system inherently produces genocidal results.29 Considerable support was lent to the latter of Sartre’s findings in 1980, when the Tribunal published a report on conditions imposed upon the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.30

Still further expansions on the theme have accrued through publications like Cultural Survival Quarterly, and in the Native resistance movements which emerged during the 1980s in places like Wollaston Lake, James Bay and Big Mountain, Arizona.31 Perhaps the most potent example, however, concerns the experience of a tiny Cree band at Lubicon Lake, in northern Alberta, who have been confronted with sociocultural eradication as the result of maneuverings on the parts of both the federal and provincial governments to allow the Daishowa Corporation, a transnational manufacturer of paper products, to “deforest” their traditional territory (within which government-sanctioned oil and gas exploration had already wrought a noticeable degree of havoc).32

After fruitlessly attempting to negotiate a resolution with both the corporation and participating governmental entities, the band, working through a non-native Toronto-based organization calling itself Friends of the Lubicon (FOL), announced a boycott of Daishowa products in 1991. The FOL made the genocidal impacts of the corporation’s planned clearcutting of Lubicon territory the centerpiece of its effort, developing a well-conceived media campaign to put its message across. As a Canadian court later put it, the “results of the Friends’ campaign against Daishowa…were, in a word, stunning.”33 Not only did typical Canadians prove quite capable of understanding nonlethal modes of genocide, they displayed a pronounced willingness to decline to trade with businesses complicit in such processes. On this basis:

Approximately fifty companies using paper products (mostly paper bags) from Daishowa were approached by the Friends. The list of these companies reads like a Who’s Who of the retail and fast food industries in Ontario—Pizza Pizza, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Cultures, Country Style Donuts, Mr. Submarine, Bootlegger, A&W, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Woolworth’s, Roots, Club Monaco, Movenpeck Restaurants and Holt Renfrew, to name but a few. Every one of the companies approached by the Friends joined the boycott of Daishowa products. All but two did so…before their stores were picketed…Pizza Pizza was subjected to picketing outside its store on two occasions; Woolworth’s had a single store picketed on two occasions…Both Pizza Pizza and Woolworth’s joined the boycott.34

By 1994, the boycott was costing Daishowa millions of dollars annually in lost sales.35 Under such circumstances, it stood to lose money rather than profiting by cutting timber on Lubicon land. One result was that, although Daishowa had indicated that it would commence logging operations “as soon as the ground freezes over” in the fall of 1991, not a tree was felled.36 As FOL leader Kevin Thomas observed in 1997, the success of the boycott demonstrated clearly that there are viable alternatives for those genuinely opposed to genocide. Rather than simply bearing “moral witness” to what is happening half-a-world away in Tibet or Kosovo, it is entirely possible “to actually make a difference by focusing attention mainly on what our own government is doing right here at home and undertaking direct action to stop it.”37

“This can have a precedential effect,” Thomas suggests. “Halting genocide in one place helps lay the groundwork for halting it in all places. But, for this to happen, it’s essential that people be made aware of what genocide actually is. We’ve all been pretty systematically misled on that score, but if we’re confused, if we can’t recognize genocide for what it is when it’s happening right in front of us, there’s no way in the world we can change anything for the better. That’s why there’s been so much effort expended on keeping everybody confused about it: business as usual pretty much depends on an ability to perpetrate genocide more-or-less continuously, without its being recognized as such and, as a result, without its encountering significant opposition from average citizens.”38

Judicial Repression in Canada

The lesson was lost on neither the corporate nor the governmental sectors of Canada’s status quo. Consequently, naming Thomas and two other key organizers as principle defendants, Daishowa filed a SLAPP suit against the FOL on January 11, 1995. Citing millions in lost revenues and a steady erosion in its client base as damages, the corporation contended that the three men had conspired to employ illegal tactics such as an illegal secondary boycott, and were guilty of defamation by using the word “genocide” in their public outreach efforts.39

Even before the defendants had an opportunity to file a response to the allegations against them, a temporary injunction was issued to prevent them from engaging in boycott activities of any sort for ninety days. By then, Daishowa’s attorneys had requested an interlocutory injunction to extend the prohibition for the duration of the suit. This motion was “substantially dismissed,” but the FOL was ordered not to describe Daishowa’s planned activities as genocidal until a final ruling had been made.40 The following trial ended with one of the more brilliantly obfuscatory rulings in Canadian history.

At one level, Judge J.C. MacPherson’s lengthy verdict was a study in liberal legal scholarship, rejecting in an almost contemptuous tone each of Daishowa’s claims that the FOL’s boycott techniques had been in themselves unlawful. On the contrary, he concluded, “the manner in which the Friends have performed their picketing and boycott activities is a model of how such activities should be conducted in a democratic society.”41 All of this progressive cant, however, was simply a gloss meant to disguise the unmistakably reactionary core of what the judge had to say: that the FOL’s characterization of Daishowa’s corporate policy as genocidal constituted “an enormous injustice…bordering on the grotesque…cavalier and grossly unfair to Daishowa.”42 Having thus found that the FOL had indeed defamed the corporation, he forbade them—and everyone else in Canada—from ever again employing such accurate terminology to describe what the corporation was doing.43

It was not that MacPherson was unaware of the “plight” in which Daishowa’s activities had placed the Lubicons. Indeed, he remarked upon it at some length.

The essential subject matter of everything the Friends say and do is the plight of the Lubicon Cree…There can be little doubt that their plight, especially in recent years, is a tragic, indeed a desperate one…The loss of a traditional economy of hunting, trapping and gathering, the negative effect of industrial development on a people spiritually anchored in nature, the disintegration of a social structure grounded in families led by successful hunters and trappers, alcoholism, serious community health problems such as tuberculosis, and poor relations with governments and corporations engaged in oil and gas and forest operations on land the Lubicon regard as theirs—all of these have contributed to a current state of affairs for the Lubicon Cree which deserves the adjectives tragic, desperate and intolerable.44

Nor was he unaware that imposition of such conditions by “governments and corporations engaged in oil and gas and forest operations” conforms quite precisely with both the etymological and legal definitions of the crime of genocide, even under Canadian law. In his verdict, the judge quoted Raphaël Lemkin, the 1948 Convention and the relevant Canadian statute all three, only to disregard them, along with testimonies of a whole series of expert witnesses,45 in favor of the “plain and ordinary meaning of the word ‘genocide’” contained in Webster’s Dictionary. This, he insisted—although the dictionary actually didn’t—was “the intentional killing of a group of people.”46

MacPherson never specified the point at which he believed the content of abridged dictionaries had come to outweigh black letter legal definition in Canadian jurisprudence.47 Less did he explain how, using his “common sense” approach, anyone is supposed to distinguish between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and such relatively trivial phenomena as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (both involve the “intentional killing of a group of people,” and would thus seem to be equally genocidal under the judge’s “plain, ordinary” and utterly absurd interpretation).48 Nevertheless, he went on to assert that characterizations of genocide deriving from other definitions—those found in international law, for example—do not constitute “fair comment” about perpetrators and their activities.49

It follows that organizations like the FOL, devoted not only to direct action but to what even the judge described as a broader “educational” purpose, are left with an ability to confront genocidal processes only by referring to them as something else (which is to say, in effect, by implicitly denying that they are genocide).50 In the alternative, should such groups—or, presumably, the victims themselves—insist upon calling things by their right names, perpetrators have been perfectly positioned by MacPherson’s judicial prevarications to claim “damages” and/or take other legal action against them.

The Wages of Denial

As prominent exclusivist Deborah Lipstadt has noted, the “general public tends to accord victims of genocide a certain moral authority. If you devictimize a people, you strip them of their moral authority,” and thus a substantial measure of their ability to attract public support.51 Lipstadt was writing from an explicitly Jewish perspective, of course, and of her own people’s natural desire to be compensated in various ways for the horrors of the Nazi Judeocide. Her point, however, is equally valid with respect to any genocidally victimized group. Moreover, where genocide is an ongoing process—as with the Lubicons—the need for public support goes not to securing compensation, but survival itself.

This is by no means an academic consideration. Cumulatively, one result of a half-century of “scholarship” by people like Lipstadt has been the functional devictimization of literally hundreds of indigenous peoples, even as their very existence has been systematically extinguished. Refused moral authority by those better stationed to monopolize it for themselves—and thus unable to command public attention, much less support—a truly staggering number of Native societies have been pushed into oblivion since 1950.52 It is in some ways a perverse testament to the effectiveness of exclusivist propaganda that most such passings—whether physical or “merely” cultural—have gone not only unprotested but unnoticed by the general populace.

In this, the convolutions of legalism have played their role. Arcane preoccupations with the standards of proof required in establishing perpetrator intent, and exactly what scale, mode, tempo or proportionality of killing should be necessary for instances of mass murder to be considered “genuinely” genocidal, have done far more to mask than to reveal the realities of genocide. (53) Small wonder that there has never been a concerted attempt by the international community to enforce the 1948 Convention. Now J.C. MacPherson places his personal capstone on the whole sordid situation, entering a ruling which by implication transforms law from its potential as a weapon against genocide into one with which those engaged in it can shield themselves from any sort of effective exposure and intervention.

Denial of genocide, insofar as it plainly facilitates continuation of the crime, amounts to complicity in it. This is true whether the deniers are neo-Nazis, Jewish exclusivists, renowned international jurists or provincial Canadian judges. Complicity in genocide is, under Article III of the 1948 Convention, tantamount to perpetration of genocide itself. It is formally designated a Crime Against Humanity, those who engage in it criminals of the worst sort. There is no difference in this sense between a J.C. MacPherson, a Deborah Lipstadt and an Adolf Eichmann. (54)

And what of the victims? Unquestionably, any group faced with the prospect of systemically-imposed extinction holds not only the right but the obligation to defend and preserve itself by the best means available to it. Afforded the moral currency attending its circumstance, it may well be able to undertake this task both nonviolently and successfully. This, surely, is a primary lesson of the recent collaboration between the Lubicons and the FOL. Denied such currency, however, the victims can hardly be expected to simply “lie down in a ditch and die.” (30) To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., those who endeavor to make the success of peaceful resistance to genocide impossible only make violent resistance inevitable. They can have no complaint, morally, ethically or otherwise, when the chickens come home to roost.

____________________________________________

Endnotes:

1. Pierre Vidal-Niquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press, 1993).

2. In France, there was the 1981 trial of Robert Faurisson, the country’s leading denier, for defaming Holocaust witnesses and scholars. In Canada, the most notable cases have been the 1985 prosecutions of James Keegstra, an Alberta school teacher who’d spent fourteen years indoctrinating his students that the Holocaust was a “hoax,” and Ernst Zundel, a Toronto-based publisher who is one of the world’s leading purveyors of such tripe. See Nadine Fresco, “Denial of the Dead: On the Faurisson Affair,” Dissent, Fall 1981; Alan T. Davies, “A Tale of Two Trials: Antisemitism in Canada,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 4, 1989.

3. The primary case in the U.S. was Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review, et al., Superior Court of California, Civ. No. 356542 (Feb. 1981); British “historian” David Irving is among those barred from entering the United States because of his record as a denier.

4. See, e.g., Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1985); Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

5. This happens by way both directly and by way of omission. In Deborah Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust, for example, there is not so much as an index entry for Gypsies, despite the fact that this smaller people was subject to exactly the same Nazi racial decrees as Jews, were exterminated in precisely the same manner and in the same places as Jews, and, proportionately, suffered equivalent or greater population losses; Ian Hancock, “Responses to the Porrajmos: The Romani Holocaust,” in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives in Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). For direct assertions, see, e.g., Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York: New York University Press, 1990).

6. Although there are literally hundreds of iterations of the notion available from other authors, the most comprehensive assertion that the Nazi Judeocide is “phenomenologically unique” has been that advanced by Steven T. Katz in his massive The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

7. A poll conducted in Italy during the fall of 1992, for example, revealed that nearly 10 percent of the country’s adult population have been convinced that the Holocaust never happened; Jewish Telegraph News Agency, Nov. 11, 1992.

8. Examples of official policy include the quid pro quo entered into between the governments of Israel and Turkey by which the Israelis ban public characterizations of the Armenian genocide as genocide. In exchange, the Turks pronounce the Nazi Judeocide as the “real” genocide. Working together, the two governments were able to prevent the Armenians from being listed as victims of genocide in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; Roger W. Smith, Eric Marusen and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, No. 9, 1995. Insofar as it has received not inconsiderable governmental support and endorsement, the Holocaust Memorial Museum itself, though nominally private, may be viewed as an example of quasi-official policy.

9. See, e.g., Arthur A. Cohen, The Tremendium: A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981); John Roth and Michael Berenbaum, The Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (New York: Paragon House, 1989). For critique, see John Murray Cuddahy, “The Holocaust: The Latent Issue in the Uniqueness Debate,” in Philip F. Gallagher, ed., Christians, Jews and Other Worlds: Patterns of Conflict and Accommodation (Landham, MS: University Press of America, 1988); Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York: Pantheon, [2nd ed.] 1990).

10. The term “moral capital” is taken from exclusivist writer Edward Alexander, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1994) p. 195.

11. E.g., Yehuda Bauer, “Whose Holocaust?” and Edward Alexander, “Stealing the Holocaust,” both in Midstream, Vol. 26, No. 9, 1980.

12. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, The Incomparable Crime; Mass Extermination in the 20th Century: The Legacy of Guilt (London: Hinemann, 1967); Israel W. Charney, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide, the Human Cancer (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1982).

13. See generally, Richard Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989).

14. As the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci described it, hegemony functions by way of a master narrative designed to convince the great mass of people that the prevailing order is natural, right and thus inevitable. Any concession by ruling élites that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the order over which they preside would of course undermine the very belief system upon which their own ascendancy depends; Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) esp. pp. 170-9.

15. Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944) p. 79.

16. Ibid.

17. U.N. Doc. A/362, June 14, 1947.

18. Ibid. For further discussion, see Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, The Genocide Machine in Canada: The Pacification of the North (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1973) pp. 15-21.

19. On Canada’s role, see Canada and the United Nations (Ottawa: Dept. of External Affairs, 1948) p. 191. Overall, see M. Lippman, “The Drafting of the 1948 Convention and Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” Boston University International Law Journal, No. 3, 1984.

20. U.S.T. _______, T.I.A.S. _______, 78 U.N.T.S. 277 (1948), Article II. The Convention’s third article makes it a crime not only to perpetrate genocide, but to conspire or attempt to commit it, to incite it, or to be otherwise complicit in its perpetration; for text, see Ian Brownlie, ed., Basic Documents on Human Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [3rd ed.] 1992) pp. 31-4.

21. Lawrence LeBlanc, The United States and the Genocide Convention (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991) pp. 7-12.

22. There can be no question whether parliament was aware its Native residential school policy violated Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention, the prohibition on forced transfer of children. The issue was raised repeatedly during the debates on ratification; Canadian Civil Liberties Association, “Brief to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, “April 26, 1969, p. 6. Yet this is one of the provisions deleted from the Canadian genocide statute, ostensibly because it had “no essential relevance to Canada where mass transfers of children to another group are unknown”; Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1948); quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 23. For background, see J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

23. Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1948); quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 23.

24. Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46.

25. As the matter was put by a principle advisor to the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, many of the charges brought against the Nazis were based in upon their violation of “customary international law—a system [evolving] under the impact of common consent and the demands of world security. Acquiescence of all members of the Family of Nations is not necessary for this purpose. All that is needed is reasonable proof of the existence of widespread custom”; Sheldon Glueck, “The Nuremberg Trial and Aggressive War,” Harvard Law Review, No. 59, Feb. 1946, pp. 396-456. This rule was affirmed by the International Court of Justice with respect to the Genocide Convention in an Advisory Opinion issued on May 28, 1951: “The principles inherent in the Convention are acknowledged by civilized nations as binding on [any] country, even [those] without a conventional obligation.” In effect, “reservations” to the Convention like that attempted by the U.S., or attempts to limit its scope by deleting portions of it in domestic implementing statutes, as Canada has, have no legal validity at all; see generally, Robert K. Woetzel, “The Eichmann Case in International Law,” Criminal Law Review, Oct. 1962, pp. 671-82.

26. Pieter N. Drost, Genocide (Leyden: A.W. Sythoff, 1959); The Crime of State (Leyden: A.W. Sythoff, 1959). In actuality, Lemkin himself coined the term “ethnocide” in a footnote on page 79 of Axis Rule—the same page on which the neologism “genocide” itself was invented—explaining therein that the two words are synonyms. Interestingly, subsequent researchers have simply repeated without further investigation Drost’s false attribution of “ethnocide” to French scholarship, as well as his unfounded contention that it describes something other than genocide; see, e.g., Kurt Jonasohn and Frank Chalk, “A Typology of Genocide and Some Implications for the Human Rights Agenda,” in Isador Walliman and Michael Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987) pp. 7, 37.

27. Frank Chalk, “Definitions of Genocide and Their Implications for Prediction and Prevention,” in Yehuda Bauer, et al., eds., Remembering for the Future: Working Papers and Addenda, 2 vols. (Oxford: Pergammon Press, 1989) pp. 76-7.

28. Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, [rev. ed.] 1999) p. 251.

29. Jean-Paul Sartre and Arlette El Kaim-Sartre, On Genocide and a Summary of the Evidence and Judgments of the International War Crimes Tribunal (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). Although he was highly critical of Sartre’s “overgeneralized” formulation, Leo Kuper, one of the more astute analysts of genocide, by-and-large incorporated it into his own books: Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Uses in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1981); International Action Against Genocide (London: Minority Rights Group, [rev. ed.] 1984); The Prevention of Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

30. Russell Tribunal, Report of the Fourth Russell Tribunal on the Rights of the Indians of the Americas (Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Foundation, 1980).

31. Cultural Survival Quarterly is the journal of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cultural Survival, Inc. On the resistance movements, see Miles Goldstick, Wollaston: People Resisting Genocide (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1987); Boyce Richardson, Strangers Devour the Land: The Cree Hunters of the James Bay area versus Premier Bourassa and the James Bay Development Corporation (Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green Publishers, [rev. ed.] 1991); Ward Churchill, “Genocide in Arizona: The ‘Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute’ in Perspective,” in my Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Colonization (Winnipeg: Arbiter Ring, [rev. ed.] 1999).

32. The story of the Lubicon is quite complex; see John Goddard, Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntire, 1991).

33. Daishowa Inc. v. Friends of the Lubicon, Ontario Court of Justice (Gen. Div.), File No. 95-CQ-59707, Verdict of Judge J. MacPherson (Apr. 14, 1998) p. 21.

34. Ibid., pp. 21-2.

35. Thomas Claridge, “Judge to Rule May 19 on Lubicon boycott: Daishowa says $3-million annual sales lost,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 1, 1995.

36. FOL briefing paper distributed by the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, beginning in 1996 (copy on file).

37. Conversation with Kevin Thomas, June 14, 1997 (notes on file).

38. Ibid.

39. Christopher Genovali, “Multinational Pulp Company SLAPPs Suit Against Activist Group,” Alternatives Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1996.

40. Daishowa Inc. v. Friends of the Lubicon (1995), 30 C.R.R. (2d) 26 (Gen. Div.). The corporation immediately filed an appeal which resulted in reinstatement of the injunction against the FOL’s boycott activities more generally. This higher court ruling was later expanded to prohibit the defendants, their attorneys, and even selected expert witnesses from publicly discussing the case; Christopher Genovali, “Daishowa Tries to Gag Critics,” Alternatives Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1997.

41. Verdict, p. 50.

42. Ibid., pp. 72, 68, 76.

43. Ibid., p. 76.

44. Ibid., pp. 42-3. MacPherson’s description of the situation in which the Lubicon have been placed should be compared with the explanation offered by the Saudi delegate to the drafting committee of what was/is meant by the language contained in Article II(c) of the 1948. This includes not only the “planned disintegration of the political, social or economic structure of a group or nation,” but the “systematic debasement of a group, people or nation”; quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 19.

45. Among the expert witness submissions MacPherson ignored were an article, “Modern Genocide,” prepared by the McGill University law faculty and published in Quid Novi on November 30, 1987 (submitted in evidence as Defense Exhibit 30; Thomas Affidavit); a 1990 letter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney prepared by the late James J.E. Smith, Curator of North American Ethnography for the Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation, in which it is concluded that “social and cultural genocide” is being perpetrated against the Lubicons (Defense Exhibit 4; Ominiyak Affidavit); a 1995 affidavit prepared by Dr. Joan Ryan, an anthropologist who combined 15 years experience documenting the destruction of Lubicon society with the very dictionary definitions the judge relied upon in arriving at an diametrically opposing conclusion. Both Dr. Ryan and I presented direct testimony during the trial. None of this is so much as mentioned in the Verdict.

46. Verdict, p. 71. MacPherson in fact quotes three different dictionaries, none of which posits “intentional killing” as synonymous with genocide. Webster’s refers to “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group (emphasis added).”

47. MacPherson claims to have followed the dictum that “defamatory meaning must be one which would be understood by an ordinary and reasonable person”; Verdict, pp. 70-1. He neglects to mention, however, that the rule pertains only to instances where the terms at issue are not defined in law; R.E. Brown, The Law of Defamation in Canada (2nd ed., Vol. 1, p. 52).

48. Even MacPherson seems a bit uncomfortable with his definition. He suggests at one point that “physical destruction” rather than direct killing alone might add up to genocide. But then, apparently realizing that the sorts of conditions he’s already conceded the Lubicons are suffering would all too obviously fit this description, he simply drops the subject; Verdict, p. 71.

49. Ibid., p. 76.

50. Ibid., p. 39. This clearly goes to compelling the employment of euphemisms, the purpose of which is well-known. The Nazis, after all, referred to their Judeocide as the “Final Solution,” the transport of Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination centers as “Resettlement,” the literal killing therein as “Special Handling.” Such innocuous terminology was designed to obscure genocidal reality and thus constrain the probability of popular revulsion and unrest.

51. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, pp. 7-8.

52. In the United States alone, nearly a hundred such peoples have been declared “culturally extinct” by the federal government during this period; Raymond V. Butler, “The Bureau of Indian Affairs: Activities Since 1945,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, No. 435, 1978, pp. 50-60.

53. The implications were brought out clearly in March 1974, when, in one of the few instances where charges of genocide were filed with the U.N. Secretariat, the International League for the Rights of Man, the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom and several other organizations accused the government of Paraguay of physically exterminating the Aché Indians. Paraguay’s formal response to these allegations was that, “Although there are victims and victimizer, there is not the third element necessary to establish the crime of genocide—that is ‘intent.’ As there is no ‘intent,’ one cannot speak of ‘genocide’”; Paraguayan Minister of Defense, quoted in Norman Lewis, “The Camp at Ceclio Baez,” in Richard Arens, ed., Genocide in Paraguay (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976) pp. 62-3.

54. Those who experience a visceral reaction to my “overstated” comparison should recall that Eichmann was not accused of actually killing anyone. Rather, he was convicted of having devoted his bureaucratic and technical expertise—that is, his intellect—to organizing the delivery of Jews and others to extermination centers; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1964).

55. Unidentified Lubicon, quoted in Thomas Affidavit, p. 24.

Molotov on Yugoslavia

“In 1953-1954 I spoke out [against reconciliation with Tito's] Yugoslavia at the Politburo. No one supported me, neither Malenkov nor even Kaganovich, though he was a Stalinist! Khruschev was not alone. There were hundreds and thousands like him, otherwise on his own he would not have gotten very far. He simply pandered to the state of mind of the people. But where did that lead? Even now there are lots of Khruschevs. . .”

“Tito is now [1970s at three different talks--ed.] in a difficult situation. His republic is going under, and he will have to grab onto the USSR for dear life. Then we shall be able to deal with him more firmly.”

“Nationalism is causing him to howl in pain, yet he himself is a nationalist, and that is his main defect as a communist. He is a nationalist, that is, he is infected with the bourgeois spirit. He is now cursing and criticizing his own people for nationalism. This means that the Yugoslav multinational state is breaking up along national lines. It is composed of Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes, and so forth.”

“When Tito visited us for the first time, I liked his appearance. We didn’t know everything about him at the time. . . .”

“Tito is not an imperialist, he is a petty-bourgeois, an opponent of socialism. Imperialism is something else again.”

 – Albert Resis intro. & ed., Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics, Conversations with Felix Chuev (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), pp. 83-4.

Liberal Holocaust: Imperialism and the Democratic Party

This is a good article from a website that is now down. I disagree with several parts, particularly the labeling of North Korea as a “Stalinist dictatorship,” referring to the Soviet Union as an “empire,” saying that Titoite Yugoslavia was a “Leninist revolution” and denying the genocidal actions of the Milošević government. Regardless, this article makes a very important point about the Democratic Party, and exposes their true imperialist warmongering nature.

 – Espresso Stalinist 

Many people involved in US anti-war movement(s) have this naive belief that Democrats are not imperialists, that US imperialist policies, such as those pursued by the Bush administration, are just a recent deviation or limited to Republican administrations. In fact, the Democratic Party has a long and bloody history of imperialism. Democrats are imperialists and mass murderers. Nor is this limited to the more conservative democrats; left-liberals have done the same. Liberal governments have slaughtered millions.

Starting shortly before the end of World War Two, Democrats began recruiting many Nazi war criminals and using them to help expand the American Empire. Hitler’s intelligence chief in East Europe Reinhard Gehlen was used by the US, after the war, to build an intelligence network against the Soviets in East Europe. They also dropped supplies to remnants of Hitler’s armies operating in Eastern Europe, to harass the Soviet bloc. Other Nazi war criminals employed by the US included Klaus Barbie, Otto von Bolschwing and Otto Skorzeny. Some of these Nazis later made their way to Latin America, where they advised and assisted US-backed dictatorships in the area.

Harry Truman kicked up anti-communist hysteria, which lead to McCarthyism (which occurred during his administration) and helped start the Cold War. He supported numerous dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia. US involvement in Vietnam started under Truman with the US providing support for the French invaders and the CIA carrying out covert actions. In 1950 his administration issued the ultra-hawkish NSC 68. The subversion of Italian democracy was done by his administration – fearing electoral victory in 1948 by the Italian Communist party, the CIA funded various leftover Mussolinite Brownshirt thugs and other former Nazi collaborators, successfully manipulating the results to ensure pro-US candidates won. A secret paramilitary army was formed to overthrow the government just in case the Communists managed to win anyway.

In the years after World War Two a rebellion against the British puppet government in Greece broke out. This client state was largely staffed by former Nazi collaborators who the British had put back in power. The UK was unable to defeat the left-wing insurgency (which had previously fought an insurgency against the Nazi occupation during World War Two) and asked the US for help. In 1947 Truman invaded Greece and proceeded to crush the revolutionaries, keeping the former Nazi collaborators in power. Truman attempted to justify this by portraying the guerillas as mere pawns of Moscow and therefore a form of covert aggression, but he had no real proof of this. The claim is also based on a double standard: when the USSR (allegedly) covertly supports revolutionaries in another country it constitutes “aggression” and is wrong, but when the US (or UK) send actual military forces to another country in order to prop up unpopular dictatorships this is somehow perfectly just.

At the end of World War Two Japan withdrew its forces from Korea, resulting in a brief period of self-rule. A provisional government was set up in Seoul, but it had little power. Across Korea, workers took over their factories and peasants took over their land. Self-managed collectives were organized. This did not last long, as the US and USSR quickly partitioned the country into a North and a South, under the occupation of each power. In the south Truman installed a brutal military dictatorship, run mainly by former Japanese collaborators, complete with death squads, torture chambers and suppression of all opposition. The United States and its client state suppressed an insurgency, leveled whole villages and massacred thousands of innocent Koreans. The Soviets followed a similar policy in the north, where a Stalinist dictatorship was imposed. Forces from each empire repeatedly clashed until war broke out in 1950. Truman & his propagandists tried to portray the war as an attempt to defend South Korea from Soviet/Northern aggression, but the very existence of South & North Korea was the result of aggression by the US & USSR. The Korean War was an inter-imperialist war between rival empires fighting for territory, rather like a turf war between rival mafia dons, in which lots of ordinary people (who had no real stake in the war) were sent to die for their elite.

These policies of mass murder continued in both the subsequent Eisenhower administration and the next democratic administration, Kennedy. Like every other president since World War Two (and many prior to that) he supported numerous puppet dictatorships that slaughtered thousands – Mobutu, the Shah, etc. Kennedy backed a coup against the democratically elected government in the Dominican Republic because it was too independent. And lets not forget the Bay of Pigs and the many terrorist campaigns against Cuba.

Kennedy also escalated US involvement in Vietnam. During Eisenhower’s term the Vietnamese defeated US-backed French invaders and the war with France was brought to an end. The country was partitioned in two, with the Vietnamese nationalists/Communists taking over the north and the French puppet government temporarily ruling the south. Elections were to be held to reunite the two, but the US intervened to prevent this (because the Communists would have won free elections) and put in power a right-wing dictatorship headed by Ngo Dinh Diem which relied on a reign of terror in order to stay in power. In the late ’50s popular rebellions erupted against this dictatorship. By the time Kennedy came to power the survival of Diem’s dictatorship was increasingly precarious and so Kennedy escalated the situation from state terror to outright aggression. The US military, mainly the air force, was sent to crush the resistance. This failed to defeat the resistance, so Johnson fabricated a bogus attack on US destroyers by North Vietnamese forces and used this as an excuse to escalate the war, launching a full-fledged ground invasion of the south and began bombing the north. US forces set up concentration camps (called “strategic hamlets”) and committed numerous atrocities during the war. Even John Kerry testified:

“Several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. … They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. … We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. … We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. … We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.”

Kerry has since claimed that Vietnam was an exception to the norm, but the evidence presented in this article shows otherwise. This testimony is corroborated by numerous other primary sources, including many Vietnam veterans. Colin Powell admitted these atrocities occurred and defended them, writing in his memoirs (My American Journey):

“If a helo [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM [military-aged male], the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen, Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong.”

In addition, Powell defends the torching of civilians’ huts in his memoirs. There are also many Vietnam veterans who strongly deny that the United States committed any kind of atrocities or wrongdoing in Vietnam at all, but they are not the first murderers to strongly deny murdering anyone. These are the kinds of atrocities the Democrat’s foreign policy leads to.

Democrats (and Republicans) tried to portray the war as a result of Chinese (or even Soviet) aggression that had to be stopped or else it would cause a “domino effect” leading to “Communist” conquest of the globe. This is shear fantasy.

Vietnam became independent in 1945 and for a brief period of time the whole country was united under the rule of Ho Chi Min and his fellow nationalists and Marxists. Then France invaded, with US support, leading to the creation of “South Vietnam,” which was a foreign puppet from day one. Attacks on it by Vietnamese were no more “aggression” than attacks on the Vichy government by the French resistance. Communists in China didn’t come to power until 1948, whereas Vietnam declared independence in 1945, so portraying the war as “Chinese aggression” is particularly absurd. Eventually, China did provide weapons, money and advisors to Vietnam (as did the USSR), but merely giving supplies to people fighting for independence hardly constitutes “aggression.” If China giving some weapons and supplies to a Vietnamese movement with substantial popular support constitutes “aggression” then what are we to make of the US, which went well beyond sending weapons and sent over 100,000 troops to keep in power a deeply unpopular puppet government? By this kind of logic, the American war for independence constituted French aggression because France gave the rebels support, just as China & Russia gave the Vietnamese support, except France went even further and sent warships to fight the British and help the US win the war. The Vietnam War was a brutal colonial war, started mainly by democrats, against a people struggling for national liberation.

Even if we ignore Vietnam, Johnson was still a murderous warmonger. In 1965 Johnson launched a secret war on Laos, which would eventually drop more bombs on it then were dropped during World War Two, in order to defeat the leftist Pathet Lao. When a popular rebellion erupted against the US-backed dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, LBJ invaded and defeated it, keeping a US puppet government in power. In Brazil LBJ supported and encouraged a fascist coup against the mildly reformist Goulart administration. Johnson also backed a right-wing coup in Indonesia. The previous ruler, Sukarno, committed the crime of trying to stay neutral in the cold war and desiring to build a strong Indonesia independent of foreign powers. So he was removed and general Suharto seized power. The US helped Suharto liquidate dissent and gave him lists of “subversives” to kill. Between 500,000 and a million people were massacred by Suharto in the period following the coup, with the covert help of the Johnson administration. When the Greek ambassador objected to the President’s plan for a resolving a dispute over Cyprus LBJ told him:

“Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good. … We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.”

In 1965 the Greek king, aided by the CIA, removed Prime Minister George Papandreou (who’s foreign policy was too independent for Washington) from power. In 1967 the Greek government was forced to finally hold elections again, but when it looked like George Papandreou was going to win again a military coup prevented him from coming to power. George Papadopoulos, leader of the coup and head of the new military dictatorship, had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years and was a Nazi collaborator during World War Two.

Carter, the so-called “human rights” president, was also an imperialist warmonger. He continued US support for brutal tyrants in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. Carter supported Pol Pot’s forces after they were thrown out of power due to a war with Vietnam. Under Ford Indonesia invaded East Timor and proceeded to slaughter 200,000 people. Although this invasion occurred under Ford, the worst atrocities happened under Carter’s reign. As atrocities increased, he increased the flow of weapons to the Indonesian government, insuring they wouldn’t run out and could continue massacring Timorese. Carter also backed the massacre in Kwangju by the South Korean military dictatorship. Many of the things which liberals like to blame Reagan for were actually started under Carter. Deregulation began under Carter, as did US support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Six months before the Soviets invaded he also initiated US support for the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists/”freedom fighters” in Afghanistan which would later include Bin Laden.

Bill Clinton was a mass murderer and war criminal, too. He backed numerous dictatorships, continued the proxy war against Marxist guerillas in Columbia and bombed more countries than any other peacetime president, including Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Clinton laid siege to Iraq with sanctions, “no fly zones” and bombings, killing 1.5 to 3 million people. UN-approved sanctions on Iraq were originally imposed at the start of the Gulf War in response to the invasion of Kuwait, but continued after the end of the war at US (and UK) insistence. The United States used sanctions as a weapon against Iraq. One military intelligence document titled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities noted:

“Iraq depends on importing-specialized equipment-and some chemicals to purify its water supply … With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations sanctions to import these vital commodities. … Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure-water-dependent industries becoming incapacitated, including petrochemicals, fertilizers, petroleum refining, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food processing, textiles, concrete construction, and thermal power plants. Iraq’s overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt … Unless water treatment supplies are exempted from the UN sanctions for humanitarian reasons, no adequate solution exists for Iraq’s water purification dilemma, since no suitable alternatives … sufficiently meet Iraqi needs. … Unless the water is purified with chlorine epidemics of such diseases as Cholera, Hepatitis, and Typhoid could occur … Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons. It probably also is attempting to purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements. … Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs. … Alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements.”

This and other documents show that the United States intentionally used sanctions to destroy Iraq’s water supply with full knowledge of the consequences. In addition to water problems, the sanctions also interfered with the importation of basic necessities like food and medicine. The UN itself, the organization that implemented the sanctions (due to US/UK insistence), reported that they resulted in mass death. UNICEF found that on average 5,000 children died every month as a result of sanctions. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported in 1995 that 567,000 children in Iraq had died as a result of the sanctions. Those sanctions continued until the invasion in 2003, killing even more. This began under the first Bush administration, but most of it occurred under Clinton’s administration.

In 1996, faced with mounting humanitarian concerns that threatened to end the sanctions, an “oil for food” program was implemented. Officially, this was supposed to allow Iraq to import a limited amount of food and supplies in exchange for limited amounts of oil but in practice it did little to alleviate the suffering of Iraqis caused by the sanctions. Everything imported by Iraq had to be approved by a UN sanctions committee that, due to US/UK influence, frequently stopped or delayed importation of needed supplies. All money Iraq made from the sale of oil was kept by the UN in an escrow account with the bank of Paris and was not at the discretion of the Iraqi government. Some of this was used to pay for administrative costs related to the sanctions and about a third were used to pay reparations to Kuwait, the remainder was inadequate for Iraq’s needs. In 1998 Dennis Halliday, the first head of the UN’s “oil for food” program resigned because the sanctions continued to result in a humanitarian catastrophe. In 2000 Hans Von Sponeck, the new head of the “oil for food” program, resigned for the same reason. On the May 12, 1996 edition of “60 minutes” journalist Lesly Stahl asked Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state,

“We have heard that a half million children have died [from sanctions on Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Clinton attacked and dismembered Yugoslavia, using a “divide and conquer” strategy to install US/NATO puppet governments ruling over its corpse. During and after World War Two Yugoslavia underwent its own Leninist revolution, independent of Soviet tanks, and eventually evolved a market socialist economy based on a limited form of worker self-management. Most of the economy was run by enterprises that were officially worker owned, with elected managers, and sold their products on the market. Yugoslavia was a federation of different nationalities in southeastern Europe, with six different republics united under a federal government.

As the Soviet empire declined and fell western financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank began pressuring Yugoslavia to implement neoliberal capitalist reforms such as privatization, austerity measures and so on.

Yugoslavia implemented these on a limited basis. These programs lead to a declining economy that opened the door for opportunistic politicians to whip up nationalism for their own benefit, scapegoating other nationalities for economic problems. They also stressed relations between the federal government and the republics because money that would have gone to the republics instead went to servicing Yugoslavia’s debt. The United States and Western Europe took advantage of this to encourage the breakup of Yugoslavia into NATO protectorates.

In 1990 separatists won elections in Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia. The new Croatian government began to persecute the Serb minority living in Croatia, even bringing back the flag and other symbols from when it had been a World War Two Axis puppet government (run by a fascist organization called the Ustase) that attempted to exterminate the Serbs (who were regarded as “subhuman”). Croatian President Franjo Trudjman refused to condemn the Ustase and claimed, “the establishment of Hitler’s new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews.” Croatia and Slovenia declared independence in 1991. West Europe and then the US recognized Slovenia and Croatia as independent states despite warnings from the UN that this would encourage Bosnia to declare independence and bring about a civil war, which it did.

The Yugoslav federal government fought a small ten-day war with Slovenia, after which Slovenia was allowed to leave Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia fought bloody civil wars with the Yugoslav government. In Bosnia the main forces fighting against the federal government were Croat fascists, supported by Croatia, and Islamic fundamentalists, led by Alija Izetbegovic, who aimed to turn Bosnia into a theocracy similar to Iran or the Taliban. Most of Bosnia’s Serb minority sided with the Yugoslav federal government. The US covertly backed the Islamists and fascists by secretly supplying them with weapons and even flying in Muslim ‘holy warriors’ from Afghanistan so they could join the Jihad. Initially the Islamists and fascists in Bosnia worked together against the Serbs and Yugoslav government. Later they started fighting each other, but US & West European pressure eventually put a stop to that. When the Yugoslav government started winning the war NATO sent in the air force to bomb them and support the separatists. Many atrocities were committed on both sides of the war, but Western governments and media emphasized and exaggerated Yugoslav and Serb atrocities while downplaying or ignoring atrocities committed by the separatists.

In 1995 the war came to an end, in a defeat for Yugoslavia. Under a UN fig leaf, NATO “peacekeeper” troops occupied much of the former Yugoslavia while Bosnia was made into a de-facto NATO colony, occupied by NATO troops and with a “high representative” responsible to foreign powers in charge of the country. Yugoslavia was dramatically shrunk, with only two out of six Republics, Serbia and Montenegro, remaining in the union (Macedonia had been allowed to peacefully leave the union in the early ’90s but at this time was still largely outside the Western sphere of influence).

The next phase of Clinton’s conquest of Yugoslavia began in the late ’90s when the CIA began covertly supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization that has been linked to Osama Bin Laden. The KLA launched a guerilla war in the Kosovo province of Serbia, advocating independence for Kosovo. In 1999, under the guise of “peace negotiations,” the US/NATO issued an ultimatum demanding Yugoslavia allow NATO troops to occupy the entire country. Yugoslavia obviously refused this unreasonable demand and Clinton used this refusal as an excuse to begin a major bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. After several months of bombing pulverized the country a peace deal was reached allowing NATO “peacekeeper” troops to occupy Kosovo (but not the rest of Yugoslavia), effectively turning the province into a NATO protectorate. A year later a revolt led by US-funded groups and politicians overthrew the Yugoslav government, putting pro-US/NATO leaders in charge. The new government abolished Yugoslavia and became a Western puppet. This conquest was completed shortly after Clinton left office, when KLA forces attacked Macedonia. Macedonia saw the writing on the wall and allowed NATO troops to occupy it. Clinton succeeded in not only ripping Yugoslavia apart, but in achieving US/NATO domination over the Balkans and in forcing an economic system favorable to Western investors on the region. A wave of privatization has swept over the former Yugoslavia, transforming it into a corporate capitalist economy colonized by Western capital.

The standard excuse Clinton used to justify the military interventions in Yugoslavia was that it was supposed to stop “ethnic cleansing”/”genocide” allegedly being perpetrated by the Serbs/Yugoslav government. This is obviously bogus because the US helped instigate the conflicts that lead to the various massacres in the war and also because Clinton largely turned a blind eye towards atrocities committed by separatist forces (like the massacres in Gospic and Krajina). It is also not credible because Clinton ignored other genocides (such as Rwanda) and even funded Turkey’s genocide against the Kurds, which occurred at roughly the same time and resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurds.

The death toll of the democrats is quite large:

Greek Civil War: 160,000 (Truman)
Korean War: 3 million (Truman)
Assault on Indochina: 5 million (started under Truman, accelerated under Kennedy & LBJ)
Coup in Indonesia: 1 million (LBJ)
East Timor: 100,000 (Carter)
Kwangju Massacre: 2000 (Carter)
Argentine Dirty War: 30,000 (mostly Carter)
Iraq sanctions: 1.5 million (mostly Clinton)
Turkish Kurdistan: 40,000 (mostly Clinton)

That’s at least 10,8022,000 killed by democrats, 9,292,000 if one only counts the liberal governments (Clinton wasn’t really a liberal). For comparison, the Nazi holocaust killed roughly 6,000,000 Jews. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; these are only the most famous incidents over the last couple of decades. If you add up the total from periods preceding this and the less famous incidents the number get much, much higher. If you add in starvation (a direct result of capitalism) it gets even higher.

Democrats could have stopped the congressional authorization for the Iraq war (via filibustering) but instead lots of them defected to the warmongers’ side. They could have stopped many of the nasty things the Republicans are doing by filibuster but choose not to. Many democrats actively supported the war. Most of those who did oppose it offered little opposition, chickening out when the shooting started and either abstained or voted in favor of the pro-war “support our troops” resolution in March. Even Dennis Kucinich, leader of the “anti-war” opposition in the house, abstained from the vote instead of voting against it. It was only after Bush’s war started going sour that vocal criticism began to come from democrats, which is completely opportunistic. Bush’s lies and fabrications about the Niger Uranium had already been exposed prior to the war, but it wasn’t until after the invasion was completed and the democrats needed an issue to attack Bush with that they started whining about it.

The Democratic Party, the party of slavery, has a long history of mass murder and empire building. They are not an alternative to the American Empire. Especially on foreign policy, there is remarkable consistency between republican and democratic administrations. If the Nuremberg standards were applied every President since World War Two, both democrat and republican, would have to be hung. Both parties have the same basic goals; they just disagree on minor details. It would have been much harder for Bush to conquer Iraq (perhaps politically impossible) if Clinton hadn’t been waging war against it for his entire term. The policies implemented by the US government have more to do with the specific circumstances of the time period then with which particular individual happens to occupy the white house. If a democrat is elected he will inherit this Pax Americana and it is unlikely that he would dismantle it (or even be capable of dismantling it). A vote for the democrats is a vote for imperialism and war (as is a vote for the Republicans).

“My Life With Enver” Nexhmije Hoxha’s Memoirs (Part 4)

12. Towards a free life – in the mountains

After being on duty with the partisans in the mountains, I left Tirana on March 20th; the city I would not return to until its liberation. Along with my joy, I also felt an emptiness in my soul. I was leaving the city in which I had grown up and gone to school, I was really close to the people of Tirana. I had fought with them for their freedom, their happiness and for a safe future for its youth. I had also helped in their struggle for the emancipation of the Albania Woman and for the independence of our long-suffering homeland. Would I ever come back to see a liberated Tirana, free from invaders and spies, without the terror, the curfew, the arrests and the imprisonments?

I was quite sure that this day would eventually come, not only to Tirana, but also to all Albania, because we were fighting a war with the backing of the entire population. However, at this particular moment, was the day of liberation in the near or distant future?

With a false identity card in my pocket and my mind loaded down with all these questions, I took the bus. I left behind the Tirana where, the Party, the guerilla units, and my life as an underground activist had been founded and headed for Korca. With me was a comrade (whom I never met) who was taking a letter from Gogo Nushi and Nako Spiro to Enver. He had been appointed as the courier who made the connections between the Korca district and the Center in Tirana. His name was Arsen Leskoviku.

Our journey took us passed Elbasan and, up to this moment, we had had no problems. However, just before entering Librazhd, we were stopped by an armed patrol. There were three of them; one was a German and the other two Albanians who were wearing the uniform of the Albanian militia. They asked for our identity cards. The German took mine and began moving it in his hands. He raised his eyes, and looking straight at me said, “Yugoslav?” I nearly had a heart attack! The name on my identity card was Vera – a name that the Slavs use as well. I thought that they would ask me to get off the bus and take me for interrogation to the post office nearby and who knows then what would have happened. I hastened to explain. Although he was not Italian, for some reason I spoke to him in Italian, thinking that I could better communicate with him. I remember telling him,

“No, no, albanese, Vera, stagione, estate o primavera”

(No, no, Albanian, Vera is a season; summer or spring).

So I waffled on a bit. Finally he returned the identity card to me. I breathed a sigh of relief, and, after a while, I turned my head and glanced at the comrade who was with me. He had recovered himself and was quite calm; he just closed his eyes as if to say: “Good…”. I smiled slightly as if to say: “We’re safe…”.

We arrived in Korça in the evening and stayed that night in the home of a school friend. The next day, at dusk, we set off for Panarit, where Enver and some comrades from the Central Committee and General Headquarters were. A team of 4-5 partisans was waiting for us outside of the town. They knew the area very well and were to accompany us on the journey from village to village. After we had greeted each other, the partisans told us that armed frontists had been seen in the area and this was why we had to talk softly and walk carefully.

We walked in a single file for a very long time without stopping in order to get away from the town. The worst thing was that the night was so dark that we were not able to see and it was difficult to follow the path. One comrade fell. He apparently walked too close to the edge of a hole in the ground, slipped, uttered a sharp ‘oh!’ and then there was silence. We were shocked. We went to the place where he had fallen but we couldn’t see anything. We called out in low voices; “Arsen, hey, Arsen!”, but there was no reply. We became even more worried. Down in the hole nothing was visible. We tried to locate his body with the butt of a rifle, but it was in vain. Then the partisans found some long sticks and, in the darkness they measured the depth of the hole with them. After coming up with the idea of holding one another hand-by-hand, one of us managed to get down into the hole. When we were told that Arsen’s body had been located we were very relieved and we hoped that he was alive.

They managed to pull him up with great difficulty. I remember when they laid him down, they gave him a drop of raki that one of the partisans kept with him in his water bottle and used as medicine for various wounds. Arsen groaned. They checked out to see if he had broken a leg or an arm but he screamed only when they touched him on one of his hips. They held his mouth closed so as not to be heard. As he told us afterwards, he had been hurt badly in one hip when he had fallen because he had had a tin of meat in his knapsack and it was this knapsack that he fell on and severely bruised his hip. What could we do? The comrades carried him on their backs in turn to the nearest village where we would spend the night. As soon as we entered the specified base, the women of the house put a bed near the fire and laid Arsen down on it to help him rest up. With the light of an oil lamp the comrades checked him for any other injuries and massaged his hip with raki and olive oil until he felt somewhat better. When we realized that he didn’t have any other serious injuries, we started joking with him.

We told Arsen that we would sequester his tin of meat because it was “cold steel” that kills and might take prevent someone from fighting.

“Look, this has interrupted your journey with us; you must stay here and will have to eat chicken soup of course, that is, if the frontists have left any chickens in the village.”

Laughing, he fell asleep.

We slept for three hours and, after taking the letter from Arsen, we set off before dawn in order to avoid any confrontation with the frontists. After so many years I don’t remember which villages we passed through or the length of the journey.

In Panarit – to Enver

We finally arrived in Panarit, where Enver was living. This village was located on a mountainside. It was said that this was a big village, but I didn’t share this idea, because I couldn’t see many houses.

The house where the headquarters was located was quite big; it had two or three floors, together with a barn, and was completely built of stone. They led us into a big room, in the middle of which was a large fire, where entire trunks were turned into fairly hot embers, and which gave the room pleasant warmth. It was able to bring one back to life and make you feel relaxed after the long and tiring journey. In such a place, the warmth created a feeling of satisfaction, something that I had not felt before in these years of war. This room in Albania is called a ‘room of fire’, and around the big fireplace with no chimney, the women cooked and stayed. These rooms didn’t have any ceilings, but only roof timbers which were blackened by the smoke). Around the fire sat several comrades who worked in the headquarters along with partisan guards and companions. I recognized among them, comrade Behar Shtylla. He stood up immediately and went to inform Enver about our arrival.

You can imagine how impatient I was to meet Enver. But Behar came back and told me that Enver was in a meeting.

Meanwhile the comrades found us a place near the fire and, one after another, brought some homemade bread, which was very soft, some fresh sheep cheese, honey and nuts. I especially enjoyed the fresh cheese and the toast. Then the friends began talking and joking. They even had an argument as to whose life was more difficult; that of the partisans in the mountains or that of the underground activists in the towns. I myself thought that the life of the underground activists, under the continuous worry of fascist encirclement, repeated controls, the dangers of arrest or the maltreatment of the families who sheltered them, was more difficult. But the partisans were correct because they lived in the mountains, marched and fought in very bad places, in the winter’s cold and frost, usually poorly dressed, in bare feet and with empty stomachs.

One of them said: “This fire and this food are like a dream for us…”

Of course he was right, and the local peasants didn’t spare what they had in their houses, in order to honor and respect the partisans of the mountains.

While we were talking, Enver came in. He was smiling as always. He was really surprised when he saw me. As he told me later; he had thought that Naxhije had come. She was a leading comrade of the Party in Korca. So after the first surprise, we hugged each other with nostalgia, forgetting to keep the “secret” of our relationship. Seeing us that way, the comrades laughed… Just to give a formal meaning to my coming, in front of the others, Enver asked:

“Did you bring the letters we wanted? Come.”

He took my hand and we went out. We went to the house where he was living and sleeping with the other comrades. The house was up in the hills so we had to do a bit of climbing. It was a small bungalow, but to go inside you had to go up some stairs built over a rock, which was covered with wide stone slabs. The house was painted with lime, and the doors and windows were made of pinewood, which, in that fresh mountain air and under the heat from the sun, gave off a pleasant scent that allowed you to breathe freely. There were too many things there that made me feel very comfortable and happy.

We went into Enver’s room. It was white because the walls were painted with lime. The sheets on the bed were snow-white, so were the embroidered curtains. On the settee was a fringed haircloth; while on the floor was a small carpet. Enver asked immediately about the letters. He looked at them quickly.

“I will read them carefully later”, he said

and then wanted to hear my report about the situation at the Center. I told him many things, and then we talked a bit about ourselves and satisfied our yearning. The women of the house brought us corn bread, sheep’s yoghurt and eggs. In that fresh and healthy climate, one had had an increased appetite and I very much enjoyed the food. I said to Enver jokingly:

“I saw in the house at headquarters that you don’t live too badly…”

Enver replied, “The peasants are friendly and hospitable and, although they are poor, they are very kind and we owe them a lot”.

The next day I went down to some of the buildings. I don’t remember if they had been a school or a cantonment. A course was being held with party personnel from the field and the army, at which, political and ideological lectures were being given in order to increase the educational level of our comrades.

During the three or four days that I stayed in Panarit I met many comrades I had known in Tirana. Here in the mountains among the partisans, comrades and peasants I felt different. Here you could move calmly and freely, something that could not be done in Tirana, because it was filled with terror.

During our talks in Panarit for three-four days, Enver told me that they had started preparations to set up a meeting larger than the Second National Liberation Conference of Labinot. (He meant the Congress that was going to be held in Permet).

“In this meeting we will make very important decisions for Albania.” But we will have to work hard in order to do this. So I think it is not necessary that you return to Tirana now. I think that you should go to Permet and from there to Zagorie. There you will find the Headquarters of the Gjirokastra-Vlora Area, and you will work there, dealing mainly with the youth and the organization of anti-fascist women, in the field and near the units acting in that area.”

I was happy about this because in this way I would continue living a free life in the mountains, villages and areas where the breeze of liberty had started to blow.

I set off for Permet and Zagorie and, for two months I worked very hard and joyfully in these two areas from which I have unforgettable memories. Memories from the historic Congress of Permet (24 May 1944) where I took part as a delegate, and from my activities during the German Operation of June in the Zagorie mountains. But I will not refer to them in these notes because I do not have many memories about my personal and direct meetings and conversations with Enver, who, during this period, was very busy. He had much of the responsibility for the preparations, development and compilation of the resolutions for the Congress of Permet, which was to be of great historical importance for the victory of the National Liberation Anti-fascist Movement, and for the future of our people.

13. Unforgettable days in Lireza – among the youth

After the Nazi operations of June, Enver, together with the leadership of the National Liberation Anti-fascist Council, the main members of the General Headquarters and some members of the Central Committee of the Party, left Odrican and went back to Helmes (a small village in Skrapar district, with 10-12 houses situated on a mountain side below Marta Pass).

After the Congress of Permet, in early July, while I was working in Zagorie, I got news from Nako Spiro telling me to set off immediately for Helmes in the Skrapar district. In time of war orders were not given to discussion. So although I was used to the wonderful people of the Zagorie region, with whom I had worked and lived for a long time, I set off to Helmes. We walked from village to village and after two days reached the destination.

Helmes village seemed to me like a beautiful relaxing oasis. It was full of greenness, with trees that gave it a special grace. The apple trees were full of fruit and the branches were nearly breaking. Also, the grapes, even though they were not properly ripened, made your mouth water when you saw them. We sat for a moment near the drinking fountain. The water was very cold and it flowed freely along the side of the cobblestone street. We refreshed ourselves and relaxed there from the long journey. After a while some comrades came and took me to the offices where Enver and his comrades worked. It was a two-floor stone built house.

In one of the offices, on the first floor, was Enver with Nako. We hugged longingly. They asked me about the affairs and the situation in the regions in which I had been. Then they told me why they had called me there: The First Congress of the Union of the Albanian Anti-fascist Youth had to be prepared. Enver told me of the importance of this Congress, which, as he put it, would give new ardor and strength to the union of anti-fascist youth for the final war to liberate the whole country. It would also create new perspectives for the youth in the construction of a new, democratic national Albania, and its future. Nako talked about the procedures we had to follow for sending out notifications, for choosing delegates, for the preparation of the Congress’ documents, and reports that would be held, etc. Then the next day he asked me to go to the Lireza field (the place where the Congress would be held) in order to see the field and to decide what measures had to be taken in the construction of some work cabins and also to see where to put the tents for the delegates to sleep in. He also wanted me to see what we could do about the equipment and decoration of the Congress setting.

Lireza was a large plateau surrounded by mountains. I thought that it was a suitable place, because it was so large and many people would be able to stay there. Also, quite a few activities could be organized. During the construction and modifications that I have already mentioned we stayed down in the village. The comrades who worked there slept in two houses. Enver and two other comrades slept in a small bungalow, which was a little down from the center, where the offices were. While I was staying in Helmes, I slept in the common room of Enver and his comrades. The landlady, Nuriham, had two nice swarthy sons. They wore long shirts that reached and covered part of their legs because they did not have anything else to wear under it. Nevruzi who was four or five years old used to collect cigarette butts that the comrades and partisans threw away and, wanting to imitate them, he would sometimes put one of them on his mouth and laugh. Enver lit a butt once for him and he nearly suffocated because of its smoke, so he never put them on his mouth again. He also has a photograph of this embarrassing moment with the cigarette butt on his mouth. We laugh whenever we see that photograph.

During a visit to Skrapar, years after the Liberation, we saw that Nevruz had become a Party instructor. He looked different, was serious, handsome, neat and tidy and was wearing a suit. We were really glad to meet him again. We reminded him of the difficult days during the War in his house and the jokes we shared with him. Of course he didn’t remember many things, but we talked about what his parents had told to him.

When the first buildings in the Lireza field were built, such as the kitchen and the hut,we went up there. Here the comrades of the youth leadership would work in the preparation for the Congress. Everything was built with timber and planks taken from the nearby forest, with the help of the peasants and some partisans who were skilled in these kinds of things. We stayed in a relatively big hut. There was a wide wooden bed above the floor in one part of it, in which we would sleep. Naturally, we couldn’t even think about a mattress, but we were able to lay a piece of carpet or a hair-cloth down that the peasants had brought, and we used blankets that we had taken from the defeated Italian army as covers. The blankets were necessary up there in Lireza, because, although it was summer (late July, early August), it was really cool, especially at night. The beautiful Lirez was enhanced even more when the delegates started to arrive. If only you could have seen that beautiful field. The tents looked like white flowers and, at night, were lit up by the partisan’s fires. That field bubbled with the songs and voices of the youth who had come from all over the country. In this way, warming themselves by the fire, talking and singing, the youth often stayed up till the early hours of the morning.

This was understandable because the majority of the delegates were partisans. It was their custom, after the long tiring marches, to get together at night around the fire, where they were able to relax and spend some precious moments after battling with the enemy. It was also a time to remember, to meditate and honor fallen comrades and family members who they had buried. That is why their songs were full of, not only grief, but also of optimism and the joy for the future, nostalgia and honor for missing comrades, and also their promise of revenge. These partisan songs, sung around these fires were, at the same time, hymns for the glory of the fallen, and also hymns for the faith and determination to accomplish the liberation of the country and the rebuilding of a new Albania. This is why my generation remembers with nostalgia, those partisan fires. They were marvelous moments that generated feelings of an inner happiness for everyone and for the special reason, that they were part of the big war, the war for Liberty, for the Motherland, for lofty human ideals!

Now, as I write this in my dark prison cell, my eyes are fill with tears when I remember the bright flames of those partisan fires, which will be forever remembered, not only for me, but by all my contemporaries who were part of that glorious time of songs around the partisan fires. It is also memorable to those of the younger generations who keep alive the glorious work of the partisans and martyrs, who risked their young lives for Liberty. The attempts of those who try to distort and deny this glorious history of the National Liberation Anti-fascist War are failures and will not have a long life…

The blissful environment in the unforgettable Lireza continued for nearly a month. This was because many delegates from the North arrived late due to the difficulties in moving around the country at that time. Many cultural activities were organized; lead by our good comrade Pirro Kondi and some other comrades. A Field Radio was set up as well as a Press Table, where news, announcements, literary creations of the delegates such as poems, songs, caricatures etc. could be read by the youth.

While the delegates were entertaining, singing and playing, we were working without rest for the preparation of the Congress, and not only for the Congress’ documents, but also preparing and giving lectures to the youth on different topics. We were really pleased because the delegates were very interested in all of these matters.

After some days, other comrades of the youth leadership in the field and in the partisan brigades such as Liri Belishova, Ramiz Alia, Alqi Kondi, Fadil Pacrami etc., arrived. We all joined the delegates. We sat and stayed with them, talked, played, sang and joked together because we were young and had the same ideals. There was nothing better than that populated Field with the flower of our people, with the brave and beautiful youth, who knew how to fight, to sing and dance and to learn about the preparations for the nation’s future.

I remember very well the reception of Major Ivanov, the chief of the Soviet military mission to the General Headquarters of the Albanian National Liberation Army. He had come from the Greek border, had crossed the Marta Pass, and went down to Helmes where the Headquarters was. The Albanian youth gave him a warm reception because they considered him as the representative of Stalin’s Red Army, whom we loved and admired for the defeats being caused to Hitler’s armies on the Eastern Front.

The anticipated day, 8 August 1944, finally came. The Congress for the Union of the Albanian Anti-fascist Youth opened its proceedings. I, along with the other participants, still remember today that beautiful “hall” with no doors or windows, built with the timber that still emitted the fresh forest scent and with its roof of fern branches. The chairs for the delegates were made in a similar fashion, with new wooden planks taken from the forest, as was the long table of the Presidium. The pathway to the hall’s entrance was lined with lime painted stones. A group of young partisan boys and girls stood along the sides of the pathway, with rifles and submachine guns as honorary bodyguards. This gave a special solemnity to the entrance of the delegates to the Congress hall and to the beginning of its proceedings.

The hall immediately became full of the lively voices of the youth, who were very enthusiastic and were not able to restrain themselves from singing and cheering. Their enthusiasm was, however, indescribable when Enver Hoxha, together with Dr. Nishan, accompanied by Nako Spiro, came into the hall. Many delegates were seeing the commander for the first time. Some of them couldn’t hold back their tears of joy. Then, after the applause and ovations, silence reigned in the hall, until it was interrupted by Enver’s sonorous voice and his passionate words. He talked to the youth’s hearts as only he knew, touched the delegates, and made opened their eyes to the marvelous future that was waiting for them; Albania’s future and that of its long-suffering people.

The impressions from this Congress are many. I remember I remember returning to Lireza on the 45th anniversary of this memorable event. I found the Lireza field just as beautiful as I remembered, however, many of the delegates of that first Congress in those unforgettable days, were not there for this anniversary. Some had died and some had not come because of old age, disease or some other inability. Even those who had come now had gray hair and were bent because of the years of war and hard work. But something had remained unchanged: their hearts and their souls were the same as they were 45 years ago. That’s why when we met together, along with the tears of nostalgia there was much joy and cries of happiness. Some remained embraced for a long time because they had not seen each other for decades. Each of them were reminded of those beautiful days and, in bringing back their memories, they behaved like those young boys and girls of 1944. They were very happy and spoke with honor and respect of each other.

The organizers of this meeting had tried to create the same premises as those of 45 years ago during the Congress; the wooden huts, the tents etc., whereas, the “hall” of the Congress was somewhat improvised. We experienced the same emotions and memories as then, but something was missing. Enver was not there, but even though he was not there physically, he was present at every moment and at every talk, because all remembered and talked about him lovingly, and, with much longing. In the evening the atmosphere was the same as during the Congress, because the partisan fires were lit, and around them boomed again the beautiful songs of the youth, intertwined with the beautiful songs of the people from all regions, south and north, since the participants came from all around Albania. There were not only some of the former delegates of the Congress, but also young school boys and girls, workers and peasants, who had given their souls, their zest and their joy to the Party. We looked at these young boys and girls and tried to follow their songs and dances, and, even though we were old, we felt young again amongst them. To tell the truth, while they stayed near the fires till dawn dancing, singing and joking, we elders took naps. It was the passionate youth to whom we had turned over the baton in order for them to continue this beautiful party, which has remained memorable to all of us. Near the end of the party I couldn’t help but go to visit Helmes. The comrades joked:

“You will go on foot as then, or…?” “Aha – I said smiling – I can’t…”

There was now a modern mountain road with many bends, which was needed in order to utilize forests in those parts. During the Youth Congress, there used to be a goat trail leading to Helmes, it was so steep that you could not walk upright. But, in those days, I flew from stone to stone because there was Enver who was attracting me like a magnet. I stayed there, alone for an hour with a gun in my arm. Then I walked up. I walked slowly, not because it was tiring, but because it was difficult to be away from Enver.

When I went to Helmes now, after 45 years, I didn’t have my previous vitality. The families that used to live there had moved to new places. There were only two or three of the old houses remaining; those used as offices by the Central Committee and the General Headquarters and the house where Enver used to sleep. Going around these houses, the streets and under the shade of the trees, it seemed to me like I was witnessing a silent film. The silent and unvoiced view of these places could not bring back the happiness of those days; on the contrary, it created within me a grueling emptiness. Those who give life to a place are the people who live there.

But old friends would never let you get bored. Old people, women and children came towards me, holding my hands, everybody wanting to take me in their house. It was difficult to choose where to go first. If I visited only one, the other would be annoyed. Those people who, during the war, gave us shelter in their houses, risking their own lives, giving us food and whatever they had, had great hearts and were very generous. I found these things again among these good and friendly people, who even now were doing what they could to please me. They gave me grapes, nuts, and delicious liquid honey in honeycombs. They had heard I was coming to the village and had cooked many things. They had also cooked pancakes to be eaten with the honey, and buns with fresh cheese, and many other things.

After the Congress, the chosen Secretariat (Nako Spiro, First Secretary and other members: Nexhmije Xhuglini, Liri Belishova, Pirro Kondi, Fadil Pacrami, Alqi Kondi, Ramiz Alia) was called to a meeting by Enver Hoxha, who was the Secretary General of the Albanian Communist Party.

In my opinion this was the most important meeting of the Youth leadership, for its analysis of the activities of the Communist Youth and also for the perspectives revealed by Enver for the future work of the organization of the Union of the Albanian Anti-fascist Youth. At the end of the meeting Ramiz Alia and I were designated to work with the youth in the field and in the partisan units in the Central, North and Northeast of Albania. On October 2nd, 1944, in Priske, the activists of the UAAY (Union of the Albanian Anti-fascist Youth) for South and Southeast Albania gathered and there were 86 delegates. The meeting was successful however; the offices of the Nazi invaders were informed immediately about this meeting. Priska was hit by German field artillery, and the shells fell around the house where we were sheltered. This was often done by the Nazis who knew where the First Corpus Headquarters of the National Liberation Army (whose Commander was Dali Ndreu and Commissar Hysni Kapo) was. Also located in the same area was a part of the British Mission led by Smith. In one of these shellings, within the family of the patriot Hysen Hysa (uncle Ceni, who is immortalized so well by Shevqet Musaraj in “The National Front Epic”), 11 people were killed.

14. In Berat – Meeting with the Prime Minister

In the historical liberated town of Berat I found an extraordinary enthusiastic and joyful atmosphere. The streets were crowded with partisans wandering in the streets that were full of citizens and many children. You could also see many women with black headdresses embracing the partisans as if they were their sons.

I was taken to the building where the General Headquarters was located, which, as I was told, was also the seat of the new Democratic Interim Government, chosen a week earlier, at the historical meeting of the National Liberation Anti-fascist Council. During the proceedings of that meeting, I was marching with the Congress delegates when I heard that the National Liberation Anti-fascist Committee had been reorganized into a Democratic Government, and that, Enver was its Prime Minister.

I am unable to describe my feelings at that moment. I was very happy that our National Liberation Movement, the war, the activities and sacrifices of our people in these years, under the leadership of the Communist Party, were being crowned with the creation of a new democratic power of the people and were going towards the final victory against the foreign enemy and their collaborators. On the other hand, seeing that Enver was given other high responsibilities, I was a bit worried and not too clear. This is something which I can’t explain even now. When I met and fell in love with Enver I had never thought he would become leader of the country and its prime minister, etc. I was worried and I asked myself this question:

“Would I be worthy as his friend in life, in his work, and to the public…?”

The idea of this responsibility burdened me, and made me feel insecure and skeptical about myself. A new complex was added to my timid nature; that of being a responsible and worthy wife for Enver Hoxha. I have to say that even 45 years after our marriage, I wasn’t able to free myself of this complex. In everything that I did or wrote, I tortured myself because of this insecurity:

“Is it OK? How can I improve it?”

It may seem strange, but these emotions became even stronger when I had discussions or I had to speak in plenums, and in Congresses, etc. in the presence of Enver. I was afraid of bothering him or of raising issues with which he disagreed. To avoid this emotional feeling as much as I could, especially in solemn moments, I asked sometimes asked Enver to look over my speeches or I read to him some parts of it that I wasn’t sure of. Even though he was very busy he seldom refused the help I asked. As he was for everyone, he was a teacher for me too, anytime, and for anything.

When I arrived at the location of the seat of the Democratic Party I saw that it was a big house that had been the house of feudalistic large landowners. Opening the door of a big room on the second floor they told me:

“This is Enver’s room, stay here and relax until the Government meeting finishes. We will inform Enver about your arrival.”

The room was small, simply furnished, well lit from a high window, and had white curtains. There was a bed in one corner; near it were a night table and an antique lampshade. Along the opposite wall were a desk, a chair and nothing else. I waited there for a while but I had nothing to do, so I went out into the wide hall, lit by some large windows. In the middle of hall was a large heavy wooden table. In the wood of this table were carvings of some mythical animal images. Near to the table were some big heavy doors. One of them was open and I was able to see the well-furnished room inside. I returned to Enver’s room and saw that he had chosen one of the smallest and most simple rooms. I waited, for what seemed to me, an endless amount of time. It was three months since I had last seen Enver, when I left Helmes. At last the door opened and I saw Enver. He had put on a well-sewn military uniform. We hugged with longing not wanting to be separated. We were very happy. After a moment, I said suddenly:

“Congratulations comrade Prime Minister…, but I liked those partisan shirts and breeches more and…when you were called Commander.”

We joked a bit and then started talking about various and numerous problems. He told me about the developments at the National Liberation Anti-fascist Council meeting, about the decisions taken and the importance that they had for Albania, which was on the verge of liberation, and its future. I told him about the situation in the areas I had been and the work we had done.

After talking about these things he took my hand saying:

“Come, I will show you the house so you can choose a room.”

As I mentioned, they were big, with curtains, rugs, heavy covers and furniture, which I didn’t like because they gave the rooms a medieval suffocating atmosphere. So I said to Enver laughing but hearty:

“I like your clean and simple room…”

He laughed and said: “I can understand that quite well…….. It is getting near the day when we should have our own house…”

The following day I went to the offices where the comrades who had arrived early for the organization of the First Congress for the Union of Albanian Anti-fascist Women were situated. Comrades such as Liri Gega, Naxhije Dume, Fiqret Sanxhaktari etc. Four partisan comrades from Yugoslavia had come to take part in this Congress. They had grades and were wearing smart military uniforms. Their appearance was much better than that of our partisans, who were no less brave, but did not have any grades.

Liri invited me to meet the guests in the Yugoslav military Mission. There I was introduced, for the first time with the new representatives of the Mission, Velimir Stojnic and Niaz Dizdarevic. I knew that Dushan Mugosha had left Albania and at the request of Koci Xoxe we wrote some letters of greetings to him, but I didn’t know that Milan Popovici had also left. During my visit I noticed that the Yugoslav Mission resembled an inn without gates, where our comrades came and went as they would in their own houses. It had become a club for meeting and talking. This impressed me a lot.

When I got back home I asked Enver immediately about Miladin. He said that he had left in a very depressed state because the new comrades who came to the mission had criticized his work in Albania with regard to our Communist Party. They had said that the Central Committee of the Yugoslavian Communist Party had decided to remove them from Albania and that they had come themselves as substitutes him and Dushan in their relationship with our Party. They would also perform the official function as representatives of the Yugoslavian Military Mission like the British, Soviets and Americans during the war. While talking with Enver I told him that, like many comrades, Liri Gega also went frequently to the Yugoslav Military Mission even though they didn’t have any important duties to complete, and that they behaved as if they were in their own houses. Making no comments Enver said:

“They can do whatever they want, but you do not have anything to do there…”

I was impressed by the way he said that. From his tone you could feel discontent and disapproval. But while I was in Berat, I wasn’t aware of what was happening around him and against him, in the background.

On November 4th, the First Congress of the Union of Albanian Anti-fascist Women was opened. All the preparations had been made by Liri Gega and Naxhije Dume. I was not called upon to view the documents, nor was I to be presented with the organizational measures, even though I had been appointed as a supervisor of the commission that the First National Conference set up for the organization. This was, I thought, because I had come late to Berat. These comrades did not inform me or call me to come to the Congress and I thought that this was unintentional because of the difficulties of communication in this time of war. If I hadn’t received Enver’s letter in which he wrote: “See you at the Women’s Congress…” I wouldn’t have gone to Berat and I wouldn’t have taken part in the Congress, because I wouldn’t have known about it. I received another surprise when the Congress’ bodies were chosen. I was not proposed to be in its presidium, but I was appointed, along with comrade Vito Kondi to the Congress’ secretariat. I decided not to bring all these matters to the attention of Enver.

Enver did not say a word to me about what was happening in Berat. I am unable to say if he did this so that I would not be worried, or to respect the principle that the affairs of leadership affairs were things that should not be discussed with one’s wife.

Being at that time a member of Central Committee of the Communist Youth and of the Secretariat of the Union of Albanian Anti-fascist Youth, I remarked to Nako Spiro that, it had been a long time since we had held a meeting; perhaps, because like me, some of the comrades had been kept very busy since the Youth Congress in Helmes…

Nako stood up and invited me to walk with him alongside the river. We walked in silence for some time. Apparently he didn’t know how to begin.

During our walk along the Osum bank, he finally broke his silence and said:

“Well, you are not going to work with the youth anymore…”

Greatly surprised by this sudden news, I interrupted him and said:

“How come? Now we are on the verge of Liberation I can hardly wait to get back to Tirana to work with the Youth…. When was this decided?”

I was continuing to speak in this manner, rather hastily and somewhat upset.

“Just a minute,” he said, “The Central Committee has decided that you should take part in the Ideological Commission at the Central Committee of the Party, led by Sejfulla Maleshova.”

Then he told me about the importance of this commission, but I was getting angry with Enver too, because he hadn’t told me anything about this change. When returned to the seat of the new Government and General Headquarters, I told Enver what Nako had said to me. Enver tried to calm me down, telling me about the functions of this commission, its relationship to the Central Committee, and, at the same time, that it was part of the Ministry of Culture, whose minister would be Sejfulla, and I would deal with Tirana Radio, education etc.

The treatment I had received at the Women’s Congress and this sudden news left a bitter taste in my mouth, but at that time I did not understand why they were happening, because no one, not even Enver had told me what was going on backstage in Berat. Later, everything became clear. Apparently, they wanted to leave Enver out of the State and Party leadership, and they didn’t want to have me among them informing Enver of their actions against him.

15. Capital Liberation. The new Democratic Government in Tirana

On 17 November 1944, after 19 days of violent fighting, we got the long-awaited news of the Liberation of Tirana. We were very happy that day. While Enver was greeting the partisans and the people in the yard from the window of the Seat of the General Headquarters, I went to his room, locked the door and cried for all the dead comrades, remembering each one of them. Some were killed heroically in fighting at the barricades; some were massacred, hanged or tortured. It seemed unjust that they were not there, that they were not alive celebrating and enjoying this victory. Although I didn’t swear an oath at that moment, I have never forgotten those strong feelings of love and pain that I felt on that day. Not even when I was tired, when I was facing difficult moments, including these tough years of loneliness in prison, and my old age. I have told myself:

“That’s OK. Their dreams for the liberation of the nation were realized, and I will continue fighting for those friends of mine who were killed during the struggle and will die with honor, like them.”

The day after we got the wonderful news of the liberation of the capital, Fiqret Sanxhaktari (Shehu) came to Enver and asked permission to go to Tirana. Since the fighting had ended, she wanted to be near Mehmet because she had become engaged to him in Permet, during the Congress. Giving her permission, Enver turned to me and said:

“Nexhmije, why don’t you go along with Fiqret? I will be very busy here, so meanwhile, you can stay with your parents,” he added laughing, “because it is getting near the time we will be going to our own house.”

So I decided to leave Berat.

We set off in a mille cento car. A comrade came with us. I remembered that the Ura Vajgurore bridge or whatever it was called at that time was completely destroyed, so we crossed the river by raft. From the Krraba Pass until we arrived in Tirana we past many smoking burnt-out tanks. We also saw quite a few German corpses. We arrived in the centre of Tirana at Skanderbeg’s square, and decided to take walk in order to see how badly our capital had been damaged and also because we had missed it a lot. What I noticed immediately was the beautiful minaret of the mosque near the clock tower. Only half of it remained because a shell had damaged it.

The Germans had built a bunker in the centre of the square where all the streets intersected. It was nearly level with the ground, with holes for looking out or to put the muzzles of the machine guns through. I wasn’t able to see the entrance for the soldiers because it seemed too narrow to enter from above. Perhaps they had built a tunnel under the square, connected to the town hall, which stood where the National Historical Museum is today. It was said that in this bunker, the enemy had put up a strong resistance, and had killed and injured many partisans, who had bravely attacked that bunker in the middle of the capital. Finally it was captured, and one of our artists had painted a picture of the victorious partisan on the wall of the bunker, as a memorial to their courage.

In Royal Street, now called Barricades Street, you could see the rubbish left from the harsh war fought in that streets – as I was told – by the guerilla units, in cooperation with professional partisan teams, and helped by young volunteers and anti-fascist women from Tirana.

I left Fiqret in Bami Street, later called “Qemal Stafa”. I hastened to my house, in Saraceve Street, thinking to surprise to my parents. But they weren’t there! They hadn’t yet come back from the free areas, where they had had to go with my sick brother. He was an underground activist. They left Tirana when they heard the news that they were to be arrested. As I was later informed, my house had been searched seven times, often under the direction of Man Kukaleshi, the number one in the Qazim Mulleti. The reason for these searches was that there had been a report of a spy living in our alley, who had said that we had a radio transmitter in the house. Maybe he had noticed the activities going on with the people who exchanged letters, communiqués, and leaflets, etc. with my mother. And also, many who stayed there, such as the couriers of some districts used the house as their base, as I have written earlier.

As I didn’t find anyone at home, I headed towards the house of Enver to surprise his parents. They lived in a bungalow with two rooms with view of the ring road, opposite Bije Vokshi’s house, where the Albanian Communist Youth Organization had been established. I entered the house happily and when they saw me they were really surprised and very pleased. Immediately they asked me numerous questions about Enver. The father, uncle Halil, was interested in knowing about the new Government which had been created in Berat, and also about the ministers, some of whom he knew, because they were from Gjirokastra: such as Dr Nishani and others.

One time Ane said to her husband:

“Why don’t you tell the bride what that frontist said about the Government?” “Come on, forget that bastard,” he responded angrily.

It was understood that he didn’t want others to remind him of that frontist so he didn’t talk about it. As I was told later a former friend of his from Gjirokastra, who was a frontist now, had told uncle Halil ironically:

“Have you heard Halil, Enver has become the Prime Minister of the new Government”. “

“He has done his best,” uncle Halil had responded, “Don’t you like it?”

“Heh,” said the frontist on leaving, “a mountain Government, a wet Government…”

That’s why uncle Halil was angry. But the frontists and their friends have now seen for 45 years what this mountain government is and what it could achieve. They have tried for so long to destroy it but they can’t take from the people’s souls the conviction about the benefits that the government brought to the country…

Now the liberated Tirana would wait for the new Democratic Government to come from Berat. The long-awaited day came. The government arrived in the capital on November 1944. It was a nice November morning, when all the members of the Government leads by Enver, arrived in the square between the ministries and walked to the Dajti hotel where, in front of the hotel steps was placed a simple tribune decorated with flags and laurels. The inhabitants of the capital were overwhelmed with an indescribable enthusiasm. The partisans helped to give the atmosphere a sense of great liveliness. They had fought for the liberation of Tirana, felt proud of their deeds and celebrated by singing partisan songs.

A group of martyrs’ mothers went up to the Government members. The moment when these mothers embraced Enver and the other members as if they were their sons was very touching and moving. They wished them heartily:

“May you have a long life…may free Albania have a long life!”

then the mothers sat in front of the tribune where there were many people waiting impatiently to see the leaders of this new democratic state. Among them were a group of young women dressed in beautiful and varicolored national costumes. One of them was holding a red flag with the sublime eagle in the middle. Below, at the side of the Avenue’s bridge over the Lana River, were lines of partisan battalions who had taken part in the Liberation of Tirana. They were to parade in front the members of the Government and the General Commander, Enver Hoxha.

The moment came when the members of the Government, of the National Liberation Front Leadership and of the General Headquarters reached the tribune. Enver Hoxha, Dr. Omer Nishani, Myslim Peza, Haxhi Lleshi, Baba Faja Martaneshi; Mehemet Shehu, Medar Shtylla and others were presented to the cheering and applauding crowds. Along with some comrades, I watched the ceremony from the balcony of the Dajti Hotel.

From the tribune in front of the cheering crowd, Enver Hoxha delivered his first historical speech before the people of Tirana. In his speech as the Prime Minister of the Interim Democratic Government in Berat, Enver had issued the call:

“More bread! More culture!”

Whereas in his speech in the liberated capital, among other things he said:

“Today opens a new page in our history, and it is up to us to make it as glorious as our war against the occupier. This will be a war for the reconstruction of Albania, a war for the boosting of the economy, for the increase in the cultural and educational levels of our people, for the progress of its political, economic and social levels… Let the whole of Albania become a building site, where young and old people understand they no longer work for foreigners, but for themselves and the construction of their own country . . . No honest Albanian citizen should remain out of the Front. On the occasion of the 28th November festival, on the occasion of the liberation of Tirana, the leadership of the Albanian Antifascist National Liberation Council gives a general amnesty to all the members of the National Front, Legaliteti and other organizations who were cooperating with the occupier. From this amnesty are excluded all the war criminals who have killed, burnt, dishonored or stolen the people’s wealth.”

The people looked at the leader carefully, the Commander, for whom they had heard so much during the war. They followed him with an unseen enthusiasm. Together, with the people of the suffering population and who were broken by the war, but whose eyes sparkled because of the joy of freedom and the presence of the members of the Government, had come some of the defeated, who, with the end of the war, had lost political and economic power.

I remember that during the ceremony, when the leaders of the state mounted the tribune, a rather ridiculous incident occurred. We saw that on one side of the tribune there was a former minister of Zogu, Ferit Vokopola, and also a merchant from Tirana, Ali Bakiu. I knew both of them. In the merchants shop we used to buy notebooks and other school items. I had also bought a violin there, because this was wanted by every student preparing to become a teacher. The former minister was the father of one of my classmates. When the organizers of the ceremony saw them both they laughed but became somewhat concerned as well. Actually, the merchant from Tirana was allowed to stay because he had helped the National Liberation Movement; he was an anti-fascist, whereas the former minister left the tribune after they told him politely that his place was not there.

On the occasion of the arrival of the new Government in the liberated Tirana, in the evening of the 28th and 29th of November a large reception was organized in the Dajti Hotel. In addition to the new authorities, of the Government and the Front etc., there were Commanders, Commissars, and distinguished partisans from the battles with the Nazis and Fascists long with martyrs’ mothers and relations. All the Allied Missions in Albania were invited, the British, Soviet, American and Yugoslav.

At this reception, for the first time, I was with Enver, making our matrimonial relationship official. The main authorities of the country and the foreign guests sat in one corner of the big hotel hall. In the middle of it, where we were, and in all the other halls of the hotel, people sang and danced with uncontrolled enthusiasm.

All the members of the allied missions were enjoying themselves, especially those of the British Mission who were represented by quite a few. At this time it was their right to be happy. For months they had wandered in the mountains, sleeping in towers and Albanian huts, far from their families and living under the terror of being bombed by Nazi planes. They looked a bit ridiculous but it was also very nice – when they joined in our southern folk dances dancers and tried to move their legs as we did. Of course they wanted to dance the modern dances, as well; the tango, waltz etc. but most of those who were in the hall had come from the mountains, and those young partisans knew that those dances were not appreciated by the general population at that time. One of the British officers thought that Madam Hoxha knew one of these couple dances, and, according to the rules, asked permission from Enver. Unfortunately, I had never danced that kind of dance so I felt really embarrassed until the music ended.

In the corner where we were sitting, Enver and Dr. Nishani engaged a representative of the British Mission to see if he could handle Albanian raki. They themselves drank two glasses for the big festival and then told the waiter to fill them with water. So while they were drinking water, the Englishman was drinking raki until he was completely drunk, and everyone started laughing heartily. The guest tried to hold his liquor but, in the end, he vomited. While he was vomiting Dr. Nishani made one of his sarcastic comments: “The Englishman vomited the colonies.”

It is a well-known fact that after the Liberation, the relationships of our state leadership with the allied military missions were close and correct, and not only with the Soviet and Yugoslavian mission but also with the British representatives but somewhat less with the Americans, whose rank was lower. The United States had thought it would be “reasonable” that their emissaries should be of Albanian origin, failing to predict that the local Albanians would not put up the haughty advice and interference of these Albanians, who were rather pompous and came from over the ocean.

Enver as the leader of the new Government and Foreign Minister, taking me with him, decided to make some goodwill visits to the allied missions. I remember the visit to the British Mission chief, Jacobs. The Mission was located in a villa between “Qemal Stafa” stadium and the now Albanian Television Station. He was a good host to us. They served their famous tea and biscuits. At that time we had serious problems with the western allies in such matters as the recognition of the Government, the upcoming elections, the conditions for the UNRRA aid etc. As far as I remember, we didn’t mention these problems during this visit, because they might have caused some irritation to our relationships. We discussed the role of the allied missions during the war, about the British Mission and their members who had been in Albania and near the General Headquarters. Enver talked about them and Jacobs told us where some of them had now moved on to other missions; to Egypt near the Mediterranean Allied Headquarters, to Italy, and, in some cases, back to England.

In the second half of 1991, when my children and I had left our house and were settled in a flat, two English journalists came to visit me. At that time I didn’t wish to receive journalists, but they informed me that they had a “last will” from a former officer of the British Mission during the National Liberation War. I became curious so I accepted their request. One of them was a journalist, the other a photo reporter working for “The Sunday Times”. The journalist took from his pocket and showed me a photo of a young officer, who, as he told me, was his father, a former member of the British Mission in Albania during the war. This man, as his father had told him, had jumped with a parachute somewhere near Elbasan (maybe in the Biza field where the allies dropped supplies), but while landing he had been hurt and had been sent to a partisan hospital. According to them I had helped him and I had given him a toothbrush. His Dad had told him about the life in Albania, the partisan’s war and had told him that he had been at the dinner party in the Dajti Hotel for the wedding of Enver Hoxha and myself. Before dying he had told his son to visit to Albania and to come and thank me, and as a souvenir he gave me a toothbrush, new of course.

His father had confused me with someone else, but I couldn’t disappoint his son, so I said: “…Thank you…” and some other friendly words about the Englishmen I had known in Elbasan, Berat, Helmes etc. I also told him that we did not organize a dinner for our wedding at the Dajti Hotel, but that it had been a welcoming reception to celebrate the new Democratic Government in the liberated Tirana, and I told him playfully that maybe I had danced with his father.

When I was sent to prison, I read a small newspaper from our foreign friends and also saw the photographs of these two friends of Albania with some others. They had organized a demonstration with placards etc., demanding my release, in front of a building where there was a delegation of the Sali Berisha Government.

16. Our partisan wedding

When the new Government came to Tirana, the majority or, better to say all of its members, stayed in the Dajti Hotel. Enver had a bedroom with an anteroom. I remember staying there all December, until the relevant offices were set-up, and we got our house. We were given a house in New Tirana, on “Ismail Qemali” street. It had been the house of an engineer or director of the “Belloti” firm. We lived there for 30 years.

Enver and I decided to hold our official wedding on the New Year Eve (1944-1945), and we told our families this. They were surprised and said: “Wait a minute, we’re not ready!” We told them that we didn’t want a wedding ceremony or anything special. In fact, our families were correct because they finally had an opportunity to marry off their only son to me, an only daughter. That is why they insisted that we should celebrate twice, because we had survived the war. Enver said:

“Many young comrades like us were killed in the war that is why we can’t have a wedding ceremony”.

So they had to accept our partisan wedding. Nevertheless they did manage to do something.

On the 30th of December my family invited the family of my uncle to dinner, Arif Xhuglini, and his children. I remember that, after dinner, my uncle’s wife took me aside and wanted to tell me about the mysteries of the first night of the wedding, as it had been done to her. As she started talking I felt very embarrassed so I interrupted her saying:

“No, no I don’t want…” and left.

It seemed banal to me to stay and listen those things, maybe I felt ashamed at that time. Later when I became more interested in traditions and social customs and it also become part of my job, I said to myself:

“Why didn’t I let her talk in order to better understand the knowledge and concepts existing then about the relationship between man and woman?”

Because, I think that, the simpler the people from the cultural point of view, the more simplified are these intimate relationships. This doesn’t mean that simple people do not fall in love, do not have passions, what I mean is that, along with the expansion of the cultural horizon, intimate relationships “get complicated”, are cultivated and smartened up more than nature has given to us humans, more than nature has given to the animals, and much higher than the natural instinct of every living being to breed.

Something nice happened the following day, on December 31st. in the morning, when some members of Enver’s family had come to take the “bride”. They were Enver’s sisters Farihe and Sano. We waited on them hospitably and treated them with different kinds of sweets, according to the custom. We laughed very much when they told us what Enver had done:

“We asked him to give us his car, but he wouldn’t allow this. Now what should we do? We had to take a brougham…This is what your Enver did to us…”

and my sisters-in-law laughed. What could they do because there were no taxis then?

The moment of my leave came. It was more emotional than I had imagined. This way of leaving and separation from my family and my little house created strange impressions and caused strong emotions to me. “The partisan bride” was leaving her house. I had put on a military fabric jacket, which I had used as a coat. At the end of the road there was a hidebound horse and an old carriage waiting for the “Prime Minister’s bride”.

While the brougham was walking in the streets of the city, many ideas came to my mind. Maybe that was the strangest journey I have ever had and …the most beautiful. A strong pen is needed along with a calm spiritual state to describe the movement of that carriage carrying a bride who had just come from the mountains, to describe the minutes of that December day that were for me, a wedding day, but for Albania a real spring, the spring of freedom. The further we journeyed from my house the more confused my thoughts became and my heart beat very quickly… I have remembered this strange journey all these years; a journey that was taking me towards a new life.

Enver’s parents, his other sister, and her children were waiting for us at home. What about the bridegroom? He didn’t come to get me and he didn’t wait for me at the house either. He had gone to the office! This wasn’t acceptable.

My mother in law, whom I called Ane as did Enver, gave me a wedding ring of her own. It had white precious stones, but, as a partisan, I felt ashamed to put on my finger. I did put it on my finger but I gave it to my daughter later when she got married. For all of my life I haven’t worn a ring. Enver never gave me one and I never gave one to him either. He said playfully:

“Why do we need them; they are like chain links.”

The truth is that neither he nor I had the possibility to buy them. Enver’s father gave me a pendant with multi-colored stones, which had been an earring. He kept the other earring for Sano. Ane had made a satin quilt. Whereas my mother came with a necklace that she had had when she got married, and had also bought me some clothes at Bege’s, which, as I remember, was a small shop, but the most modern for those time. She also bought some pajamas there for Enver, which he never wore because they were too small for him. Because of this he teased my mother saying that she didn’t buy fairly for the bridegroom! According to the customs of the time, my mother sent to my parent’s in-law and sister’s in-law, towels, handkerchiefs, socks and other items. So, after everything, I didn’t leave without a proper ceremony. On the New Years Eve, Enver and I were alone. I will never forget that night, which was not only the night of a New Year but also of a new life.

As we had planned; the following day we held the official celebration of our marriage. Two employees, who had civil status, came to officiate in this. At the small ceremony that had been organized where two close friends of Enver; Dr. Omer Nishani and Baba Faja Martaneshi, who had come for the New Year and had been happy to be the witnesses of our marriage. From that time on, Omer used to call me “Enver’s wife “. On January 1st and 2nd, comrades from the political bureau such as Mehmet with Fiqret, Hysni, Vito, Nako and some others, came to congratulate us on our marriage and also to wish us all the best for the New Year. An unexpected self-organized “delegation” from Dibra also came to visit us. A group of my father’s cousins and some other citizens had come visiting. They were five or six people, lead by my father’s cousin, Mersin Qyflaku. He had known Enver from the time the Zajmi Mosque was being used as an undercover base and Enver had used Mersin’s yard to get into a “mile cento” car that would take him to Peza. Also in this group was one of the leaders of the Muslim Community, whose name I am unable to remember, but he was from Dibra. I was surprised to see that one of the visitors was Zija Dibra, who was a cousin of my father on his mother’s side. He was the brother of Fuat Dibra who, during the German occupation, was chosen to be Regent, together with Mehdi Frasheri, Lef Nosi and Pater Anton Harapi.

During the war, the Nazi invaders wanted to organize this Regency to fool the Albanian people into thinking that they were being governed by Albanians. The comrades of the Central Committee, Gogo Nushi, Nako Spiru and Sejfulla Maleshova sent me to talk with him (because I knew him) and appeal to him on behalf of the National Liberation Front not to accept this function.

Both brothers, Zija and Fuat Dibra, were not permanent residents of Tirana. They lived in Istanbul, where they had their palaces. My grandmother had told me that they were so rich that they didn’t count their gold, but weighed it using a large measuring cup. Fuat Dibra spent most of his time in France and Switzerland, and as I have heard from my father that he spent his fortune recklessly, not only in helping patriotic societies with emigration matters, but also living a life of luxury in Swiss hotels and sanatoriums, where he had gone to be cured of tuberculoses. One day the gold ran out and his family were destitute. Their old wooden house in Istanbul was even burned to the ground.

The brothers came very often to Albania especially since the time of Zogu. Fuat Bay Dibra lived at his cousin’s, Fuat Shatku’s wife, who had been a former minister during the time of Zogu. She was the aunt of Shyhret Turkesh, who had married the well-known scholar, Professor Eqrem Cabej. So we were related. I had been in this house at an earlier time with my mother. Shyhret’s aunt knew I was a communist and underground activist like her niece, that is why she welcomed me. I told her the reason why I had gone there, and she said that he was ill, but nevertheless, they hadn’t left him alone. She said that Mehdi Frasheri went there almost every day and pressed him to accept the post of regent that they had proposed. She took me to see him in his room. It was a half room, very dark, lit only by a small electric lamp, which was weaker than a candle. He was lying in a narrow bed completely covered with a dark blanket and his face turned to the wall.

Razia said slowly:

“It is useless to talk to him, he is tired because of the illness, and most of the time he feels sleepy from the medicine, and he doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”

I understood that it was impossible to try to talk to him in the state that he was in, so I left. I told this to my comrades. After a short period of time, he died. However his name was listed as a member of the quisling Regency. Nevertheless, Sejfulla Maleshova wrote an article about him in the newspaper of the National Liberation Front “Bashkimi” (The Union), where he mentioned his patriotic activity in the past, without mentioning that he ended his life as a quisling regent.

And now in our house came the regent’s brother, to congratulate on the Liberation of Albania and our wedding. We didn’t behave badly towards him, we treated Zija Dibra like the others, considering also the fact that he had not been involved in politics but had tried to keep his family’s capital. Actually, like his brother, he was a failure in politics.

The press of the time wrote that Enver had made a political marriage; marrying a girl from the North.

Understandably it was impossible to think of a honeymoon at that time. We had hardly had the chance to live together and find a house of our own. This is why we started working immediately.

17. New bride – In Enver’s family

After leading a nomad’s life for three years –as an illegal and a partisan – I finally was part of the family. When Enver was dismissed from his job in Korca and came to Tirana, he opened his shop “Flora”, and brought his family; mother, father and his single sister Sanije from Gjirokastra. They rented a house, a short distance from the place where Vojo Kushi was killed and close to the house where the Communist Youth was founded. This was quite a small house with only two rooms. In the garden was a small hut that was used as a kitchen. Enver lived at this house for only a short time until the end of October 1941, when he was obliged to go ‘underground’ to avoid arrest. He never set foot in that house again.

After the liberation, when we moved to the “Belloti” house in ‘Tirana e Re’ (New Tirana), Enver sent for his parents and sister to live with us. His middle sister, Haxhire, continued to live in the small house with her three fatherless children; her husband having been killed in his shop in Berat. Later, as she had nothing to live on, we sent for her and the children to come and live with us. Zylo, the daughter of his uncle was also invited by Enver to come and live with us. This was because he thought that he owed his uncle a favor as he had helped him with his education and also because he was a well educated patriot.

The house that we moved into was not so spacious. The women and the children slept in the largest room, while, in a smaller room slept Enver’s father. One of the other two rooms was our bedroom, whereas the other became Enver’s studio, where he welcomed comrades and held meetings with them. Koci Xoxe moved into a house close to ours. He lived with his father, stepmother, wife and her mother and his two children, who were born before the Liberation. He had two other children after that. Koci’s family was a modest one, his father was a tinsmith by profession, a craft passed down to his only son. Koci’s wife, Sofika, was a kind woman, who, even at a young age, was rather stooped, because of working hard at the handloom, making carpets for others. She could not get used to the high post that her husband had and said smilingly:

‘Wow, Xoxo has become… a celebrity!’

Indeed Xoxo put on great airs, which he always did in a very serious manner.

Koci’s father, called Barba…, I don’t remember his full name, seemed to be hardworking, able-handed and still kept working in his old age. Uncle Halil, Enver’s father and Koci’s father became close friends. Over a glass of raki or a cup of coffee they told old stories about their families or about the cities where they had lived. Uncle Halil, out of curiosity had asked him one day:

‘What’s the matter with our sons? They keep arguing, I have heard them shouting when they get together at our home…’

However, Barba minded his own business.

We did not get our monthly payment until some months after the Liberation. Some of the comrades of the Party leadership, members of the Government and of the Anti-fascist National Liberation Council continued to live and eat at the “Dajti” Hotel, others at another hotel later called the “Vollga”. Canteens were set up by Naku Spiru, such as the one for the Youth Central Committee and its administration, where people could eat for a low nominal charge..

However, our family and that of Koci Xoxe had only the one cook, a middle-aged man, called Lluka. He was supplied by a state managing center and he cooked the same things for both of the families; a first and a second course for lunch, whereas, for breakfast and dinner we each had a glass of milk, an egg and some cheese.

The house where we moved was unfurnished. It had belonged to an Italian engineer, who had left with the Italian army after the surrender of the fascist Italy, and a merchant from Korca called Petro Katro had removed the furniture. This furniture was taken away from him and became state property and was then distributed to various places. Later, many comrades, bought some pieces of this furniture from the government. We bought the bedroom and the dining room furniture. While we settled down with these items, Koci’s house was empty and had only some old bits and pieces and some small carpets, which had been brought from Korca. Noticing this situation, Enver said to his mother:

‘Ane, what about cutting the rug of the hall in two and give one part to Koci?’

She replied, ‘It’s a pity to cut up such a rug, it will get spoiled, let them find another rug for Koci.’

They found and brought two rugs to Koci’s, which were so thick that they had to saw off the bottoms of the doors.

There’s another funny story about this rug, which Enver tells. Two peasants from Elbasan came for a visit; Ali Disha and others, who had hosted and protected Enver and some friends in their house, during the war. They wanted to take their shoes off before entering the house but Enver smilingly said,

‘No, no!’, and, taking them by the hand said ‘Do come in and walk comfortably on this rug because it used to belong to Shefqet Verlaci”.

Actually, it wasn’t his but he mentioned his name because the peasants from Elbasan had suffered a lot because of Shefqet Verlaci a landowner, who, right up to the end was in the service of the fascist invaders, and even became a Prime Minister under them.

During the first 3 or 4 years after the Liberation, the meetings of the Political Bureau were held in our house. This was rather uncomfortable because of our large family. Therefore, Koci moved to another house nearby. Into his old house, which was next to ours, Enver and the family moved, however we all dined together. A woman was employed to do the cooking for us. She boasted that because she was from a big house, she would be able to do a very good job for us. She, thinking that perhaps she was a great cook or perhaps that we, as communists, would treat her as an equal, decided to sit down with us at our meals at the other end of the table, facing Enver. And this was not all. She kept up a constant chatter at the dining table! Enver once looked at me as if to ask ‘Where did you find her?’ I did not know her at all; those who dealt with our houses and related matters sent her to us. She did not stay long. When Enver’s sister, along with her children, came to live with us, she did the cooking for quite some time.

Sterjo Gjokoreci, a senior communist, who had been for several years in the Soviet Union, was responsible for matters of supply and other economic issues. He was fluent in Russian so he was also Enver’s translator at the meetings with Stalin, even at the tête-à-tête ones and also at dinners and walks, which Enver describes in his book “With Stalin”. Sterjo was totally honest and systematic for whatever expense or object that he brought into the house. In his special file you could read about the shirt, tie or socks that he had bought for Enver or the specific authorization that he had made for to buy me a suit for my wedding etc. With this authorization in my hands, I went to the store of the big merchant from Korca, Sheko, where I picked up some blue cloth, which I am still wearing, even in the photo on the cover of this book. The off-the-peg white shirt was a wedding present from Koco Tasko, from his shop, which he opened with the money of Sano’s trousseau, given by Enver to offset the expenses of the activities of the Korca Communist Group.

This photo has a story of its own, both beautiful and painful at the same time. That is the first photo after our wedding and is a memory from a Soviet camera operator who was in Albania to film the most gripping moments of the fighting for the liberation of Tirana and of the historic events to come. Unfortunately, the plane in which he was flying was shot when passing over Montenegro and thus he lost his life and all the work he had done in Albania. I do not know if any examples of his work still exist, or even if he sent some of it to Moscow in batches.

I don’t remember after how many months, the state began to pay us on a monthly basis and I don’t recall what our salary was after the Liberation. However, I do remember that at the time when Enver was the prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign affairs, he earned 35,000 (old) Lek. I earned 20,000 (old) Lek when I was the Director at the Ministry Of Culture and later as a Director of Propaganda, Education and Culture at the department in the Party Central Committee. Each of us earned 2,000 Lek as deputies. Later, Enver suggested cutting off this honorarium for the deputies living in Tirana, and were paid only for the usual mileage when they were on duty. For the out of town deputies who came to Tirana for the meetings of the Assembly accommodation and mileage costs were given to them. Later the salaries were reduced to that point that, at Enver’s suggestion and in accordance with Lenin’s recommendations written in his books; the salaries of the highest Party and State functionary could not be higher than 2 – 21/2 times the average of the salaries of the workers in the top category and therefore Enver received 16,000 leks while I received 13,000.

During the early years our salaries were quite enough for us, but we could not save anything. This was because, in addition to Enver’s family, we had to maintain my family, including my father who had a low pension along with my mother who was a housewife and my brother who was studying in the Soviet Union. We also had to maintain the two families of the two widowed sisters of Enver; Haxhire, with her three children, and Fahrije, and her two sons, Luan and Fatos who attended the university.

Earlier I have mentioned that Enver loved his eldest sister very much and admired her cleverness, wisdom and the culture. This she had picked up from her husband Bahri Omari who had emigrated to Italy some years earlier because he was an anti-Zogist. When Italy invaded Albanian, Bahri Omari returned to his home country, he socialized with his immigrant friends, many of whom had been appointed as members of the High Council, which was set up by the invaders. When Balli Kombetar was created, Bahri Omari was at its center. Enver in his book ‘Laying the Foundations of the New Albania’ has described in detail his efforts to convince intellectuals and politicians to join the Anti-fascist National Liberation Front and fight to liberate Albania. He did the same with Bahri Omari.

Enver send word with his sister and her son, Luan, in order to convince him to withdraw from his circle, and come up to the mountains to fight as some of his friends had done, such as Dr. Omer Nishani and others. However Bahri Omari held fast to his position.

In one of Enver’s letters that he sent me after there had been an ambush by a partisan unit in which Bahri Omari was wounded in one arm, he wrote

‘I do not feel sorry for him as a political figure, but I do for Fahrie and her sons. I am not going to intervene in any way… This is not particularly nice of me towards Fahrie…but there’s nothing I can do. I struggled for two long years trying to show him the correct way, but his head was like a cave..’

However, Bahri was not only an activist of Balli Kombetar, he also became Minister of Foreign Affairs under the quisling Nazi Government of Rexhep Mitrovica.

Thus was created the deep conflict between his sister, Fahrie and our families. It has been asked; ‘Could Enver really do nothing to rescue him?’ The charges against him were very serious; not only was he a quisling, but, just as important was the fact that he had signed the order to blow up Durres Harbor after the Nazi forces withdrew. Couldn’t his friends have done something?

Koci Xoxe asked Enver

‘What we are going to do with Bahri Omari?’

Enver replied ‘I did my best, he wouldn’t listen, now it’s up to justice.’

When Bahri was sentenced to death, Ane said to her son, Enver:

‘I am going to Fahrie for some days…’

She said this not as though she was asking permission but as a decision that was up to her.

While Sano also asked ‘Can I go too?’

‘Do go!’ Enver replied.

Some days past and I asked the same question,

‘Enver, may I go to Fahrije?’

‘Surely!’ he replied and he added sadly

‘I am really sorry for Fahrie and the family…’

When I arrived, there was Bahri’s sister and many other cousins from the Omar family. They were motionless, when I came in. I do not remember if I shook hands with them, but I hugged Fahrie. She kept a straight face, and, being a wise woman she never argued about this, but she did not set foot on our house for a long time afterwards. She came only when her father was sick. Enver also went to see her. It was easy for their mutual brother-sister affection to bloom again. Enver asked her about her health, because, after the war, she had problems again with tuberculosis, which was cured by the well-known pulmonologist of that time, Petraq Leka. Then she came occasionally, then later, more often and, finally she came regularly as a daughter of the house. She stayed for days and satisfied her longing for her parents, sisters and brother. She loved me too, and opened her heart to me about any problems that worried her. She showed her wisdom and self-control again even though she was going through a very difficult stage of her life.

It was Enver’s 60th birthday. She welcomed and kept the house open for the guests. The following morning, before leaving, she came up to my room and after a while told me,

‘Vera (one of my pseudonyms in the war, which the Enver’s family still uses), I have got something like a small ball, here at my breast. I felt it for the first time when we were at Durres beach. At first I thought it was just a minor injury from the mattress or something but now it seems to be something else…’

I was completely taken aback. I stood up and as I checked her I noticed the lump which was hard to the touch. I kept a straight face, and said calmly

‘You should see the specialist to check it. Don’t worry, you know that such lumps can sometimes occur and they can be benign”.

I arranged the medical check up and the tests for her, but unfortunately, it was malignant. She was operated on. Enver did not want to send her abroad (he was rather strict with his family, in every aspect). The chemotherapy for the tuberculosis affected her health, and, even after she was sent abroad, she did not recover. After languishing for six months, she gathered all her spiritual and physical strength and welcomed Enver, standing and smiling assuring him that she was all right. She, and we knew that this would be the last time that we met her. By midnight, she closed her eyes forever, while in the arms of her sons. In the morning, her sons came and consoled Enver, maybe thinking that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to go to their house. On the contrary, as soon as he had met with the comrades of the Political Bureau who had come to console him and who also went to see her sons, Enver, and all of the family, went to Fahrije’s house to console them. Enver went there prior to, and after the funeral, and for two or three days he stayed there during the afternoons and for hours he welcomed whoever came to console Fahrie’s sons.

Enver’s mother was gentle, calm and patient. She had lost her son, Beqir, at 27, due to tuberculosis. He was older than Enver and, whenever he was mentioned, she wept. She wore a ring, which had a photo of him in it. She was illiterate, but very clever. She had a natural cleverness. Her memory was extraordinary, and this was something that Enver inherited from her. It was nice to interact with each other. I have written about this in the preface of Enver’s book ‘Childhood Years’. I was told that she was hardworking around the house, a good hostess and cook. Now she did not do any housework. Sometimes you could see her sitting by the fireplace sewing or patching clothes for the family. She could thread a needle even when she reached her nineties. Although she had difficulty with her hearing, one could not tell this even when she was chatting with many women within the same room.

Enver made time to take care of his parents, especially Ane (his mother). Almost every morning, with his bag under his arm leaving for work, he would go into her room and to say good morning or chat with her for a while. In the evenings, as well, half an hour prior to dinner, we went together to his parents who we usually found by the fireside; Ane sitting on the corner ottoman, and, at the other side was the uncle (Enver’s father) sitting on a soft pad. In the evenings, Enver’s father wore his nightgown (not pajamas) and a black fez on his head, as all the Moslem men did before Zog in 1936 after which the law made it compulsory for the men to wear a trilby hat and for the women to take off the yashmak (an example set by Qemal Ataturk). During these evening get-togethers I found out that Enver’s parents were married from the cradle, as usually happened in Albania. The way this happened was: that two friends, having coffee or a glass of raki, one sad because his wife had given birth to a daughter and the other quickly comforting him would say, ‘Don’t worry, I will ask her hand in marriage for my son…’ so they were connected by an arranged marriage. Enver played jokes on his father about this and asked,

‘So tell us, did you play together when you were little?’

His father pursed his thick lips and smilingly replied

‘I threw pebbles towards her so that she would go inside…’

Enver went on joking ‘Wow were you jealous or a fanatic? When she grew up straight and tall, did you like her? You were very short indeed…’

He replied to this with irony ‘It’s not a big deal; she also wore a pair of yellow high heel boots, which you could notice from far away…’

‘That’s why you did not allow her to walk past the market, even though she was covered head to toe…’

‘He wreaked havoc about this’ Ane told me, ‘One day when somebody told him ‘I saw Gjylo walking by the market’. I went to the market (the town center) only once in my life while we were living there.’

I had heard that the people of Gjirokastra were good thrifty housekeepers but also stingy ones. Enver liked to tell a joke about this, although I don’t know if it was true or made up. Somebody from Gjirokastra was related by marriage to someone one from Libohova. The in–laws visited them after having done the shopping at the market. The hostess had cooked some very delicious, but rather small, meatballs. The men sat down at the dining table, the man from Gjirokastra noticed that his guest was eating the meatballs two at a time. He could not keep himself from saying:

‘How do you climb the stairs there in your town?’ He answered, ‘One by one or two at a time, it depends on the stairs…’

Enver knew his father’s habits well and one evening he said

‘You have not yet shown your wooden chest to your daughter in law…’

He had a small wooden chest like the ones from long ago; tin layered and decorated with circular head nails with a semi-spherical lid. There were also goat skinned chests and larger ones usually given to the bride. Ane had one like this, but bigger, which she had sent to Gjirokastra and placed it in the room where Enver was born. The uncle took the chest from his room and placed it where he was sitting by the fireplace. You could find anything in it ranging from pieces of letters, letter rolls that had become yellow with age, nails, rivets and shoe-slabs etc.

‘What are these, what do you need them for?’ Enver teased him.

‘You ask me what do I do with them. Well, when Naim’s (his fatherless nephew) shoes wear out they need to be mended…The women waste time looking for nails to fix the curtains in the kitchen…I did not buy these but collected them here and there and placed them in this wooden chest.’

‘What about the letters?’ Enver asked.

‘The ones that you are holding are the land-patents of the fields that we own in…’ he mentioned a village that I don’t remember now.

‘What do you need them for uncle, they are of no value. Don’t you know that the land belongs to the people who farm it, thus their place is here…’ and threw them into the fire.

The uncle nearly burnt his hands trying to retrieve them, but they made a beautiful flame and burned. The uncle was annoyed and angry with Enver.

‘They were of no harm to you, they were just a souvenir from Mullah Beqiri’s time (Enver’s grandfather).’

One Sunday, Enver said to his mother

‘You have not shown the ‘ bride’ that national costume, the vest that you embroidered…’

Sano went to get it from the white sheet in which it was wrapped. The loose breeches of Gjirokastra and Dibra are not made of a white, thin and stiff cloth like the ones from Tirana or Elbasan. In general those of Central Albania made of satin, light colored, such as cream, lilac, with light pink or blue flowers etc. The cherry colored, velvet vest was embroidered with charming designs of golden threads by Ane and looked as though it had just been made.

‘The daughters of the house had worn it for their weddings and next in line to wear it was Sano, but unfortunately, she had not yet found her match…’ Ane ended her story, on a rather sad note.

Sano never did manage to wear this costume because she did not get married. She had been unlucky; firstly Enver, her only brother, was away from the family because of his job and studies, then came the war. She did not even become a partisan because Enver left her to take care of their elderly parents. After the war, partially because of her age, but I think that was more due to the fact that Enver had official assignments and so people found it difficult to approach her since they may have thought that we were aiming too high.

Thus, Sano did not get married. She had attended only elementary school, but you could not tell this as she was clever and read a lot, especially magazines and newspapers. At the beginning she hesitated to go to work, considering her educational level too low. However, Enver insisted that she worked, not only because of the economic aspects but also the principle aspect, which was the employment of women. By working Sano set a good example to other women. She worked at the registry office in Tirana and, although she did not earn much there, Enver and I let her keep her salary for her personal needs. Sano worked in a modest manner and never showed herself off as Enver’s sister. Sano was accepted as a Party member thanks to her work and modesty. She was active in the activities of the Democratic Front organization and that of the Woman in the neighborhood. She was always in contact with people and aware of their needs because of her work and these activities in the neighborhood. She often talked about these at lunchtime or dinnertime and she never held back her criticism of the governmental bodies that did not find solutions for particular problems.

Sano persistently defended her opinions even when Enver contradicted her –

‘It’s not like you think…’ she went on and sometimes

Enver loudly replied ‘Who knows better, you or I?’.

Sano did not gave up and replied quietly ‘That’s what I think…’

I had to play the referee, on one side I advised Sano

‘Don’t go too far when we are dining, he is tired…’

and on the other side when I was alone with Enver, I would say to him

‘Why do you tease her, she has her own personality, I am glad that she has her own opinions.’

Enver laughed and said ‘I tease her so that she gets used to other criticisms…’

Enver’s attitude was sometimes principled but Sano was not to blame. Once, when we were dining, Sano looked really happy and Enver asked

‘What’s up?’, she told him that she had been to the Party Conference of Tirana and had been elected to the labor presidium.

Enver replied immediately ‘Were not other communists in the organization of Tirana to be elected for the presidium?’

Enver was referring to the opportunism of the Party Committee but Sano was justifiably offended and replied indignantly

‘I did not request to be elected’ and stood up and left.

We went on commenting on this but Enver put this to an end by saying

‘I’m irritated because they do things meant to please me, but what do all those communists, who have great merits, say about this?’

During all the years that I lived with Sano, I was convinced that even when time passes a brother likes to tease his younger sister, whom he loves very much. In my personal library I have a small hard covered book of La Fontaine’s tales, which Enver had sent to Sano when he was in France. In it he has written:

‘As a memory…, poor you if you ruin it…’

I do not have the exact dedication now but I remember these words quite well.

Anytime that Enver got sick, she sat at the top of the staircase and burst in tears. I tried to comfort her and begged to go in her room because she stood in the way of the medical staff. When Enver passed away I stayed close to her, much more so than I stayed with my children. I was very sorry for her, as she had not experienced the joys of love, a family and of her own children. My imprisonment was a fatal blow to her. After 5 years of solitude, during my imprisonment, despite her old age, she enjoys welcoming communists, comrades and friends of Enver or new friends of our family.

Enver’s mother and father were very different characters. Ane was careful, quite neat in her way of dressing and eating and somehow authoritarian, while uncle Halil was totally different. He never changed his suit unless his wife and daughters insisted and he never laced his shoes.

‘Where on earth are you going dressed like that?’ Ane would say.

We laughed at his words ‘What did I do?’

He wore his old hat, even though Enver had given him one of his. One day Enver said,

‘Will you throw that old hat away or what…’

He did not take Enver’s words seriously until, one day he saw Enver taking the scissors and cutting it up. Enver said smilingly,

‘If you like it so much then wear it like this…’ Uncle smiled too.

Basically, he was one of those people that are called good-natured, calm, popular, who liked to socialize with the common people. He was very honest regarding financial matters. At the beginning, when we had our salaries, he did the shopping even for my mother who lived near by. He was not too lazy to go to the third floor and give back the change to my mother even if it was just a one lek!

Every evening, when we went into their room, we found uncle Halil reading. He had a wooden chest full of old quran books in Turkish or Arabic, which could have belonged to father Ceni (Hysen Hoxhes) Enver’s uncle, who was educated, chairman of the town Hall, and of the law-courts. Even Enver’s father was called Mulla Halil, a title used for educated people. When I had submitted for translation one of these ‘qurans’ to the only translator of the old Turkish language who was from Berat, he had told me that this was an amusing writing. In one of my photos of my youth, which I had sent to Enver’s family, his father had written on the top of this ‘marsh Allah’ , I do not remember the other words. We had sent this photo together with other objects to the small and low house, where Enver’s family had lived before the Liberation. I do not know what happened to it and to the other relics that we had submitted to this museum.

During his evening visits, Enver played backgammon with his father or sometimes he said ‘Let’s sing a song!’ Uncle started singing quietly and Enver sang along with him in a thick voice. I remember that one of songs from Laberia which Enver liked singing was that of ‘Cerciz dhe Bilbilenjte’. Uncle liked telling the stories that he read in his ‘qurans’, such as the Persian-Greek wars, episodes from the battles of Alexander the Great and those about the Imams in Arabia, of Ali and his sons, Hysen and Hasan. Maybe these readings had encouraged him to follow the Bektashi sect (Moslem sect) and to go to the Tekke (holy place). He was not that religious; he did not fast, but left the table any time that we ate ham or pork dishes. He discussed for a long time with his second daughter, Hatixhe, whether or not she had properly washed the casserole in which pork had been cooked. On the other hand, he always visited his Christian friends at Easter time and came back with his pockets full of red painted eggs, which amazed and made our children very happy.

Enver was in Moscow when our first child was born. When he returned to Albania, in the midst of the boisterous happiness within our households, the uncle said

‘Now we are three men…’

Enver not realizing or not having heard this at that moment or just to tease his father, said startled,

‘What do you mean by, we became three men?’ The uncle added smiling ‘Three men, I, you and your son…’ ‘But what name shall we give him?’ Enver replied.

‘Ane and I have found a name for him, Beqir (in the memory of their dead son).”

I stiffened, I did not like that name at all. Enver and I had agreed to name him Ilir. Enver, smiling, winked at me and said to him:

‘All right, we’ll name him Beqir but he will have also another name…Ilir.’

The uncle took him in his arms and sang something to him, a ‘Moslem prayer’ that we did not understand then he whispered three times at his ear ‘Beqir, Beqir, Beqir.’ We registered our son at the registry office with the name Ilir and, except uncle, we never called him Beqir.

Even though Enver did his best to look after his father, he had a weakness for his mother. When we went downstairs, before dinner, he sat beside her on the ottoman and embraced her, and trifled with her braid, which she had thrown over her shoulders under her headdress. She turned her head and kissed him on the cheek. The same kind thing happened even when Enver was at his early sixties.

In the early days, when I was a ‘young bride’ in the house, Ane, after having kissed Enver had said to me

‘Dear bride, don’t worry about this as I have clean lips.’

I could do nothing but smile at the implication of her words. However, she could not upset me because she was so meticulous about her personal hygiene, clothes, bedding and covers. I could even go so far as to say that a nurse could not be more sanitary. She ate with such delicacy as if she had grown up in a noble family or maybe abroad. Her eldest and youngest daughters, Fahrie and Sano, had taken after her in this aspect. On the other hand, the other daughter had not inherited anything from this. When the others pointed this out to her, she replied

‘It’s not so easy, I have other things to do, I cook, do the washing up…’

She resembled her father in appearance and in character.

Enver ‘hated’ black clothes. He did his best to convince Ane to take them off but she wouldn’t listen. One day, when she was present, he requested me to find a light colored cloth to make a dress. As it was summer, I bought a grey cotton fabric with some small black stripes on it and we made a dress for her. Ane wore it for only a day and she, smiling said,

‘It seems to me as if I am wearing my nightgown’.

Sometimes Enver asked Ane to grill cheese on the fire-iron, as we sat by the fireplace. This was very nostalgic and reminded him of his childhood. Enver, being a diabetic, could not eat things that were not included in his diet, so he encouraged the children, saying,

‘Do go to Ane, she will grill cheese on the fire-iron.’

The word ‘fire-iron’ used in this case brought up lengthy debates regarding the various meanings that were given to some objects in some dialects. For example, we from Dibra use this word to name the object used to ignite the fire in the fireplace or in the stove, whereas in Gjirokastra it has another name. You could imagine how my grandmother and my mother-in law communicated with each other. Enver usually asked Ane,

‘What did you do today? Did anyone visit you? Did you go anywhere?’

She replied that she had visited my mother. Enver asked Ane about her visit

‘What was said there?’

She told him about any topic that she had discussed with my mother

‘There was the grandmother, too, but I did not understand a word of what she said and she did not understand a word of what I had said.’

This might sound strange but the younger generations of the last three or four decades have overcome the problems of dialects. These problems have been brought to an end thanks to schooling, communication, and above all, the historical decision to process and standardize the literary language.

_______________________________END THIS INSTALLMENT_____________________________________________ 

“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———————————————– 

“New Albania: A Small Nation, A Great Contribution!” Part IV: International Relations and the Foreign Policy of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania

Albania is the only socialist country in the world today, and as such its foreign policy is different from the foreign policy of any other country. It follows an open, independent policy, guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. This means that Albania constantly guards and maintains its independence and defends the interests of the socialist homeland. This also means that Albania supports the revolutionary struggles of the working class and people throughout the world, for national liberation and socialism working always to assist these struggles and to increase the fighting unity of the people against their common enemies.

In taking this stand, Albania opposes the threats and interference of the two imperialist blocs, headed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In contrast to the two superpowers, who dictate and dominate over the world’s people and whose rivalry for power is threatening all humanity with a new world war, Albania maintains a policy of peaceful coexistence with countries of different social systems. It develops foreign trade, cultural and scientific exchanges based on equality and mutual interest, and respect for freedom and national independence. It has always worked to strengthen sincere relations of friendship and collaboration with all the freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples, with all those who fight against the aggressive and hegemonic policy of imperialism.

Self-Reliance Paves the Way For Foreign Trade

On the basis of forty years of socialist construction, Albania has been able to build a strong and diversified economy. As a result it has increased its foreign trade, adding new products to its exports and achieving a balance of imports and exports. At present Albania has trade relations with over 50 countries and hundreds of firms. Its exports include fuels, electric power, chromium, ferrochrome, basic nickel carbonate, tobacco, fresh and canned vegetables, agricultural and artisans’ goods and other products. Machinery and some kinds of raw and primary materials for the expansion of production make up the overwhelming portion of imports. During this Five-Year Plan (the seventh), Albania is working to keep the growth of exports higher than imports. It gives priority to exports so as to ensure that the export-import balance results in the increase of their reserves for foreign currency.

In addition to foreign trade, Albania has cultural and scientific exchanges with many countries. It has always highly valued the friendship of peoples throughout the world, and their contributions to culture, science and the progress of humanity. lt has worked to extend its friendly relations on every continent. The reports of trips to and from Albania in the magazine, “New Albania”, give a vivid picture of the growing ties and friendship of Albania with the people of the world. Diplomatic relations have grown from year to year and in 1981 numbered 95 stetes and commercial and cultural relations exist with many more. These include countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as in Europe.

How Does Albania Conduct Trade Relations While Remaining Free From The Domination and Dictate of the Superpowers?

One of the problems which confront the developing countries of the world is interference and control over their economies by one or the other superpower. The newspapers have been filled with the serious difficulties faced by the Latin American countries as they suffer under tremendous debt to the U.S. and particularly the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund. Using these debts as a club, the U.S. is demanding even greater sacrifice by the peoples of these countries and further increasing its control over these countries.

How is it that a small country like Albania is free from such domination? The answer lies in the socialist policies of Albania, beginning with the victory of the people’s revolution and continuing today. Albania has never accepted any inequality, discrimination, exploitation and political or economic submission it rejects all imperialist attempts to gain a foothold in Albania under the guise of trade.

Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference, 1946

Albania has been able to do this by implementing from the beginning the Marxist-Leninist principle of establishing state monopoly on foreign trade. This means that the state, which is controlled by the working class, concentrates in its hands all foreign trade activity. Albania’s economy is protected from indiscriminate flow of foreign goods and from the economic crisis of the capitalist countries. Thus, imports and exports are included in the economic plan. Albania trades its surplus of mineral products and energy in order to obtain products and technology it needs to sustain its industrial growth and meet the material needs of the people.

Visiting China

Since liberation, Albania has never allowed the resources of the country to be given away to foreign companies. As its Constitution states, “…In the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, the granting of concessions to, and the creation of foreign economic and financial companies and other institutions or ones formed jointly with bourgeois and revisionist capitalist monopolies and states, as well as obtaining credits from them, are prohibited.” Albania is completely free of foreign debt and the entanglement and domination by the superpowers and other capitalist states which these debts create.

Thus Albania is living proof that even a small country and one which started out very backward economically can achieve socialist construction and maintain complete independence from the big imperialist powers, by relying on its own resources and uniting all its people in a valiant struggle.

Albania and the Struggle Against Revisionism

During World War II and after, Albania allied with the Soviet Union, then a socialist country. Under the leadership of Stalin, the Soviet Union provided assistance and fraternal aid to Albania. Based on a united struggle for building socialism and supporting the revolutionary struggles around the world, Albania and the Soviet Union had Lies of mutual benefit and cooperation.

But with the death of Stalin and rise of revisionism in the Soviet Union, a struggle broke out — not only between these two countries but between all the true fighters for socialism in the world and the traitors of the Soviet Union, who destroyed socialism and re-established capitalism. This was a just and vital struggle in the interests of the people, and the Albanians, led by their Marxist-Leninist Party, the Party of Labor of Albania, played a leading role in exposing the Soviet revisionists. They put forward for all to see that the path the Soviets had taken was against the interests of the people and would cause the Soviet Union to become an aggressive, imperialist power. Reality today proves the Albanians right.

E. Hoxha being welcomed at Moscow airport by Soviet Minister V. Molotov, 1947

After World War II, the Albanians also had relations with Yugoslavia and China. In both of these cases, a similar struggle unfolded. The Yugoslav government and party tried to make Albania an appendage of the Yugoslav economy and to hamper the socialist industrialization of Albania. They tried to isolate Albania and exploit the country through unequal exchanges and hostile interference. And here too, an ideological struggle developed, with the Albanians once again exposing that the policies and stands of the Yugoslavs reflected not socialist ideals, not Marxism-Leninism, but capitalism and service to the rich.

Albania and Yugoslavia were allies in the anti-fascist war before the Titoite deviation into the capitalist camp.

The situation with China developed at a later date. Again there was a fierce ideological struggle, with the Albanian people fighting to defend the interests of the working class and people, and the Chinese taking a stand in support of U.S. imperialism. The Chinese, like the Yugoslavs and Soviets, promoted revisionist lines and policies which harmed the struggles of the people and caused great confusion.

Stamp made to celebrate the warm relations between E. Hoxha's Albania and Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam

In each case, the revisionists attempted to sabotage the economy of Albania, unilaterally canceling contracts and agreements. They tried to fool the Albanians into accepting their dictate and when this didn’t work they resorted to other means of attack leaving projects unfinished, providing false reports on mineral deposits and so on. In the face of this, the great strength and determination Albania has shown to oppose all forms of revisionist and imperialist attack and to continue on the socialist road is a great inspiration to all people interested in freedom and progress.

With General Secretary of the CP-Peru (M-L) Saturino Paredes Macedo

The struggle waged by the Albanians under the leadership of the PLA, has been discussed and analysed in recent works by Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the PLA. In these books – The Khrushchevites, The Titoites, Reflections on China (on the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and China respectively), and Imperialism and the Revolution, Hoxha provides great detail and insight, while making important contributions to the understanding and analyses of imperialism and revisionism on a world scale. These books, as well as  the consistent and open policy which Albania pursues today readily show why the imperialists slander Albania. They attack Albania because it refuses to accept revisionism and the path of betrayal of the people, and because it remains independent of the dictate and domination of the imperialists. In fact, it is a great danger to the imperialists and social-imperialists and thus they do everything to silence its voice and confuse people about Albania. But day after day, Albania shows the world that it is the imperialist powers who are becoming more and more isolated, as the peoples increase their struggle against the superpowers and all their local tools of reaction.

The Foreign Policy of Albania: Based on a Marxist-Leninist Analysis of the World

In order to have a consistent internationalist stand which both safeguards the revolution in Albania and supports the struggles of the world’s peoples, the Albanians make a careful objective analysis of the international situation. They explain that imperialism is the source of all aggression and predatory wars, the source of the suffering of the world’s people. U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism are competing and maneuvering to carry out various aggressions and occupy other countries. These two superpowers, along with other imperialist and capitalist powers (European countries, Japan, China, etc.), are trying to outdo each other in gaining economic, political and military superiority and in capturing new strategic positions. This is what leads to dangerous tensions and threatens the peoples with a new world war. The superpowers make secret deals and interfere in and attack various countries and nations in order to gain markets, raw materials and other advantages.

With Gensek of CP France, W.M. Thorez, 1959

The Albanians show that imperialist war, oppression and exploitation have run into great resistance from the working class and peoples of the world. They bring out that the struggles of workers and other oppressed peoples is a cause for great optimism.

While analysing that the imperialist superpowers and their NATO and Warsaw Pact allies are powerful and ferocious, the Albanians also expose that they are in decay, suffering from all round crisis. They explain that for the world’s people to escape once and for all from the suffering they experience under capitalism, under the neo-colonialist yoke of foreign imperialists and domination by local reactionary rulers, there is only one path. This is the path of socialist revolution, to overthrow imperialism and all reactionaries. This struggle is an objective historical process that no force can stop.

Albania Supports The International Working Class and Oppressed Peoples

Albania strengthens its support for the working class world-wide while safeguarding and defending socialism at home. In every available international forum, Albania presents a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world, which recognizes that the working class in every country is the leading force of the revolution. And as their own experience confirms, the victory of the revolution depends on the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party of the working class on the ability of this party to unite the people in struggle against their enemies and to organize the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. For this reason, the PLA pays great attention to strengthening and increasing its unity with Marxist- Leninist parties worldwide, and on developing the unity and strength of the international communist movement. Its consistent struggle against revisionism has been a very valuable contribution to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement world-wide. The great accomplishments of Albania in socialist construction and its firm stand against imperialism and revisionism has made it the leading ideological and political force in the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

Speaking at a rally of the people, 1967.

Consistent with assisting the unity and struggle of the working class world-wide is Albania’s support for the struggle of all people for democracy, independence and socialism. The Albanians support each step in the struggles for freedom, independence and social progress won by other peoples, such as those of the Iranians in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Shah and the Nicaraguans in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Somoza. These triumphs help them and the other peoples of the world by weakening the common enemy.

With Gensec of Romanian Worker's Party, G.Georgiu Dej, 1956.

In the international arena, the Albanians work to expose the superpowers and their allies and to put forward an internationalist stand in support of the just struggles of the people for national and social liberation. For example, the consistent exposure of the phony character of the disarmament talks by the superpowers is one effort the Albanians have made to prevent the world’s people from being fooled.

E. Hoxha meeting with Kim Il-sung

The fact that Albania vigorously opposes, ideologically and politically, the stands of other countries does not prevent them from having friendly relations. Yugoslavia, for example, has taken hostile actions toward Albania and has attempted to destroy its socialist homeland. Despite the ideological differences with the Yugoslav revisionists, and their continuing plots against Albania, the Albanians aim to carry on normal diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia . At the same time, they have repeatedly warned the Yugoslav government against continuing its brutal, chauvinist policy toward the almost two million Albanians in Kosova and other parts of Yugoslavia. These people were separated from Albania during the imperialist dismemberment of the country before World War II. The Kosovars have demanded their own republic within the Yugoslav Federation, the right to develop their own national art and culture, to become acquainted with their own history and so on. The Kosovars have refused to reconcile themselves to an inferior status among the peoples of Yugoslavia, where their political, economic and national rights have been denied. Albania has never interfered in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia, but it has defended and will continue to defend the rights of the Kosovars in Yugoslavia.

With Stalin, 1947

Albania works not only for good relations with Yugoslavia, but with all the Balkan countries (Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania) and with European states in general. It aims to create a friendly atmosphere and to relax tensions. It seeks to resolve disputes by protracted negotiations rather than by threats and violence. It has called on these countries (as well as those in the rest of the world) not to ally themselves with the superpowers, saying that there is no safety under their aggressive “nuclear umbrellas”. It has also called on its neighbors to refuse to allow superpower military bases on their soil or to permit the superpowers to use their ports for refueling or rest stops.

Albania has formal diplomatic relations with China, but since 1978 when the Chinese social-imperialists lined up against the PLA and the Albanian people, there have been no other contacts. In 1978 the Chinese violated official agreements between the two countries, revealed information harmful to Albania’s security and sabotaged projects underway.

At a meeting of working in a Leningrad factory.

As for the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the Albanians consider them the most savage enemies of the freedom and independence of the peoples and of peace and security in the world. They do not and will not have relations with these enemies of the people and will resolutely continue their exposure of these powers’ aggressive and hegemony-seeking policy and activity. Albania also refuses to have diplomatic relations with South Africa and Israel.

The foreign policy of Albania is an open, correct and principled policy, which defends the victories of socialism and supports the progressive struggles of people in the world. Providing a clear example of what is possible when a people rely on their own efforts, and unite under the leadership of a true Marxist-Leninist party, the Albanian people and state have won the respect and sympathy of millions of people all over the world.

Conclusion

In spite of the conspiracy of silence in all the U.S. bourgeois media the achievements of socialist Albania cannot and should not be hidden from democratic and progressive Americans. This pamphlet has been produced to help break this silence and to tell the inspiring story of this small country and its forty years of brilliant achievements since liberation and the triumph of the people’s revolution.

Alternating with the capitalist media’s usual silence have been lies and falsifications about Albania. But progressive organizations world-wide and many eyewitnesses to Albania’s socialist construction insist an spreading the true facts about the new socialist life being developed.

Facts show the Albanians are blazing a historic trail. Socialist Albania, the first country in the world to abolish taxes, the only country without such capitalist evils as inflation and unemployment, is a country that anyone eager to learn how these “miracles” have been accomplished should investigate. Starting as the country which was the most backward in Europe before World War II, Albania has become completely self-sufficient in feeding its people and constantly provides a better material and cultural life for its people.

Albania has accomplished all of this despite constant attacks and pressures by the imperialist powers. In particular, the United States government has been responsible for ongoing attacks against Albania, in collaboration with Britain, Yugoslavia and other European countries. These provocations continue today.

Albania deserves the support of all democratic and progressive people. It provides a shining example of how the working class and people can completely change their lives for the better. Using the experience of centuries of struggle against foreign occupation, the Albanian people rose and developed their Communist Party, the strong leadership capable of meeting the historic challenge before them. This Party, now the Party of Labor of Albania, led the people in defending their rights and waging a war of national and social liberation. Today after forty years of triumphant socialist construction the people, firmly united around the Party, are actively participating in the running and organizing of the state and economy, defending their homeland and joining with the people of the world to fight for peace, democracy and social progress.

Socialist Albania shows the reality that can be achieved when the working class and people take history into their hands and determine their own destiny.

Thoughts on Titoism & its Revisionist Implications for the Future of Marxism-Leninism

“The Yugoslav communists and the Yugoslav people must attend to that matter; it is up to them to solve the problems of the present and the future of their country. It is in this context, also, that I see the problem of Kosova and the Albanian population living in other parts of Yugoslavia. We must not leave any way for the Titoite enemy to accuse us later of allegedly waging our fight to break up the Yugoslav Federation. This is a delicate moment and needs very careful handling, because by saying, ‘See, they want to break up Yugoslavia,’ Tito not only gathers reaction around him, but also tries to win the patriotic elements over to his side.”

– Joseph Stalin

The “comrade” Broz led the anti-Nazi guerrilla campaign in the 40′s. No one will take away from his leadership, but on one occasion he promised British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that he had no interest in implementing socialism in Yugoslavia, and swore that he would not.

Once the Second World War was won, Titoite policy was nationalist deviation, and from 1948, his policy was a program of economic liberalization, in which, among other gems, commodity prices were allowed to be set by the market, a characteristic of classical liberal economics.

Private investment and foreign investment in factories did not stop, and the factories could produce as they deemed necessary, without undergoing any rigorous economic planning by the state. To include kulak elements within the economy and the government without waging the class struggle was deemed necessary by the Titoite administration.

The Yugoslav Communist Party had a complete lack of proletarian democracy and popular participation. This party was warned by the Cominform in 1948, to denounce Tito’s abandonment of the socialist bloc and his collaboration with the capitalist powers.

The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform resulted in a massive anti-communist purge within the PCY that was reflected in the overwhelming number of arrests: between 100,000 and 200,000. Most of these were tortured and killed as “Stalinists.”

Tito helped the imperialists in the Korean War, and was always a dividing element in Europe, where the Yankees relied on Yugoslavia to implode neighboring socialist governments. As for the promise he made​to Churchill, if we consider the “market socialist” economy and the capitalist “workers’ self-administration” program that characterized the Yugoslav model, then Tito fulfilled his promise.

Particularly in favoring the capitalist model of uneven development even within the confines of Yugoslavia, developing states like Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro while leaving such states as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo as backwater neo-colonies exploited and oppressed by the more developed states, we can see the Titoite policy’s responsibility for the violent events of the collapse of Yugoslavia as a country in the 1990′s.

Yugoslavia and its leader Tito was (and still is) the darling of all mushy “socialists” opposed to Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union. Tito brought “market socialism,” subsequently adopted by the revisionists in China and the Soviet Union. In Tito’s version of “market socialism” there was also “local control” and “workers self-administration,” thus he gained the support of various half-baked “anarchists” as well. 

Many of the “left” looked on in admiration at Yugoslavia’s standard of living and this furthered the pro-Tito and pro-U.S. illusions propped up with billions upon billions in Western loans.

Today, all the petty-bourgeois advocates of the Yugoslavian model are nowhere to be found, except in total stupor in younger generations. There is no Titoite International, no ruling Titoite party nor any Titoite parties active in any country except the countries that constituted the former Yugoslavia.

There are no mea culpas coming forward from any of the people who found Tito preferable to Stalin. However, there is a new danger, in that potential advocates of “workers self-administration” are so lacking in theoretical seriousness that they do not know if Yugoslavia was a model of socialism or not. In this way there is another generation of unconscious Titoites rising.

In the present time we can see clearly where “workers self-administration” of the economy leads. Each ethnicity retained its own economic interests and never learned what centralized cooperation should be. Workers of each ethnicity never understood concretely how they were damaging each others’ interests. In fact, in Yugoslavia’s case, the lack of socialism bred suspicions and illusions about other ethnicities. In reality, it was imperialism robbing Yugoslavia, with Tito’s blessings.

Without centrally-planned economic production among workers, conflicts occur in relations among nations. Not surprisingly, when Western liberalism swept eastern Europe, Yugoslavia had the biggest explosion of ugly ethnic violence, right out of Hitler’s game plan from World War II. Russian revisionism played a scandalous role in ex-Yugoslavia. It was Khrushchev who abandoned Stalin and a principled position on the national question. It was also Khrushchev who looked to nothing more than the size and economic strength of Yugoslavia as a reason to abandon principled relations with Albania and cozy up to Tito.

When we see extreme actions of ethnic cleansing or rioting, as in ex-Yugoslavia, we can be sure that small nations are writhing in pain from the punishment of bigger nations. Once Khrushchev abandoned Stalin on the national question and allowed for corruption to enter the party in the name of opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat, all the nations smaller than Russia knew that bourgeois self-interest was the new watchword of the day. Instead of viewing imperialism as the source of economic problems, all ex-Soviet people since Khrushchev have increasingly looked at their neighbors as the source of economic problems. Thus, revisionists of a feather…

PCMLE: Albania – Unmasking and Struggling against Titoite Revisionism

From En Marcha, the newspaper of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE).

Yugoslav revisionism was to the old ideological foundation revisionist theories of Bernstein, Kautsky, anti-Marxist theories of all opportunists and enemies of socialism, the Trotskyites, Bukharin and social democracy.

In tandem with Albania and the Party of Labor of Albania undertook its struggle against Khrushchev revisionism and Chinese revisionism, revisionism Titoist also fought in Yugoslavia, which played a leading role in counter-revolutionary action and in favor of imperialism. Their aim against the Titoist PTA was to transform a Marxist-Leninist party in an opportunist party and make Albania a Yugoslav state.

Titoist Revisionists were a band of renegades who pushed their counterrevolutionary activity since 1948, this group was led by Joseph Tito after World War II, said national-chauvinist accented features and flourished in times of war. The Yugoslavs seized power product of the struggle against fascism and opportunistic traits immediately expressed his resignation to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, in its assumptions about the Soviet Union and Stalin in their attitudes and chauvinistic acts against Albania . According to Enver Hoxha “the Titoist were not for the construction of socialism, were not because the Communist Party of Yugoslavia should be guided by Marxist-Leninist theory and did not accept the dictatorship of the proletariat. In that originated the conflict that erupted between the Information Office of the Communist and Workers Parties and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. “

Yugoslav revisionism was to the old ideological foundation revisionist theories of Bernstein, Kautsky, anti-Marxist theories of all opportunists and enemies of socialism, the Trotskyites, Bukharin and social democracy.

The Yugoslavs played a difficult role in the spread of anti-Marxist theses which were mainly made at the Seventh Congress of the Communist League of Yugoslavia, they claim to follow an independent policy, but in reality its activity showed an adaptation to the policy of the imperialist camp.

The Titoism was characterized by “a feverish activity against Marxism-Leninism, to organize a worldwide propaganda campaign to present to the Yugoslav system in the form of a regime ‘real socialist’ as a ‘new society’ as a ‘socialism line ‘, which is like Lenin and Stalin had emerged in the Soviet Union, but as a socialist regime with’ human face ‘, which is experienced for the first time in the world and gives’ brilliant result’. Propaganda has been proposed to put in a blind alley to the people and progressive forces who fought for freedom and independence in the four corners of the globe. “

Tito and his band in Yugoslavia adopted forms of government that were fought in time of Lenin and presumed to be used in the Soviet Union by the Trotskyists and other anarchists, they were encouraged by the bourgeoisie to sabotage the building of socialism and Yugoslavia dressed in the capitalist system by the so-called “Yugoslav self-management”, which was dressed in a robe Marxist-Leninist and tried to convince people that this system was the most authentic socialism. According to Enver Hoxha “the ‘self’ was born as an economic system, then extended the domain of the state organization and all other areas of life in the country. The theory and practice of ‘self’ is a denial Yugoslav open the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the general laws of socialist construction. The economic and political system of ‘self’, is a form of anarcho syndicalist bourgeois dictatorship. “

The thesis of the ‘self’ did much damage to the Yugoslav people, as stated in c. Enver “the system of ‘self’ with all its distinctive features, such as the elimination of democratic centralism, the unique leadership role of the state, federalism, anarchist, anti-state ideology in general, Yugoslavia has caused disorder and economic turmoil political and ideological standing, a weak and uneven development among the republics and regions, major social and class differences, discord and national oppression and degeneration of the spiritual life. It has caused a sharp division of the working class, provoking rivalry between its various detachments and feeding their bourgeois spirit. “

Albania was a great example in the struggle against revisionism, was able to face the various facets counterrevolutionary who sought to distort the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism and defend, while it provided an important example of resistance and strength to the communists and workers the world.

Source

PCMLE: The Struggle of the PLA against Revisionism

From En Marcha, the newspaper of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE).

The first big fight was faced by Albanians against Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev led sect presented at the XX Congress of the CPSU ineffable a violent attack on the principles of Marxism-Leninism …

After the Second World War and the Communist proletariat were victorious, a quarter of the globe was under the banner of the working class and the Marxist-Leninists had acquired a great respect for the peoples of the world. The Soviet Union played an important role in this struggle, became an example to follow, the members of the CPSU, Comrade Stalin especially, constituted relating to the liberation struggle. Thus the bourgeoisie and imperialism seeking ways to destroy the socialist countries, they used against revolutions, sabotage and the action of the revisionists, that under a Marxist-Leninist phraseology masked their collaboration to overthrow socialism. Thus, after the death of Joseph Stalin (March 5, 1953), revisionism, which was hidden behind the shadows and found the time to attack and seize power of the USSR, to push forward an offensive anti-seize that sought the respect and admiration of the first socialist country to hit the proletariat.

Many Communists took over the task of exposing and combating revisionism his theses against revolutionary played an important role in the Labour Party of Albania (PTA) and the Albanian people, who faced before and in the midst of World War II and Italian Fascism occupants of Nazi Germany.

After conquering the people of Albania to expel the invaders from their land and began the process of building socialism in the way they fought against the various reviews that appeared as: Titoist, the Khrushchev, the Maoists, the Euro-, etc. .

The first major fight was against Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev led sect presented at the XX Congress of the CPSU ineffable a violent attack on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. “The report of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presented to Congress by N. Khrushchev proposed a number of theses, described as ‘new’, that constituted an alleged ‘creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory’ “

The main anti-Marxist revisionists Khrushchev posed consisted of “The thesis of the so-called ‘whole building’ socialism, ‘end of social classes and class struggle’, ‘the party of all people, all State the people ‘sovereignty’ limited ‘from the old socialist countries. ” These approaches were able to gain ground as the revisionists managed to “reverse the socialist principles in the economy, politics, ideology, eliminated the socialist planning and operation Leninist party, its democracy ceased to exist and became formal, so they got abolish the criticism and self “

To fulfill its role of enemies of the working class and disrupt the dictatorship of the proletariat, were endorsed by the attack of the bourgeoisie against Stalin and plated combat the so-called “cult of personalism,” thesis that sought to undermine the prestige of Joseph Stalin to strike a blow to the Marxist-Leninist teachings and legitimize the destruction of the Marxist Leninist CPSU made in its previous conference and adopt a revisionist political line.

Were the actions taken by multiple Albania in the defense of Marxism-Leninism and the fight against Khrushchev revisionism, including the publication of several papers and articles written by the PTA and mainly by c. Enver Hoxha, which were distributed in pamphlet form and translated into different languages. As well as their ongoing battle in the different scenarios to confront and expose the revisionist thesis as was the Third and Fourth Congress of PTA in which plants growing left Marxist-Leninist line and reject attempts revisionists, as well as various meetings Communist party in 1957 and 1960 in Moscow, as in the impromptu meeting in Bucharest (1960) in which the Albanians were able to drive a relentless struggle against revisionism and maintain the defense of the unity international community, while represented in scenarios in which the revisionists was defeated.

The heroic struggle of Socialist Albania, which was a small country with limited productive development, made the revisionists repeatedly launch campaigns to discredit and slander against the PTA and mainly against the party leadership and sought to undermine the leadership of Enver Hoxha as first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Albania. On several occasions, Khrushchev made known to the people of Albania to overthrow the communists from power, but the drive rail is not allowed to break the discipline and morale of the Albanians. Despite the sabotage, blackmail and economic blockade by the Soviet revisionist, the PTA held Albania and revolutionary line of Marxism-Leninism defense.

Source

PCMLE: Enver Hoxha – Strong Defender of Marxism-Leninism

From En Marcha, the newspaper of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE).

The constant struggle of Enver Hoxha was his concern for the working class to provide the materials needed to face the reaction and contributed to the elucidation of the true nature of the action that the enemies in Albania. Unified actions of the different sectors, including the woman who played an important role in the revolutionary process, which together with the workers gave their contribution to the conquest of political power of the state, which occurred on 29 November 1944.

Enver Hoxha was born on October 16, 1908, was one of the biggest advocates of Marxism-Leninism. Since his youth he joined the struggle against the occupation of their country.

With the establishment of the Communist Party of Albania, its role was decisive against the organization and the Albanian state. Enver Hoxha was named interim head of the Central Committee.

The constant struggle of Enver Hoxha was his concern for the working class to provide the materials needed to face the reaction and contributed to the elucidation of the true nature of the action that the enemies in Albania. Unified actions of the different sectors, including the woman who played an important role in the revolutionary process, which together with the workers gave their contribution to the conquest of political power of the state, which occurred on 29 November 1944.

After the liberation of Albania, the “allies” Anglo-Americans refused to recognize the new power and supported the reactionary interior. The Constituent Assembly elections gave a large majority of the Communists and patriots. Failing their attempts to overthrow the new regime, the United States and Britain withdrew their delegations from Albania.

During the liberation struggle, E. Hoxha opposed chauvinist positions on Kosovo Albanian reaction and defended the principle of respect for international borders established in 1912. Hoxha’s position was that the Kosovo problem should be discussed and resolved between socialist states after the victory over Nazism. The aim of Titus, in the context of its proposed Balkan Federation, was that Albania was the seventh Yugoslav province. To carry out his plan, he initiated a split in the Albanian Communist Party leadership. After the war, Albania was in a very difficult economic situation and the new power was in consolidation phase.

Such interference in Albanian affairs created an atmosphere of serious suspicions around the country. Within the communist movement, the young Albanian Communist Party dared to face Tito, leader of one of the most prestigious and influential games of the Cominform. This showed great courage and determination of Enver, especially when you consider that the Communist Party of Albania, was the only party in power had not yet been recognized as a member of Cominform, as Tito had a lot to see.

Attempts to overthrow the socialist system continued; raided Albania reactionary groups were eliminated. However, the blockade and the ideological pressure continued. In the sixties, Enver Hoxha, faced Khrushchev’s revisionist line in defense of Marxism-Leninism.

At the Conference of the Communist parties in Moscow in 1961, the Albanian party, with Enver Hoxha at the head, was the only one who openly opposed the CPSU, which will be subject to gibes cost and economic pressures. To cope with crop failures recorded, due to weather reasons, Albania need to import wheat. Khrushchev made known to the Albanians that if his party gave the USSR wheat cover their needs, and pointed with his particular “spirit of internationalism,” these needs “could be covered with wheat that rats were eaten each year in the USSR “. Enver Hoxha replied, “we prefer to eat roots rather than sell our independence and our principles.” The attitude of Enver Hoxha in Moscow Conference was of particular importance, because although he knew the differences between the Chinese party and the CPSU, Mao Zedong did not know whether Chinese PC and disagreed with his radical denunciation of revisionism.

Fought the social-Enver Hoxha, the thought of Mao on the theory of the Three Worlds, and the other revisionists and counter-currents that emerged at that time.

This is shown by his works as Imperialism and Revolution, The Khrushchevites, The Titoites and other writings that have contributed to the development of revolutionary theory and the defense of Marxism-Leninism as a legacy for contemporary revolutionary.

A Brief History

In 1924 the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie of the South and return migrants from Albania, led the bourgeois democratic revolution to overthrow the government of the big landowners, feudal lords and clergy representatives of the great kept the Ottoman laws and refused to land reform. Enver is part of this movement.

With the triumph of the democratic revolution, Fan Noli was elected head of government, but six months later was dismissed by the reactionary forces: Ahmed Zogu funded abroad (the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and Standard Oil) and the specific support of Yugoslavia and Greece and a mercenary army, seized power and proclaimed himself President of the Republic, and later King of Albania.

In 1939, Italy invaded Albania with the changes in nature struggle, the struggle for social emancipation and against the dictatorship zoguista are combined with the struggle for national liberation and the need to unify the Communists in the construction of a single party .

On May 28, 1944, the National Liberation Army ELNA-was ordered to go on the offensive general for the complete liberation of Albania from German occupation and all reactionary forces. The Germans, on the same day, they released four and a half divisions, 50,000 men, against Division I National Liberation Army emerged victorious after a month of intense fighting which backed the fascist enemy. At that time about half of the Albanian territory was liberated.

In October ELNA already had 70,000 combatants between youth and peasants, 9% of this army was made up women. It was an overwhelming force, so that contributed to the liberation of Yugoslavia.

On November 29, 1944 Albania gets its final release and Enver Hoxha is responsible for leading this country to build socialism.

Source

Beria and Tito

Beria offered assurances to Czechoslovakia that the USSR would not continue to interfere in Czech internal affairs, and he wrote a personal letter to Marshal Tito apologizing for the manner in which Stalin had treated him. The MGB officer who would carry the letter to Tito showed it to me. The final sentence said, “Let us cast the past aside and look ahead to the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two nations.”

Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey’s, c1998, p. 148

Khrushchev and Molotov on Beria

I post these excerpts here for a balanced view of Beria’s role in order to encourage dialectic analysis of whether he was a Marxist-Leninist or a revisionist. I post these here despite serious misgivings about the thesis that “Beria poisoned Stalin,” a theory for which I’ve found no evidence except for the book “Molotov Remembers,” which was published by an anti-communist after Molotov’s death.

 – Espresso Stalinist

No sooner had Stalin fallen ill than Beria started going around spewing hatred against him and mocking him. It was simply unbearable to listen to Beria. But, interestingly enough, as soon as Stalin showed these signs of consciousness on his face and made us think he might recover, Beria threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin’s hand, and started kissing it. When Stalin lost consciousness again and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat. This was the real Beria–treacherous even toward Stalin, whom he supposedly admired and even worshipped yet whom he was now spitting on.

Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 318

During his [Stalin] last days I had in some sense fallen out of favor…. I had seen Stalin for five weeks before he died. He was absolutely healthy. They called for me when he was taken ill. When I arrived at the dacha some Politburo members were there. Of non-Politburo members, only Mikoyan and myself, as I recall, had been called. Beria was clearly in command.

Stalin was lying on the sofa. His eyes were closed. Now and then he would make an effort to open them and say something, but he couldn’t fully regain consciousness. Whenever Stalin tried to say something, Beria ran up to him and kissed his hand.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 236

CHUEV: Beria himself was said to have killed him.

MOLOTOV: Why Beria? It could have been done by a security officer or a doctor. As he was dying, there were moments when he regained consciousness. At other times he was writhing in pain. There were various episodes. Sometimes he seemed about to come to. At those moments Beria would stay close to Stalin. Oh! He was always ready…

One cannot exclude the possibility that he had a hand in Stalin’s death. Judging by what he said to me and I sensed…. While on the rostrum of the Mausoleum with him on May 1st, 1953, he did drop hints…. Apparently he wanted to evoke my sympathy. He said, “I did him in!”–as if this had benefited me. Of course he wanted to ingratiate himself with me: “I saved all of you!” Khrushchev would scarcely have had a hand in it. He might have been suspicious of what had gone on. Or possibly… All of them had been close by. Malenkov knows more, much more, much more.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 237

MOLOTOV: It is totally obvious that he kept his plan secret, a plan aimed against building Communism in our country. He had another course–a course for Capitalism. This faint-hearted traitor, like other faint-hearted traitors whom the Party has dealt with satisfactorily, was planning nothing less than a return to Capitalism.

I must again draw your attention to Beria’s attempts to establish ties with Rankovich and with Tito, which Comrade Malenkov has already mentioned.

Stickle, D. M., Ed. The Beria Affair. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 1992, p. 30

What Beria proposed would never have come up for discussion in Stalin’s time. Stalin made a public statement when the GDR was created, that this was a new stage in the development of Germany, and that there could be no doubts about this. Stalin was the sort of man to sacrifice everything for the sake of socialism. He would never have abandoned the conquest of socialism.

I objected that there could not be a peaceful Germany unless it took the road to socialism. Therefore all talk about a “peaceful Germany” implied a bourgeois Germany, period.

I consider Khrushchev a rightist, and Beria was even further right. We had the evidence. Both of them were rightists. Mikoyan too.

…Being a rightist, Khrushchev was rotten through and through. Beria was even more of a rightist and even more rotten.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 336-337

He (Beria) was unprincipled. He was not even a communist. I consider him a parasite on the party.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 339

I regard Beria as an agent of imperialism. Agent does not mean spy. He had to have some support–either in the working class or in imperialism. He had no support among the people, and he enjoyed no prestige. Even had he succeeded in seizing power, he would not have lasted long.
…a big scum.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 340

He was a good organizer, a good administrator–and a born security operative, of course. But quite without principles.
I had a sharp clash with Beria the first week after Stalin’s death. It is quite possible that I was not the one to meet either his or Khrushchev’s requirements. Their policies would not have differed greatly.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 341

…he (Beria) was, in any event, a dangerous character.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 343

CHUEV: Beria is called a diehard enemy of Soviet power.
MOLOTOV: I don’t know whether he was a diehard or some other kind of enemy, but I do know he was an enemy.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 343

EDITOR: Molotov wonders with good reason whether Stalin really died a natural death. Shortly before Beria was liquidated by his fearful colleagues, he took credit for Stalin’s death. He confided to Molotov that he had “saved them all,” implying that he had killed Stalin or at least seen to it that the stricken Stalin did not receive adequate and timely medical attention.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 161

US Government Report Undermines Zimbabwe Opposition’s Claim of Independence

By Stephen Gowans

The US government had a hand in formulating the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, and funded community-based newsletters to create a platform to persuade Zimbabweans to accept Washington’s point of view, according to a US government report. The report boasts that Washington is the undisputed leader in nurturing anti-government civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, operating through a CIA-interlocked organization led by former New York investment banker and Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman.

In a November 16, 2007 letter accompanying the US State Department’s “Zimbabwe 2007 Performance Report,” US ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee wrote that,

“Working closely with like-minded governments, we continued diplomatic efforts to maintain pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe and to remind the regime that fundamental changes…are a prerequisite to reengagement with the international community.”

McGee called for economic reform, translated as abandonment of Harare’s economic program of favoring Zimbabweans over foreign investors, an end to price controls, and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

The neo-liberal, foreign investor-friendly economic policies Washington favors are central to the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC. The State Department document reveals that the MDC’s policy orientation may be based more on US government direction than its own deliberations. According to the report,

“The (US government)…assisted the MDC to effectively identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas within Zimbabwe, in the region, and beyond. In particular, (US government) technical assistance was pivotal in supporting (the) MDC’s formulation and communication of a comprehensive policy platform.”

Critics of the party point to the absence of any difference between its policy proposals and those favored in Washington for African countries, an absence that may be explained in the US government’s helping “the MDC to identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas, and develop and communicate a policy platform.”

US government assistance to the MDC’s Tsvangirai faction didn’t stop at formulating and articulating a policy platform, the report says, but extended to helping the MDC formulate strategy to oppose the Mugabe government. According to the State Department, the US government,

“provided technical assistance to the MDC…to enable it to conduct regular strategic planning meetings to establish goals, identify key objectives, prioritize activities, and determine performance benchmarks.”

The tone of the report paints Zimbabweans as being incapable of establishing goals, setting priorities, and measuring performance themselves and therefore requiring US assistance to perform basic organizational tasks. It may be that the assistance US advisors provided is more accurately, and less tactfully, called direction.

The technical aid was furnished by the International Republican Institute, the Republican Party arm of the US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy, whose chairman is John McCain. According to the State Department document, the,

“IRI held a workshop for Tsvangirai’s shadow government at which each shadow minister presented and defended his/her policy positions. A panel of technical experts grilled presenters on the technical content of their policies.”

This assistance was deemed by the State Department to be “critical to building the capacity of (the MDC) to operate effectively and to enable (it) to contend in the (2008) Presidential and Parliamentary elections, and to be prepared to govern.”

On top of helping the MDC shape its policy platform, the report also reveals that the US government helped shape public opinion in Zimbabwe through support for Voice of America broadcasting and community-based newsletters.

While portraying its role as simply one of delivering assistance, the State Department makes clear in its report that the newsletters provided the US government with a platform “to inform Zimbabweans about issues important to them.” Rather than funding community-based journalism, the report reveals that the State Department underwrote the newsletters to use them as vehicles for disseminating US government propaganda.

The State Department report also offers insight into the financial lengths Washington was prepared to go to create and sustain a civil society apparatus to oppose the Mugabe government. In 2007, Washington gave Freedom House and PACT a total of $1.8 million to back civil society organizations that were hostile to the Mugabe government. Freedom House, headed by former Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman, is interlocked with the CIA, according to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.

In addition, over $400,000 was funnelled to Voice of America to counter Harare’s efforts to jam VOA anti-government broadcasts. Washington had been supporting VOA’s Studio 7, an anti-Mugabe radio program, since 2002. According to the report, “the program consisted of English, Shona and Ndebele broadcasts for an hour and a half per day, five days per week, until July 2007, when broadcasts were expanded to seven days a week.”

To thwart Harare’s jamming efforts, VOA’s broadcast time was expanded, and shortwave radios were distributed to Zimbabweans. In addition, publicity campaigns were undertaken to build Studio 7’s profile “via the distribution of calendars and pens, advertising in the print media and a text messaging campaign.”The State Department describes Studio 7 as providing a platform for groups opposed to the Mugabe government and its land reform and economic indigenization policies: “the political opposition, exile groups, democracy activists and human rights proponents” – largely the same groups the US government was funding through Freedom House and PACT.

Conspicuously absent from the report’s list of political parties the US government provided “democracy and governance” assistance to in 2007 was Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Defenders of US democracy promotion insist that the US government promotes democratic processes aboard, not political parties, but only one party in Zimbabwe received US government assistance: the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC.

That, however, wasn’t Washington’s goal. The report says the US government planned to aid two political parties in Zimbabwe: presumably Tsvangirai’s MDC faction and the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara. But when the US government approached Mutamabara’s party, it was “rebuffed.” Mutambara has complained publicly about US imperialism and hypocrisy in its foreign policy and has manoeuvred to keep himself free from the taint of being an instrument of Western foreign policy.

To square the circle, and prove that it is promoting democracy and not political parties, the US government calls Tsvangirai’s MDC faction the “democratic opposition.” It is not by accident that the MDC’s full name is “the Movement for Democratic Change,” or that another party that once received US government assistance, Serbia’s the DOS, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, also incorporated the word democracy into its name. The Western mass media mimic the US government designation of the foreign political parties Washington supports as being a “democratic opposition”, thus reinforcing the deception that US support for selected foreign political parties is democracy promotion, not illegitimate interference in the internal politics of other countries.

The report boasts that the US has been “the undisputed leader among the donor community in providing assistance to civil society,” providing “technical assistance and small grants to 29” civil society organizations through its “implementing partners”, Freedom House and PACT. Grants and assistance were provided to improve “strategic planning, communication, proposal writing (and) platform development.”

Proposal writing is emphasized, the report explains, to equip civil society organizations with the skills necessary to land additional grants from private foundations. According to the State Department,

“youth organizations like the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union (ZINASU) and Youth Initiatives for Democracy in Zimbabwe (YIDEZ) are two good examples of…(civil society organizations that were) nurtured through US (State Department) funding from an idea to a level where they are able to stand on their own and attract other funders.”

Defenders of the idea that civil society organizations are not created and guided by US government funding, but represent spontaneously arising grassroots organizations that would exist even if they hadn’t received US government largesse, paint a picture far different from the report’s reference to Washington nurturing civil society organizations from an idea to a level where they’re able to attract other funders and stand on their own.

The MDC insists it is an independent political party, and anti-Mugabe civil society organizations and their defenders are adamant that Zimbabwe’s civil society is not under foreign control. Scholar Patrick Bond has declared an underground anti-Mugabe organization that receives US government-funding to be part of an independent left, while scholar Stephen Zunes says Women of Zimbabwe Arise, a group singled out in the State Department report as receiving US government funding, can in no way be considered an agent of the US government. These defenders of anti-Mugabe organizations appear to be unfamiliar with the pivotal role played by the US government in nurturing and sustaining Zimbabwe’s civil opposition.

The MDC has received considerable assistance and guidance from Washington and the John McCain-led IRI, in developing and articulating its policy platform, and in formulating strategy to defeat the Mugabe government.

In its opposition to Zanu-PF, it has been helped by civil society organizations funded by the US government through Freedom House and PACT, and by US government-funded community-based newsletters and the VOA’s Studio 7, which have served as platforms for disseminating the point of view of the US government and the views of Mugabe-opponents.

The report, then, reveals how the US government has taken advantage of Zimbabwe’s relative openness to intervene in the country’s internal political affairs to try to bring to power a party whose platform it had a hand in formulating.

Harare has taken steps to counter Washington’s illegitimate interventions, including jamming VOA broadcasts, barring journalists and election observers from the US, and banning some NGOs. These measures have been denounced by Washington as “undemocratic” and “authoritarian” and therefore as reasons for intervention. But the causal sequence is backwards. The measures Washington calls anti-democratic and authoritarian didn’t cause the US to help the MDC write and communicate its policy platform, to nurture and fund government-hostile civil society organizations, and to provide Mugabe’s opponents a vehicle through Studio 7 and community-based newsletters to shape public opinion. On the contrary, all these things caused Harare to take the measures that have been denounced as anti-democratic and authoritarian as a means to limit Washington’s illegitimate interference in Zimbabwe’s democratic space.

Anyone who was truly interested in promoting democracy would press Washington to stop its interference in Zimbabwe, rather than lionize US-backed civil society organizations as a spontaneously arising pro-democracy people’s movement, as an independent left that people should look to understand what’s going on in Zimbabwe (Bond), or as groups that can in no way be considered agents of the US government (Zunes).

Source

Cold War: a Marxist view

The Revolutionary Highway Has No Exits – The History of the Cold War

By Arlen Tracey

The Cold War, a global conflict between the United States and its allies in Western Europe, against the Soviet Union and its allies around the world, was a conflict that evolved and twisted itself over its decades of existence.

It is important to acknowledge that throughout the war, the emphasis and goals of both sides changed numerous times. A historical record must be made of the evolving positions of the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslavian, and United States governments.

Stalin Wanted Peace

The “Cold War” began, according to historians, at the end of World War Two, when the Soviet Union and the United States ended their war-time alliance.

The most ignored aspect of the opening of the cold war was the fact that the Soviet Union had calculated the opposite occurrence. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union predicted, expected, and hoped for period of “peace” among the “Democratic Powers.”

The actions of the Soviet Union even as the war was still in the process of ending, but especially in the few years immediately following it, were devoted to doing its best to prevent any conflict between the US and the USSR.

The Tehran Accords, signed by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, made clear that these “democratic powers” were to be united after the war. Soviet-American-British cooperation was to be the order of the day following the war, according to the accords.

In order to appease the British and Americans, the Soviets demanded that the French Communist Party agree to withdraw from the French Government, even though it had won a clear majority in the post-war elections. The Italian Partisan Brigades, which had fought the Nazis and were led by Communists, laid down their arms without a shot, and allowed a “democratic government” which excluded to them to take hold.

In the U.S., the Communist Party dissolved itself and became the “Communist Political Association.”

But this was not enough for the imperialists. They never intended to have unity with the “democratic powers” of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s attempts to appease the capitalists in the post war period were of no avail.

Hitler’s staunch allies who led the fascist regimes Spain and Portugal were embraced by the United States and Britain. The forces fighting for democracy against the Pro-Fascist Greek Monarchy found the U.S. and Britain sending guns to their oppressors.

In China, though the Chinese Communist Party had done the bulk of the fighting against the Japanese Imperialists, it was blocked from the government, and again suffering persecution by U.S. backed despot named Chiang Kia-shek.

U.S. military bases were set up in West Germany. U.S. Communists endured the horrific “McCarthy Period” in which they were forced into semi-underground status, and the entire leadership of their organizations were jailed.

In response to this, Stalin’s mild policies of peace and cooperation with the west reversed. The Soviet Union led the World Communist Movement into a “left turn.”

In Response to Aggression, Stalin Turns Left

It was in response to this that the USSR turned away from it post-war “world democratic peace” policies and became a cold warrior. The Chinese Communist Party took up arms and defeated the U.S. backed “nationalist” government and established a socialist regime. The Warsaw Pact created unity among the “People’s Democracies” of Eastern Europe, who rapidly moved to place the Communist Parties in command of the “Democratic Fronts” created during WWII.

In 1949, Chinese Communist Party, due to its popular support was victorious, and removed the U.S. backed dictatorship of the Nationalists.

The Koreans attempted to re-unify their country, and overthrow the U.S. backed dictator, Syngman Rhee, who held power in the South. The U.S. imperialists could not tolerate Korean Re-Unification and the “Korean War” erupted.

In 1948, the U.S. Communist Party, directed by the Soviet Union, abandoned the Democratic Party, which it had supported since 1936. Since 1936, the Communist had always run independent candidates for symbolic purposes, but voted for the Democratic Party in the name of creating a “people’s coalition”, but in 1948, the Communist devoted all their forces to the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace.

Aid to people in Africa and Asia from the Soviet Union increased. The feeling of the Soviet Union was that “peaceful co-existence”, once offered at the end of the war, had been met with betrayal, and that the only hope for survival of the USSR was a stronger, world revolution.

No summing up or self-criticism of the earlier policies with Italy, France, and elsewhere was made publicly, however, it should be noted. However, this can be justified by an understanding that doing so might undermine the credibility of the leaders who made the errors, who still held power.

In 1945, the U.S. Communist Party did expelled Earl Browder, who was the symbol of the classless, pro-imperialist, “democracy” brand of Socialism that marked the war years.

The only internally known vocal opponent of Stalin’s turn toward world revolution within the socialist camp was Tito. Tito headed Yugoslavia, and in 1948, at the same time Stalin was embracing revolution as a response to aggression, announced the opposite position.

Tito proclaimed his opposition to “Stalinist Expansionism” and “Soviet Domination.” He aligned himself with the United States during the Korean Conflict, and in response was given millions of dollars in “aid.” Tito also began to implement “workplace democracy”, which in reality, meant the break up of the state industries created after the war, into small, capitalist corporations.

Tito denounced world revolution as “aggression” and socialist economics as “dogmatism”, throwing Stalin’s name in with both. The words of Stalin for Tito were fiery and critical. Albania’s criticism was equally fiery.

Mao briefly flirted with Tito, before shortly afterward condemning him.

The 20th Party Congress and Revisionism

When Stalin died in 1954 this opened the floodgates for an internal Communist Party fight that had been under the surface for decades, heating up most intensely at that moment.

The “right opposition” of Bukharin, who had opposed a socialist economy for a “market socialism”, and had opposed world revolution but wanted “peaceful co-existence” still existed. They had been suppressed while Stalin was alive, and had no following as Stalin opposed them, and Stalin was so beloved by all who fought against U.S. imperialism and Nazism.

The fight went on for 2 years after Stalin’s death as no longer did the forces defending world revolution and socialist economics have Stalin’s leadership to rally behind.

In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Neo-Bukharinists, gave the “secret speech” at the 20th Party Congress. His speech went into detail attacking Stalin on personal grounds, repeating the very content of Hearst Newspaper and Anti-Communist slander.

The speech was “secret” from the people of the Soviet Union, but was circulated throughout the world in order to make clear that the new Soviet leaders were not “revolutionaries” like Stalin, but believers in “peaceful co-existence” and “cooperation.”

Pro-Stalin leaders were jailed and executed. Pro-Stalin literature was burned. China and Albania were silent about the policies at first, hoping they could be corrected without a huge conflict.

The first acts of Khrushchev was to attempt to restore the relationship with Tito in Yugoslavia. Khrushchev had numerous meetings with Tito, and did all he could, unsuccessfully to win Yugoslavia to being friendly toward the Soviet Union.

In 1956, rightists and fascist rose up in Hungary to overthrow socialism and install a pro-western dictatorship. Khrushchev attempted to have dialogue with openly Pro-Nazi Priests and other Neo-Fascists within the regime. Khrushchev also refused to receive the input from the Hungarian leaders about how to deal with the counter-revolutionary uprising.

Finally, he sent in the Red Army to crush them, and symbolically, the Chinese Communist Party sent some of its own troops as well.

China & Albania Speak Out and are Punished

In response to Khrushchev’s open lack of support revolution around the world, Mao Zedong and Enver Hoxha loudly denounced the ideology of Khrushchev. They praised Stalin for the left turn prior to his death, and preached that it was the duty of Communists to support people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere who wanted revolution against colonialism.

They denounced the manner in which Khrushchev sought to negotiate and make peace with capitalism, and his various scheming attempts to de-socialize the Soviet economy and move toward “market socialism” as Tito had done.

China and Albania’s calls were not hostile denunciation, but rather soft spoken critiques. But this was too much for Khrushchev.

While Khrushchev always wanted dialogue and negotiation with the U.S. imperialists and with rightists like Tito and the elements in Hungary, he offered no such understanding to China and Albania.

The USSR cut off diplomatic relations with Albania and China, something never even done to the Nazis. In both China and Albania, soviet engineers and technicians burned their blueprints, and left buildings half built.

In China, the economy had depended on foreign aid from the USSR, and the punishing vengeance of Khrushchev forced an economic disaster as the country was forced to re-organize its economy at the drop of hat.

USSR and USA align for “Peace” Against World Revolution

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union announced that Kennedy was their friend. The battle cry of the Soviet leadership became “world peace.” All who opposed world peace, whether they be the Africans who fought against colonial domination, or the people of Indonesia who sought to elect a socialist government, were the enemy.

Mao, Hoxha, and Che Guevara thunderously preached that it was the duty of third world people to fight against imperialism. Khrushchev and the leaders of the USSR were convinced that “world peace” depended on them keeping these “ultra-lefts” in line.

Khrushchev called for Mao and Hoxha’s overthrow as they were “brutal dictators.” Khrushchev denounced China for seeking atomic weapons.

The USSR urged the people of Vietnam to drop their weapons and “negotiate” the continued existence of the U.S. backed dictatorship in South Vietnam.

It seemed that in their desire to suppress world revolution there was a temporary alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union’s leaders.

The Soviet leaders, acting as social democratic sellouts always do, lectured the figures within their own movement to “slow down” and “stop being so extreme.” It is likely that Khrushchev wanted to go even further with this betrayal, which is why he was removed in coup, and replaced by Kosygin and Brezhnev in 1964. But for the moment, the policies continued.

China and Albania were the fire of the left screaming for world revolution. Cuba, Korea, and the German Democratic Republic walked the “middle of the road”, trying to negotiate with both sides.

The USSR continued to say that revolution was immoral, as it would “provoke” the U.S. imperialists to use atomic weapons.

The Shift of 1972

In 1972, there was a rapid shift in the cold war. No longer were the Soviet and U.S. leaders united in their opposition to world revolution. Now, China was actively fighting the cold war on the side of the U.S., Albania was confused and silent, and the Soviet Union became the main target of U.S. hatred.

In 1972, Nixon was welcomed into China and greeted as a hero. The Chinese government proclaimed that the “main danger” was the Soviet Union. China proclaimed that supporting Marxist-Leninist parties in third world countries was “Social Imperialism.”

China instead embraced leaders like the Shah of Iran who represented the “indigenous identity of the people.” It was better to have a pro-U.S. capitalist leader than to have a revolutionary one who was loyal to the USSR.

China was aligned with the U.S., not against world revolution, but against the Soviet Union.

Chinese allied rebel groups in the third world, which had been constructed in order to defy the Soviet policy of “peace”, suddenly were embracing U.S. dictators as “defense” from the “Soviet Social Imperialists.”

The only “revolution” that China would support would be a revolution to overthrow a pro-Soviet government. China’s internal policy no longer spoke of revolution or Communism, but of “third world unity” against “Soviet Social Imperialism.”

This policy began in 1972, but continued after Mao’s death. In 1979 China invaded Vietnam to “liberate” it from “Soviet Social Imperialism.” China funded the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan along with the U.S. China sent weapons and aid to the Shah of Iran, and denounced the Iranian revolution as a “Social Imperialist Plot.”

Albania denounced this, an as resulted in a period of isolation with horrific economic consequences. China, Albania’s only ally, was gone. Albania was a lone, small, isolated nation, which claimed to be the only socialist country in the world amidst “Soviet and Chinese Social Imperialism.”

The USSR’s Response

In response to China openly siding with the United States, the USSR began to no longer distance itself from revolutionary causes around the world. The Soviet Union, which had previously discouraged people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia from fighting back, instead, openly championed such things.

The African National Congress, which the USSR had discouraged from taking up arms against apartheid, now received Soviet money and weapons. The Cubans became the icon of the Soviet Union’s world revolutionary camp, as did the Koreans.

The USSR embraced U.S. revolutionary Angela Davis and highlighted her as a symbol of Black Liberation in the U.S.

The USSR began to “talk left”, while at the same accusing all who criticized them of being “Maoists”, a world that would that became synonymous with “Trotskyite.”

The response of the U.S. was to intensify its brutality toward the USSR. Contra death squads were sent throughout Latin America to commit fascistic crimes against the people.

Reagan waved his arms preaching about a “world crusade against Bolshevism” in ways that would make Adolph Hitler jealous.

The Crack of 1989

The cold war ended officially in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR, but by 1989 the battle was lost. Gorbachev led a section of the Communist Party that was politically to the right of Khrushchev. They denounced the “working class” in favor “universal humanism” and other nonsensical, non-Marxist ideas.

Margaret Thatcher and Reagan found in Gorbachev’s and his followers to be “Communist leaders we can do business with” because they weren’t “war mongering” like their predecessors, i.e. they were open to surrender.

Gorbachev opened the economy, and let the west pour in. His “market socialism” made Yugoslavia’s look dogmatic.

The cold war ended because China and the USSR had both become dominated by leaders who abandoned any will to fight. With Pro-U.S. forces in power in Russia and China, there was no arms race to be had.

Why?

The cold war was ended, not by a flaw in Communism, not by a lack of ability to “negotiate” on the part of the Soviet leaders, but the opposite.

Neither the leaders of the USSR nor of China were purely committed to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. They had both become infected with careerism and revisionism. They both found comfort and peace, and abandoned their will to fight.

It was treason and lack of endurance that caused the horrific events of 1991.

The majority of the Communist Parties were filled elements without principles. The parties were also disconnected from the masses, so even the non-revisionist elements within them could not mobilize a defense of the revolution properly.

The only way the imperialists were able to instill the massive set backs of 1991 was because of the very “revisionism” we see in modern times.

It is always easier to be wrong than to be right. It is always a more comfortable life to accommodate and befriend the oppressors.

The most successful period of the cold war was Stalin’s left turn before his death. Sure, he got caught up in illusions during the war. But Stalin’s response to U.S. imperialist backstabbing was different than Khrushchev or Mao.

Stalin saw that being attacked by the imperialists called not for being more moderate, but for being more radical and hostile.

Did this make his life easier? Did this make them like him more?

No. But it strengthened world revolution like nothing else.

Life in 1930s Germany was much easier for “Good Germans” than for underground resistance fighters. Now “good Germans” live in shame.

Life in the Southern U.S. in the early 1960s was much easier for members of the KKK, than for Civil Rights Movement. But now there is Martin Luther King holiday, while the KKK is the subject of jokes, denial, and ridicule.

Progress comes through struggle and confrontation.

The essence of revisionism is refusal to accept the reality of being a revolutionary.

Revolution is a difficult life. It is an uphill battle. It is a road without short-cuts.

Its final victory is the most glorious of all.

But the journey does not end. As long as oppression exists, revolutionaries must fight oppression.

The revolutionary highway has no exits.

The journey must continue until Communism is reached. Reaction will inevitably begin, when the thrust for progress halts.

Source

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 Sino-Albanian Split & Khrushchev’s Attempted Coup against Socialist Albania

“The spillover from the Sino-Soviet conflict into Eastern Europe was evident almost immediately. In late 1960 and early 1961 the Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, sparked a crisis with the Soviet Union by openly aligning his country with China, a precedent that caused alarm in Moscow. Quite apart from the symbolic implications of Hoxha’s move, Khrushchev had always regarded Albania as a key member of the Warsaw Pact because of ‘its superb strategic location on the Mediterranean Sea.’ The rift with Yugoslavia in 1948 had eliminated the only other possible outlet for the Soviet navy in the region. To ensure that Albania could serve as a full-fledged ‘military base on the Mediterranean Sea for all the socialist countries,’ the Soviet Union had been providing extensive equipment and training to the Albanian army and navy. In particular, the Albanian navy had received a fleet of twelve modern attack submarines, which initially were under Soviet control but were gradually being transferred to Albanian jurisdiction. Khrushchev believed that the submarines would allow Albania to pose a ‘serious threat to the operation of the NATO military bloc on the Mediterranean Sea,’ and thus he was dismayed to find that Soviet efforts to establish a naval bulwark on the Mediterranean might all have been for naught.

As soon as the rift with Albania emerged, the Soviet Union imposed strict economic sanctions, withdrew all Soviet technicians and military advisers, took back eight of the twelve submarines, dismantled Soviet naval facilities at the Albanian port of Vlona, and engaged in bitter polemical exchanges with the Albanian leadership. Khrushchev also ordered Soviet warships to conduct maneuvers along the Albanian coast, and he secretly encouraged pro-Moscow rivals of Hoxha to carry out a coup. The coup attempt was rebuffed, and the other means of coercion proved insufficient to get rid of Hoxha or to bring about a change of policy. In December 1961, Khrushchev broke diplomatic relations with Albania and excluded it from both the Warsaw Pact and CMEA. However, he was unwilling to undertake a full-scale invasion to bring Albania back within the Soviet orbit, not least because of the logistical problems and the likelihood of confronting stiff armed resistance.”

 – Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert & Detlef Junker (Ed.). 1968: The World Transformed. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. pp. 117-119.

Partija Rada: For the Balkans Without NATO Occupiers! Freedom for the Balkan Peoples!

Today, it is becoming more and more necessary the closer cooperation and solidarity among all of the left, communist forces of the Balkan countries.

For over a decade now, Balkans consists of a field of intense inter-imperialist antagonisms that, by using local chauvinisms and submissive governments, have transformed the area again into a powder-magazine and a war field. War, half a century after the end of the 2nd World War, is today a constant threat. Troops of imperialist forces, under various labels (UN, NATO , USA , etc.), check at Balkan countries, while many Balkan countries have joined or are about to join NATO and Western-European Union. Almost as a whole these countries helped USA and G. Britain during the unjust war in Iraq . Military bases of the USA , NATO and of the other imperialists that are used for the control of the Balkans and for the raids in third countries have been scattered throughout almost all of the countries.

In front of the escalation of the USA aggression against the peoples of the world, and the application of the dogma “whoever is not with us is against us”, we must unite our forces against the preemptive and continuous war, develop the anti-war movement, and express our solidarity with all the struggling peoples, and especially the peoples of Iraq and Palestine.

All, without discrimination, of the Balkans countries’ economies undergo the neo-liberal policies that are imposed by the international economic organizations, integrations and powers (IMF, EU , USA , etc.) resulting to a dramatic worsening of the living conditions for the peoples. Multinational capital and the imperialist forces dominate today like never before in the Balkans, enforcing the further dependence and the robbing of the economies of Balkan countries.

Governments and the ruling classes of the Balkans, none excluded, serve the imperialist planning of the one or the other power; they are the same ones who sow the poison of chauvinism and racism, faithfully implement the policies for the abjection of the working masses that are dictated by international centers, get richer by the blowing up of economies and overexploitation.

On this ground, during all of the previous years, there have been developed various kinds of chauvinisms that confront Balkan peoples and nations with each other and poison the relations between them, serving only the imperialist policy of “divide and rule” and undermining peace, fraternization and solidarity among the Balkan peoples, things that are today more necessary than ever.

No Balkan country inside the war coalitions of NATO and the Western-European Union . All of the foreign military bases, out! No participation of the Balkan countries in the imperialist wars!

Down with the neo-liberal policies of misery that IMF, USA and EU impose!

No to chauvinism – No to national oppression!

Peace and anti-imperialist solidarity among the peoples and the progressive forces of the Balkans and of the whole world!

The only perspective for the peoples: a world without exploitation and war, a world liberated from capitalism and imperialism – such a world is possible and necessary!

Long live Socialism! Long live Communism!

Forensic Science Identifies 6598 Srebrenica Victims

As an alternative to their make-believe denials, readers might be interested in the latest forensics update on Srebrenica detailed in a press release issued by the International Commission on Missing Persons on 10 July 2011:

By analyzing DNA profiles extracted from bone samples of exhumed mortal remains and matching them to the DNA profiles obtained from blood samples donated by relatives of the missing, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has so far revealed the identity of 6,598 persons missing from the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica.

In an effort to identify the victims ICMP has collected blood samples from 21,566 Srebrenica victims’ survivors. The number of reported missing for whom ICMP has blood samples as well as the matching rate between DNA profiles extracted from these bone and blood samples leads ICMP to support an estimate of around 8,100 individuals missing from the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. This leads us to a conclusion that the bodies of approximately 1,500 persons still need to be found.

So far 5,564 cases of Srebrenica victims have been closed by local court-appointed pathologists. Other cases are pending approvals from family members who have decided to wait until more body parts of their identified relatives are found, before they are buried.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Enver Hoxha Quotes on Maoist Revisionism pt. 4

“When our Party was founded, during the National Liberation War, as well as after Liberation, our people had very little knowledge about China. But, like all the revolutionaries of the world, we, too, had formed an opinion that it was progressive: “China is a vast continent. China is fighting, the revolution against foreign imperialism, against concessions is seething in China,” etc., etc.”
— Imperialism and the Revolution

“We defended China, Mao Tsetung, and the Cultural Revolution, because we defended Marxism-Leninism.”
— Enver Hoxha, “The Admission of China to the United Nations Organization”, 26 October 1971, in Hoxha, E., Reflections on China, vol. 1, Tirana, 1979, p. 600.

“Each time that our party noticed that the CPC was practicing acts and adopting attitudes which were in opposition with Marxist-Leninism and with proletarian internationalism, in opposition with the interests of socialism and the revolution, it tried to expose the CPC’s errors and criticized the CPC in a comradely spirit. But the leadership of the CPC never wanted to apply Marxist-Leninist principles to the relations between parties.”
— Letter from the Central Committee of the PLA to the Central Committee of the CPC and to the Chinese government, Tirana, 28th July of 1978, translated from French language.

“We trust you will understand the reason for the delay in our reply. This was because your decision came as a surprise to us and was taken without any preliminary consultation between us on this question, so that we would be able to express and thrash out our opinions. This, we think, could have been useful, because preliminary consultations, between close friends, determined co-fighters against imperialism and revisionism, are useful and necessary, and especially so, when steps which, in our opinion, have a major international effect and repercussion are taken…Considering the Communist Party of China as a sister party and our closest co-fighter, we have never hidden our views from it. That is why on this major problem which you put before us, we inform you that we consider your decision to receive Nixon in Beijing as incorrect and undesirable, and we do not approve or support it. It will also be our opinion that Nixon’s announced visit to China will not be understood or approved of by the peoples, the revolutionaries and the communists of different countries.”
— Enver Hoxha, Selected Works: 1966–1975, vol. 4 (Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House, 1982), 666–667, 668.

“Likewise, during his talks with us here in Tirana, Chou En-lai said, <Stalin suspected us of being pro-American or that we might go the Yugoslav way>. Time has proved that Stalin was completely right.”
– Imperialism and the Revolution

“Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China have maintained a pragmatic stand towards Yugoslav revisionism and have made a great evolution in their views about Tito and Titoism. At first, Mao Tsetung said that Tito was not wrong, but it was Stalin who had been wrong about Tito. Then the same Mao Tsetung ranks Tito with Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek and says that <such people… as Tito, Hitler, Chiang Kaishek and the Czar cannot be corrected, they should be killed.> However, he changed his stand again and expressed his great desire to meet Tito.”
— Imperialism and the Revolution

“The Chinese comrades want to impose Mao by force as the ‘greatest Marxist in the whole history of communism’, want the whole communist movement of the world to adopt and apply their experience en bloc, to apply their Cultural Revolution.”
— Enver Hoxha, “The Foreign Policy of China – a Policy of Self-Isolation”, 14 July 1967, in Hoxha, E., Reflections on China, vol. 1, Tirana, 1979, p. 371.

“All these have not been academic contributions to a «scientific» discussion but a counterrevolutionary opportunist political line which has been set up in opposition to Marxism-Leninism, which has disorganized the Communist Party of China, in the ranks of which a hundred and one views and ideas have been circulating and today there really are 100 schools contending. This has enabled the bourgeois wasps to circulate freely in the garden of 100 flowers and release their venom.”
— Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution, Tirana, 1979, edition in English.

“In the future, along with the transformation of China into an imperialist superpower, the role and the power of the army in the life of the country will steadily increase. It will be strengthened as a praetorian guard, armed to the teeth, for the defence of a capitalist regime and economy. It will be the tool of a bourgeois capitalist dictatorship, a dictatorship which, if the people’s resistance is strong, may even assume open fascist forms.”
— Imperialism and the Revolution

“Chou’s statement at the banquet with Mobutu is flagrantly anti-Marxist. He included China in the «third world». This means to deny socialism, to conceal the true individuality of China and the character of its socio-economic order from the eyes of the world. This is an opportunist, anti-Marxist view. (…) General Mobutu and his clique are reactionaries, the murderers of Lumumba and other progressive individuals in their country. China receives the representative of this anti-democratic African clique with great honours (…).”
— Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China, Volume II, January 15, 1973, Tirana, 1979, edition in English.

“How is it possible in the present epoch of social development, which has at its hub the most revolutionary class, the proletariat, to call a grouping of states, the overwhelming bulk of which are ruled by the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords, indeed, even open reactionaries and fascists, the motive force? This is a gross distortion of Marx’s theory.”
— Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution, Tirana, 1979, edition in English.

September 15th, 1964
Throughout the development of the struggle of Communist Party of China against the modern revisionists, it has displayed some astonishing vacillations in its tactics. One remembers the Moscow Meeting of 1957, when Comrade Mao publicly supported Khrushchev approving his action in denouncing Stalin and in condemning the anti-Party group of Molotov, and advocating unity with the Khrushchev group.

When I met Comrade Mao in Peking in 1956; he criticized the ‘incorrect’ actions of Stalin, particularly his actions in relation to Yugoslavia, describing the Yugoslavs as ‘good Marxists’.”

— E. Hoxha, Reflections on China, Part 1, Vol. 1

“By preaching the need for the existence of many parties in the leadership of the country, the so-called political pluralism, ‘Mao Tsetung thought’ falls into complete opposition to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the indivisible role of the communist party in the revolution and socialist construction.

“Which is better in the final analysis,” Mao Tsetung asked, “to have just one party or several?”And he answered, “As we see it now, it’s perhaps better to have several parties. This has been true in the past and may well be so for the future; it means long-term coexistence and mutual supervision”.

(Mao Tsetung, Selected Works, Vol. 5, p. 319)

According to ‘Mao Tsetung thought’, a new democratic regime can exist and socialism can be built only on the basis of the collaboration of all classes and all parties. Such a concept of socialist democracy, of the socialist political system, which is based on ‘long-term coexistence and mutual supervision’ of all parties, and which is very much like the current preachings of the Italian, French, Spanish and other revisionists, is an open denial of the leading and indivisible role of the Marxist-Leninist party in the revolution and the construction of socialism.”

— E. Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution, p. 399

“On the question of the relationship between the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, Mao Tse-tung takes the standpoint of the chiefs of the Second International, who were the first to attack and distort the Marxist-Leninist theory about the rise of the revolution and came out with the thesis that between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, there is a long period, during which the bourgeoisie develops capitalism and creates the conditions for the transition to the proletarian revolution. In conformity with the policy of the ‘equal right to land,’ the kulak stratum, in the forms which have existed in China, has retained great advantages and profits. Mao Tse-tung himself gave orders that the kulaks must not be touched, because this might anger the national bourgeoisie with which the Communist Party of China had formed a common united front, politically, economically and organizationally.”

— E. Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution.

Partija Rada: New terror of the Turkish military regime

Turkish army is on another mission of slaughter in Kurdistan. After the changes in the military top, Turkish regime adopted a new strategy of fighting against Kurdish people and its movement. Economic crisis and imperialist war against people of the world allowed all regimes of the Imperialist Internationale to wage wars of limited character in order to solve their internal issues without condemnation of the worldwide community.

“Chemical” Nejet Ozel is the new commander of the Turkish army, who “earned” his nickname after just a couple of days of military operations, which fits the nature of this filthy war just right.

It’s obvious that the main goal of Turkish army is not only retaliation and attempt of destruction of PKK as the representative political and military force of Kurdish people, but also to control the mass uprising of the Kurdish people who demand their rights of self-determination and national rights.

In the same time, it is the beginning of the new sense of Turkish militarization, which serves not only surpression of national movements, but also regional imperialst interests of the Turkish regime – which are directly connected to the interests of western imperialists in the region (situation in Syria, relationship between western imperialism and Iran etc…)

The new strategy of the Turkish army consists of use of chemical weapons and attacking the villages, which forces the peasants into leaving their homes and cuts the link between people and Kurdish military movement. Military actions in Southern Kurdistan are performed with backing of US army, helped by the puppet regime in Iraq and with collaboration of Iranian army. The numbers of dead civilians and Kurdish fighters are growing every day.

But, this war only strengthens the Kurdish people, and words of solidarity come from all over Turkey, Europe and other parts of the world. The youth of Southern Kurdistan is forming live shields in order to stop the attacks of the Turkish army, and plans for the marches up the mountains where the battles are fought are in preparation. Although Turkish police and army are trying to prevent the rise of peace movements in Kurdistan, “Mothers for Peace” will join the youth and form live shields all over borders with Iraq. Political importance of having peace movements in this moment is crucial, since Turkish regime can use the situation and commit even greater atrocities against Kurdish people.

Solidarity with Kurdish people in their struggle for self-determination!

Down with colonial fascist dictatorship of Turkish state!

Partija Rada on the Dissolution of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia: “The Left & the False Left”

Confusion in the definition of the Left in Yugoslavia culminated in the nineties of last century due to the disintegration of Alliance of Communists of Yugoslavia as a highly revisionist and nationalist party.

Common opinion in Serbia, in that time, was that the Milosevic’s SPS and JUL (which was only a surrogate of SPS), which were the formal successors of Alliance of Communists, were leftist parties. However, practice has shown that they were, actually, nationalists and chauvinists, and JUL has turned out to be just an interest group that wanted only to loot. There are still parties in Serbia today that promote the interests of Russian imperialists, from position of National Socialism, using the leftist form and leftist phrases.

After the demolition of the Milosevic regime, and the penetration and domination of the neoliberal ideology of the West, many antifa-anarcho-communo-anti-authorative groups emerged in Serbia recently, which seek to represent the interests of wide social layers.

This phenomenon would have been desirable (better to have them than the nationalists and fascists), but behind the activities of these groups lies suspicious ideological position that indirectly aligns them as associates of neoliberal regime. The regime, at the same time, tries to reduce the growing resistance of the masses and increase in workers’ strikes in the country with a “carrot and stick” system: with a strong demagogic propaganda and by forming “workers’ parties”, by bribing the leaders of trade unions, proclaiming various “social packages”, and also with permanent strengthening of repression and with introduction of additional prohibitions and efficient suppression of each organized class resistance.

Vlado Dapčević

1917-2001

In Brussels on the 12th of July, in the 84th year of his life died a Revolutionary, Vladimir – Vlado Dapčević.

Vlado Dapčević was born in 1917 in Montenegro. He was accepted into the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1933. Because of distributing propaganda material, joining demonstrations and taking part in clashes with the police, he was arrested several times. Together with a large group of volunteers, he tried to get into Spain to take a part in defending the Spanish Republic, but he was arrested and convicted.

He continued his political work at the University of Belgrade, where he was seriously injured during a clash with fascist youth.

In 1941 Vlado Dapčević took part in the people’s uprising in Montenegro against the fascist occupiers. He took part in all the great battles of the Partisan Army for the liberation of Yugoslavia. During these battles he was wounded several times and was twice expelled from the CPY because of criticism of certain decisions of the Party. By the end of the war he had become a lieutenant colonel.

After the war he worked at the Higher Party School, and then he was appointed Chief of Administration of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) for agitation and propaganda.

In 1948, after the Resolution of the Communist Information Bureau opposing Tito’s revisionism, Vlado Dapčević tried to escape the country, but he was caught and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

From 1948 until 1956 he experienced the worst torture at Goli Otok and other concentration camps of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

In 1958, because of the possibility of a new arrest, he fled the country to Albania, and then to the Soviet Union. Because of opposition to the policy of Khrushchev and the CPSU, it was made impossible for him to work politically. He tried to organize a trip of political emigrants to Cuba, and then to Vietnam, but that was made impossible for him by the authorities. Under threat of arrest, in 1967 he was forced to flee the Soviet Union and to go to Western Europe. In Western Europe, until settling in Belgium, he was arrested a few times.

In Western Europe he was engaged in the work of the Marxist-Leninist parties.

In 1975, Yugoslav police kidnapped Vlado Dapčević.

In Yugoslavia he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison.

In 1989 after release from prison he was expelled from the country.

In 1990 he was permitted to return to Yugoslavia.

From 1992 he was President of Partija Rada.

During that period, Vlado Dapčević directed all his activities to the fight against war, and for peace among the peoples of Yugoslavia, while the struggle against Great-Serb nationalism and Milosevic’s regime was the main aim of his political activity.

He was an example of how one consistent revolutionary can defend the basic principles of proletarian internationalism. In his brave struggle for the rights of the exploited and oppressed, Vlado Dapčević with his life and work wrote some of the best pages of the revolutionary anti-imperialist movement of the world.

Information Department of Partija Rada.

Source

Enver Hoxha on the Hungarian Counterrevolution & Stalin’s Legacy in 1957

After the Hungarian uprising, Yugoslavia’s relations with the USSR cooled significantly in the 1957-1960 period. It was during this time that Hoxha was able to come to the defense of Stalin at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania on February 13, 1957.

“But it was Hoxha who in his speech to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the [Albanian Party of Labour] on February 13, 1957, took up the defense of Stalin. After having defended the Soviet Union for her action in suppressing the Hungarian revolt and denouncing Yugoslav ‘revisionism,’ he [Hoxha] declared that all campaigns which the imperialists and revisionists had started against Marxism-Leninism, against communism, were carried out under cover of struggles against ‘Stalinism.’

‘We are not in agreement with all those who attempt to discount the entire positive revolutionary side of Stalin, as experience, and who see only the black side of it… As is known, J. V. Stalin was a great Marxist. After Lenin it was he who protected Marxism-Leninism on all sides from revisionism and contributed greatly to the further development of science. Great merits are due to him in the preparation and development of the October Revolution, in the building of the first socialist state, in the historic victory over the invading fascists, in the development of the international communist and workers’ movement. For all these deeds Stalin enjoyed great authority, not only in the Soviet Union but throughout the world… Stalin was never mistaken in such questions as the protection of the interests of the working class and of Marxist-Leninist theory, the fight against imperialism and against the other enemies of socialism. He was and remains an exemplary figure.’”

(Enver Hoxha, quoted by Stavro Skendi in Stephen D. Kertesz (Ed.). East Central Europe and the World: Developments in the Post-Stalin Era. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1962. p. 204.)

The source given for Hoxha’s speech itself is Rruga e Partisë, Tirana, IV (February 1957), pp. 22-23.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Joint Statement in Opposition to the Cutting Off of Aid to Socialist Albania by the Government of China

Introduction

The following statement is being issued by a number of Marxist-Leninist circles in the U.S.

Although we have differences on various important questions, we are united on the contents of this statement, which expresses our firm opposition to the outrageous great-power chauvinist act of the government of the People’s Republic of China in cutting off aid to the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. The statement also outlines our rejection of the revisionist “theory of the three worlds.”

Our circles are not the only ones in the U.S. who have voiced opposition to Chinese revisionism and the “theory of the three worlds.” Many of the forces who have voiced opposition, along with some of the comrades who are vacillating but will be won over, are struggling to uphold proletarian internationalism and build a new vanguard party based on Marxism-Leninism that can lead the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Some forces who have voiced opposition to the “theory of the three worlds” are only doing this in form.

Three circles, led by the MLOC, have also issued a statement opposing the recent Chinese actions. Given the absence of a single vanguard U.S. proletariat, it would have been desirable for all Marxist-Leninists (or would-be Marxist-Leninists) in the U.S. to unite in one statement. However, we have not been able to come to agreement with other circles because of errors in their draft, the way their final draft was arrived at, and its obvious use to promote MLOC’s opportunist party-building plan.

* * *

On July 7, 1977, the Party of Labor of Albania issued an historic document, “The Theory and Practice of the Revolution.” This document openly and clearly exposed the revisionist nature of the “theory of the three worlds.” One year to the day after the issuance of this Marxist-Leninist statement, the government of the People’s Republic of China withdrew all aid and ceased all aid projects in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania.

As Marxist-Leninists in the U.S., we condemn the treacherous actions of the government of the People’s Republic of China in withdrawing aid from socialist Albania, and we support the Party of Labor of Albania in condemning the so-called “theory of the three worlds” as revisionist, class collaborationist, and a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and the interests of the international proletariat.

I. WE CONDEMN THE ARBITRARY AND HOSTILE WITHDRAWAL OF AID FROM THE PEOPLE’S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

The People’s Republic of China has been aiding Albania’s development for two decades. While this aid has been a benefit to the economic advancement of Albania along the socialist path and a support for international revolution, it was not, nor could it have been, the decisive factor. Chinese aid to Albania was based on fraternal state to state relations and a desire on the Chinese side to strengthen the socialist world. These fraternal state to state relations were formed, strengthened and solidified by the two states’ and two parties’ common struggle against Titoite revisionism and Khrushchevite revisionism as an international trend.

On July 7, 1978, the Chinese government withdrew its aid to Albania arbitrarily and unilaterally. The basis of the withdrawal of aid is not a breakdown of state to state relations, but arose as a result of the differences in party to party relations. The action taken by the Chinese government is identical with Khrushchev’s withdrawal of aid in 1960 from Albania and China, when the parties of these two countries persisted in attacking the revisionist line that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was attempting to impose on the international communist movement.

We see the spectacle of China increasing aid and even sending military advisors to prop up the reactionary regime of Mobutu in Zaire, while cutting off aid to socialist Albania.

First the Soviet revisionists and now those who have usurped power in China share the illusion that small country like Albania will quickly knuckle under their great power bullying. Like all revisionists, they under-estimate the strength of socialism. Under the leadership of its Party of Labor, Albania was able to drive out the fascist Italian and German armies that occupied it during World War II. Later it was able to resist Tito’s efforts to annex it to Yugoslavia. Relying primarily on their, own efforts, the Albanian people have built up a balanced socialist economy. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a reality in Albania. The initiative of the masses is given full play in all areas of political, economic, and social life, in line with Enver Hoxha’s slogan, “socialism is built by the masses, the Party makes them conscious.”

The Party of Labor of Albania has always struggled to hold to a single Marxist-Leninist line. When opportunist elements have reared their heads, they have been beaten back and purged from the Party. This has prevented factionalism, bureaucratism, and revisionism from striking root or triumphing. The strict upholding of Leninist norms in the Party’s internal life is reflected in the determination with which it has fought for the purity of Marxism-Leninism in battle against all modern revisionist groupings in the international communist movement. This small Party was the first to openly condemn Khrushchevite revisionism, after patiently attempting to bring the CPSU back to Marxism-Leninism with fraternal criticism.

In the past, it was the position of the Communist Party of China that “it is impermissible for any Party … to adopt patriarchal ways in relations …” with fraternal parties. (A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, P. 47) But this is exactly what the Chinese revisionist leaders have tried to do to the Party of Labor of Albania. When this failed and the Party of Labor of Albania insisted on upholding Marxism-Leninism and acting according to long accepted principles of struggle in the international communist movement, the leaders of the People’s Republic of China unilaterally and arbitrarily cut off all aid to the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. These actions are clearly not aimed at strengthening the victory and consolidation of socialism around the world, but at undercutting the struggle of the Albanian people, led by the Party of Labor of Albania, to build and strengthen a powerful, socialist state. This action is clearly aimed at undercutting and destroying socialism in Albania. Standing behind this act of outright great-power chauvinism and pressure are deep-seated ideological and political motives. Because Albania persisted in its exposure of the revisionist “theory of the three worlds,” and because it would not go along with and join in the Chinese government’s alliance with U.S. imperialism and its allies, the Chinese government set out to punish Albania by cutting off aid.

Marxist-Leninists in the United States and throughout the world condemn this treacherous act. Further, we are confident that the Albanian people, led by the Party of Labor of Albania, will continue on the road of socialist revolution, relying mainly on their own efforts and with the support of genuine Marxist-Leninists, the proletariat, and the genuine anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces throughout the world. In addition, the actions of the Chinese party and state in withdrawing aid from a socialist country, and by their elaboration of the “theory of the three worlds,” have helped show Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. and throughout the world that revisionism is in power in China and that the dictatorship of the proletariat has been usurped.

II. MARXIST-LENINISTS CONDEMN THE “THEORY OF THE THREE WORLDS.”

The “theory of the three worlds” is a revisionist theory that is aimed at undercutting the revolutionary struggles of the international proletariat and the liberation struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples. Since the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia, Marxist-Leninists have recognized the existence of four basic contradictions that have marked this era of history, the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution: the contradiction between two opposing systems, capitalism and socialism; the contradiction between labor and capital in the capitalist countries; the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations and imperialism; and the contradiction between imperialist powers. The “theory of the three worlds” denies the existence of these contradictions. According to this theory, the undeveloped world or “third” world consists in the main of the countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, excluding Japan, without regard to the social system. Even Yugoslavia is now considered part of the “third world”. This lumps together socialist countries, Titoite revisionism, Iranian monarchism, and Chilean fascism. In addition, this “theory” calls on the oppressed masses in these countries to unite with their own rulers regardless of the oppression they suffer at the hands of those rulers. This theory enabled the Chairman of the Communist Party of China to embrace the Shah of Iran while the Iranian people were in the midst of a mass uprising against the Shah’s brutal dictatorship.

The “theory of the three worlds” advises the workers in the United States and its capitalist allies to cease preparing for revolution and instead unite with their class enemies to oppose the Soviet Union, which, according to them, is alone the main source of war. It is thus a classically revisionist line of class collaboration that prohibits proletarian revolution.

The essence of the “theory of the three worlds” is revisionism and class collaboration, especially with U.S. imperialism and its allies. But the reality today is that imperialism as a system is our enemy, and that both superpowers are together the main enemy of the people of the world. We cannot rely on one superpower to defeat the other.

Marxist-Leninists must resolutely oppose the “theory of the three worlds” as this theory abandons the fight for revolution, abandons the struggle of the oppressed peoples and nations for liberation, and abandons the struggle against imperialism and revisionism. Marxist-Leninists must mobilize to defeat the revisionist “theory of the three worlds.”

CONCLUSION

The international communist movement is at a very important turning point. The emergence of a new international revisionist trend led by the Communist Party of China has presented new difficulties for the communist movement and must be resolutely combatted. But there are many forces in the international communist movement who have been forging ahead in the revolutionary struggle and have been meeting the challenge posed by the Chinese revisionist. We are confident that the problems remaining will be solved and difficulties overcome.

It is the particular responsibility of communists in the U.S. to lead the working class and all oppressed and exploited people in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalists, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and build socialism and communism. In order to do this, a vanguard Mar^st-Leninist Party is needed. Today in the United States there is no such party, and the formation of a genuine party is not imminent. Building this vanguard party remains the principal task of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and advanced workers. The actual situation in the U.S. communist movement is that, aside from many revisionist and opportunist “parties” and groups, the many circles and individuals who oppose Chinese revisionism and the “theory of the three worlds,” or are vacillating on this question are still disunited on many questions. Ideological struggle is needed to draw clear lines of demarcation between living Marxism-Leninism on the one hand, and fake Marxism Leninism on the other hand, so that the genuine forces can mite on a principled basis and form a vanguard proletarian party. Thus, we resolve to fight all shades of revisionism, opportunism, and social chauvinism. This statement by some of the U.S. Marxist-Leninists is a modest contribution to rallying Marxist-Leninists towards fulfilling these essential tasks.
January, 1979

UPHOLD MARXISM–LENINISM!

DEFEND SOCIALIST ALBANIA!

DEFEND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!

DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM, SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM, AND ALL REACTION!

WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLES OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

BUILD A SINGLE, GENUINE PROLETARIAN PARTY IN THE U.S.!

(signed)
Demarcation
Kansas City Revolutionary Workers Collective-Wichita Communist Cell
Marxist-Leninist Collective
Workers Revolutionary Organizing Committee
Comrades in the Bay Area

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Enver Hoxha Quotes on Maoist Revisionism pt. 3

The following excerpt from the First Volume of Enver Hoxha’s “Reflections on China” shows the extent the reactionary foreign and laissez-faire policy to the American imperialist mouthpieces Tito and Ceaușescu. In a precursor to their reactionary and anti-communist “Three Worlds Theory” we see the Chinese already had their eyes on abandoning Marxist-Leninist principles for right-opportunism, by urging a truly socialist state like Albania to side with chauvinists like Tito, who before had planned to carve Albania into little pieces, is unforgivable. We see that apparently opposition to ALL types of imperialism was non-existent to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, who were beginning to cozy up to American imperialism through Yugoslavia and Romania.

October 15th, 1968
Speaking with Beqir Balluku about the international situation, Chou En-lai proposed that we should enter into negotiations with Tito to sign a treaty of mutual aid with him! Chou’s unprincipled proposal is that we should embrace the most ferocious enemy of Marxism-Leninism socialism and Communism, the most vicious enemy of our Marxist-Leninist Party and our socialist country; that we should reconcile ourselves with Tito who, for twenty-five years, has striven to destroy and enslave our homeland and make it into the seventh Republic of Yugoslavia! He is proposing that we betray everything sacred to us.

Socialist Albania must never allow anyone to believe that he can use it as a pawn.

The basis of this infamous proposal is that in Chinese strategy the Soviet Imperialists are considered the most powerful and main enemy, since they have the greatest possibility of attacking and damaging China. For the Chinese comrades, therefore, anyone who appears to be against the Soviets, even temporarily is regarded as their potential ally, regardless of who he may be. For our part, we say that the aim of our struggle must be to strive to weaken both imperialist superpowers, to wage a struggle on two fronts. In fact, it must be noted that, the Soviet Union is not the stronger, but the weaker of the two imperialist superpowers having a very long border and vacillating allies.

October 21st, 1968
Chou En-lai’s proposal with regard to Yugoslavia has been accompanied by a statement of lack of readiness to supply us with heavy weapons. He suggests that at the first attack of the enemy we should take to the mountains, relying on partisan warfare and an alliance with Tito for our salvation!

April 29th, 1969
The Americans have spread a “sensational” report that the Soviet Union is going to attack China. The bloody provocation on the Chinese border and the massing of hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops all along the Sino-Soviet border support this report.

However, I think that the report is a bluff to intimidate China. While the Soviet revisionists are undoubtedly preparing for war, they are not yet ready to wage it, especially with China. in my opinion, the Chinese were terrified and wavered before this colossal frame-up.

September 18th,1969
The “degeneration” of China from the strategic angle greatly interests American imperialism, and there is no doubt that it will follow up these events vigilantly.

September 19th, 1969
Chou En-lai was so irritated during his talk with comrade Rita that, although he had invited him to a banquet, he failed to propose a toast to our leadership. Could this have been an oversight? I don’t believe so. It was pressure.

January 6th, 1970
The Chinese comrades in Peking have told our comrades; “Now some of our ships will come to Albania from northern China through the Taiwan Straits” Our comrades said: “But how? Surely the US Seventh Fleet and the Chiang Kai-shek navy are patrolling there?” The Chinese comrades, however merely replied: “We must follow the ‘teachings of Chairman Mao and not fear the imperialists”, etc. It seems that the resumed meetings of the Chinese and American ambassadors in Warsaw have yielded a first result. There is no smoke without fire.

January 7th, 1970
The Warsaw “talks” between the Chinese comrades and the USA, which they had suspended during the Cultural Revolution, have been resumed not in the Polish building but in the embassies of China and the USA respectively. This means that they are no longer subject to Polish bugging. This development has greatly intrigued the Soviet revisionists who are uneasy about these talks.

June 22nd, 1970
The Romanian plans in the Balkans consist of the “Romanian-Yugoslav-Albanian alliance” and other dirty revisionist deals, unacceptable to us but pleasing to Chou En-lai, provided such alliances are directed against the Soviets. We shall not step on a rotten plank.

July 7th, 1970
China is being guided by the principle: “Approaches should be made to anyone who is anti-Soviet.”

The Romanians are developing a clearly anti-Marxist internal and foreign policy. They are up to their ears in debt to the USA, West Germany and other capitalist countries. This is the basis of Ceauşescu’s “independent” foreign policy. Independent of whom? Of the Soviet revisionists, who are not reconciled to this situation? The Chinese have become very enthusiastic about the Romanians. For the Chinese, Kim Il-Sung has now become “a great leader.” They are easily enthused. All these things force us to be very vigilant.

July 24th, 1970
The Romanian Minister of Defense has gone to Peking. This revisionist has been welcomed with great honours by the Chinese, who have promised Romania factories to produce aircraft, missiles, heavy machine-guns, etc. A secret agreement is to be signed, also. We may even see later a Chinese alliance with Tito. Anything is possible when you plunge into dirty revisionist waters.

July 26th, 1970
Tito is playing his “anti-Soviet” card skillfully in the interests of the grouping around US imperialism. The Chinese comrades are guided by the illusions they hold about the anti-Sovietism of all these revisionists, but these illusions bring no ideological or political benefit to our great cause.

September 11th, 1970
The, Romanians are anti-Marxists, revisionists, nationalists, anti-Soviet (on a chauvinist basis) and anti-Stalinists; The Chinese are in danger of getting caught in the gears of an anti-Soviet machine. They are discussing problems with the Romanian revisionists, who have sold themselves out to US imperialism.

December 9th, 1970
China’s Deputy Minister of Energy has been here at the head of a team to look into the matter of our hydro-electric power stations. Some days ago she told Comrade Rahman Hanku, who is in charge of these matters, that the Fierza power station could not be built on the site decided upon (and on which work is proceeding) because the terrain was “unsuitable” and because the waters of the artificial lake that will be formed might extend on to Yugoslav territory. She also declared that the dam of the Mao Tse-tung power plant was unsafe and might jeopardise the name of Mao.

Rahman Hanku categorically refuted all this as unfounded. On their third meeting she begged Rahman’s pardon and said that she had been “misled by two engineers.” Astonishing! Such a move to delay the construction of the Fierza power station cannot be tolerated.

February 17th, 1971
When and how will the great disorder in China came to an end? This, naturally is very worrying to us. I think that under the cloak of “Mao Tse-tung Thought” powerful groups are clashing fiercely.

April 15th, 1971
China has opened a new page in its relations with the USA with the invitation to the American table-tennis team. This event has the importance not of a sports event, but of a new political trend. The players were even received by Chou En-lai. For his part, Nixon has been quick to respond to Chou, declaring that he was lifting the embargo on the export of many non-strategic goods to China. There is more than meets the eye in this.

May 23rd, 1971
Ceausescu’s Romania is being sold at auction for credits. Ceausescu is following Tito’s treacherous road. However, despite this, the Chinese comrades are smiling an this anti-Marxist and playing his game. Ceausescu’s patrons, world capital are very desirous that he, like Tito before him, should be presented as a “communist.” Now Ceausescu is to go to Peking as First Secretary of the Romanian party, to receive a diploma to this effect from the Chinese!

China is giving credits to Romania. It is not right that credits should be given by socialist state to a revisionist state linked with the capitalists and imperialists, a state which is building a Titoite-capitalist economy. In our opinion this is a grave political, ideological and economic error. It is not correct for credits to be given to Romania, to enable the new parasitic bourgeoisie to live in affluence.

June 2nd, 1971
Ceausescu went to China, as head of a delegation of 80 people. Not even a cook was left out! Mao received Ceauşescu and Hsinhua reported only that the former said to him: “Romanian comrades, we should unite to bring down imperialism.”

If the world waits for Ceauşescu to do such a thing, imperialism will last ten thousand years!

June 7th, 1971
Ceauşescu is coming to the end of his visit to China, and tomorrow or the day after the Yugoslav foreign Minister, Tepavac, will begin his trip. The second is not allowing the egg laid by the first to get cold! The master Tito and his young apprentice with big ambitions, Ceauşescu, will manoeuvre for rapprochement with the USA, where they have their feeding trough. Woe betide those who fall into their trap!