Contents
Congress of Khrushchevism without Khrushchev
Persistent continuation of pro-imperialist policy
The most dangerous splitters and enemies of the international communist movement
Soviet revisionist propaganda has lately proclaimed the results of the 23d Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union both in the country and abroad. It tries to make the Soviet people and world public opinion believe that the Congress had been a success, that it had allegedly turned into an important national and international event, that its «ideas» will exert a great influence in the minds of people, that it has an epochal character in Soviet history, and so on and so forth.
Obviously, the Khrushchevite revisionists try to achieve by means of words and propaganda that which they had wished their Congress to have been, to arouse some enthusiasm among the people, to paralyze negative impressions both in the Soviet Union and in other countries, in short, to raise the morale of all those who had expected something grand and important from the sittings of the highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and who were badly disappointed for all that.
«Pravda», «Izvestia» and other organs of Soviet propaganda are now blaming the bourgeois press for lack of realism, since, according to them, it had expected «sensations» from the Congress, but which it failed to get, for there had not been any in it. If only the bourgeois press had been disillusioned which, this time seem to have had bad luck, as the Soviet newspapers write, this would have been, most likely, quite a normal thing. But we do not believe that this lack of ability of the bourgeois press to assess events aright, is what preoccupies revisionist leaders most. The hard luck of the revisionists is that the proceedings of the 23 Congress have disillusioned the Soviet people, the Soviet communists, who didn’t of course, expect sensations but a comprehensive clarification of the political line of the party at the present stage. By rising against the «expectations of sensations» the Soviet press tries to enhance the true value of the results of the Congress which were low and mediocre indeed. The proceedings and decisions of the 23 Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union did not satisfy, first and above all, the Soviet people who clearly saw once again that the present Soviet leadership is as treacherous as Khrushchev, that the line it adopted at the Congress is an anti-Marxist one, a line leading to the capitalist political, economic and ideological degeneration of the Soviet Union, a line which dealt a blow to and darkened above all the perspectives for the future of the Soviet people. The results of the Congress may arouse some interest outside the Soviet Union but this is by no means the main thing. Attempts to attract the attention of public opinion in this direction, as the Soviet press is doing, shows that all is not too well between the Khrushchevite revisionists and their people that the former want to draw the attention of their people away from the gloomy pessimist atmosphere which the Congress has created in the Soviet, Union.
The Congress itself has been a major embarrassment for the Khrushchevite leaders. Should they or should they not speak openly on all cardinal matters which preoccupy at present the Soviet people, should they or should they not openly propound their opportunist line — this was their dilemma.
During these last ten years the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has held three Congresses (the 20th, the 21st and the 22nd) which defined and canonized the revisionist line of Khrushchev’s group which usurped the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet State by counter-revolutionary putsches. In them decisions were taken, directives were set forth, objectives were marked and time limits were set. Now it is high time to render account. Should the Congress hear a report on these? The Soviet Union has all along pursued a foreign policy totally at variance with the one jointly worked out by socialist countries. Should this be taken up? Not very long ago (in 1957 and 1960) the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had signed certain very important; documents of the international communist movement which clearly defined its joint program. It rejected these documents and followed a line of action of its own. Should an explanation be given about this? During this period it pursued the line of departure from Marxism-Leninism and the adoption, on a growing scale, of modern revisionism. In the internal domain it zealously undermined the achievement of the October Revolution and started restoring capitalism, whereas in foreign policy it adopted the line of collaboration with American imperialism to establish the domination of two great Powers over the world; it turned its back on the friends of the Soviet Union and got closer to its enemies; it did its uttermost to split the international communist movement and the anti-imperialist front; it sabotaged the national-liberation movements of peoples and renounced the revolution and the ideals of communism. What were the results of this line, of these attitudes and acts? If the Khrushchevite clique enjoyed the support of the Soviet people, which it pretends to enjoy, then why did it not come out openly in the Congress to defend its views which it calls correct, «Leninist», «realistic», «scientific», and so on?
Apparently this does not seem to have been an easy job. The skein of its contradictions with the party and the people is so badly entangled that it does not know where to start. If they expounded their line openly at the Congress the Soviet leaders would expose themselves as traitors to Marxism-Leninism and dangerous counter-revolutionaries, would reveal to the Soviet people and to all the world their plots and vile methods in wresting the leadership of the party and of the state, they would reveal their insidious schemes against the revolution, against socialism and peace. Confrontation with reality, with truth would be a death blow for them. That which is their main concern at this Congress was to evade grappling with the basic problems of Soviet and international life, to pass by in silence the major preoccupations, doubts and alarmings of Soviet people, to give no reply to embarrassing questions which Soviet life has now brought to the fore as a result of the treacherous deeds of the revisionists.
The 23d Congress was a Congress «to freeze» all the problems that preoccupy the Soviet people at present.
In the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union there has never been so colorless a Congress as the 23d Congress which the new Khrushchevite leaders organized and held these recent days. If we were to sum up in one word its proceedings we would be inclined to say that it is the Congress of «freezing» all the problems which preoccupy the Soviet people today. The report which Brezhneev presented to the Congress on behalf of the Central Committee of the Party resembled, more than anything else, a speech by a plain agitator to a usual solemn meeting in a factory. Schematic discussions and the monotonous repetition of the figures of the new five-year plan drawn out of his report which had been made public and discussed for quite a long time, could not impart life to a soul-less corpse. As long as the essential problems had been buried beforehand, recitations at the Congress were bound to be lifeless.
The question here is, of course, not that the organizers lacked the power of oratory or of writing out speeches. We have met these paladins of Khrushchevite revisionism at the 20th Congress and especially at the 22nd Congress where they let their tongues loose. The lowered tone of their voice is no sign of maturity or wisdom as some may interpret it. It determines a definite situation of contradictory relations, not only between the leader's of the party, on one hand, and the communists and people, on the other, but also between the Soviet revisionist leaders and their revisionist allies of other parties. It is not hard to notice, for instance, that Brezhneev’s political report is a careful compilation of compromises not to treat of the most fundamental questions running through Soviet life these recent years and formulate the revisionist line avoiding anything that might arouse disputes and discontent among their allies. It is not accidental that such outstanding members of the Khrushchevite clique as Suslov, Shelepin, Mikoyan, Polyansky and others uttered not a word at the Congress. It is hard to believe that they had nothing to say. But at a congress filled with restraints, where words had to be sugar-coated, where even the slightest attempt at delving deep into any matter of more or less importance would risk letting the cat out of the bag, under such circumstances silence is golden. This silence as well as the weak economic and political status of the Soviet Union, as brought out at the Congress, were very much to the liking of the allies of Khrushchevite revisionists who are very eager to see the Soviet Union weakened in all respects. Thus, they can more easily rid themselves of the conductor’s baton and rely on the support of their national bourgeoisie.
At a congress of a genuine communist party, its central committee does not only render account to the members of the party but reports on the policy and activity of the party to the people as a whole. In particular, it draws up there a balance sheet of the fulfilment of tasks and directives set forth at the preceding congress and analyzes all the important events that have taken place or the various measures the central committee has taken during the interval between two congresses. But nothing of this kind was done nor could anything of this kind be done at the 23d Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With the exception of certain general, unspecified and vague words, nothing was said about what has happened and what has been done after the 22nd Congress. Nothing was said, for instance, on how the line of the 22nd Congress has been worked out and put into execution. The 22nd Congress had especially attacked Stalin and had called on fighting «J. V. Stalin’s cult of the individual» to the end. Why were the results of this campaign not reported to the Congress? At the preceding Congress Khrushchev assailed the Party of Labor and the People’s Republic of Albania, in the Resolution of the Congress there were pleadings and threats, there were expressions of «hopes» and «demands» towards our country. But what was done after that? What policy did the Soviet leaders pursue towards our Party and our people? Khrushchev and his intimate collaborators ruptured diplomatic relations with Albania, they established an all-round blockade against our country, they plotted against the freedom and independence of a socialist country to which they were bound by numerous obligations publicly entered into. Should the Party and the Soviet people not be given some kind of explanation about all these things?
Immediately after the 22nd Congress, the Soviet leaders launched their ill-famed campaign against the People’s Republic of China and it? Communist Party, linked up with the United States to encircle China and set up an anti-Chinese «cordon of fire», helped Indian reactionaries to attack China, and so on and so forth. Finally, following the invitation it received, the Communist Party of China refused to take part at the 23d Congress and sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union explaining the reason for such action. But why did the Soviet leaders not speak about the state of Soviet-Chinese relations at the Congress, why did they not make public the contents of the above letter, in short, why did they not publicly defend, their stand towards China? Moreover, in July 1963 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union published its anti-Chinese Open Letter and its 1964 February plenum passed an. anti-Chinese party resolution. These were, by no means, insignificant events of the past the consequences of which were not worth reporting to the Congress. After the 22nd Congress followed the well-known Caribbean events in which the Soviet Union was directly involved. What policy was pursued at that time, how is it assessed now, did they act well or badly?
It is already a fact that the communist movement is split just as the socialist camp is split, for a major and bitter polemic has been going on for a long time between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists. The Soviet leaders have exerted and continue to exert major efforts to establish the hegemony of the «conductor’s baton» over communist parties, they interfere brutally in the internal affairs o£ those parties which loyally abide by Marxism-Leninism, support renegades in various parties, and so on. Communists and the Soviet people are eager to know what is going on in this field, but the organizers of the Congress passed over these matters in silence at the Congress, as if they did not exist at all, or as if they themselves had not taken direct part in them.
None of those taking the floor at the Congress failed to eulogize the 1964 October plenum which seems to have been highly propitious and «salutary». But no one ever mentioned Khrushchev’s name, no one ever said what was done at that plenum. It is a known fact that it ousted Khrushchev who, up to that time, held the highest functions in the Soviet Union, that of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, not to mention others. In the official communique of the plenum it was said at that time that he gave up the functions he held for reasons of health and advanced age. This formula was neither confirmed nor denied at the Congress. Anyone can ask: How is it possible not to report to the Party what happened to its First Secretary, not to inform the people why the Government was changed? Whatever the case may have been, the new Soviet leaders should either have paid homage to Khrushchev who «retired because of old age and ill health» or should have called him publicly to account for his «subjectivism», «voluntarism» and so on. A silence like this has never been maintained in an earnest communist party.
We pointed out above some of the problems which preoccupy Soviet society and which the 23d Congress totally ignored as if they never existed. It is of course clear to everybody that by failing to speak of these matters, they do not cease to exist, they do not lose their sharpness and actuality. In its April 6 editorial dedicated to the winding up of discussions on the first item of the order of the day of the Congress — Brezhneev’s report — the «Pravda» daily proclaimed «the unanimity and compactness» which seems allegedly to have reigned at the Congress during the first part of its proceedings. The paper did not explain in what this unanimity existed, in those that were said or in those that were left unsaid which, according to the views or ratio of forces in the ranks of the leaders, should not be taken up and confronted. But compromises do not last long, they never give a complete and permanent solution. The history of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from Stalin’s death onward is itself a major example of the futility of these compromises and their luckless consequences.
It is already an incontestable fact that no political or ideological unity exists in the Soviet community and, in spite of all efforts of the leaders to avert any expression of it in the proceedings of the Congress, it still emerged, in one way or another, here too. It was noticed in the anxieties of many debaters who appealed for political and ideological unity, in the preoccupations of many for unwholesome manifestations in educating the young generation or for liberalism which reigns today in the domain of letters and arts, for disruption in economy, and so on.
Grasped between serious internal and external contradictions, which
have arisen and are developing as a consequence of failures which
Khrushchevites have met with so far, the new Soviet leaders did their
uttermost to receive the approval of their future line from the
Congress. To achieve this they resorted to all methods and means
ranging from passing by in silence over the most acute problems to
dropping all such favorable terms of Khrushchevite revisionists as the
«state of all the people» and «the party of all the people», from
maneuvering with the figures of the new five-year period to the lack of
the braggings of the Khrushchev type, from evading to raise new
«theoretic matters», or to formulate new «codes» of communism to
demagogic outbursts for «unity» and «anti-imperialist» attitudes, and
so on. Of course, this new «style» was not adopted to stress the
difference from Khrushchev’s line. It is part of the demagogical
tactics of Khrushchev's successors who try to preserve the ideological
heritage and political line of then-predecessor but without making a
lot of noise and raising a great fuss about it. The tactics of the new
leaders is the familiar tactics of double-dealing, of under-cover acts,
of silent plots and backstage intrigues. The proceedings and decisions
of the 23d Congress prove once more that they are determined to proceed
along this road, that is, to carry out Khrushchevism without
Khrushchev, to fight Marxism-Leninism but not by his crude and
authoritarian methods, to collaborate with American imperialism but
without boasting out loud about it, to continue wrecking the
international communist movement and the socialist camp, but to do it
in the name of «unity», in short, to say one thing and do another. But
nothing can come to the rescue of the new Soviet leaders. The
dialectics of things is such that any attempt to overcome difficulties
and contradictions on the basis of the line which has created them can
bring nothing else but a deepening of those difficulties and
contradictions, thus, the inevitable and ultimate collapse of
Khrushchevite revisionism.
Congress of Khrushchevism without Khrushchev
What did the 23d Congress show? It showed that the new Soviet leaders persist on loyally pursuing to the end the treacherous, capitulating, anti-Marxist line of the 20th and 22nd Congresses, on carrying out under all conditions the Khrushchevite revisionist line of betrayal and capitulation embodied in the program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The general line of Khrushchevite revisionism remains intact in all internal and external matters. The theses of the 20th and 22nd Congress remain, as they have been so far, the gospel of Soviet revisionists for which they vow and which inspire them for new counter-revolutionary acts. In certain matters, such as the management and direction of economy, the new leaders have even gone further ahead of the revisionist way. They compelled the Congress to adopt the new economic reforms which mark a further step towards creating more favorable conditions for the re-establishment of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
Brezhneev, Kosigyn and many other orators brought many figures to the Congress and played with them just as jugglers play with their sticks at the circus. They took great pains to persuade their auditors about the «benefits» which will allegedly accrue to the Soviet people by this five-year plan, about the place which Soviet economy will be occupying in the world, about its international influence, and so on. But the Soviet people have heard such promises from revisionist leaders many times before during these recent years. Some years ago Khrushchev and his collaborators, who are now top leaders of the party and the state, promised to the Soviet people that by 1970 they would have reached the highest peaks of human welfare, that, if not altogether in communism they would be at the threshold of it. «The drafted general plan envisages such an increase of consumer’s goods», Kosygin declared at the 22nd Congress, «that by 1970 we will surpass the level of production per capita of the more advanced capitalist countries including the USA». At the present Congress Kosygin made no reference to the former promises. He was even obliged in a way to admit that the revisionist course has brought with it many shortcomings. By way of justification, he tried to throw the blame on agriculture which, according to him, by lagging behind «hampered the accomplishment of tasks to develop the light food-processing industry, a thing which could not but influence the slackening of the rate of increase of national incomes and of material welfare of the laboring masses». He said that another factor which has exerted an influence in this matter has been the decrease of yield of work which has been lower during the preceding five-year period than during the last one. In his report Kosygin tried hard not to reveal the true causes why many of the targets of the 7-year state plan were not reached. He said that mistakes and wrong calculations have been made but he did not say who has made these mistakes, who was he or they who have maintained «a thoughtless voluntarist stand towards the solution of many complicated economic problems», who have «envisaged tasks wrongly based economically and impossible of being accomplished.» Everybody knows that at the time the 7-year plan of the USSR was drawn up, Kosygin, because of the post he held at the time, was one of the men who drew it up and, before Khrushchev’s downfall, he was one of its most ardent propagandists who often pointed out the «scientific» basis of the plan, its realization and so on and so forth. This is, for instance what he had declared at the 22nd Congress: «The successful development of national economy shows in a most convincing way how correct and timely is the course undertaken by the Central Committee of the Party under Comrade Khrushchev’s leadership to further improve the economic structure of production on the basis of data provided by science and technique.... We have now achieved such a level of development that the building of communism has become a practical and direct task of the Soviet people.... The Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade Khrushchev’s speeches to the Congress, represent a brilliant example of a deep analysis of social life, a creative development and enrichment of Marxist-Leninist theory-. Whereas at the 23d Congress he denounced «subjectivism, in solving economic problems, foppish disregard for scientific and technical data».
We wonder what Kosygin will be saying at the 24th Congress. But buffoonery has nothing to do with either science or Marxism. He speaks to suit the occasion, he denies today what he has said formerly, what he proclaims today as .the last word in science and technique he is liable to discard tomorrow as «foppish disregard towards science». Under such conditions can the Soviet people lend credit to the fresh promises by Brezhneev, Kosygin and their companions? Can they trust the «scientific» assurances for the new economic reforms and plans? The Soviet people and all the revolutionaries of the world see very clearly that all these maneuvers, all this play of words aim at concealing one thing: the collapse of the treacherous revisionist line which, through the anti-Marxist economic policy of these leaders intends to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union,
Khrushchev made many reforms and his successors did not lag behind. But they brought no benefits to the Soviet people. On the contrary, they have wasted many material values created by the toil and sweat of the people, they have aroused a feeling of pessimism in the country and have stifled creative forces, the live work of the Soviet people is smothered by repeated organizations and reorganizations which have confused and perplexed the people. If the revisionist leaders have today any preoccupation at all, it is that of satisfying and fulfilling all the whims of the privileged strata of the high functionaries of the party and of the state, of the technocrats and of the armymen of superior grades on whom they rely to maintain their power and to carry out their plans to degenerate Soviet society into a bourgeois one.
The economy of the Soviet Union has embarked now and is proceeding non-stop along the Yugoslav path. Those forms and methods which turned Titoite economy to an appendage of the economy of the capitalist world are being gradually adopted. Apparently, the Soviet leaders have found ready-made recipes to carry out their treacherous schemes which undermine the very foundations of the major achievements of the October Revolution, the brilliant results and successes the Soviet people had attained during a number of decades in bitter battle to build socialism. The head of the delegation of the Titoite clique at the 23 Congress, Alexander Rankovich, famous murderer of the peoples of Yugoslavia, frantic anti-Soviet and reckless enemy of socialism, spoke of this very enthusiastically. He took advantage of the rostrum of the Congress the Soviet revisionist leaders offered him in order to advertise «the Yugoslav experience», in order to stress the need «for a further improved exchange of it». But no matter how much its sympathizers and the intimate comrades of the Titoite clique who now stand arbitrarily at the top of the party and state in the USSR, may applaud him, the Soviet people cannot fail to know what the «Yugoslav way» represents, they cannot fail to know what is happening in Yugoslavia today and what the condition of the Yugoslav people is.
Present day Yugoslavia, in spite of numerous «certificates» and «documents» by which the Soviet revisionist leaders have proclaimed it «a socialist country», represents a state subjected from top to bottom under the political and economic control of the imperialists and the internal reactionary bourgeoisie represented by Tito’s clique. In its economy there is a growing day to day manifestation of the ugly bourgeois phenomena of competition, unemployment, uneven development of districts and regions, chauvinist pressures of economically more powerful groups, rivalry for markets, and so on. A paradise of this kind lies ahead also for the Soviet Union if it proceeds along the road the present revisionist leaders urge it to go. And the first signs are disquieting a lot for the Soviet people. Their top leaders, following faithfully Khrushchev’s footsteps, have begun and are inviting foreign capital to be invested in the Soviet Union. Important negotiations are going on with Japanese capital for investments in the Far East, while the large Italian Fiat firm has concluded a very important agreement to open a branch in the Soviet Union. Under the form of long-term credits, of free international economic exchange, which, as Kosygin alleged in his speech to the Congress, «are needed because of the technical and scientific revolution», the Soviet leaders intend to link the economy of their country with the capitalist economy of the USA, England, West Germany, Japan and others. By resorting to a thing of this kind they hope in this way to speed up the capitalist transformation of the Soviet economy and to set up another basis on which to consolidate their power. These, of course, are their own calculations. But the last word will be said by the Soviet people who have not fought and shed so much blood so that their country may become a new Russia, of the Czars.
Persistent continuation of pro-imperialist policy
One of the questions taken up most at the 23d Congress was that of the problems of foreign policy which occupied a major part of the speeches of the Soviet leaders and of their friends invited to the Congress. All of this uneasiness is fully understandable. Because of their treacherous, capitulating and counter-revolutionary policy the Soviet revisionists have come up against a general conflict with all the anti-imperialist forces of the world. The line of Soviet-American collaboration to establish the domination of two great Powers over the world is meeting with the opposition of countries and peoples who see a direct threat to their freedom and independence in these imperialist-revisionist plots. The major revolutionary events that have taken place in the world have made it impossible for Soviet revisionists to wear the anti-imperialist mask which they desire to keep in order to mislead public opinion. Therefore, just as expected, Khrushchev’s successors occupied themselves at the Congress mainly with the task of justifying their capitulating policy and of improving upon their well-known demagogical tactics of hurling the stone and hiding the hand that threw it. The analysis they made to the international situation, which was almost a word for word repetition of that of the 20th and 22nd Congresses, was intended to find, or better said, to establish some vantage grounds to derive fresh «proofs» to justify their course of collaboration with imperialism under the already known form of «peaceful co-existence», «peaceful competition», and so on.
But, unlike Khrushchev, the new leaders do not blab their intentions out openly; if judged by words they say, they are even liable to be considered as the most intransigent anti-imperialists. At the Congress there were heard so many harsh verbal attacks against American imperialism, so many curses and harsh anathema against it, so much that who knows what would happen if they were in earnest about them!
But whoever followed the proceedings of the 23d Congress could not help noticing that the «anti-imperialism» of the Soviet revisionists is, from top to bottom, a bluff, a faded out coating to mask their concrete acts in support of imperialism. Both in Brezhneev’s and Kosygin’s reports as well as in the discussions by Gromyko and by other orators, the condemnation of American imperialism and its aggressive policy did not go beyond a general, abstract and formal reproach. With regard to concrete matters of international relations, the Soviet leaders expressed, as heretofore, their readiness to cooperate with the USA in order to solve them within the framework of Soviet-American relations. Thus, for instance, Brezhneev, after making a full-mouthed advertisement in his speech to the Congress of revisionist anti-imperialism, after speaking a great deal about American aggression in Viet Nam, stressed: «We have often expressed our readiness to develop our relations with the USA and now we maintain the same attitude». Through this he wanted to tell the Americans: «Don’t mind the words we are obliged to say about you, we will continue to pursue the policy of contact and collaboration in the future as well». And it must be said that the Americans interpreted aright the language used at the 23d Congress. The American newspaper «Christian Science Monitor» while commenting the speeches on foreign policy delivered at the Congress, summed up all the essence of revisionist attitude in a few words: «harsh line, tender deeds». The entire Western press is enthusiastic as the Congress «left the door open for collaboration, with the West».
The maneuvers which were used at the Congress to demagogize with anti-imperialist slogans were great, but they can no longer deceive anybody. Everybody knows that what the Soviet revisionists have close to their heart is to continue and broaden Soviet-American collaboration to dominate the world. Just as heretofore, Khrushchevite revisionist leaders of the Soviet Union are striving doggedly to conclude a new agreement with the USA to stop the spread of nuclear weapons so as to secure the atomic monopoly of the two great Powers, they are trying hard to subjugate UNO and to turn it into a tool of Soviet-American combinations, they are working tooth and nail together with the USA, to complete «the encirclement by fire» of China, they help in collusion with American imperialists to arm Indian reactionaries and instigate their warmongering anti-Chinese desires, they actively coordinate their actions with American «global strategy» to suppress liberation wars in Asia, Africa and Latin America, they persist on pursuing the policy of reconciliation with German revanchism and sacrifice the vital interests of the German and other European socialist peoples for the sake of this contact with the USA., and so on. It is precisely these concrete acts, to mention but a few, that represent the treacherous revisionist policy, that point out their dangerous trend, their capitulating designs. Everything else is demagogy to deceive people, a trap laid to enslave peoples, a dangerous maneuver to stab the revolution and socialism on the back.
Typical in this regard is the unbridled, unrestrained demagogy in connection with Viet Nam, which reached the acme of its ugliness at the 23d Congress. Many nice words were uttered on behalf of the war of the Vietnamese people, against American aggression and, of course, there was no lack of promises for aid and support. But what is this aid, what does it represent now and what will it amount to in the future? Brezhneev said that «the aggressors will come up against the growing aid of the Soviet Union to Viet Nam», Kosygin that «we shall continue this support at the level required» while Gromyko confined his remarks to: «the Americans should take these declarations seriously».
But these are mere words. As a matter of fact, neither Brezhneev, Kosygin nor Gromyko said a single word regarding the imperialist plot of «peaceful talks» and they did not discard this devilish maneuver which aims at making the Vietnamese people capitulate. This is by no means casual. It is a known fact that the Soviet revisionist leaders, just as the Titoites, as the Indian reactionaries and others, are supporters of the imperialist thesis of «unconditional talks». Khrushchevite leaders bragged a good deal about the «aid» they give to Viet Nam, but the value of this aid to the war against aggressors is quite insignificant. This can be confirmed by a very simple fact: if the Soviet arms were so dangerous a factor for the American imperialists why have they so far shown so little concern about this act of the Soviet people? It is known that in 1962 when Khrushchev dispatched Soviet rockets to Cuba the American imperialists did not only fret and fume but they compelled Khrushchev to capitulate and withdraw the rockets from Cuba by accepting American control. Therefore, the question is not that the Americans attach no importance to the problem of armed aid. But the American imperialists do not raise a hue and cry about it because there must surely exist some secret agreement between the Soviet leaders and Johnson and the Pentagon (to what other use could the red teletype be put?) in which the limits are set for Soviet «aid» to Viet Nam, what and how much can be sent without endangering in the least the imperialist aggressors.
The Soviet leaders boasted a great deal that they possess continental and intercontinental, cosmic and universal rockets, that their atomic sub-marines now tour the world without being detected, that they have set up «blue circles of defense», and so on and so forth. But what influence does this exert in the Viet Nam war to ward off imperialist aggression? These pretensions disclose more clearly the great truth that the revisionist leaders give no effective aid to Viet Nam, that their so-called «aid» is very insignificant as compared with the potential and possibilities of the Soviet Union. Whereas the aid and support they give the American imperialists in their aggressive war are much more effective. Is this not corroborated by the fact that the Americans are withdrawing tens of thousands of troops from Europe to dispatch to Viet Nam, since there is nothing m Europe to make the imperialists feel uneasy about?
Revisionist demagogy which was used a great deal at the 23d Congress cannot cover up the obvious fact that Khrushchevite revisionists do not at all intend to aid the Vietnamese people and uphold their just cause, because the liberation war of the people of Viet Nam, their stubborn resistance to American imperialism, their historic victories in the field of battle against the greatest military capitalist Power in the world have razed to the ground the whole revisionist edifice of «Khruschevite coexistence». It is now dealing more terrifying blows to the revisionist, pacifist and capitulating theories on the nature of wars at present, on the revolution and peaceful co-existence. Above all it has become the touchstone of socialist internationalism which mercilessly draws the line between friend and foe, shows to the whole world who are with the people and who are with imperialism. It is precisely on this account that Khrushchevite revisionists, who have long betrayed Marxism-Leninism, who have ultimately departed from the revolutionary traditions of the October Revolution and the principles of proletarian internationalism, are not at all eager to see the Vietnamese win, it is precisely on this account that they coordinate their plans and acts with those of the United States for getting «peaceful talks» under way, that is, for subjugating Viet Nam to American imperialism.
The most dangerous splitters and enemies of the international communist movement
The 23d Congress took a new stride, the final stride in splitting the international communist and workers movement. Of course, as in all other matters, the Soviet revisionist leaders strove to hide their true intentions also in dealing with the problems of the communist movement. This shows that Khrushchev’s successors have drawn certain lessons from Khrushchev’s sad experience. At the 23d Congress the Soviet leaders made a lot of noise about their «loyalty» to Marxism-Leninism and the Moscow Declarations, expressed themselves in favor of the «unity» of the movement, Brezhneev even «offered» the hand of friendship to the Party •of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China in his political report.
This attitude is not only hypocritical and fraudulent but it also bespeaks the cynicism of the Khrushchevites. While making such declarations on the surface they plot in secret against the communist movement and parties which stand loyal to Marxism-Leninism, come closer to and collaborate with the Titoite clique, which has been publicly condemned by the Moscow Declarations, organize slanders and plots against the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China. Not only this, but many orators, hosts and guests, immediately after Brezhneev’s report, used the platform of the Congress to launch unbridled calumnies against Marxist-Leninist parties, particularly, against the Communist Party of China, accusing them of being «warmongers», «pseudo-revolutionaries», «adventuresome», «splitters», and so on. There was also someone who by «delving» into theoretic speculation coined the term of «anti-Soviet communism» in order to slander against our parties and countries, although it is a known fact that this «inventor» himself is one of those pioneers of modern revisionism who, some years ago, as a banner-holder of anti-Sovietism and wrecker of the communist party, became a member of a counterrevolutionary government.
This campaign within the Congress directed against parties which abide loyally by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, as well as the whole dissentient and diversionist activity of Khrushchevite revisionists, disclosed best the demagogy and intentions of Khrushchevite leaders. Through their false slogans about «unity» they want to deceive communist public opinion, to move attention away from their treason, to achieve a cessation of public polemics so as to gain time to carry out their treacherous schemes against Marxism-Leninism and the revolution in peace.
The «friendship» they offered to China and Albania is an unscrupulous demagogy, a premeditated gesture for purposes of diversion, a stale piece of propaganda to mask their counter-revolutionary deeds. Anti-Marxist, anti-Albanian, anti-Chinese acts are the principal constituent part of the foreign policy of the Soviet revisionist leaders. Khrushchevite revisionists cannot cover up this truth by any gesture of propaganda, by any maneuver and cunning whatsoever.
The demagogic maneuvers of the Soviet leaders are also dictated by the major difficulties and contradictions that exist within the ranks of various revisionist groupings, they are dictated by the failures the revisionists are meeting with from day to day. Khrushchevism is losing more and more ground from day to day as a result of the resolute and principled fight of the Communist Party of China, of the Party of Labor of Albania, of the Communist Party of Japan, of the Communist Party of New Zealand etc. and of all genuine revolutionaries to expose Khrushchevite revisionism, and as a result of the anti-Marxist, counter-revolutionary acts of the Soviet revisionists and others, as well as their growing contact and collaboration with imperialists. Khrushchev’s downfall is a very significant forewarning. Contradictions have mounted between the Soviet leaders and the revisionist leaders of certain other parties both as a result of the chauvinistic conduct of the Soviet revisionists towards these parties and these socialist countries, as well as of the economic difficulties which have arisen for all due to the implementation of the revisionist-Titoite policy and even to the bourgeois nationalism which has raised its head wherever the revisionists are in power. On the other hand, the resistance of revolutionary communists, is growing among the ranks of many revisionist parties, for they are becoming more and more aware of the abyss into which their revisionist leaders are leading them. This is what is happening in the Soviet Union, this is what is happening in other countries inn by revisionists, this is happening in communist and workers parties of capitalist countries. In certain places Marxist-Leninist forces operate in secret, in others openly; in certain places, new Marxist-Leninist parties and groups are formed which operate under conditions of complete illegality, in others these parties and groups openly oppose revisionism. This process is now well under way. It is an irresistible process which will sweep away revisionist treason like an avalanche. Soviet Khrushchevites and their allies are sensing the danger. They stand in need of a breathing period to muster up their forces and launch their attack with renewed energy.
In order to deceive communists and lull their vigilance to sleep the Soviet revisionists tried to minimize and wipe out altogether the distinction between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism at the 23d Congress too, presenting the divergences of «minor importance», emphasizing out loud that «what unites us is the main things and so on.
Our Party of Labor has stressed over and over again that nothing unites and everything divides Marxist-Leninist from revisionists who have betrayed socialism and communism. The Soviet revisionists spoke a lot at the 23d Congress too about «unity of action» in the war against imperialism. But is there anything to unite Marxists with revisionists in this domain too? Not a thing. While Marxists and all revolutionaries wage a fist to fist battle with imperialism the revisionists are allies and lackeys of imperialism and oppose the anti-imperialist war of peoples. To embark on a «unity of action» with the revisionists means to give up fighting imperialism, to capitulate and submit to imperialism.
The 23d Congress showed once again that Khrushchevite leaders are splitters and sworn enemies of the international communist and workers movement. Marxist-Leninists and genuine revolutionaries should intensify their efforts to expose Khrushchevite revisionism. It is essential to draw a clear line of demarcation with Khrushchevism, both in the domain of policy and ideology as well as in that of organization. Revolutionaries loyal to the cause of communism are fully justified, it is even high time for them to organize themselves into new anti-revisionist groups and parties. The war against revisionism, this agency of imperialism should be waged on an even higher level. Revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists should launch a general campaign so that Khrushchevite schemes of fraud and treason, worked out at the 23d Congress, may come to naught. Every communist who is faithful to the triumphant ideas of Marxism-Leninism should take a definite stand. An undefined, centrist, wavering, neutral attitude does not serve the cause of the revolution, the cause of communism. Khrushchevite revisionists, as it was pointed out at their 23d Congress, are doing their uttermost to align obedient revisionists closer to themselves and to set up a united front against revolutionary Marxist-Leninists with them. But they also strive to win over «new friends», pursuing, at first, the tactics of neutralizing them with the hope of eventually drawing them to their revisionist front.
Under the actual conditions when the war between Marxist-Leninists has become very acute, when the treacherous acts of Khrushchevite revisionists are not directed only against a group of communists within the country, or against a sector of the communist movement alone, but are directed against the entire communist movement, against the revolution and communism, genuine communists, even if they are in the sanctum sanctorum of Khrushchevite revisionists, cannot renounce their principles nor replace them with obscure, abstract or half opportunist formulae. History has proved that halfway, equivocal attitudes are very dangerous, they are to the advantage of revisionists who prefer and encourage them.
The establishment of a clear line of demarcation, ideological, political and organizational separation with Khrushchevite, Titoite and other revisionists have become an inevitable, essential and historical exigency. The Party of Labor of Albania will continue to intensify, as always, its principled fight against modern revisionism, will give unreserved support to anti-revisionist communists and revolutionaries.
In an article of the «Zeri i Popullit» entitled «Khrushchevite Revisionist Traitors Go To Their Congress with a Balance Sheet of Major Failures» published on March 22, we wrote:
«The activities of the treacherous Khrushchevite leaders, the whole policy they have pursued so far, show that at the Congress they will ask to sanctify Khrushchevism but without Khrushchev. They will try to get a license, be it ever so formal, for a congress to proceed along the line they worked out together with Khrushchev, to proceed further along towards capitalist degeneration of the social order in the Soviet Union, towards splitting the world communist movement, towards intensifying and deepening collaboration with American imperialism for the sake of placing the world under the domination of two Great Powers». Now that the Congress wound up its proceedings we may say that there is nothing to add to these conclusions. Its results were what all had expected. And it could not have happened otherwise.
The Soviet revisionist leaders went to the Congress as carriers of the line to reestablish capitalism in the Soviet Union, but they couldn’t very well say a thing of this kind openly to the Soviet people. They went there as lackeys of the aggressive policy of the imperialists, but in order to carry out their mission best they had to carefully conceal their dealings as agents. They went there as splitter’s and saboteurs of the communist movement but as long as they work from within, it is essential to keep the mask on. The double-faced tactics of Khrushchevite revisionists is not something freely picked out by them. It has been imposed on them by circumstances, by their traitorous mission, by the counter-revolutionary intentions they try to realize.
It was the proceedings of the 23d Congress that laid bare better than at any time before this demagogical tactic, this duplicity, this separation of words from deeds, this hypocrisy and cynicism of revisionists. But this tactics, so demagogical and built on sand, is the product of insuperable contradictions, of the exigencies of the day, is the result of fear and failures met with. As such it is doomed to collapse just as the revisionism which has given it life will itself collapse.
Now that the Congress is over, Khrushchevite revisionist leaders try to feign they are glad to have been able to preserve the appearance of unity at the Congress, to have been able to hush up their contradictions with their own party and their people, with their revisionist allies and friends. But this is false joy which has no basis whatsoever, which is wishful thinking rather than reality. The atmosphere of uneasiness, of preoccupation for imponderables that might come to the fore, the lack of complete assurances of those that were said, that were brought out, in one way or another, at the discussions of the delegates are symptoms which point out that even when the revisionist leaders refuse to move from their place, the people move around them, processes go on and they are unable to halt them.
The Soviet people are a great people, with a glorious revolutionary past, with a highly developed national and internationalist awareness. Whatever may happen, they will not tolerate for long that a group of incorrigible renegades, who have usurped power in the Soviet Union, draw them into a dangerous alley which is entirely opposed to their vital interests. There will surely come a day when the banner of Leninism will again wave aloft in the sky of the Land of the Soviets.
Click here to return to the
index of archival material.