The 24th Congress of the revisionist Party of the Soviet Union which opened in Moscow on March 30 wound up its proceedings on April 9. As expected, it reaffirmed the Khrushchevite line of the present Soviet leadership. The Report delivered by Brezhniev and the discussions staged there were a tedious repetition of the well-known revisionist theses, stale self-praise and demagogical promises.
The general characteristic of this Congress was its insistence on going down the road of the betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, the revolution, and socialism to the very end. Brezhniev declared officially that the Kremlin chiefs do not intend to reject the 20th Congress and the Party program approved by the 22nd Congress, when Nikita Khrushchev was in power and Khrushchevite modern revisionism was codified.
If it can be said there was anything new brought out by the present Congress it was precisely the further deepening of Khrushchevism in all fields — internal and external, political, economic and ideological.
The primary concern and preoccupation of the organizers of this big revisionist meeting was the consolidation and perfection of ways and means for the restoration of capitalism and the consolidation of the revisionist bourgeois dictatorship. Through this Congress, the Soviet revisionist leadership sought formal approval, allegedly, in the name of the party and people, for continuing its pursuit of its social-imperialist policy against the revolution and the liberation movement of the peoples, for the preservation of the revisionist Soviet Empire, the extension of its political and economic expansion and the broadening of its collaboration with U.S. imperialism.
Anti-Marxism and anti-Communism — the ideological basis of Khrushchevite Revisionism
The speeches delivered at the Congress for ten days on end fill whole volumes and the figures cited are innumerable. But who ever followed the proceedings of the Congress attentively could not fail to notice the great theoretical deficiency, poverty of ideas and bureaucratic mediocrity. In the reports of Brezhniev and Kosygin there was ample room to speak of all the economic minutiae from flatirons to the numbers of pamphlets issued, from sewing machines to the work of pensioners assisting the municipal services. But the Soviet chiefs maintained complete silence on and passed over the acute problems which preoccupy the Soviet people and Soviet society. In the present day Soviet Union there is a recognised conflict between the bureaucratic apparatus of the Party and the State, on one hand, and the broad masses of people, on the other, there are profound contradictions between the bureaucratic centralism in power and the demands of the masses for freedom and democracy. But not a word was said about these things.
Today, it is hard to find another country in the world where bureaucracy has taken in its hands such great and uncontrolled power, as in the Soviet Union. It holds not only the political power but also economic power and the ideological monopoly in its grip. The working class and the laboring masses have already been stripped of those rights which they won during the October Revolution to exercise their own control over the apparatus and to participate directly in governing the country. And though there still remain such organisms as the Soviets, the trade unions, the Comsomol, production meetings, and so on, they have kept only their old names and forms but have lost their substance, and have been turned into propaganda organs for the decisions and directives of the bureaucratic apparatus and instruments to carry them out.
The democracy of which Brezhniev boasted at the Congress is not democracy for the masses but for the bureaucratic caste. It is a fact that not only the masses but even the so-called elected organs take no part in formulating the policy and attitudes in either internal or external affairs. These things are decided in the narrow circle of the clique in power and the masses are always faced with accomplished facts. Were the Soviet masses ever consulted when Stalin was denigrated and the revolutionary work and struggle of whole generations of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet people was negated, when Khrushchev was ousted and his place was occupied by Brezhniev and Kosygin, when China and Albania were attacked, when Czechoslovakia was occupied, and so on and so forth? The familiar saying of the Soviet people, «nachaltsvo znaet» (= the leadership knows) about everything that happens in their country, is no mere tale.
It expresses a bitter reality, the absolute domination of the bureaucracy, the deep gap which exists between it and the people.
There has long emerged in the Soviet Union another acute contradiction which has not been, nor will ever be resolved, as long as the revisionists hold sway there. This is the contradiction between the hard work of the Soviet people in the field of production of material and spiritual values and the low level of its efficiency. The unwieldy bureaucratic machinery has become an insuperable obstacle to the development of the forces of production in their rational utilization of the resources of the country, of manpower, of material and financial means, to the introduction of advanced technique and technology, and so on. It strangles the creative initiative and activity of the masses.
In his report Brezhniev himself was obliged to admit that the Soviet economy today suffers from such phenomena as retardation of capital construction, inefficient utilization of productive capacities, slowness in introducing new technique in production, inadequate increase of labor productivity, production of many poor quality articles, lack of organization in production, and so on and so forth.
In order to resolve these contradictions and difficulties the Khrushchevite revisionists, in line with their political and ideological concepts, undertook the introduction of capitalist methods of organization and management, production and distribution. This was sanctioned in the most complete and all-round way in the so-called economic reform. The objective of this was to bring the Soviet economy into conformity with the bourgeois revisionist superstructure.
But the capitalist mode of production which the revisionists chose could not extricate the Soviet economy from its predicament. Such ills typical of bourgeois society as competition, great fluctuation of manpower, disproportion between the various branches of production, the extension of market relations to the field of the principal means of production, and so on began to appear more and more powerfully. These capitalist reforms have now given rise to major social contradictions between the working class and laboring masses who produce all the material blessings, on one hand, and the new bourgeois class which appropriates the sweat and toil of the working people, on the other. The material stimulus and profit, which lie at the root of this reform, are constantly deepening and aggravating this contradiction.
The revisionist propaganda and even that of the bourgeoisie, calls the 24th Congress the Congress of «consumption». This is in connection with the many promises of Brezhniev and Kosygin to increase the production of consumer goods and to raise the wages of certain categories of workers during this five-year period. Of course, the revisionists try to advertise these as measures of their concern to raise the standard of living of the people pretending that this is the only purpose of production in the Soviet Union. In fact the purpose of production in the Soviet Union today is to draw profit for the benefit of the bureaucratic caste in power. In reality, the promised measures are concessions which the bourgeois ruling class feels obliged to make at a given moment of the sharpening of the class struggle in order to safeguard its authority. Such concessions have been and are made, now and then, by the bourgeoisie of the capitalist countries for the purpose of pacifying and deceiving the workers, of diverting them from revolutionary struggle.
It is not accidental that this «concern» about raising the standard of living of the workers should be manifested right at this time. It came immediately following the recent events in Poland when the Polish working class launched a furious revolt against the revisionist regime. The Polish events indicated that the Polish workers could no longer reconcile themselves to their miserable plight, that they could no longer endure the political oppression and economic exploitation. What sparked off this revolt were low wages, the rise of prices, lack of consumer goods and their poor quality, lack of housing and so on. But it took the character of a pronounced political struggle directed against the whole revisionist system.
In order to forestall similar outbursts, the Moscow leaders hastened to undo their purse strings. But they are grossly mistaken if they think they can deceive the workers for long and overcome the deep contradictions they have with them, with a few small crumbs. The great discontent of the Soviet workers and those of all the other revisionist countries, stems not only from economic causes. It has arisen and extended, first at all, from political and ideological causes. So long as revisionist betrayal, which is the source of all evils, exists, the revolutionary outbursts of the working class are inevitable regardless of which motive will spark them off.
The same thing is happening with the Soviet revisionists as with the bourgeoisie of the old capitalist countries, who, while making a few concessions in the field of the social and economic demands of the workers, tighten the screws in order to keep the reins of state power in their own hands. In his report, Brezhniev calls for strict discipline and «unconditional implementation» of the orders and directives of the State and Party apparatus. He threatened all those who are not reconciled to the actions and views of the Soviet leadership and issued a stem warning to those who would «stain the banner» of the ruling clique.
Brezhniev tries to present this tightning of the screws as a struggle he is waging to safeguard «the general line of the Party» from the attacks from the left and from the right. Irrespective of the principled pose which the Secretary-General of the Soviet revisionist Party is trying to maintain, in this way he is obliged to admit the existence of opposition to the revisionist line among the Soviet people. It is precisely the fear of the extension of the discontent and opposition among the people of the various strata that compels the Kremlin leader to maneuver between demagogy and the threat to use force.
In its attempt to maintain its domination, the Soviet renegade clique has never neglected the ideological «processing» of the masses subjecting them to a continuous bombardment of revisionist propaganda. This was dearly apparent in this latest Congress where Brezhniev, Kosygin and others strove to sell revisionism as Marxism, and creative Marxism at that, to present their revisionist standpoints and methods as Leninist. They want to stifle any critical or creative thought, to impose on the masses the concept of unconditional obedience and submission to the policy and activity of the leadership. There is nothing Marxist, nothing Leninist in this. They speculate with the name and authority of Lenin and Leninism to cover up the deficiencies in their revisionist ideology, to cover up their complete betrayal of Marxism-Leninism.
In his report, Brezhniev boasted of the «contribution» that the Soviet leadership has allegedly rendered to the development and enrichment of Marxist-Leninist theory, in the fields of the economy, the role and structure of the Party, the history and theory of the State, the development of present-day capitalism and socialism,, the revolutionary and national-liberation movement. If we can speak of any real contribution of the Soviet revisionists, it is their contribution to the general revision of Marxism-Leninism, to the flagrant distortion of the theory and practice of socialism. In this they are standard-bearers and any merits can be recognised as theirs. How can the «elaboration of the new methods of planning and running the economy» which have smashed the socialist economy and paved the way to the restoration of capitalism, be called a further development of socialist, construction in the Soviet Union? Of what contribution can one speak in the «doctrine of the leading role of the Communist Party» when the Khrushchevites, under the guise of the «party of the whole people», have liquidated the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin and have turned it into a tool for their domination of Soviet working; class and people? How can the slanders and savage attacks against the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the guise of fighting the cult of the individual,, and the complete liquidation of this dictatorship under the pretext of «the State of the entire people», be called an «enrichment of the history and theory of the State»?
The revisionist leaders of the Soviet Union praise to the skies their «elaboration of new principles of the relations between socialist countries». Are Brezhniev’s «theory of limited sovereignty», the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the brutal intervention in other countries, the economic exploitation of the East European States, and the provocations and attacks on China and Albania, deeds of Marxism-Leninism? Or have their opportunist sermons about the peaceful and parliamentary road to socialism, on the integration of capitalism into socialism through reforms, on the transition of various countries to socialism without socialist revolution, without the leadership of the proletarian party, and without the dictatorship of the proletariat, helped develop the theory of revolution as they pretend?
Brezhniev’s report, and all the proceedings of the Congress, showed that the ideological basis of all the activities of the Khrushchevite revisionists is not Marxism-Leninism but anti-Marxism, bourgeois ideology, of which the whole of revisionism is a variant. In essence, the line which the 24th Congress adopted is the old Khrushchevite line. The Congress did nothing but express once again the determination of the present soviet leadership to persist in its course of betrayal and counter-revolution.
The Great State Chauvinist and Neo-colonialist Course
An important place in the documents and proceedings of the 24th Congress was devoted to the relations between the Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries. As expected, Brezhniev and the others painted a truly idyllic picture of both the relations, and the situation in these countries. Quite unblushingly he spoke of the «consolidation of the friendship and solidarity between the Soviet Union and the socialist countries» as if the Czechoslovak affair had not occurred at all; he spoke of the «successes and progress of the fraternal countries», as if the events in Poland had never taken place; he spoke of their «relations of equality and independence» as if the permanent military occupation of the German Democratic Republic. Hungary. Poland. Bulgaria and Mongolia did not exist at all. He spared no bombastic statements about the «fraternal aid» which the Soviet Union claims to be giving these countries, as if the world is not well aware of the way it exploits them economically, of the way it has turned them to appendages of the Soviet economy.
But the tragic situation which reigns in the revisionist camp cannot be covered up by demagogy or a coal of polish. Czechoslovakia has been and remains an irrefutable indictment of the clique which rules today in the Kremlin. In his report Brezhniev tried to skate lightly over the Czechoslovak problem, thinking that in this way he could divert public opinion. To justify the occupation of Czechoslovakia he could find nothing better than a statement by Husak who called this aggression an «internationalist act». Truly a key-witness! The bringing up as an «argument» of the statements of such a discredited individual as Husak, which were written in the offices of the Soviet Embassy in Prague, shows how low the Soviet leaders have come.
The aggression in Czechoslovakia remains aggression and no theory, no document or argument can justify it. It revealed and confirmed the real nature of the present imperialist policy of the Soviet Union, its transition to social-imperialism. The events of August 1968 exposed all the falsity of the demagogical preachings of the Soviet chiefs. They showed that the Soviet Union is the absolute ruler in these countries, making the law and deciding internal and external policy. The occupation of Czechoslovakia and raising the doctrine of «limited sovereignty» to an official norm, prove that the other revisionist countries have already lost their freedom, their national independence and sovereignty.
Czechoslovakia remains a running sore for the Moscow leaders which neither Brezhniev words nor the declaration of the Czechoslovak Quislings can heal. The continued stationing of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia cannot fail to further deepen the Czechoslovak crisis which is the crisis of Khruschevite revisionism as a whole. The occupation of Czechoslovakia extends and intensifies the struggle of the Czechoslovak people against the foreign occupationists for freedom and independence, and adds to the revolt of world public opinion against the imperialist policy •of the Soviet leaders.
Another question which Brezhniev tried to skate over in this report was the Polish problem. He tried to treat as if it concerned only Poland, as if it had nothing to do with the other revisionist countries, and confined himself to wishing Giereck «great success in surmounting the difficulties». Brezhniev could not open the files on the recent events in Poland before the Congress. Such a thing would have revealed that the situation and the causes which aroused the Polish workers to revolt are identical for all the revisionist countries including the Soviet Union itself. They would have shown the real nature and political meaning of the Polish December, as well as the new and major fact that the working class in the revisionist countries has begun to wake up and rise against revisionist rule.
Both in the case of Czechoslovakia and that of the events in Poland the Soviet leaders want to hush them up, to put the lid on them and consider them as bygones. But the cauldron is seething within and, sooner or later, will burst forth again. The revolutionary struggle of the working class and the laboring masses cannot be quelled because Brezhniev and Co. ignore it. It follows its own laws of development and is inevitable so long as the interests of the working class and those of the revisionist clique in power are in opposition and irreconcilable.
The prospects which the 24th Congress opened for the revisionist countries are very gloomy indeed. In fact, it showed that what the Soviet leaders are after is to deprive them of what little is left of their national independence and sovereignty and to turn them into military provinces of the Czarist type. Without even bothering to camouflage it, Brezhniev called for the coordination of their foreign policy with that of the Soviet Union, their economic integration, and the consolidation of the political end military instruments of the Warsaw Treaty. In fact, the «coordination of foreign policy» implies that the other countries will have no foreign policies or that they will be a propaganda echo of Gromyko’s Department. And practice shows that in the field of international relations these countries have already lost their individuality and national independence and are obliged to approve the maneuvers of Soviet diplomacy unconditionally even when these are in opposition to their own national interest as is the case with the Moscow-Bonn treaty and so on.
As regards economic integration, it is not hard to understand what its aims and consequences are. The economy of the revisionist countries has already been turned into an appendage of Soviet economy. Its orientation, rate, and proportions, are fixed not in Berlin, Prague, or Warsaw, but in Moscow’s Gosplan. It is dependent on the Soviet Union for everything, for raw materials and technology. Their foreign trade is entirely in Moscow’s hands. The so-called Council of Mutual Economic Aid is in reality a council of economic enslavement, an instrument of the neo-colonialist policy of the Soviet Union.
A similar function, but in the military and political field, is filled by the Warsaw Treaty. Through its mechanism, which Brezhniev demands must be consolidated, the Soviet leadership exerts military and political pressure on its allies, keeps them under continuous control, and compels them to obey its orders. The Warsaw Treaty is no longer a force to protect the freedom and independence of the member countries from foreign imperialist threats, but a means to protect the revisionist foreign occupation. What is more, the Warsaw Treaty has now become a military bloc in the service of the Soviet expansionist policy, constituting a serious danger for other countries as well.
The policy of subservience to the Soviet leadership, which emerged so clearly from the 24th Congress too, is armed not only at the satellite countries but also at all the revisionist parties which maintain relations with Moscow. In his report, his closing speech and his speech at the banquet for the foreign delegations which took part in the Congress. Brezhniev demanded from all parties unlimited obedience to and solidarity with the present policy of the Soviet Union. With absolute arrogance he described as «anticommunist» and «anti-soviet», any remark or criticism which might be made against the «infallible activity» of the Soviet leadership. He demanded that they put everything else aside and, under all circumstances, consider unconditional support of the Soviet State policy as the primary and sole objective of their activity.
Brezhniev sang praises to the international revisionist meetings and urged that they should be introduced deeply into the practice of the world communist movement». It is well known what these meetings are and whom they serve. The Soviet leadership has used them and wants to use them, to force its concepts and dictate on others, to keep the other parties hitched to the chariot of its policy.
But this is wishful thinking for the fact is that fewer and fewer revisionist countries are so enthusiastic and so eager to express their «solidarity» towards Moscow. Today, there is no unity in the revisionists camp, nor can there ever be. Each party is singing its own national anthem. The pressure of the Soviet dictate, on the other hand, adds momentum to the centrifugal tendencies, disagreements, and confusion. Even Brezhniev himself, felt obliged to admit to a certain extent this unfavorable situation for Moscow when he spoke about «the difficulties of unity», «the trends to national self-isolation», and «the revival of right opportunism», and so on.
Worried about this situation, the Soviet clique tried its uttermost to gather in the Congress as many foreign delegations as possible. This had two aims: propaganda and political. On the one hand, it aimed at making internal and external public opinion believe that the presence of foreign delegations in Moscow was an expression of solidarity with the Kremlin line, and, on the other, at making the guests accomplices in this policy. But the world does not judge the Soviet leaders and their policy by those who come or go to Moscow, nor by the cordial words they address to them. Through such gestures, the Soviet chiefs cannot escape exposure nor do they bring honor on themselves.
The Fire Brigade of the Revolution and the Peoples’ Liberation Movements
As expected, in their 24th Congress the Soviet revisionists were not sparing in their statements and criticisms against imperialism. If we were to believe their words, it would seem that the Soviet leadership opposes the policy of aggression and war of U.S. — led imperialism in every way. The «anti-imperialism» of the Soviet revisionists has been and remains an empty and demagogical slogan intended to deceive the peoples and to undermine their struggle. The Soviet Union has long ceased to be a revolutionary and anti-imperialist Power. Not only does it rot wage a real struggle against imperialism, but it sabotages every revolutionary and national-liberation movement.
Brezhniev may boast to his heart’s content, and pledge his word about the solidarity and aid which the Soviet Union allegedly gives the peoples fighting for freedom and independence against colonialism, oppression and exploitation. But in practice it has been shown that Soviet revisionism has striven and done its utmost to extinguish every revolutionary flame and suppress every anti-imperialist struggle wherever it has taken place.
The pro-imperialist and counter-revolutionary stand and activities of the Soviet leaders are conditioned by the line and the very nature of revisionism. Any truly revolutionary and liberation movement, in whatever country it may break out, is bound to come into open opposition with the Soviet revisionists. Every revolution willy-nilly compels the Soviet Union to take a stand. If it supports it, it will put itself in opposition to the other imperialist and reactionary powers, a thing which it in no way desires. If it stands aloof, then how could it justify before public opinion at home and abroad its pretentions as «the great center of world communism» as «the true communist party», «supporter of the revolution», and so on. Therefore, the only way, in the objective conditions, is to sabotage the revolution before it arises or to quell it when it has broken out. The revisionists’ betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution has gripped them by the throat and leaves them no room to maneuver. It absolutely compels them to become the fire brigade putting out the revolution.
For years on end the Soviet leaders have been sabotaging the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people, trying by every means to save the U.S. imperialists from their inevitable defeat. They exert all kinds of pressure on Vietnam to force it to its knee" and accept the U.S. dictate. They have a great deal to say about «solidarity» and «aid» for the peoples of Indochina. But while the United States continues its aggression in Cambodia the Soviet leaders maintain diplomatic relations with the reactionary Lon Nol clique to this day. When the U.S. imperialists entered Laos they were satisfied with a mere message of «sympathy». The extension of imperialist aggression in Indochina and in other countries has in no way prevented the Soviet revisionists from maintaining and consolidating their friendship and collaboration with the murderers of peoples, the U.S. imperialists. Where is there in all this that anti-imperialism and support for the just struggle of the people of Indochina of which Brezhniev spoke so long and advertised so loudly at the 24th Congress?
In certain cases, like that of the Arab anti-imperialist movement, it seems as though the Soviet Union assists it and is unsparing in a certain material and political support. But its objective is to extend its expansionist influence. In other cases, it maintains complete neutrality towards the liberation movements, or sabotages them by all the means in its power.
Let us look at the stand of the Soviet Union towards the movement of the Palestinian partisans who stand in the forefront of the struggle of the Arab peoples. While posing as the champions of the Arab peoples, as though they uphold their right to freedom and independence, and support their anti-imperialist struggle, the Moscow revisionists combat and try to suppress the movement of the Palestinian partisans. Their completely indifferent attitude towards the anti-Palestinian assaults by the Jordanian reactionaries is a clear proof of this. The Soviet leaders oppose the Palestinian partisan movement because it runs counter to their hegemonic policy in the Middle East, to their joint conspiracies with U.S. imperialism to establish the domination of the two super-Powers over this region, exposing their demagogy and the falsity of their allegedly anti-imperialist policy.
Under the cloak of «anti-imperialism», the Soviet revisionists are trying to take advantage of the temporary difficulties of the Arab people, in order to penetrate into the Middle East and to occupy economic, political and military positions there. Like the U.S. imperialists, they want to get their roots into this region in order to set up bases to serve as «places d'armes» for their expansionist and imperialist purposes in the continents of Africa and Asia. The revisionist chiefs of the Soviet Union, together with the U.S. imperialists, are trying to split the Arab peoples and to dictate a peace contrary to their interests and in favor of the two super-Powers. Every stand and activity of the Soviet revisionists in the Middle East is a further proof of the falsity of their «anti-imperialism», a clear proof of their collaboration with the U.S. imperialists for the division of their spheres of influence and domination of the world.
It was not accidental that Brezhniev made no mention whatsoever in his report of the heroic struggle of the peoples of Latin America against U.S. imperialism and the fascist dictatorship. It is not that he is not acquainted with the situation, but because the Soviet leaders consider Latin America a zone of influence of the USA in which they do not want to meddle, because they do not want to break with the reactionary regimes with whom they are seeking to expand and strengthen their ties and collaboration. The revolutionary struggle of the Latin American peoples who have taken up arms in many countries, runs counter to the preachings of the Soviet revisionists who have expressed themselves against revolutionary violence, in favor of the peaceful road, and so on.
In line with this stand of the Soviet revisionists, too, is their complete disregard for the liberation movements of the peoples of Asia and Africa, as if these did not exist at all. Can Brezhniev’s illusions, which he stressed once again at this Congress, alleging that many of these countries are pursuing the course of socialism and of the construction of socialist society along the so-called «non-capitalist road of development» be called aid to the development of revolutionary movements?
All the preachings and activities of the Soviet revisionists regarding the revolution and the liberation movement are opportunist and counter-revolutionary, aimed at quelling the flames of the struggle against imperialism for national liberation and social emancipation. This has been so in the past and will be so in the future. Any illusion about the «anti-imperialism» of the Soviet leaders and any naive belief in their demagogical statements is highly detrimental to the world revolutionary movement, to the genuine struggle against imperialism.
A Super-Power’s Policy for Expansion and World Hegemony
In the reports of Brezhniev and Kosygin and Gromyko’s contribution to the discussion, the treatment of Soviet-U.S. problems, the problems of war and peace and. in general, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union occupy a large space. The essence of the whole line of the Soviet Union in international relations is the policy of a super-Power fighting for expansion and world hegemony.
There was plenty of criticism of the policy of the United States, at the 24th Congress. But all this was just for appearances and imposed by the circumstances. The real essence, the official line of the Soviet revisionists in their relations with the USA, is not the exposure and fight against it, but their desire to expand and further consolidate their collaboration with U.S. imperialism in all fields. «The improvement of Soviet-US relations» Brezhniev declared, «would comply with the interests of the Soviet and American peoples, with the consolidation of peace».
The peoples of the world cannot fail to wonder how collaboration with a country which, as Brezhniev himself says, «tries to preserve its role as the guarantor and defender of the international system of exploitation and oppression» which «tries to dominate everywhere, to interfere in the affairs of other peoples, to rudely trample upon the legitimate rights and sovereignty of others, and so on, can possibly be considered «in the interests of the people and of peace».
Between the words and deeds of the Soviet revisionists there has always been a deep inconsistency.
By the "interest of peoples» they imply the interest of the imperialist bourgeoisie which holds sway in the USA and the Soviet Union, while «the consolidation of peace», according to them, implies peace between the two super-Powers and war against others.
In recent years, despite the increased aggressiveness of the imperialism of the USA, Soviet-US relations and collaboration have continued to increase and become ever more profound. The counter-revolutionary Soviet-USA alliance constitutes one of the most important features on the present international scene.
This alliance has found its expression in the joint attempts of the two super-Powers to preserve their domination over their respective zones of influence. Each has left the other a free hand to do as it pleases in those countries which belong to its sphere of influence. Thus, for instance, at the time of Soviet aggression on Czechoslovakia, the U.S. imperialists maintained a very loyal stand towards the invaders just as the Soviet revisionists maintained towards the U.S. aggression in Cambodia and Laos.
Today, within the framework of this alliance bargaining behind closed doors is taking place to divide up new spheres of influence which used to belong to other imperialist Powers. Typical in this regard is the attitude these two Great Powers maintain towards the Middle East and North Africa.
Now, the two super-powers are making great efforts to coordinate their policy and to adopt a common stand on all the important international issues and to impose it on other countries. This is quite obvious at the United Nations Organization which is maneuvered by the United States and the Soviet
Union and has been turned into an instrument of their hegemonistic policy. Their aim is to become arbiters in the internal and external affairs of other countries and to impose their will on everyone.
To preserve and consolidate their alliance, both the Soviet revisionists and the U.S. imperialists now attach great importance to avoiding friction between them, to liquidating disagreements and preserving the balance of power. Their permanent preoccupation is to preserve their nuclear monopoly and technological and scientific superiority, to maintain their lead over the other countries and exert continuous pressure and threats upon them. It has already become clear that the SALT talks, the Geneva disarmament talks, the agreements on space, etc. serve these aims.
Brezhniev’s peace plan, which he trumpeted abroad at the 24th Congress, is a demagogic one aimed at presenting the imperialist and aggressive Soviet policy in beautiful colors and at deceiving the people. This plan is designed to achieve a number of definite objectives of Soviet foreign policy while trampling underfoot the vital interests of the peoples. In reality, Brezhniev pulled out the files of Khrushchev’s old proposals which the peoples have rejected. His peace plan is not a plan of opposing imperialism which is the source of war and the breaker of the peace. It is a program which, in essence, aims at serving the imperialist interests of the two super-Powers and at ensuring their privileges and superiority in international affairs.
Demagogy and falsehood appear at every point of the «Brezhniev plan». It demands «the prohibition of all acts of aggression and international arbitrarily, the liquidation of all hotbeds of war» and so on. It is not clear to whom Brezhniev is addressing himself: to Nixon’s good judgment or to the «reasonableness of the Pentagon»? U.S. imperialism has not withdrawn nor will ever withdraw from Indochina, the Middle East, or from the other countries to which it has extended its tentacles, of its own good will and from moral motives. It will not give up its policy of violence and aggression which are a product of the capitalist and imperialist system itself. Through such preachings, the Soviet leaders seek to create illusions and to divert the people from their resistance and liberation struggle which are the only effective way to oppose aggression and defend their freedom and independence.
On the other hand, of what opposition to violence and arbitrarily can Brezhniev speak, when Soviet social-imperialism itself is an aggressor and has raised the method of threats and arbitrarily towards various countries to a law? While they oppose revolutionary violence, the Soviet leaders practice counterrevolutionary violence on a wide scale. The danger of aggression and war today comes not only from the U.S. imperialists but also from the Soviet social-imperialists, who resort to aggression, threats the use of force as the principal means for the realisation of their policy of world hegemony and domination.
Among the measures to preserve peace in the world Brezhniev advanced the familiar proposal of «European collective security». This so-called European security has nothing in common with the real security of Europe and the preservation of peace. The peoples of Europe are endangered, first and foremost, by the two Great Powers, and it is against them that they should be guaranteed, whereas the Soviet plan on European security seeks to make the principal enemies of Europe, the US and Soviet imperialists, its «guarantors». This is like putting wolves to guard the sheep. In reality, Brezhnev’s plan for Europe aims at securing and perpetuating the US and Soviet spheres of influence and domination in Europe, at preserving the reactionary status quo on this continent, and at directing the spear head of war and aggression against Asia. As concerns the liquidation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact to which Brezhniev refers, this cannot be realized as long as the aggressive, expansionist and hegemonistic policy of the two super-Powers exists, because they use these military blocs as the principal instruments to carry out this policy.
In Brezhniev’s «peace plan» there is a lot said about disarmament, stopping the armaments race, the liquidation of foreign bases, the reduction of the armed forces, cuts on military budgets, and so on.
The people have been hearing such «sweet» sermons for a long time and are fed up with them. In his plan, Brezhniev speculates on the just demands of the people for complete and total disarmament and wants to keep the world vainly hoping that something might be done, and to hide the real meaning of the great fuss the two super-Powers are making about disarmament. The entire policy and all the activities of the United States and the Soviet revisionists, show that, far from working for disarmament, they are continually arming themselves, for their aim is to keep the arms for themselves and prevent the others from arming and protecting themselves. Can the ill-famed treaty on banning nuclear weapon tests on the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere, that of their non-proliferation, the treaty for banning the establishment of weapons of mass extermination in the ocean bottom and in space really be called «positive and promising steps». These treaties, and others of this kind which are being drafted, are agreements concluded between the two superpowers which coordinate and balance their armament plans. By this means they want to preserve their nuclear and technological monopoly so that they may then freely carry on their nuclear blackmail and threats towards others. Can it be said that the people feel more at ease now that the two super-Powers do not test their arms on the surface but explode them under ground, do not place them in spaceships but carry them in aircraft that encircle the globe, that they do not have them on the bottom of the sea but on its surface?
The armaments race has not been stepped up by anyone else but the two super-powers themselves, and no one has military bases in foreign countries except they themselves. It is they who have the biggest armies and whose military budgets have reached astronomical figures.
The Soviet revisionists stand in need of public utterances against imperialism and about peace and disarmament in order to avoid being exposed before the people. These utterances do not affect or disturb the U.S. imperialists in the least for the foundation of the Soviet policy remains their collaboration and secret diplomacy with the USA with which they conclude all kinds of agreements behind the backs of peoples and to their detriment.
The peoples can expect nothing good from Soviet social-imperialism. The Soviet foreign policy is the expression of the hegemonistic and expansionist aspirations of the new bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin chiefs try to present their course of action as if it is counterposed to the aggressive policy of the U.S. imperialists. In reality, this is an ill-disguised bluff, since the policies of the two super-Powers have the same features and the same class character. Therefore, defense of peace and international security, emancipation from national and social oppression can be attained only through a resolute and consistent struggle on two fronts, against U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. The Soviet-U.S. counterrevolutionary alliance should be counterposed by the united revolutionary anti-imperialist front of the peoples of the whole world.
From start to finish, the 24th Congress was a revisionist, anti-Marxist and anti-Communist Congress. It reaffirmed once again the counter-revolutionary course of the present Khrushchevite leadership directed against the genuine communist movement, against all the Marxist-Leninist forces, and first and foremost, against the glorious Communist Party of China Brezhniev and his lackeys launched a frenzied attack against People's China distorting and misrepresenting its policy. Although they added nothing new to the arsenal of their anti-Chinese campaign and reiterated the old trumped up charges which have already become stale, the Congress of the Moscow revisionists showed one thing very clearly, namely, that their hatred for the Communist Party of China and its revolutionary line, their fight against China, constitutes one of the main directions of the present Soviet policy. But like the entire protracted anti-Chinese campaign Brezhniev’s new slanders and attacks can in no way disturb great People’s China nor besmirch its correct, revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist policy in the least. China stands an invincible bastion of socialism and world revolution. Guided by the outstanding Marxist-Leninist Chairman Mao Tsetung and his revolutionary ideas, the Communist Party and People’s Republic of China always hold aloft the banner of the struggle against imperialism and modern revisionism, resolutely support the revolutionary struggle of the working class, of the oppressed peoples and nations. People’s China is an insurmountable obstacle to the realization of the aggressive schemes of the two imperialist super-Powers. It exposes and deals merciless blows at their conspiracies and intrigues against the peoples.
The triumph of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, directed and led personally by Chairman Mao Tsetung, steeled the great Chinese people even more, still further consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat and the cause of socialism in China.
Its triumph dealt a crushing blow to the anti-Chinese ambitions and schemes of imperialist and Soviet reaction, to their hopes of restoring capitalism in China. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution provided the working class and the peoples of the whole world with a rich experience in. their struggle to overthrow capitalism and revisionism.
The more momentum the victory of the revolution gains in China, the more frenzied becomes the anti-Chinese hatred of the Soviet revisionists, the more intense become their schemes against People’s China. Now the revisionist chiefs of the Soviet Union have joined in a common anti-Chinese front with the most aggressive forces of the world, with the U.S. imperialists, the Japanese militarists and all the reactionary cliques. They are seeking to encircle China with a ring of fire and to strangle the Chinese revolution. But their aspirations and schemes will never be realized. Socialist China is invincible. The Chinese revolution will forge ahead triumphant, and there is no force in the world to stop it.
At a time when the Soviet revisionists are intensifying their anti-Chinese propaganda and activities, Brezhniev’s statements that the Soviet Union is allegedly in favor «not only of normalizing relations but also of re-establishing good neighborliness and friendship between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China» have a very hypocritical, empty and demagogical ring about them. It is obvious that their aim is to deceive public opinion, to conceal their anti-Chinese plans, and to weaken the ideological struggle which the revolutionary and Marxist-Leninists are waging for the all-round exposure of Khrushchevite revisionism.
It is a fact that the ever-growing Marxist-Leninist forces and their fight are worrying Brezhniev a great deal. He tried to describe the new Marxist-Leninist parties as the offspring of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and to identify them with Trotzkyite groups. What Brezhniev calls them is of no importance. From him, as an enemy of Marxism-Leninism, nothing could be expected but insults. The new Marxist-Leninist parties are not artificial creations. They have sprung from the ranks of the working class as an historical necessity for the leadership of its revolutionary struggle at a time when the old communist parties in many countries have betrayed and gone over to revisionism. They were a logical and inevitable product of the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism on a national and international level. As such the new Marxist-Leninist parties are continuously growing and becoming stronger, and the future is theirs and theirs alone.
In his report, Brezhniev did not omit mentioning Albania as well. He offered to our country «the reestablishment of normal relations». Of course, we cannot prevent him from speaking about relations with our country. But if the Soviet revisionists think that by this tactic they will have us eagerly awaiting «new positive development on their part, that they will make us stop the polemics and the straggle against revisionism, we tell them that they have knocked at the wrong door. Our revolutionary vigilance against their diabolical maneuvers has been and will always be at the necessary level.
The stand of our Party and Government on this issue was clearly expressed by Comrade Enver Hoxha in the speech he delivered last year at the meeting with his electors in Tirana. «We have declared and declare again» he said, «that we wish to have good and correct relations even with States which have regimes contrary to ours, but on condition that they respect the freedom and independence of our country, its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and all the achievements of our people’s revolution, while all those imperialist and revisionist states which have maintained and maintain a hostile attitude towards socialist Albania have received and will always receive from us the response they deserve. They have great political and economic debts to Albania which no empty and demagogical words can wipe off. The inevitable revolution in these countries will redress the crimes which they have committed and are still committing not only against the People’s Republic of Albania, but towards all the peoples of the world».
Not once but many times, the Party of Labor of Albania has addressed itself to the people and Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, pointing out to them the real causes of the rupture of Soviet-Albanian relations. But the Soviet revisionist chiefs have persisted on their road of betrayal of and hostile attitude to our party, our country, and Marxism-Leninism.
The normalization of relations between the Soviet Union and Albania is not an issue that can be solved b\r a false statement of a Soviet revisionist leadership which maintains a hostile attitude towards and threatens our country. Nor can such an undertaking be thought of if the fraternal Soviet people and genuine communists do not intervene energetically to establish the great Marxist-Leninist justice on these issues, because deep and principled political and ideological differences divide us from the present Soviet leadership.
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The 24th Congress was organized by the Soviet revisionist clique for the purpose of furthering their revisionist ends. Its aim was to mobilize the Soviet people in order to carry out its line, to consolidate the positions of the new revisionists ruling bourgeoisie. With a view to misleading the Soviet people and public opinion, Brezhnev and C° tried to pose as pure Marxist-Leninists, as if they maintain a balanced stand and fight both the leftists and the rightists, both bureaucratic and technocratic centralism and liberal anarchism, the «cult of the individual and «subjectivism and arbitrarity», reactionary nationalism and antipatriotic elements, and so on.
These are familiar tactical maneuvers aimed at calming the laboring masses, at distracting their attention from the great, unsolved problems, which preoccupy the Soviet people. The revisionist chiefs stand in need at present of a period of tranquility so that they may have no trouble in carrying out their policy of restoring capitalism internally and social-imperialism externally.
The Soviet people who have glorious revolutionary traditions should not be deceived by the revisionist demagogy and fraudulent tactics of their rulers. The 24th Congress adds new links to the chain of revisionist bondage, it increases the doze of poison with which the revisionists try to destroy the consciousness of people and confuse their minds.
The Soviet people can extricate themselves from the grave misfortune which has befallen them not by waiting, or by indifference and passivity. The only road to salvation is for the working class and the Soviet people to take to the field of battle, and with their own revolutionary actions to overthrow revisionism, to re-establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and to put the Soviet Union back again on the glorious road of Great October.
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