For three months now the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic has been writhing under the sinister yoke of the Soviet revisionist fascist invaders. The Czechoslovak people are faced today with the objective necessity of rising up to fight for the liberation of the country and their national independence.
For the Soviet revisionists the invasion of Czechoslovakia is only the first step towards the achievement of their ultimate and far-reaching objectives. Now the whole country — its economy, foreign and internal policies, the Czechoslovak array, the Government and Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, its whole social life — is subjected to the interests, to the policy of brutal dictation of invaders who are trying hard to stabilize the situation and to consolidate their regime of occupation. They are trying to create the illusion among the Czechoslovak people that Czechoslovakia is allegedly «free» and «equal among equals», that the invasion army is a «friendly army» which has allegedly come to rescue socialism and Czechoslovakia from the counter-revolution and the imperialists, that the stationing of foreign troops on Czechoslovak territory is allegedly temporary, and so on and so forth. In order to make these illusions believed they have trumped up the farce of «the gradual withdrawals of the invading Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia, a thing which is a fraud pure and simple, for the invaders hold the key to the Czechoslovak borders in their pockets rendering account to no one and coming to and going away from Czechoslovakia day or night freely without being subjected to any control or customhouse dues, as if they were at home.
But what does stabilization of the situation in Czechoslovakia mean for the Soviet revisionists? What are their objectives? Under present conditions, Czechoslovakia represents an acute point of major strategic, military, political and economic significance. Due to its geographic position in the center of Europe, Czechoslovakia holds an important place in the global strategy of the Soviet revisionist clique: it has direct bearings on the security of the borders of the Soviet Union, it is a bridge between it and the other European revisionist countries as well as between it and the West. As an advanced industrial and commercial country, Czechoslovakia is necessary to the Soviet clique for direct economic advantages and as a lever in their economic relations with the countries under their zone of influence and with the West. Therefore, the ultimate objective of the Soviet revisionist clique is to take hold, through military dictate or other means, of the key positions in Czechoslovakia so as to make of it a province subjected to the Soviet Union under the false label of the «Czechoslovak Socialist Republic».
In order to attain such «stabilization», the Soviet revisionist invaders are trying to turn the Czechoslovak army into an appendage, a disarmed army obedient to Soviet orders and altogether incapable of playing any role in uprisings against the invaders. They are purging the Czechoslovak army of all opposing cadres and are organizing within it Soviet Security Service under the guise of the numerous Soviet «advisers». Thus, they aim at turning the Czechoslovak army into a weapon serving the Soviet revisionist invaders and their tools against the Czechoslovak people who are rising to offer a growing and determined resistance.
The economic subjugation of Czechoslovakia as well as of the other satellite countries has been the permanent policy of the Khrushchevite chauvinist group of leaders of the Soviet Union. It has given rise to grave consequences. Following the overthrow of Novotny's bankrupt clique, Dubchek's group was forced to admit its deep concern when it noticed that 9 out 10 automobiles were running on Soviet fuel, that 2 out of every 3 loaves of bread were made of Soviet flour and that the metallurgic plants were about to suspend their work in case the delivery of Soviet minerals failed. The enslaving economic agreements signed by the Dubchek-Svoboda capitulationists with the Soviet Government during the days when Czechoslovakia was invaded, tied up Czechoslovak economy more closely to the Soviet economy. But within the framework of «stabilization», the Soviet revisionist leaders aim at .suppressing even the slightest attempt for Czechoslovakian economic independence and at placing the whole Czechoslovakian economy under the complete dependence of Soviet economy on the alleged form of «socialist collaborations and of «the socialist international division of labor» through the Council of Mutual Economic Aid and its other mechanisms. Under the guise of numerous economic «advisers» every branch of Czechoslovak economy is being and will be placed under the strict supervision of the Soviets. The latter are trying to place investments under their control so that they may meet, first and foremost, their own needs and interests. The Soviet revisionist leaders want to see to it that the development of Czechoslovak industry should depend mainly on the raw materials, oil, electric power and minerals which are supplied by the Soviet Union, that this development is placed at the mercy of the Soviet leaders, that its distribution be controlled by them and that the Czechoslovak crown be subservient to and under the control of the ruble. They also seek to place Czechoslovak foreign trade under their strict supervision so that the bulk of it may be carried out with the Soviet Union and its satellites and meet the economic and political needs of the Soviet leaders in compliance with conjunctures that are set up within the revisionist fold and with their relations with the capitalist world. This is in fact the way to turn Czechoslovakia into an «industrial semi-colony» of the Soviet social-imperialist leaders.
The Soviet revisionist invaders are exerting great pressure to place Czechoslovak public opinion under strict censorship. This was one of the main Articles of the Agreement of Occupation which they signed with the capitulating Dubchek-Svoboda clique. Any public manifestation whatsoever against the invaders is brutally suppressed by the Czechoslovak police while the Soviet tanks stand behind ready to take action. Every free expression of opinion is accompanied with repressive measures and with shrewd demagogy about the «counter-revolutionary and anti-socialist forces in action».
Public education and culture will likewise undergo changes under the brutal pressure of the invaders, allegedly on behalf of «the real internationalist and socialist spirit» which, in other words, means suppression of the spirit of patriotism and resistance against invaders, especially among the Czechoslovak youth, resistance which is bound to sizzle and grow and cause head-ache to the invaders.
The aim of the Soviet revisionist leaders is, above and before all, to seize the Party and State leadership in Czechoslovakia. This is the lion’s share, the key to everything, for this will precisely serve as a mask behind which the regime of occupation and Soviet rule can be stabilized and consolidated in Czechoslovakia. It is in this that the main battle of the Soviet revisionist invaders is spearheaded and it is precisely here that they have not succeeded in achieving their end.
By precipitating their armed aggression against Czechoslovakia the Soviet revisionist leading clique could not get even a formal backing by any group or Quisling Government which would in some way justify this typically fascist act before Czechoslovak public opinion. The Soviet revisionists stand out as open invaders. All they are fighting for now is to cover up their features.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet revisionists was carried out peacefully and without firing a shot, for the Dubchek-Svoboda clique capitulated. It used all means to put the brakes on the Czechoslovak people’s resistance, issuing orders to the Czechoslovak army not to put up the slightest opposition. Scared to death by the pressure of Soviet invaders, it assures them of the «inalterable loyalty to the friendship with the Soviet Union», it continues to make one appeal after another to the Czechoslovak people not to put up resistance, it condemns popular demonstrations against the invaders and does not hesitate to resort even to violence and arrests of the «diehards who disturb public order», in other words, of the genuine patriots who are rising to fight the invaders.
The Dubchek-Svoboda clique submitted on general lines to the dictate of the Soviet invaders as testified to by the capitulating agreements it has signed with them, which it is implementing in a servile way but which have come up against the lawful and ever growing protest of the Czechoslovak people. But under the existing conditions and circumstances, taking advantage of the people’s resistance towards the invasion and trying to utilize the patriotic sentiments of the Czechoslovak people for its own benefit, this clique is offering resistance in order to wrest concessions from the Soviets, to force them not to oust it from the leading posts it holds in the Party and in the State. The Soviet revisionist invaders are prepared to do something if the Dubchek-Svoboda clique submits to their enslaving schemes and, especially, what is of vital importance to the invaders, if it agrees to admit publicly that the Soviets have allegedly come as friends, as liberators, as defenders of socialism and of the Czechoslovak people-, that they have acted as internationalists-, and so on and so forth, in other words, if the Dubchek-Svoboda clique agrees to justify the Soviet revisionist aggression before the Czechoslovak people and world opinion. But this clique, which represents the interests of the Czechoslovak nationalist bourgeoisie, refuses to do this for the time being, for otherwise it would tear off the mask that serves to deceive the masses and would sign its death warrant. That is why it resorts to demagogy, as we pointed out above, trying to utilize the national factor, the patriotism of the Czechoslovak people to resist Soviet pressure, for its own interest.
This is then why the Soviet revisionists, regardless of the services the traitorous Dubchek-Svoboda clique has rendered and is rendering to them by sabotaging and quelling down all resistance movements of the Czechoslovak people, have lost all faith in it and, to overcome the national feelings which are today the main obstacle for them, they have turned to Novotny’s followers, to the clique of the so-called «veterans», direct and obedient tools of the Soviet revisionist leaders, in order to justify and legalize their aggression against the Czechoslovak people. They have thus unleashed a factional fight within the Czechoslovak Communist Party. This fight is unfolding and becoming more intense with each passing day within and outside the party.
During the early period of the Soviet revisionist invasion, the supporters of the Novotnyite revisionist trend, obedient servants of the Soviet leaders, faced with the people’s protest and stigmatized as «collaborationists», kept aloof and out of sight. Now, at the instigation and with the support of the Soviet invaders they have become active and have revolted against the Dubchek-Svoboda revisionist clique. They are conducting a big campaign in the Party to undermine the positions of the Dubchek group, organizing meetings and open manifestations against it and in favor of the Soviet invasion. By demagogically speculating on the slogan of defense of socialism, the «veteran» revisionists accuse the Dubchek-Svoboda revisionist clique of having paved the way to counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia, of having jeopardized the socialist gains of the Czechoslovak people and, consequently, of having obliged the Soviet Union and other «allies» from the Warsaw Treaty to intervene in order to «save socialism and defend Czechoslovakia», etc. Thus, one revisionist clique — the Novotny clique — is striving to undermine and oust from power the other revisionist clique — the Dubchek-Svoboda clique — in order to regain the positions it lost in January, to deceive the Czechoslovak people, to break down their resistance and to compel them to bow to the Soviet revisionists and submit to their fascist invasion.
Sensing the danger, the Dubchek-Svoboda revisionist clique is counter-acting by all the means at its disposal with a view to discrediting and getting the better of its opponent and to maintaining their posts in the Party and in the State. It acts in a highly demagogical way, trying to describe its post-January revisionist course as a «real socialist» one which allegedly enjoys the support of the broad masses of the Czechoslovak people and which, allegedly, meets their interests. At the same time, it tries to create the impression that the problem of the independent development and sovereignty of Czechoslovakia rests, allegedly, on the implementation of this anti-Marxist and counter-revolutionary course. Thus, by unscrupulously speculating on the national sentiments of the Czechoslovak people, it is trying to set the opposing revisionist clique of the «veterans» against the people while posing, on its part, as the representatives of the interests and will of the .people.
Thus, each revisionist faction tries with all its might to waylay and win over the Czechoslovak people, to exploit them for its own counter-revolutionary interests and to settle accounts with the opponent clique.
Meanwhile, the resistance of the Czechoslovak people to the Soviet revisionist invaders is growing. In spite of the ruthless oppressive measures taken by the invaders and the revisionist capitulationist rulers, demonstrations broke out against the invaders and for freedom and independence in many cities during the festive days commemorating 'the 50th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic and, particularly, during the festive days commemorating the 51st anniversary of the October Revolution. Clandestine organizations are being set up in various regions of the country in order to launch an organized war against the invaders. In the process of this growing popular resistance, the real traitorous and capitulationist features of the Dubchek-Svoboda revisionist clique are becoming more and more evident to the Czechoslovak people, its demagogic and fraudulent position with regard to the national cause is coming more and more to the fore. It is becoming and will continue to become more obvious to the broad masses of the Czechoslovak people that the country’s real freedom and independence can be attained only through a resolute struggle not only against the Soviet revisionist invaders but also against the local revisionist cliques, both against the Novotnyite clique of the «veterans» who are obedient tools of the invaders as well as against the capitulationist and traitorous revisionist Dubchek-Svoboda clique.
Under present conditions, two lines of struggle are thus taking shape in Czechoslovakia: on the one hand, the ever growing resistance of the Czechoslovak people which will turn into a struggle for liberation against the Soviet revisionist invaders for the freedom and the independent socialist development of the country and, on the other, the ideological struggle for state power between the two revisionist cliques, which may develop into a civil war between them. Boh revisionist clans, one backed by the Soviet invaders and the other backed by the local nationalist bourgeoisie and foreign imperialist reaction, may get along by making temporary concessions to each other or they may come to grips. In order to disguise themselves and to deceive the masses with the illusion of socialism, both these clans will try to utilize the name and authority of the old Czechoslovak Communist Party.
In the situation created, when the Czechoslovak people have came up against the Soviet revisionist invaders and the traitorous Dubchek-Svoboda and Novotnyite revisionist cliques, when they are faced with the historic necessity of a life and death struggle for the freedom of their country and the ideals of socialism, faced with this situation, the Czechoslovak revolutionary Marxist-Leninists are aware of the role they must play, they are aware that the earliest possible creation of the genuine Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Party is an imperative and vital obligation. Without this there can be no real struggle for national liberation and socialism in Czechoslovakia, one cannot pass over from passive and spontaneous resistance to active and revolutionary actions organized on a national level. The circumstances to set it up are favorable. Iron should be beaten while it is hot, for the Soviet invaders and local Quislings are getting up still graver conjunctures and conditions for Marxist-Leninists and for the Czechoslovak people.
It is not hard to foresee that, in order to remain in power and evade direct blows by the invaders, the Dubchek-Svoboda clique will be making further and numerous concessions to them. This capitulating clique is very much afraid of internal clashes, of people’s actions and struggle which will bring about new interferences and pressures on the part of the Soviet revisionists since this struggle and these actions are spearheaded against the invaders. It will thus continue to refrain from putting up any resistance to the pressures, threats and blackmail of the invaders. Thus, it will not hesitate to take repressive measures, as it is doing, against popular resistance in order to thus preserve its leading posts in the Party and in the State.
But the adoption of repressive measures against the resistance movement will inevitably expose and discredit the Dubchek-Svoboda treacherous clique which will undoubtedly be taken advantage of by the Soviet invaders to settle accounts with these suspicious collaborators and to place the reins of the Party and of the State in the hands of the Novotnyite clique of «veterans-, obedient servitors of the revisionist leaders and Quislings «par excellence».
When restored to power, this revisionist band will try to create a situation similar to that of Novotny’s time but, this time, with new persons loyal to the present course of the Soviet leaders. In agreement with the invaders, this band of renegades will proclaim its allegedly «new, independent policy-, its «socialist solidarity with the Soviet Union», etc., «taking stock also of some positive moments of the post-January course-. Behind all this demagogical fuss, this revisionist band, allegedly on behalf of «socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat» will deal hard blows at the revolutionary resistance of the Czechoslovak working class and people which they will dub «counter-revolution».
Such is the situation. It is complicated but favorable as well for the creation of the party of the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninists and for the organization of the revolutionary struggle of the Czechoslovak people. This is dictated and favored first of and above all by the present course of events in Czechoslovakia. The situation there is very tense. The people’s resistance against foreign occupation, against the Soviet revisionist invaders, for liberation and national independence has affixed its seal to the country’s whole political life. It has become the main axis around which events are gravitating. This is a determining internal factor, a vital element on the basis of which the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninists can and must unite the broad masses of the Czechoslovak people.
Thus, the present situation dictates and facilitates the formation of the Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party of Czechoslovakia. It allows the unfolding of its legal and clandestine activity, the organization of the struggle against the invaders and their activities as well as against the two renegade cliques which are clashing inside and outside the revisionist Czechoslovak Communist Party.
The proletarian party of the new type built on solid Marxist-Leninist ideological and organizational foundations, of an iron unity and conscious proletarian discipline, the new Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninist Party will rally in its ranks the best and most determined elements of the working class and of the other laboring masses, men of revolutionary action, of self-denial, and prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of revolution and socialism, people who know that only such a party is capable of guiding and carrying the great and difficult struggle facing the Czechoslovak people today through to the end.
The Czechoslovak Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party will have to wage a consistent all-round and frontal war. For the struggle for national liberation, the struggle against the Soviet revisionist invaders cannot be waged without, at the same time, waging and linking the struggle of liberation with the ideological and political struggle against the Soviet and Czechoslovak revisionists who are trying to justify and perpetuate the occupation of the country, as well as with the ideological and political struggle against imperialism, West German revanchismv the Czechoslovak bourgeoisie and all the different reactionaries seeking to restore the order of bourgeois exploitation in and hitch Czechoslovakia to the chariot of the international bourgeoisie. Thus, inside the country the Czechoslovak Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party has to fight on a tri-fold front of the class struggle: against the Soviet revisionist invaders, against the Dubchek-Svoboda revisionist clan and against the revisionist clan of the «veterans».
The merciless tit-for-tat struggle against the Soviet revisionist invaders, the ideological and political struggle to expose their demagogical allegedly «socialist» and «internationalist» phraseology and the armed struggle to drive them away from Czechoslovakia to a man — this is the only correct motto under which the broad masses of the Czechoslovak people will unite and take action. No compromise with and no concessions whatsoever to the invaders!
This struggle is the main weapon also for exposing and smashing politically and ideologically the two Czechoslovak revisionist groups, especially the Dubchek-Svoboda clique which is trying to speculate on the national moment. In the background of this struggle against the invaders the Czechoslovak people will clearly see the real features of this revisionist clique as traitors to the country and collaborators with the invaders in sabotaging and suppressing the people’s war.
The struggle of the Czechoslovak Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party can not help being spearheaded also against imperialism and the world reactionary bourgeoisie, in particular against U.S. and West German imperialism which remains always a dangerous enemy of the freedom of the Czechoslovak people and of socialism. The Czechoslovak revolutionaries will have to see to it that the Czechoslovak working class and people keep their vigilance high against the enslaving aims of the imperialists and resolutely expose the aggressive intentions covered up by their demagogy of the aid they pretend to give them against the invasion by the Soviet revisionists.
Mapping out aright the tactics of the revolutionary struggle, bearing always in mind the struggle against the invaders and the national moment, all this is of first-rate importance. In this respect, the Czechoslovak revolutionary Marxist-Leninists have a rich experience accumulated under the critical conditions of fighting the Nazi invaders as well as in their struggle for the triumph of socialist revolution in Czechoslovakia. It is obvious that even under the actual conditions of Czechoslovakia, subjugated by force of arms, the liberation struggle of the Czechoslovak people can not be waged with success except in the form of an armed struggle. Therefore, to train the masses spiritually and materially for the armed struggle, to organize various acts of sabotage, to secure weapons, radio broadcasting stations and other means of propaganda and communication, to find suitable forms of organizing and linking with the masses of the people on as broad a scale as possible under conditions of ruthless violence and repressions by the invaders and the Quisling forces, these are today the major and vital problems that await solution. And these problems can be solved only by a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party which, under the existing circumstances, is forced to be set up and act under conditions of clandestinity without neglecting also the legal means when circumstances allow it.
The historical experience has confirmed that, for a correct organization and guidance of revolution and the struggle for liberation, it is essential to properly determine its motive forces and its alliances, guarding against all and every sort of opportunist and sectarian deviation, be they «rightist» or «leftist». This is especially important under the present complicated conditions in Czechoslovakia where a whole range of contradictions and forces are at loggerheads. What determines the successful outcome of any combat or endeavor is the creation by the grassroots organization of a broad people’s front under the indivisible leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party. Only people’s front based on the direct collaboration of the broad masses of workers and of the patriotic forces under the guidance of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party and not an alliance of chieftains in saloons, can be effective and stable, only such a front can be a powerful factor in the struggle for freedom and national independence and for the triumph of socialism.
In Czechoslovakia there is a highly developed working class of fine traditions in revolutionary movements which can and must be in the van of all the laboring masses. Under the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist (Marxist-Leninist) Party and in alliance with the peasantry and all the patriotic strata, it will play the decisive role in the struggle for the liberation of the country and the triumph of socialism. The Czechoslovak youth, who are offering more and energetic and resolute resistance to the Soviet revisionist invaders and are undertaking bold actions against them, are likewise a major and active force in the present liberation struggle of the Czechoslovak people, a powerful backing for the Marxist-Leninist Party. Under the auspices of the Party and the working class, they will reject any poisoning influence by the revisionists and, giving vent to their juvenile enthusiasm, will throw themselves into the heat of battle for the cause of revolution and socialism in Czechoslovakia.
In utilizing the suitable political conjuncture created by the occupation regime, an important field of action lies also in the campaign to win political and ideological positions among the ranks of the present Czechoslovak army where most of the soldiers, sons of workers and peasants, have been filled with indignation and are revolting against the Soviet revisionist invaders. But one should not nurture exaggerated illusions about a bourgeoisified army which is under the command of officers who obey capitulating orders by Svoboda and other renegades like him. Therefore, as the historical experience of liberation and revolutionary wars points out, the only correct course to follow is to set up, in the heat of battle, an entirely new, genuinely revolutionary army made up of militants from the rank and file, tempered in battle and actions and not trained in bourgeois and revisionist schools and academies. Without the creation of such an army, brought up, molded and led by the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party it is futile to speak of a liberation struggle.
As an integral part of the great struggle of the workers and peoples of the whole world who are fighting against their common enemy — the U.S.-led world imperialism and its dangerous agents, the modern revisionists, headed by the Soviet leading clique —, as part and parcel of the world revolutionary movement, the Czechoslovak people’s liberation struggle is interlaced and integrated into a close internationalist unity with the great principled anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist fight of the Party of Labor of Albania, of the Communist Party of China and of all the Marxist-Leninist parties and revolutionary forces of the world, enjoying their reliable and unreserved support.
The Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries consider the creation of the new Marxist-Leninist Party and the organization of the liberation struggle against the invaders and the local revisionist traitorous clique as their high national and international duty. Czechoslovakia has become today a touchstone and a neuralgic point for all the revolutionary and progressive forces in the Warsaw Treaty clan, one of the most important arenas of the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution in the revisionist fold. Therefore, the Czechoslovak example, the revolutionary course of events in that country cannot help exert a direct influence also in the other countries militarily subjugated to the Soviet modem revisionists and run by them through revisionist traitorous cliques. While the game in Czechoslovakia is being played with open cards, the situation in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and elsewhere under similar conditions of the occupation regime resembles a tightly closed cauldron boiling and ready to blast. In these countries, contradictions are becoming sharper and sharper between the national interests of the people and the hegemonist and imperialist demands of the Soviet revisionists, who have dispatched their armed forces from everywhere, between the broad masses of workers and the revisionist cliques which submit to the dictates of Kremlin. The revolutionary liberation struggle of the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninists will, no doubt, render a major contribution to the struggle against the Soviet revisionist leadership, as one of the main bastions of counterrevolution and world reaction at the present time. In a particular way, the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninists will render their contribution to exposing before all peoples, especially before the people of the countries where the revisionists hold sway, the real aggressive and enslaving role the Warsaw Treaty plays as a weapon for the revisionist renegade clique of the Soviet Union to realize its chauvinist and imperialist objectives. The course of events in Czechoslovakia and the revolutionary liberation struggle of the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninists against the Soviet revisionist invaders will be an aid and an impulse for all the peoples of the satellite countries of the Soviet revisionists, for they will lay bare the major antagonistic contradictions which exist under an ash-cover in the whole revisionist fold and help the peoples of these countries to realize that it is their imperative duty to launch a liberation struggle as well.
The revolutionary uprising in Czechoslovakia, the fight against the Soviet revisionist invaders and their tools for national liberation and social emancipation will facilitate and speed up in a particular way the revolutionary process to spread in the Soviet Union, the process of the decomposition and liquidation of the revisionist order in that country and in the other revisionist countries, they will facilitate the contacts and ties of the Marxist-Leninists of these countries, they will organize and coordinate the joint actions of the revolutionary vanguard and, finally, they will weaken the moth-eaten revisionist fortress in breadth and in depth.
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