Why the Soviet Revisionist Leadership Insists on the International Meeting

(Reproduced from, the «Zeri i Popullit» daily, dated December 26, 1967)
The «Naim Frasheri» Publishing House Tirana, 1968

After the communique on the convocation of the «consultative get-together» of the revisionists in Budapest, the Soviet leadership is making a great propaganda fuss about the alleged «international meeting of the communist and workers’ parties».

It is understandable that the Soviet leadership continues to insist on the convocation of the meeting because it can’t do otherwise. Through such a meeting, it hopes to extricate itself from or, at least, mitigate the great internal and external difficulties it is meeting with and attain some of its counter-revolutionary aims in the world communist movement.

The main and most grave difficulty for the present-day Soviet leadership lies in the fact that, as a result of the principled, open and ruthless fight waged by the Marxist-Leninist parties, the anti-Marxist, anti-socialist, counter-revolutionary and pro-imperialist line, which it has pursued and is pursuing in all the fields, has been exposed before the eyes of the Soviet and other peoples.

The demagogical slogans of the «construction of communism» in the Soviet Union or of the «construction of socialism» in the other revisionist countries are no longer holding water. The Soviet people and the other peoples are seeing that the place of communism and socialism in their countries has now been taken by the processes of capitalist restoration in economy and bourgeois degeneration in the whole social life. Capitalist profit has become the main pivot of their whole life poisoning the minds of the people with bourgeois selfishness and individualism, inciting them to run after enrichment by all means and methods. Revisionist decentralization of the management of economy, extension of individual plots to the detriment of collective economy in agriculture and other «reforms» of this kind have led and are leading to the undermining of socialist ownership and to the revival and flourishing of private capitalist ownership. The revisionists are going ever further on the road of leading the economy of their countries into the gears of the world capitalist economy, on the road of integration of socialism into capitalism, preached by renegade Tito, French, Italian, West German, Japanese and other capitals are ever more easily penetrating into the economy of the revisionist countries.

The bourgeois degeneration is sweeping over the whole cultural life, is spreading like a plague in the Soviet Union and in other revisionist countries. «Wes tern way of life», western fashions, bourgeois dances' and music, decadent western art are taking root by all the means and ways and are being spread by the revisionist clique especially among the younger generation with a view to corrupting them. They are ever more openly renouncing the glorious revolutionary traditions and ideals of the October Revolution that used to inspire the people in the period of Lenin and Stalin for selfless struggle and work to the service of the cause of revolution and socialism. In their stead, the revisionist cliques preach other,' «more practical and realistic» ideals — apoliticism, running after personal Interest, comfort and ease, privileges and amusements, pacifism, bourgeois humanism and Christian fraternity. The gap between the new Soviet bourgeois aristocracy and the broad popular masses is growing wider and wider from day to day. It is now expressed not only in ruthless enrichment, but also in economic oppression and political repression which it is resorting to in order to preserve its privileges. It is understood that where oppression and persecution exist there will be also resistance and struggle.

Despite the severe censure that muffles up the revisionist and the western press, reports have leaked out of late about political demonstrations of students who are opposed to the repressive policy of the revisionist governments, about strikes of workers demanding the respect of their rights and, finally, about some close-door trials that have taken place in the Soviet Union against some armed groups striving, allegedly, «to overthrow the regimes in power there.

Irrespective of their degree of organization, consciousness and importance, these efforts show that the bankrupt internal policy of the Soviet revisionists and of their followers is rapidly leading towards inevitable clashes between the popular masses and the revisionist ruling cliques.

Not less difficult and helpless appears the situation of the Soviet revisionist leadership with regard to the implementation of its traitorous foreign policy. Now, its «anti-imperialist» demagogy has become hackneyed. Its ever closer criminal collusion with the most rabid enemy of the people — U.S. imperialism and other imperialists and reactionaries, its out-and-out treachery to the freedom-loving peoples and socialist countries can no more be camouflaged with some thread-bare slogans. The peoples have learned and are learning better and better how to judge the revisionists not by their words but by their deeds. And at every moment of crisis the Soviet leadership has always taken the side of imperialism, by its capitulating and traitorous attitudes and actions. The expenses of this treachery have been paid by the peoples of the Congo, of Vietnam and of Arab countries, of Cuba and of the German Democratic Republic as well as by many other peoples and countries without counting here the joint plots hatched by the Khrushchevite revisionists with the imperialists and most rabid reactionary forces against China and Albania.

This traitorous line of the Soviet revisionist leadership and its supporters could not help leading to the emergence and constant sharpening of the contradictions of the revisionist cliques, not only with the Marxist-Leninist parties, but also with the Soviet and other peoples. Doubts, dissatisfaction and the resistance of genuine revolutionaries, of the working people in the revisionist countries and all the peoples the world over are growing with every passing day; they are fighting against the anti-Marxist and anti-revolutionary activity of the Soviet revisionist clique and its accomplices in the international arena. The Soviet-U.S. alliance for the division of the world into zones of influence and its domination by the two superpowers is now a fact. But all the peoples of the world, all those struggling for the freedom and independence of the peoples, all those hating imperialism and /slavery, realizing these expansionist and enslaving designs cannot fail to rise against them. And the former are not few in numbers. They are counted by hundreds and hundreds of millions on all the continents, they are all the people who resolutely reject the dirty imperialist-revisionist bargains at their expense.

In all the countries where the revisionist leaderships have led the proletarian parties to degeneration and liquidated them including also the countries ruled by the revisionists, there have been and are being created new Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, their degree of organization and their struggle against the revisionist treachery is growing, their connections with the masses are becoming stronger, they are courageously raising the banner of revolution.

All this scares to death the revisionist cliques. That is why the Soviet leadership, in order to extricate itself from this grave and very difficult predicament, despite the previous defeats, pins great hopes on an international meeting of the so-called communist and workers’ parties.

It needs the meeting of an «international communist forum» to deceive the Soviet people and the other peoples, to tell them that its revisionist and treacherous course is a «real Marxist-Leninist lines which has been approved also by a «great international communist forums. With this certificate of good conducts it aims later to justify the pressure at home exerted on those who oppose its anti-Marxist and treacherous policy, who are struggling for the overthrow of the ruling revisionist clique and the return of the Soviet Union on to the correct road blazoned by Lenin and Stalin.

The renegade Soviet .leaders are seeking to prepare thereby the ground and ensure the support of the international revisionist front for the further traitorous steps they are taking and intend to take in the future either in direction of capitalist restoration inside the country or of the further extension of their collaboration with U.S. imperialism, to undermine the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people and the other freedom-loving peoples, to integrate socialism into capitalism, etc.

By approving «joint communiques, some «declarations or other document of this kind at the end of their proposed meeting, they want to boast and then to claim that solidarity, unity and mutual aid among the revisionists remain «strong» not only on party but also on state level, that their connections have made a «new strides towards further strengthening.

From such a fallacious and deceptive enumeration of the aims of the «Budapest meeting» the revisionist leaders seek to reach some still greater targets, including the vast field of the struggle being waged today in the world between the sound Marxist-Leninist forces and modem revisionism, between revolution and counter-revolution.

They will try in Budapest to «legalize» the so-called orientation that will be given there presenting it as a general orientation to the world communist movement, sanctioned in an alleged «meeting of all the communist and workers’ parties of the worlds. With such an allegedly international «Marxist-Leninist» document, they not only believe to be able to deceive the people and to conceal from them the out-and-out treachery they are committing but, on the other side, they will get rid also of the Moscow declarations of the years 1957 and 1960, which are an obstacle on their anti-Marxist and counter-revolutionary road.

On the other hand, the international meeting is needed by the Soviet revisionist leadership to stage «the international condemnation» of the Marxist-Leninist parties, of the Communist Party of China and of the Party of Labor of Albania in the first place, to «isolate» them, to curb the process of growth and development of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement the world over. The assurances of some revisionist leading groups that their meeting is not allegedly aimed at condemning any party are a clumsy bluff. This is testified by the frantic campaign of slanders conducted by the Soviet leadership and its supporters against the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania, especially against the great Chinese proletarian cultural revolution. But, whatever may happen, whether the Soviet leadership will be able or not to ensure the necessary support of the other revisionist groups for an open attack on the Communist Party of China, on the Party of Labor of Albania and on the other Marxist-Leninist parties, this will by no means change the essence of the question, for it is principally irrelevant whether the revisionist meeting will directly or indirectly attack the Marxist-Leninist parties, posing to them, even without mentioning by name, the revisionist line as a line allegedly of the entire world (communist movement. This has to do only with the tactics that will be judged as most suitable to be pursued, while the essence, the aim, remains the same: to isolate, to halt the process of the development of the Marxist-Leninist movement, to strangle and quell down their principled struggle against the revisionist treachery.

The complete exposure of their out-and-out treachery to Marxism-Leninism by the Party of Labor of Albania and the Chinese Communist Party is gripping tighter and tighter the neck of the revisionists. The Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China are the principal enemies of the revisionists; it is they who, through their principled and consistent struggle, have brought to the fore and have ruthlessly exposed the revisionist treachery, have frustrated and are frustrating their treacherous plans, have smashed their demagogical and deceptive maneuvers. The struggle of the sound Marxist-Leninist forces has made the revisionists lose their night and day sleep. Therefore, in Budapest, too, as on every other occasion, the Soviet leaders will attempt without fail to direct their poisonous arrows against our parties, although, because of the internal contradictions of the revisionist front and the fear of their further exposure before the world public opinion, they may try to sugarcoat them.

But the Soviet revisionist clique and its supporters are reckoning without the host and giving themselves to illusions. However hard they may try they will never be able to peddle their revisionist wares under Marxist labels even if they bear the stamp of the «international communist forum», or to isolate the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania and halt the irresistible process of the growth and constant strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist movement in the world. Life is showing more clearly with every passing day to the peoples that the only real Marxist-Leninist line is the one upheld by the Party of Labor of Albania, the Chinese Communist Party and by the other Marxist-Leninist parties, it is the line of revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the line of the class struggle for the elimination of the danger of revisionism and capitalist restoration, aiming at carrying through to the end the construction of socialist and communist society. It is the line of the firm, tit-for-tat struggle against imperialism and modem revisionism, against their heads — the U.S. imperialism and the Soviet revisionist leadership, the line of unreserved support of the revolutionary and liberation movements of the peoples. Their revolutionary line is getting a tighter and tighter hold of the minds of the workers and peoples of the whole world. The clearest testimony to this is borne by the ever growing impetus of the revolutionary struggle of the working people and the peoples on whole continents, a struggle which cannot be strangled and quelled down either by the aggression and brutal oppression of the imperialists or by the demagogy and deceptive maneuvers of the revisionist renegades.

By their courageous stand in defence of Marxism-Leninism and their exposure of the revisionist treachery, the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party, of China, have become torch-bearers of the revolutionary struggle in the world, they are today the torch-bearers and impregnable fortresses of socialism and communism. Around them are militating today a considerable number of Marxist-Leninist parties which are springing up everywhere, which are organizing themselves into new parties and intensifying their resistance, their fight against the bourgeoisie and for revolution, unmasking the modern revisionists wherever they are and in every treacherous action of theirs. By attacking our parties, the revisionists want precisely to quell down this revolutionary struggle, to impose their opportunist line and domination on the international communist movement. But whatever propaganda and deceptive maneuvers the revisionists may resort to, the Marxist-Leninist line of our parties is inspiring and will inspire international communism on all the questions, is unmasking and will unmask modem revisionism in all the fields.

The convocation of the Budapest meeting is connected also with the grave situation existing on the revisionist front, with the mutual relations between the various revisionist groupings.

Soviet hegemony on the revisionist front has been greatly shattered; whatever efforts the traitorous leaders of the Soviet Union may make, they will be unable to fill up the large leaks of their sinking boat. Today it is no more a question of tendencies of disobedience of some revisionist groups to particular political attitudes of the Soviet leadership, of some more or less accentuated nationalist and particularist manifestations, but of a fierce and all-round struggle being waged by all the revisionists against one another in order to force one’s own political solutions, narrow national interests to snatch as much as possible from one another giving nothing in return.

The grave disputes and clashes which are corroding and wrecking the revisionist front are being justified by the revisionist chief claiming that different political stands and appraisals, contradictions and lack of coordination, scrambling for supremacy and influence are allegedly expressions of concrete economic and national conditions in which various parties act, of their unequal political and ideological levels, they are allegedly expressions of the freedom and independence each party enjoys in formulating its own policy, of the equality and democracy allegedly existing in the relations among them, etc.

But through similar sophisms they cannot dissipate the stink coming out from the uninterrupted dissolution, degeneration and rottenness of the revisionist system. The real causes of these ugly phenomena lie mainly and wholly in the out-and-out treachery of the revisionist cliques to Marxism-Leninism, to the camp of socialism and the world communist movement; they are to be found in the treacherous line of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and in the other countries where the revisionists are in power; they lie in the opportunist trend of some communist parties towards social-democratism and their transformation into an appendage of the big monopoly bourgeoisie. The practice of these recent years has shown that the deepening of the trends of departure from Marxism-Leninism is directly proportional to the increase of divergences, contradictions and misunderstandings between the revisionist parties and states.

A proof of the decline and grave situation existing in the relations among the revisionist parties and in the revisionist front as a whole is provided by the very campaign for the convocation of the Budapest meeting. This campaign is being frantically conducted in an atmosphere of uncertainty and embarrassment. Its initiators are deeply stricken by fear of failure, of difficulties and of numerous unknowns. In spite of the decision and the summoning of 18 parties to the consultative get-together in Budapest, not all the revisionists show themselves eager to take part in it. Some of them hesitate to go to Budapest, others are trying to find some way to avoid attending, others again refuse to participate, and so on and so forth. It is self-understood that the cause of these hesitations, waverings and refusals is not related to some question of principle, as they are not less revisionist than their like minded brethren. In the first place, they proceed from their narrow national interests and want to preserve in this respect the greatest possible freedom of action in the future; in the second place, they do not like at all to become a mere tool of the political games and maneuvers of the Soviet leaders, to become pawns of the chauvinistic policy of Brezhnev and Kosygin. They are not so naive as not to be able to understand that the meeting which the Soviet leaders are after is a meeting aimed at subjugating and curbing others.

It is now clear that the Soviet leaders are striving for a general meeting of the revisionist parties in order to consolidate their revisionist positions, to dictate and force upon others their own stands and opinions. Through this meeting, they want to achieve that if possible, the complete sliding of the various revisionists on to the fold of capitalism should not take place with such an irresistible vigor as to become so discrediting and exposing. It is to their liking that this sliding be directed exclusively by them, so that they can speed it up or keep it down according to the needs and interests of different political conjunctures. The Soviet leaders would have the meeting organize a more orderly sliding down so as to create the sham opinion that this is allegedly a «normal peaceful process» in compliance with the «further development of Marxism-Leninism», a process which is allegedly imposed by the «real analysis» of the actual development of the forces in the world arena.

But if such are the aims and desires of the Soviet leaders, those of the other parties are different.

The question of the convocation of an international meeting of the parties has a long history, full of defeats and disillusions for the Soviet leading clique and constitutes a very clear mirror of the deep and irreparable split in the revisionist front. The decision to hold the so-called «consultative get-together» in Budapest has not eliminated and cannot eliminate the difficulties in convoking the international meeting of the parties, the more so as it is confirmed by the sad experience of the ill-famed and bankrupt March 1, 1965 and the Karlovy Vary April 1967 get-togethers. The revisionist partners of the Soviet leadership continue to manifest doubts and hesitate about their participating to such a meeting, the way of its preparation, the questions to be discussed in it and the objectives it will achieve, for they, by no means, want to submit to the chauvinistic dictate of the Soviet leadership, they do not want to submit to any decision and discipline whatsoever, even if they are based on the revisionist line. In the revisionist camp, with its relations of bourgeois nationalism, there can be no unity and solid and stable compactness; on the contrary, the contradictions, disputes and centrifugal tendencies grow deeper and deeper with every passing day.

Many of these revisionist groups do not like any more being dependent on the caprices of the Soviet policy, on the complicated conjunctures the Soviet leadership creates to serve its own interests. Suffice it to mention the confusion created in and the divergences dividing the revisionist countries concerning their attitude towards the German Federal Republic, to understand the degree of gravity their disobedience towards the Moscow baton has taken. Some have already established diplomatic relations with the German Federal Republic, others are still in the stage of trade and consular missions still, others are merely waiting for the opportune moment. The revisionist chiefs who are seeking to preserve Democratic Germany as an exchange commodity in their large scale combinations with the Americans and the western monopoly bourgeoisie, have exerted much pressure, but nobody has lent an ear to them. Moreover, the approach to and the linking of the revisionist countries of Europe with the German Federal Republic is an attempt of theirs to weigh down the burden of Soviet hegemony, just as their connections in general with the west assume, among other things, the form of a pressure on the Soviet Union to unrivet the Warsaw treaty and the Mutual Economic Aid Council.

The situation created by their attitude towards the Arab-Israeli conflict is not any better. Many meetings have been held to coordinate it, but, as it seems, not everybody is willing to support the old Czarist policy of the present-day Soviet leaders in the Near and Middle East.

We might mention here the divergences that have emerged on the revisionist front concerning the monopoly policy pursued by the Soviet Union in the Mutual Economic Aid Council, the contradictions concerning the agreements on trade and payments, the general strategy of the Warsaw Treaty and the relations among the armies and commands of the member states, etc. But these would make up a chapter of its own. What is important is that at the Budapest meeting, or at any other revisionist meeting, the dark shadow of these misunderstandings will always dominate, great theoretical formulations being of very little value when such «minor» practical questions remain unsettled.

Another important factor encouraging and strengthening' the centrifugal tendencies of the Khrushchovite revisionists is, no doubt, also the consistent and ever greater pressure of the bourgeoisie and imperialism which are obstinately striving for the earliest and most complete detachment of the countries ruled by the revisionists from Soviet influence. Not in vain does Johnson build up his «bridges» in Eastern Europe, just as not in vain have the monopolies of West Germany, Britain, France, Italy, etc., granted generous credits to or invested their capitals directly in their economies. And it is obvious that one of the principal «aids» that imperialism gives to the revisionist countries is also the one aimed at turning them away from the Soviet Union and attaching them to its own chariot. The maneuvers being now carried out by Tito, this inveterate agent of U.S. imperialism, against the Budapest meeting under the slogans of «independence», «non-submission», etc., are a mere continuation of his old policy to detach the East European parties from the influence of the Soviet Union and, jointly with him, to pass over definitely to the West. The imperialist states are working hard to make the projected meeting of the revisionist parties a success, but in the direction they are interested in, ,that is, in weakening the Soviet hegemony over these parties, in weakening the formal aid given to Vietnam. They are working to ensure that this aid to Vietnam or to the national-liberation struggles of the other peoples remain as it is today — an aid in words and sabotage in deeds — and, moreover, to intensify the fight against China and Albania, to further increase, if possible, the disagreements of the other revisionists with the Soviets.

Finally, one should take into account also the fear which many revisionist parties and groups are feeling of the aims of the Soviet leaders to «excommunicate» China and Albania through a «general meeting». They are fully aware that such a step would increase their internal difficulties, it would more badly expose the treacherous and anti-Marxist line, it would further increase the dissatisfaction of the masses with such shameful actions, it would finally intensify the struggle of the sound Marxist-Leninist forces and would draw still nearer the time of the overthrow of the revisionists.

Typical of the waverings, hesitation and fear of the meeting which the Soviet leaders are seeking to hold, are the attitudes of the Italian revisionists. While the leader of the Italian revisionist Party, Luigi Longo, was on the tribune of the «jubilee» meeting in Moscow, from which renegade Brezhnev called for a «new world meeting of the communists», the newspaper «Unita» of November 3 last published an article by Longo. Referring to the difficulties in holding such a meeting, he pointed out: «We must admit that the reason underlying many reservations and doubts concerning the convocation of a world meeting of the communist parties is the fear lest to a certain extent, due to the very nature of its preparations, organization, development and conclusions, it touches the limit of the independence of the individual parties. It is also feared that finally their demands, the special conditions of their work, may not be taken into account.» Luigi Longo quite openly declared that «in the future it will not be indispensable to establish common tactics and even a common and rigid strategy».

Indeed, now the different revisionist parties and groups, far from wishing to be pawns in the hands of the Soviets, are seeking to use the latter or others to further their own special interests and aims. The pilgrimages of Gromyko, Podgorny and others to the Vatican were not effected without Longo’s encouragement and that of his companions, just as the approaches of the Soviet leaders with the dictatorial regimes of South America are not effected without the insistence of the Latin American revisionist parties which are seeking to justify, through these actions, their approach and capitulation before the national reactionary bourgeoisie, their renunciation of revolution and their transformation into reformist, anti-labor and anti-socialist parties.

The campaign and the preparations of the Khrushchovite revisionists for their meeting, that has now become «famous«-, show that they now find themselves in an impasse, before another inevitable great defeat, before a still greater split between them. A further weakening of their positions lies ahead of them both in their foreign and home policies.

This situation will for certain result in increasing, strengthening and organizing the resistance of the communists and people in the Soviet Union as well as in the other revisionist countries and will make them take up arms. Likewise, the revisionist parties in the capitalist countries will get wormy and will be smashed, they will turn into open tools of the bourgeoisie and real Marxist-Leninist parties will be created and strengthened to continue their struggle at the head of the working class, together with the revolutionary peasantry and patriotic intelligentsia against the imperialists, the bourgeoisie, the revisionists and reaction.

Such meetings as the one that the Khrushchovite revisionists are trying to organize are of benefit to world revolution, to international communism. They weaken and badly expose the traitorous revisionist cliques, they isolate these cliques from the masses of the communists and from their peoples, they contribute to the polarization of the forces and to the disaggregation of the revisionist cliques.

The «Unity» proclaimed by the revisionists far from being a Marxist-Leninist unity, far from being a unity of parties, is not even a unity of cliques. It is a bluff, an attempt to throw dust on the eyes and deceive whomever they can deceive. But now it is difficult for them to find many people to deceive, life will soon eliminate also this smokescreen of words and hackneyed demagogy.

It is an, important internationalist duty for all the genuine revolutionaries and communists ruthlessly to hit and unmask the new treacherous plans the Soviet revisionist leadership is hatching up about the alleged meeting of the communist parties. The Soviet people and the Soviet Marxist-Leninists in the first place, must no longer tolerate the demagogic propaganda and the deceptive claims of the Brezhnev and Kosygin usurping clique which feigns to strive for the strengthening of socialism and of the world communist movement and alleges that its line meets with the approval and support of the communist parties of the world. They must rise up and revolt with courage against the revisionist demagogy and activity which is aimed at concealing its treachery towards Marxism-Leninism, praising its reactionary alliance with U.S. imperialism and encouraging the counter-revolutionary battle against the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China. This is required by the interests of revolution and socialism, this is required by the vital interests of the Soviet people who have been deprived of the glorious October victories by the revisionist clique which is seeking to turn them back to capitalist slavery. We are convinced that the communists and the peoples of the countries where the revisionists are in power will incessantly intensify the revolutionary struggle and will raise the banner of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism from the mud into which the revisionists have thrown it.

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