From Albania Today, 1975, 3
Along with the great propaganda clamour concerning the 30th anniversary of the victory over fascism, the Soviet revisionist chieftains have also undertaken a new campaign to advertise their policy of expansionism and domination. Serving as a justification for this is the approach of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation
Top level political leaders and the military commanders of all ranks and services have been set in motion to present the military organisation of the revisionist countries in the softest colours and to dress it up in sheep’s clothing. The big war lords in Moscow are trying to prettify their aggressive guns and tanks with innocent white ribbons and bouquets of flowers, to pretend that the rumble of the engines of their warships that prowl the seven seas and the snarl of their jet aircraft across the skies of the whole world are pacifist lullabies, to present their plots anti intrigues against independent countries and peace-loving peoples as the highest expressions of love and respects for them.
But the black shadow which the Warsaw Treaty Organisation casts over Europe and other regions of the world cannot be dispersed with demagogic slogans and propaganda tricks. It is a heavy shadow of aggression, a constant threat and danger to the freedom and independence of the peoples, a source of incessant tension in the world.
The recent past and the present reality compel the peoples to be very vigilant and contemptuously reject all the revisionist palaver about the “defensive and peaceful” character of the Warsaw Treaty.
The Warsaw Treaty Organisation has long ago degenerated into an organisation for aggression anti occupation, just as the Soviet Union itself, that has the reins entirely in its hands, has been completely transformed into an imperialist and expansionist superpower. Now the Warsaw Treaty is entirely at the service of the great power chauvinism and the old imperialist policy of Russian czarism. Its aims are the aims of the Soviet imperialist foreign policy of dominating and subjugating other peoples, of economic and military penetration into foreign countries, the preservation and extension of the spheres of influence. It is an instrument of violence and despotic rule.
The efforts which the Soviet revisionist chieftains are making now to present the Warsaw Treaty as a collective “defence” organisation of socialist countries can deceive no one. Even if some sort of disguise still shrouded the Soviet chauvinistic and expansionist policy, that was torn right off with the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The entry of the Soviet tanks into Prague and the strengthening of the Kremlin military garrisons in Poland, GDR, Hungary, etc., proved that the political methods for the preservation of the domination on the satellite countries had ended and that violence and military force had taken their place. The Russian armies which have parked themselves in Warsaw and Budapest, Sofia and Berlin, have all the characteristics and all the functions of a colonialist army of occupation.
The Warsaw Treaty Organisation is the main centre of pressure to keep the satellites under control, it is the main weapon to dominate them. The Czechoslovak experience, the frequent movements of the Soviet units, the numerous military manoeuvres, the repeated visits of Grechko, Yakubovski and others, apart from being demonstrations of strength, also have the aim of reminding other revisionist cliques that in future, the iron fist of the Soviet army, camouflaged behind the Warsaw Treaty armies, will fall on any of the small partners that might dare to disobey the Kremlin.
Up till now the Moscow chieftains have claimed that their armed forces in Eastern Europe are there to defend their allies from a possible aggression by German militarism. But this fig leaf is badly withered. Not only the Soviets, but also the other Warsaw Treaty partners are kissing and embracing West Germany. They also say that these forces are needed to face the threats of imperialism. But this argument, too, is dishonest. In the first place the question arises: What sort of socialist countries are they if they need foreign armed forces to prop them up? The Soviet generals and marshals boast that their army can immediately annihilate any aggressor nearby or distant who might start against the Warsaw Treaty members. If this is so, why is it necessary for a “fraternal socialist country” to be occupied by the Soviet troops for defence against “capitalist aggression”.
The military occupation and domination of the satellite countries constitutes one of the fundamental bases of the expansionist and hegemonistic policy of the Soviet revisionists. Through the Warsaw Treaty and the Comecon, Moscow has turned them into its “guberna” which, little by little each day, are losing not only their independence and sovereignty, but also their national individuality.
One of the distinguishing features of any independent country and a sign of its sovereignty is the existence of an independent army. But does such a national army exist in the Warsaw Treaty countries? The armed forces there have been so thoroughly integrated with the Soviet ones that there can no longer be any question of independence or anything like it. Net only are they completely dependent on Moscow for armaments, equipment, etc., but even their smallest duties are allocated by the Soviet staffs. For the functions they perform and the missions allotted to them, these armies are treated simply as ordinary Soviet armies. It is well known that what is called Warsaw Treaty command is nothing but an ordinary department of the Defence Ministry of the Soviet Union.
For the Soviet revisionists the satellite countries serve not only as a source of raw materials and cheap manpower, but also as source from which to draw military forces as cannon fodder for the aggressions they plan. The Kremlin rulers are trying to ensure that in the armies of the Warsaw Treaty countries any feeling of patriotism and love for their countries is extinguished. They are striving in every way and with every means to make them degenerate into subject mercenary armies, into oppressors and gendarmes against their own peoples. In the first place they have tried to corrupt and degenerate the military commands of other countries, and through them to degenerate and destroy the whole effective. They try to place their men in all the key positions and important links, so that later, through these paid and unpaid agents they will be able to implement their chauvinistic and fascist plans.
The military and political integration of the revisionist countries, which is realised through the Warsaw Treaty, just as the economic integration is realised through Comecon, today represents the main mechanism also for their territorial integration into the Soviet Union, the most effective way to liquidate any sign of independence and sovereignty that may still remain.
The great clamour the Kremlin chieftains are making now about the 30th anniversary of the victory over fascism and the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Treaty, the exaltation of the militarist spirit and the demonstration of strength through military manoeuvres and parades, are further proof that they base all their policy on strength, on tanks.
Blinded by megalomania and intoxicated by the power of weapons, they think that in the satellite countries no one will trouble them and no one will resist their aggression. But the degenerate Soviet military clique which believes only in reprisals and bayonets and which underrates the strength of the peoples, is greatly mistaken in its calculation. History will punish them severely just as it punished Hitler and Mussolini, and has condemned and thrown into the garbage tin the aggressors and occupiers of all empires of all times. Just as the new Kremlin czars are doing now, they, too, underestimated the resistance of the peoples and thought that with the force they possessed they would conquer and subjugate the peoples once and for all. But the great fighting force of the peoples in defence of their freedom and independence has been and remains unconquerable. The most recent example is the triumph of the liberation war of the heroic peoples of Vietnam and Cambodia and the defeat and disgrace sustained by US imperialism. The United States of America did everything it could, exerting all its strength to stay in Indochina and preserve its enslaving occupation. But despite its enormous army, despite its modern weapons, despite its powerful diplomacy, despite the endless plots, intrigues, and manoeuvres, of the Soviet social imperialists against the peoples of Indochina, it was compelled to withdraw from there defeated.
It is true that today, the peoples of the Warsaw Treaty countries are oppressed and enslaved by the Soviet social imperialists and the revisionist ruling cliques, but they will not remain forever subjugated by the Moscow rulers and they will not allow themselves to be used as obedient tools of the enslaving and expansionist policy of Soviet social imperialism. No treaty and no demagogy whatsoever can quell the feeling of freedom and national independence, the insurgent and revolutionary spirit of the peoples. The Soviet political and military staffs are wrong in their calculations in another aspect too, in the evaluation they make of their armed forces and the fighting spirit they have today.
The present day Soviet army, which is educated in the great Russian chauvinistic spirit of territorial expansion and political and military hegemony, cannot have that solidarity, that fighting spirit and force, which it demonstrated in the great Patriotic War when it was led by Stalin. It was such that time because its war had a revolutionary character, but it is weak now because its objectives have a fascist reactionary character. Like ail imperialist armies, it looks strong from the outside, but it is rotten within.
The lackeys of Soviet social imperialism, ail in unison, following their instructions from Moscow, are trying to justify the stationing of the Soviet troops in their territories with allegedly external aims and duties of the entire “community”. But ugly facts cannot be concealed with nice words.
The peoples of Europe hate both NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, and want none of either of them. They know that these two organisations are instruments of the two superpowers for the preservation of the dominating positions which the US imperialists and the Soviet social imperialists have in various countries of Europe. They are chains for the enslavement of the peoples of this continent.
The US troops that have been stationed in Western Europe under the NATO flag, and the Soviet troops in Eastern Europe which bear the Warsaw Treaty label, arc selected units stationed on advanced bases for setting out on new aggressions against peace-loving countries. This is the reason why the struggle against NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, these two biggest aggressive blocs of the superpowers, is a struggle to ensure freedom and national independence, a struggle to strengthen national sovereignty, to ensure equality in international relations. The non-acceptance of and opposition to the aggressive military blocs of the United States and the Soviet Union is opposition to the danger of the outbreak of a devastating aggressive war, for which these two blocs are the source.
By denouncing the Warsaw Treaty, the Albanian people have set a lofty example of political determination and courageous revolutionary action. “With this correct act”, comrade Enver Hoxha has stated, “we not only defended the freedom and independence of our homeland, but we also showed that the road for the defence of freedom and independence, the road of peace and international security, is resolute opposition to the hegemonistic and enslaving policy of imperialism and revisionism”. Upholding this correct and clear line, our country has always raised its voice and has openly denounced the dangers threatening the European peoples and other continents from the aggressive, expansionist, and hegemonistic policy of the two superpowers, which use the military blocs as main tools for the implementation of this policy. We have warned, especially, against the great danger of the deceptive, enslaving, and destructive theory of the US and Soviet defence “umbrellas”, which aim at implanting the psychosis of war and fear, the idea of obedience and unconditional submission to the superpowers. Not only can the peoples of Europe, both East and West, live without NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, but they can live really free and independent, only without these aggressive imperialist blocs.”
The propaganda campaign the Soviet revisionists have launched now about the Warsaw Treaty, like those connected with the 30th anniversary of the victory over fascism, is a new manoeuvre aimed at moulding internal and world public opinion in the directions the Kremlin wants. Their particular aim is to prettify their aggressive social imperialist policy and weaken the resistance of the masses and peoples to it.
But the people are not deceived by the false and deceptive slogans of the Soviet social imperialists, by the demagogy about “peace” and “security” which they are spreading far and wide the world. They are realising that, because of the crises that have hit the capitalist and revisionist world today, the Soviet policy today is heading towards even more brutal interference in the home affairs of other countries, towards the intensification of its efforts to invade foreign markets, towards ever greater aggressiveness.
Intensification of the armaments race and war preparations is one of the main characteristics of Soviet social-imperialism.
In these circumstances, exposure of the aggressive nature of the policy of the present Soviet Union and opposition to its hegemonistic ambitions, like the struggle against the aggressive plans and efforts for the domination of the peoples by US imperialism, constitute one of the fundamental conditions for the defence of the freedom and independence of the peoples. The dangers threatening the peoples as result of the increase of the militarist tendencies and rivalry of the superpowers, are great, but so are the possibilities of the peoples to restrain them and put them in a “straight jacket”.
If the peace-loving and progressive peoples and countries resolutely
and unhesitatingly oppose the military blocs, if they take the cause of
peace and security into their own hands, if they fight to the end for
the withdrawal of foreign military bases and troops from their
territories, and finally, if they struggle ceaselessly to strengthen
their national independence, sovereignty, and defence capacity, the US
imperialists and the Soviet social imperialists will certainly fail in
their criminal plans.
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