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Link to original content: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1969/01/10.htm
Enver Hoxha
Date: January 10, 1969
Source: Zëri i Popullit daily; from The Party of Labor of Albania in Battle with Modern Revisionism, Naim Frashëri Publishing House, Tirana, Albania, 1972. pp. 475-526.
Transciption: Ismail Badiou
HTML Markup: Mike B.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2010). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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| Enver Hoxha |
Demagogy has always been the favorite weapon of all traitors. That is very typical of the modern revisionists, especially of the Soviet revisionist leadership. This clique of renegades, while always advancing on the same road of treachery, has made use, according to circumstances, of various masks to conceal its real countenance.
Khrushchevite revisionism in the Soviet Union has undergone several stages, in compliance with which its forms, methods and tactics of struggle and action to carry out in practice its anti-Marxist and traitorous course and to camouflage it, have also changed.
The first stage was that of the building up, maintenance and establishment of the betrayal, accompanied with a great and scandalous noise and with a sham "optimism" to distract the minds of the people. It was characterized by the frantic campaign of attacks on J. Stalin, to discredit the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and the cause of the Bolshevik Party, under the fraudulent pretext of the "fight against the personality cult and its consequences."
But what was the line of the Bolshevik Party, the line of Stalin, against which the Khrushchevite revisionists hurled themselves so furiously, what were its consequences for the development of the Soviet Union and the international communist and revolutionary movement?
In the ideological field the line pursued by the Bolshevik Party led by Stalin was the line of the consistent defence and the creative development of Marxism-Leninism in a merciless fight against the enemies and distorters of Leninism in the Soviet Union and outside it—against the Trotskyists, Bukharinists, social-democrats, Titoites etc., the line of the fight against the pressure and influences of bourgeois ideology and culture, for the implanting and development of socialist ideology and culture, the line of high proletarian partizanship in all spheres of spiritual life, for the communist education of the working people.
In the political-social field it was the line of the unceasing strengthening of the proletarian party and of its leading role in the whole national life, of the strengthening and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the alliance of the working class and peasantry, of the friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union, of the unity of the entire Soviet people around the Party and the power of the Soviets, through a fierce class struggle against the overthrown exploiting classes and their remnants outside the party and inside its ranks, the line of constant strengthening of the country's defensive power in order to stand up to any possible imperialist aggression.
In the economic field it was the line of the building of socialism with one's own efforts and at fast rates, in conditions of complete capitalist encirclement, and in a life and death struggle against the tide of petty-bourgeois spontaneity, the line of socialist industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, of the constant improvement of socialist relations of production, of the impetuous development of socialist production and of the uninterrupted growth of the well-being of the working people.
In the field of international relations it was the line of resolute opposition to imperialism, to its policy of war and aggression, as well as of the exploitation of contradictions in the imperialist camp for its weakening and the strengthening of the positions of socialism, the internationalist line of the powerful and unreserved support for the world revolutionary and liberation movement, the line of fraternal relations of mutual support and aid towards the socialist countries and the fraternal communist and workers' parties, the line of unceasing strengthening of the militant unity of the socialist camp and of the international communist movement on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and of proletarian internationalism, in the common struggle for the victory of the cause of socialism throughout the world.
As a result of the implementation of the correct revolutionary Marxist-Leninist line of the Bolshevik Party led by Stalin, the socialist transformations throughout the country were successfully carried out within a short period of time, the backwardness inherited from the Czarist regime was liquidated, and the Soviet Union was transformed into a powerful socialist State with modern industry, with a large-scale collectivized agriculture, with a most advanced technology and science, with a tremendous economic and military potential. The great historic victory over fascism in the years of the Second World War was achieved and the role and importance of the Soviet country in international life grew considerably. The consolidation and growth of the influence of the communist movement in the world, the creation and consolidation of the socialist camp after the Second World War, the general weakening of the positions of international imperialism and the great successes in the development of the world proletarian revolution are due, to a considerable extent, to the internationalist revolutionary line consistently implemented by J.V. Stalin.
The Khrushchevite modern revisionists, who after having taken over the leadership of the party and the state, relied on the great results of the Stalin epoch and used them to spread and consolidate their revisionist and treacherous course, frontally attacked all the Marxist-Leninist principles which guided Stalin's policy and underlay the tremendous strength of the Soviet Union, which they usurped and appropriated.
In the ideological field the revisionists replaced the ideas and the consistent Marxist-Leninist line of Stalin on all fundamental questions with the ideas and the anti-Marxist line of modern revisionism. Opportunists and various Trotskyist, Bukharinist and Zinovievist enemies, nationalists, and others, in the Soviet Union were proclaimed as "victims of Stalin" and were placed on the pedestal of "martyrs" and "heroes." The renegade Tito clique in Yugoslavia was rehabilitated and Titoism was proclaimed as a variant of "creative Marxism-Leninism" and of "socialism." In various socialist countries condemned traitors were rehabilitated and revisionist cliques attached to Khrushchev's chariot were brought to power. They launched the slogan of unity with the social-democrats on a national and international scale "in the joint struggle for socialism," and the way was paved for the complete ideological, political and organisational rapprochement and merger of the communist parties with the social-democratic parties. The principle of proletarian partizanship was discarded and, under the slogan of liberalisation and "freedom of creative thought," the revival of all sorts of decadent and anti-socialist trends in the fields of culture, literature and arts was encouraged.
In the political field Khrushchev and his group besmirched and discarded the Marxist-Leninist theory and practice about the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, calling it a "Stalinist distortion" and proclaiming the whole historic period of Stalin's leadership a "dark, anti-democratic period, a period of violations of socialist legality, of terror and murders, of prisons and concentration camps." The road was thus opened for the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and for its replacement with the bureaucratic and counterrevolutionary dictatorship of the new "socialist" aristocracy which was born and was developing, all this being covered with the deceptive slogans of "democratisation" and of "restoration of freedom and socialist justice" allegedly "lost and now regained."
In the economic field the Khrushchevites declared as erroneous and incorrect the Stalin line and methods of development and management of the socialist economy in all branches, especially in that of agriculture, rejected Stalin's directives on further improvement and development of socialist relations of production in the historic period of the transition from socialism to communism, and, under the pretext of overcoming the economic "stagnation" and difficulties allegedly created as a result of the Stalin "dogmatic" line, undertook a series of "reforms" which paved the way to the gradual degeneration of the socialist economic order and to the uncontrolled operation of the economic laws of capitalism.
In the field of international relations the Khrushchevite revisionists proclaimed as "erroneous," "rigid" and "dogmatic" the Stalin foreign policy line, the line of the blow for blow fight against imperialism and of determined internationalist support for the revolutionary and liberation struggle. They replaced it with the "peaceful coexistence" policy as the general line of the foreign policy of the Soviet state. They trumpeted peaceful coexistence in all directions as a "great discovery," as an "invaluable contribution to the creative development of Marxism-Leninism," and as the "beginning of a new epoch in international relations." Everything—the cause of revolution, of the liberation of the peoples, of the independence and sovereignty of the socialist countries, was subjected to the needs of "peaceful coexistence" and of "peace at any price" with imperialism, especially with U.S. imperialism. This was in fact the line of capitulation to imperialism, of renouncing the struggle against it, of rapprochement and collaboration with it.
The anti-Stalin campaign served the Khrushchevite renegades to pass over to the second stage—to that of the efforts for the strengthening and stabilisation of the betrayal in the economy, policy and ideology, at home and in foreign relations. This is the stage of the codification of the viewpoints of Khrushchevite revisionism and of the large-scale implementation of its policy.
N. Khrushchev and his group completely liquidated the Marxist-Leninist proletarian party, they transformed it into a weapon of the revisionist counter-revolution, they replaced the Leninist norms of party building with revisionist norms and, finally, they proclaimed it a "party of the whole people." They liquidated the dictatorship of the proletariat and it was proclaimed as a past stage, under the pretext of the transformation of the Soviet State into a "state of the whole people," which is nothing else but a "democratic" mask hiding the counterrevolutionary dictatorship of the new bourgeois class represented by the revisionist renegades. The process of restoration of capitalism in the economy began on a large scale. The proclamation of "profit" as the fundamental criterion and incentive of economic development, the decentralisation of some vital links of the management of the economy, the encouragement of tendencies towards private property, the transformation of socialist property into a means of exploitation of the working people and of ensuring large profits on the party of the leading section of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the opening of the doors to the free penetration of foreign capital and, as a consequence of all this, the ever more powerful operation of the laws of capitalist economy, anarchy in production and competition between enterprises, the considerable revival of the black market, profiteering, abuses, graft, etc.—such are some of the fundamental features of the bourgeois degeneration of the Soviet economy. Alongside this, the anti-Marxist course of the Khrushchevite revisionists flung open wide the doors to the irresistible penetration of the decadent bourgeois ideology and culture, to the mortal degeneration of the people, and in the first place of the rising generation, to the spreading of the "western way of life."
In the field of international relations this stage was characterized by the complete establishment of the counter-revolutionary alliance of the Soviet leadership with U.S. imperialism for sharing the domination of the world, at the expense of the freedom and independence of the peoples of the vital interests of the socialist countries, of the cause of revolution and socialism. The selling out of the interests of the liberation struggle of the Congolese people, the bargainings with U.S. and West-German imperialism to the detriment of the national interests of the German Democratic Republic, the treachery towards the Cuban people in the days of the Caribbean crisis, the joint plots with the U.S. imperialists and the Indian reactionaries against the People's Republic of China, the signing of the ill-famed Soviet-U.S.-British treaty on the partial prohibition of nuclear weapons tests, the sabotage of the revolutionary struggle of the Vietnamese people against the U.S. aggressors, and of the just struggle of the Arab people against the imperialist-Israel aggression, etc.—all these, and other acts, are links of the long chain of the counterrevolutionary alliance of the Soviet revisionist leadership with U.S. imperialism.
In this period, when Khrushchevite revisionism was still on the rise and had somewhat strong positions, it did not hesitate in many cases to take off its mask, to openly express its viewpoints, trying to place them on a "Marxist-Leninist" theoretical foundation and to justify them with the "new conditions." It was precisely in this period that the entire revisionist chorus, under the absolute direction of the conductor's baton—Khrushchev's,—was loudly singing of peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, the peaceful road, of the State and party of the whole people, of the world without weapons, without armies and without wars, when they were openly saying that imperialism and its chiefs have become sensible and peaceloving, that the fate of the peoples will be decided by U.N. resolution, that the Soviet-U.S. alliance was the greatest guarantee of world peace, etc., etc.
All this counter-revolutionary line and the anti-Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of the Khrushchevite revisionists were consecrated in the decisions of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, especially in the program of the CPSU adopted at this congress, which, due to the dominating position of the Soviet leadership in the revisionist camp, became the main code of the trend of international modern revisionism.
At this ill-famed congress were repeated openly and publicly now the monstrous attacks and calumnies against Stalin. This showed, in the first place, that the feelings of sympathy towards J. Stalin had remained alive among the Soviet people and this greatly worried the Khrushchevite leading clique; in the second place, that this clique was obstinately advancing on its anti-Marxist road, and in the third place, that it needed the "bogy of Stalinism" in order to defeat the ever more resolute resistance which was rising in the international communist movement against its treacherous line.
But the logic of treachery is such that the more deeply they submerge in the bog, the more it suffocates them. Revisionism was born as a retrogressive trend to save capitalism from its general crisis. But in this role it, itself entered a deep and general crisis from which nothing can save it. The situation for the head of revisionism, for the Soviet ruling clique has become especially grave.
The struggle of the Marxist-Leninist parties and forces, and life itself, which is the best judge of every policy, rejected the line and theories of the Soviet revisionist leadership, exposed their anti-Marxist and counter-revolutionary essence. Difficult days have come for the Khrushchevite revisionists. Khrushchevite revisionism has entered the third stage, which is the stage of its decline, of its deep and general crisis, the stage when treachery develops but yields bitter fruits and brings defeats to the revisionists.
The efforts of the Khrushchevite revisionist leadership to impose its revisionist course and its chauvinist dictate on the whole international communist movement failed ignominiously. At a rapid rate the great and irresistible process of differentiation in the communist movement in various countries and on a world scale has developed. The principled and determined attitude of the Communist Party of China and of the Party of Labor of Albania in defence of the immortal principles of Marxism-Leninism, and their consistent fight against the treachery of Soviet revisionism played the main role in this important historic process. Within a few years tens of new Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations were created which raised high the banner of the struggle against modern revisionism and have taken in their hands the cause of revolution. This is a heavy and irreparable defeat with lethal consequence to the revisionist renegades in all countries.
The ever deeper engagement of the Khrushchevite revisionists on the criminal road of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, of counter-revolutionary alliances with imperialism, of subversion and division of the world communist and revolutionary movement, their successive defeats in their domestic and foreign policies, accompanied with serious economic and political difficulties—all this has thrown the Soviet revisionist leadership into a deep, irreconcilable, and ever fiercer contradiction with the Soviet people and with the revolutionary peoples of the whole world.
The contradictions of the Soviet revisionist leadership with the other revisionist groupings have greatly sharpened and these in compliance with the special interests of their national bourgeoisie whose representatives they are, are demanding faster rates of degeneration of the socialist order into an order of bourgeois democracy and greater independence and freedom of action from Moscow. The dominating positions of the Khrushchevite clique of the Soviet Union in the revisionist camp are weakening and being smashed with every pasting day. The clearest testimony to this is the "rebellion" of the Czechoslovak and other revisionists against the dictate of the Soviet leadership and the repeated discrediting failures of the latter in its efforts to organise an international meeting of the revisionist communist and workers parties.
The positions of the revisionist cliques in power, especially the Soviet clique, have been shattered to their foundations. No longer are they in a position to conceal the deep splits and the struggle for power which is taking place ever more fiercely in their fold. The failure and inglorious overthrow of the inspirer and head of the Soviet modern revisionism, N. Khrushchev, were the most obvious expression of the deep crisis and of revisionist instability.
Khrushchev's successors were obliged to change tactics. They discarded into oblivion the noisy slogan and preachings of N. Khrushchev and decided to pass from words to deeds. If the "merit" of the working out of the general line of modern revisionism belongs to N. Khrushchev, to his successors, the Brezhnev-Kosygin clique, belongs the "merit" of the full implementation of this counter-revolutionary line.
But the "cautious" tactics of the Brezhnev-Kosygin clique were incapable of lifting Khrushchevite revisionism from the swamps into which it has submerged. The iron laws of history irresistibly blaze their trail, deepening from day to day the crisis and difficulties of the revisionist renegades.
In face of the irreparable defeats, both at home and abroad, in face of the resistance and revolutionary struggle being waged against them from outside and inside by the Soviet people and revolutionaries, by the Party of Labor of Albania, the Communist Party of China and the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries throughout the world, the Khrushchevite revisionists are striving to save their domination by establishing a military fascist dictatorship. This they need to quell the revolt of the working masses, of the Soviet people, and every activity of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, to curb the discrediting actions of the impatient liberal revisionists at home, to hold under control the revisionist cliques of the other countries, and to re-establish the Soviet dictate on their revisionist partners.
This policy found its most flagrant expression in the aggression of the Soviet revisionists and their satellites against the Czechoslovak people. This aggression entirely tore off the mask of the Kremlin clique. The methods used, beginning with the pressures, blackmail, the Judas kisses in Cerna and Tisu, and Bratislava, and ending with the surprise attack, in the darkness of the night, without any ground whatsoever, be it even as a matter of form, that could justify the brutal intervention with arms, gives this interference its true meaning—an imperialist, fascist aggression.
The strengthening of the aggressive, imperialist, fascist tendencies of the domestic and foreign policies of the revisionist Soviet Union, which is an expression not of strength, but of the weakness of the Khrushchevite leadership, demands its ideological foundation. The ideological servants of revisionism are now meeting this need. For this purpose, there have been published of late in the Soviet press a series of so-called theoretical articles, full of pseudo-revolutionary demagogy, which are aimed at creating a smokescreen so that the people should not see what is in reality hidden behind it. It is a question of dressing the revisionist treachery with new cloaks at these very critical moments which the Khrushchevite leadership of the Soviet Union is living. Above all, they are striving to justify the complete passage of the Soviet revisionist clique to the fascist dictatorship and methods and to conceal it by the alleged return to Stalin and to his Marxist-Leninist line.
To attack Stalin with the most rabid savagery for his correct, revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist policy in all the fields, as the Khrushchevite revisionist renegades did, and now, faced with their full defeat in all directions; to try to hide behind Stalin's name, claiming, at times directly and at times indirectly, that the Khrushchevite revisionists are allegedly returning to the correct Stalin policy, is out-and-out deception, the most shameless hypocrisy, the basest and most desperate demagogy on the part of the Soviet revisionists.
It is the duty of the Marxist-Leninists squarely to expose this deceptive attempt of the Soviet revisionists and to wrest this dangerous weapon from their hands.
One of the demagogical manoeuvres of the Soviet revisionist clique to justify its transition to the fascist dictatorship, is the noise which it is making in these recent times allegedly in defence of the Marxist-Leninist teaching about the dictatorship of the proletariat, although, as is known, it is precisely the Soviet leading clique itself that has destroyed the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and has slung the dirtiest mud at it, presenting it as a "savage, barbarous, inhuman dictatorship which has done nothing but commit crimes against the working class and the laboring people."
They who come out today with the banner of the defence of the dictatorship of the proletariat are precisely those that have proclaimed it as liquidated in the Soviet Union under the pretext of the transformation of the Soviet State into a "State of the entire people." The Soviet revisionists are now striving to create the illusion that the so-called "State of the entire people" is allegedly "the direct continuation of the State of the dictatorship of the proletariat." This illusion can deceive only the naïve, because there is nothing and there can be nothing, in common between the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and "the state of the entire people." The latter, in reality, is the complete negation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, its transformation into something entirely opposite—into a counter-revolutionary dictatorship of the new revisionist bourgeoisie.
"The continuation between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state of the entire people," the scribblers of the Moscow Pravda write,—"is clearly seen in the preservation of the leading role of the working class." But how does the working class play this role when the socialist state and the communist party, as the revisionists claim, have lost their proletarian class character and have become a "state and party of the entire people"? It is obvious that we are faced here with a very clumsy and banal deception. In reality, the working class in the Soviet Union has not been in power for a long time. It is now a class which is being oppressed and exploited, being corrupted and exposed to degeneration. It is transformed from a leading force into a mere productive force, from a political force into an economic appendage. In fact, it is the new bourgeois class that is ruling and leading now in the Soviet Union, the class that has established its savage dictatorship over the Soviet working class and the Soviet people.
The Soviet Khrushchevite revisionists, who are today playing with slogans of the dictatorship of the proletariat, are precisely those that have defended and propagandized, with a great noise, the revisionist theses which advocate the supra-class character of the present day capitalist state, and its use as a means for transition to socialism, who deny the necessity of smashing the bourgeois state machine as an indispensable condition for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, who deny the leading role of the communist party in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat without which the latter cannot exist, etc.
The falsity of the whole demagogical noise of the Soviet revisionists, allegedly in defence of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is quite obvious also in the fact that, as previously, indeed with a still greater intensity, they continue to attack the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China for their firm loyalty towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Just as at the time of the frantic campaign against Stalin and his work, they furiously attack the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and Albania calling it a "bureaucratic-military regime, strangler of freedom and socialist democracy," etc. They especially attack the Marxist-Leninist thesis of our parties pensable till the victory of communism on a world scale, because during this period the class struggle continue at home and in the international arena. There continue the struggle between the two roads—socialist and capitalist, a thesis which has been fully confirmed by revolutionary practice. The most convincing proof of the correctness of this thesis is the very fact of the revisionist counter-revolution and of restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union nearly 40 years after the triumph of the October Socialist Revolution.
It most clearly follows from all this that in the activity of the Khrushchevites we are by no means faced with a denial of the previous revisionist theses and with a return to the Marxist-Leninist positions on the dictatorship of the proletariat, but with a deceptive attempt to mask with "revolutionary" slogans what is happening in reality in the Soviet Union—the full transition to the methods of fascist military dictatorship. The dressing up of fascism with "socialist" and "revolutionary" phraseology is by no means new. These tactics were used by Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, in their time.
The coercive measures, the calls for the strengthening of the ideological struggle, of discipline, unity, etc., are measures serving the consolidation of the fascist dictatorship of the Khrushchevite revisionist clique. In reality, the coercive measures are actions of the fascist dictatorship for the suppression of all revolutionary activity of the Soviet people and of the genuine Bolsheviks. The intensification of the fight against all truly revolutionary thought. The discipline demanded by the Soviet leaders is the discipline of the "black hundreds," to bridle away every one who rises against the revisionist treachery. The unity about which the Khrushchevite revisionists speak, is a unity on revisionist foundations, around the revisionist party and for the counter-revolutionary purposes of the revisionists.
The Soviet leadership is trying to create the impression that its measures are mainly directed against the liberal extremists who, of late, especially after the events in Czechoslovakia and Poland, have become still more active. Although the Soviet revisionist leaders and the extremist liberal elements are essentially advancing on the same anti-Marxist and treacherous road, the activity of these elements is undesirable for the revisionist leadership. It fears another counter-revolution within counter-revolution, it does not wish to suffer the fate of N. Khrushchev or of the Novotny clique. But what worries the Soviet leadership most is the fact that the frenzied and unwise activity of these elements openly discloses the trickery of the revisionists, causes their demagogy to fall, openly reveals treachery, and this cannot help opening the eyes to the Soviet people, it cannot help intensifying their resistance and struggle to sweep away with the great broom of revolution both the liberal revisionists and the "conservatives," both the ultras and the "moderates."
Therefore, it is precisely against this revolution that all the measures, and the fascist dictatorship of the Soviet revisionist leadership, are directed. But however hard it may try to strangle this revolution through repressive measures and deception, the revolution is irrevocable. The Soviet people will not tolerable the revisionists treachery for long. In the end they will have the final say.
In order to realise their counterrevolutionary aims, all the class enemies have always directed their main attack against the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party which is the brain and heart of the working class. This is how the Khrushchevite modern revisionists, too, began their treachery. And now, it is precisely they who have transformed the great Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin into a revisionist, counterrevolutionary, and anti-communist party, who have paved the way to the revisionist and bourgeois degeneration of many communist and workers' parties of other countries, precisely they are today coming out allegedly in defence of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the party and are "criticizing" those that are violating these principles. Seeking justification for their fascist aggression in Czechoslovakia they accuse the Czechoslovak revisionists in particular of having "launched a frantic campaign against the healthy cadres of the party, who make up its fund of gold," of having "risen against the leading role of the communist party," of having "advocated the multiplicity of political parties," of having "sought to make the party a cultural-illuminist or ideo-preaching" organisation, of having "stood for the so-called equal partnership of all the social organisations within the communist party," of having "attacked the Leninist norms of inner party life," etc.
On the lips of the Soviet revisionist renegades such accusations resound as all-out hypocrisy, with an unprecedented cynicism, for it is precisely they themselves and their allies who, as before, are still advocating, defending and committing these crimes in their own parties.
The Party of Labor of Albania has long since, and more than once, pointed out the complete betrayal of the Soviet revisionist leaders of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the proletarian party. But in order to expose the deep-going demagogy of the revisionists that they are allegedly returning to the positions of the defense of these teachings, to the implementation of the Leninist norms of the party, it is necessary that we should once more dwell on some well known facts.
If the Dubcek counterrevolutionaries attacked and purged the Soviet agency—the Novotny counter-revolutionaries whom the Soviet leadership call "the Party's fund of gold," the Khrushchevite counter-revolutionary clique of the Soviet Union in its own country attacked and purged the real revolutionary cadres who were remaining true to the Marxist-Leninist line of the Bolshevik Party and to the ideals of socialism. Under the slogan of the "fight against Stalin's personality cult," or under the pretext of rotation, the Khrushchevite revisionists rode roughshod over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Seventy per cent of the members of the members of the Central Committee elected at the 19th Congress of the CPSU in 1952 were no longer figuring on the list of the Central Committee members elected at the 22nd Congress in 1961. Sixty per cent of the CC members in 1956 were no longer figuring on the list of the CC members that were elected at the 23rd Congress in 1966. A still greater purge has been carried out in the lower party organs. For instance, during 1963 alone, more than 50 per cent of the members of the party central and regional committees in the Republics of the Soviet Union were relieved of their functions, while in the city and district party committees three quarters of their members were replaced with others. The purge of the revolutionary cadres has been carried out on a large scale also in the State organs, and especially in those of the army and State security.
As to the question of the leading role of the communist party, of the denial of which the Soviet leadership accuses the Czechoslovak revisionists, this role has long since been liquidated in the Soviet Union itself. Of what leading role of the working class revolutionary party in the Soviet Union can we speak when the Khrushchevite revisionists have discarded the Marxist-Leninist line and the proletarian class character of the CPSU? They have forced upon it a treacherous revisionist line in the service of the new Soviet bourgeoisie and of world imperialism, headed by the United States, and have transformed it into a "party of the entire people"! The "party of the entire people" slogan is essentially a denial of the class character in general, because there are not and there can never be nonclass and above-class parties. But denial of its proletarian class character, is a label to conceal its transformation from a revolutionary proletarian Marxist-Leninist party into a counterrevolutionary bourgeois revisionist party.
Of what norms can the Soviet revisionists speak when they have long since buried these norms in their own party, when they have transformed them from Marxist-Leninist norms into revisionist norms which serve their counterrevolutionary aims and line. The Soviet revisionists speak of democratic centralism; they speak of Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism, but in reality they are hypocritical; they speak of conscious party discipline, but in reality it is a fascist discipline; they speak of proletarian morality, but in reality it is a bourgeois morality; they speak of freedom of thought, but every free expression of revolutionary Marxist-Leninist thought leads one to jail, to committal to mental hospital or concentration camp. Irrespective of the disguises, the present day norms in the CPSU are anti-Leninist, bourgeois, reactionary, fascist norms.
It was precisely the revisionist course of the 20th Congress of the CPSU that paved the way, not only for the degeneration of this party itself, but also for the degeneration of a number of other communist and workers parties in socialist and capitalist countries. It was precisely this counterrevolutionary course that inspired and encouraged the spreading of all sorts of anti-Marxist viewpoints of the revisionists in various countries about the transition to socialism under the leadership of anti-proletarian parties, which indeed do not even call themselves socialist, about unity with the social-democratic renegades through the complete organisational merger with them into a so-called united working class party, about the liquidation of the communist parties and their merging into fronts led by the bourgeoisie, etc. As a result of this revisionist line, the communist parties in many capitalist countries in reality no longer exist as such; they have been transformed into a new variant of the old discredited social-democracy, they have abandoned all revolutionary ideals and are collaborating with the bourgeoisie for the defence of the capitalist order. While in the former socialist countries they have been transformed from working class parties for the building of socialism into parties of the new bourgeoisie for the complete restoration of capitalism.
Pluralism, the many party system, against which the Soviet revisionists are making a noise today, exists not only in Czechoslovakia, but also in many other revisionist countries, and signs are appearing everywhere of the revival and political and organisational activation of other parties to obtain leading and ruling positions in the "socialist state," which is ever more assuming the features of a bourgeois state. These viewpoints are being noisily defended and propagandized also by many other revisionists in capitalist countries, especially in Italy and France, who are bringing pressure to bear upon their colleagues in the former socialist countries to advance as quickly as possible on this road, to adapt "socialist democracy" as far as possible to bourgeois democracy.
Why then does the Soviet leadership precisely now show itself so worried about the question of the leading role of the party and come out forcefully against pluralism? They do this not only to find additional justification for the legalisation of their aggression in Czechoslovakia. There are other deep reasons. The Brezhnev-Kosygin clique is very much worried about the defence of its dominating position from the great dangers threatening it both inside and outside the party. There is not and there can be no unity in the Soviet revisionist party. Revisionism is certain division. In the Soviet Union as well as in any other revisionist country, there exists the factional struggle for power between the revisionist groups and trends, as is clearly confirmed by N. Khrushchev's overthrow and the other changes in Soviet leadership. This disintegration process will irrevocably deepen. The course of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union cannot but lead to the revival of the various bourgeois and nationalist groups. This prepares the objective conditions for the birth, sooner or later, also of the bourgeois many party system. The Brezhnev-Kosygin revisionist clique, with a view to preserving its dominating position, is trying and will try with all its might without hesitating to use even means of violence, to curb this process. For this purpose, it is trying and it will try, to exploit the tradition of the existence of a single party and of the fight of the Bolsheviks against the factionists and deviators. The Soviet leading clique is opposed to the disintegration of the single party also because of the position of the Soviet Union as a great multi-national State, for this would lead to an internal national division, consequently also to the undermining of the role of the revisionist Soviet Union on the international arena as a great imperialist power.
But above all, the Khrushchevite revisionists are striving to exploit the Bolshevik single party tradition, with which the Soviet communists and the Soviet people have been moulded, to keep them attached to the CPSU in which there remains nothing communist. They are striving to exploit this tradition in order to prevent the organisation of the Soviet revolutionaries and the creation of a new Marxist-Leninist Party in the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that not all the communists and the working class in the Soviet Union see that the present-day Communist Party of the Soviet Union has nothing in common with the Bolshevik Party of Lenin-Stalin, bolshevism is always alive in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bolshevik revolutionaries will not be defeated in the face of the tragedy which the land of the Soviets is living, but they will restore the great traditions of October Revolution, of the heroic times of Lenin and Stalin. And the only road to this is the recreation of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist revolutionary party, that must take in its hands the banner of the struggle for the overthrow of the revisionist clique and the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to turn the Soviet Union back to the road of communism.
Revisionism, as a bourgeois-ideological, anti-Marxist and counter-revolutionary trend, has been so badly discredited that even the chiefs of revisionism themselves, especially those of the Soviet Union, are using the term "revisionist" to criticize their most irresistible and liberal allies. Here and there they let out even the words that revisionism is today the main danger, and the fight against it—the primary duty. They need this, both to justify their aggression in Czechoslovakia and for home consumption. The tactics of the Soviet revisionists are tactics of the thief who calls: "catch the thief." They accuse others of all that they have done or are doing themselves.
Modern revisionism was born about the time of the Second World War. Its first representatives were Browder in America and Tito in Europe. But due to the struggle of the Marxist-Leninist parties, headed by the Bolshevik Party led by Stalin, neither Browderism nor Titoism could flourish very widely; they were isolated and fully exposed. Modern revisionism was transformed into a major international trend only after the 20th Congress of the CPSU and due to this ill-famed congress. After this congress Khrushchevite revisionism was developed and raised to a whole system of political, ideological and economic bourgeois viewpoints. But while they now take "anti-revisionist" poses, the Soviet revisionists persist in the entirely revisionist line of the 20th and 22nd congresses. This shows that all their present-day fuss against "revisionism" is a great bluff.
The Soviet leaders accuse the Czechoslovak revisionists of having "discarded loyalty towards principles under the banner of the fight against dogmatism. They advocate the liquidation of the revolutionary convictions, of the foundations of socialist ideology," etc. But is it not the Soviet revisionists themselves who up to today have proclaimed that "dogmatism" (meaning Marxism-Leninism) was the main danger; and is it not they themselves who, under the banner of the fight against dogmatism, betrayed Marxism-Leninism, widely spread revisionism, and furiously attacked the Stalin revolutionary line, the Party of Labor of Albania, the Communist Party of China and the other Marxist-Leninist parties? Is it not the Soviet revisionist leaders who, while they throw fireworks against "revisionism," are furiously continuing the fight against the parties which really stand on Marxist-Leninist positions, especially against the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China, which have waged and continue to wage a consistent, principled and inflexible struggle against revisionism? This is another proof exposing the "anti-revisionist" demagogy of the Soviet leadership.
When the Czechoslovak revisionists, for the realisation of their counterrevolutionary aims, made extensive use of the false slogans of "freedom," "democracy," "liberalisation," "humanism," these slogans, according to the Soviet leadership, were a mask "to cover counterrevolutionary activity," but when these slogans are used by that leadership itself, which is just as much counterrevolutionary as the Czechoslovak leadership, these slogans are allegedly revolutionary! Freedom and democracy on the lips of the revisionists, whether Khrushchevite, Titoite, Novotnist or Dubcekist, mean freedom and democracy for the revisionists, for the traitors and counterrevolutionaries; liberalisation means destruction and liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat; humanism means replacement of the class struggle with Christian pacifism and love for all the class enemies.
When the Czechoslovak revisionists speak of "grave errors in the past," "distortions of democracy and violations of legality" and use them to blacken and undermine the gains of socialism, this, according to the Soviet leaders, is "diabolic tactics" of the enemies of socialism. But did the Khrushchevite clique not pursue precisely these "diabolical tactics" in the Soviet Union? The attacks and calumnies made by the Khrushchevites against the heroic past of the Soviet Union outdid even those of the most rabid imperialist enemies of the Soviet Union. Nobody has discredited the Soviet Union more than the Khrushchevite clique. The "secret" report of the 20th Congress is a document which is known to everybody and Khrushchev's successors have never, in the slightest, put this document in doubt. Their manoeuvres in publishing some writing or in producing some film showing the great historic role of J. Stalin during the great patriotic war, cannot conceal their out-and-out treachery towards the ideas and the activity of Stalin. They are only a testimony to the fact that Stalin is always alive in the minds and the hearts of the Soviet men and women, and are aimed at throwing dust in the eyes, and at quelling the resistance of the Soviet people towards the Khrushchevite clique which has buried the glorious historic period of the Stalin leadership.
Just as demagogical on the lips of the Soviet revisionist renegades, are their slogans about the necessity of intensifying the struggle against the bourgeois ideology and its efforts for the "erosion of socialist ideology," "against a multiplicity" of socialist ideologies and of socialism as a social order. Today they accuse the Czechoslovak revisionists of having had opened the doors to the flood of western ideology, of making efforts to liquidate the foundations of socialist ideology, of advocating a new model of socialism which is not based on Marxism-Leninism, etc. By rising against these "sins" of the Czechoslovak revisionists, the Soviet newspaper Pravda discovered America for the second time, as it were, pointing out that "there is not and there can be no socialism without the leading role of the Communist Party, armed with the ideas of Marxism-Leninism," that "there can be no other form of socialism since the birth and development of scientific socialism, no 'other' socialist ideology which is not based on Marxism-Leninism can exist in our times." (see Pravda of September 19 and 22, 1968).
Of what fight against bourgeois ideology can the Soviet revisionists speak while revisionism is nothing else by a manifestation of the bourgeois ideology in theory and practice, while egoism and individualism, the running after money and other material benefits are thriving in the Soviet Union, while careerseeking and bureaucratism, technocratism, economism and intellectualism are developing, while villas, motor-cars and beautiful women have become the supreme ideal of men, while literature and art attack socialism, everything revolutionary, and advocate pacifism and bourgeois humanism, the empty and dissolute living of people thinking only of themselves, while hundreds of thousands of western tourists that visit the Soviet Union every year, spread the bourgeois ideology and way of life there, while western films cover the screens of the Soviet cinema halls, while the American orchestras and jazz bands and those of the other capitalist countries have become the favorite orchestras of the youth, and while parades of western fashions are in vogue in the Soviet Union? If until yesterday the various manifestations of bourgeois ideology could be called remnants of the past, today bourgeois ideology has become a component part of the capitalist superstructure which rests on the state capitalist foundation which has now been established in the Soviet Union.
As to the criticism against the "multiplicity" of socialist ideologies and of socialist orders," it is the Soviet leaders themselves that have wiped out in theory and practice any distinction between socialist ideology and bourgeois ideology, between the socialist order and the capitalist one. It is precisely the Soviet revisionists who have declared, and continue to declare, that many countries newly liberated from the colonial rule of imperialism and in which the bourgeoisie and landlords and their reactionary ideology are dominating, have embarked on the road of socialism or are building socialism. Does this not indicate that the Soviet leaders themselves are advocating the possibility of transition to socialism without the leadership of the working class, of its revolutionary party, and of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, in other words, the possibility of transition to socialism under the leadership of non-proletarian classes and parties, that there exist, thus, several kinds of socialism and several kinds of socialist ideology?
Or let us take the case of Yugoslavia. In "criticizing" the Yugoslav Titoites, who supported the Dubcek clique and spoke against the Soviet aggression in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet revisionists thought of pointing out that the program of the Communist League of Yugoslavia is the complete embodiment of the ideology of revisionism. But how does this comply with the other statements of the Soviet leaders who, after having kissed and embraced the Tito clique, proclaimed and continue even today to call Yugoslavia a socialist country? What is this socialism which is allegedly being built in Yugoslavia on the basis of revisionist ideology, which is nothing else but a variant of the bourgeois ideology? Does the Soviet leadership itself not admit by this that socialism can allegedly be built also on the basis of revisionism, that is of anti-Marxism, of bourgeois ideology?
Expressing dissatisfaction with the attitude of the Tito clique towards the Czechoslovak events, the Soviet propaganda accuses the Titoites of being "inspirers and supporters of the Czechoslovak counterrevolutionaries." But the Soviet leaders themselves who, in an entirely arbitrary way, rehabilitated the Tito clique as an "innocent victim," introduced it into the communist movement, proclaimed it as "a "fighter for socialism" and maintain close ties with it, are they not themselves inspirers and supporters of the inspirers and supporters of the counterrevolutionaries? Thus, they themselves are as much counterrevolutionaries as the Tito clique. After the 1956 Hungarian events, also, the Khrushchevite clique of the Soviet Union undertook a campaign of criticisms against the Yugoslav revisionists, but only as a matter of form, for it had collaborated with them behind the scenes to bring counter-revolutionary Kadar to power, and as soon as the tension relaxed somewhat the honeymoon started again. This is what will surely happen this time, too. Indeed the tone of the anti-Yugoslav propaganda in the Soviet Union has already greatly diminished. The Brezhnev-Kosygin clique can deceive nobody by its sham criticism of the Tito clique. They are two revisionist cliques which, despite the contradictions they have about the questions of the roads of development of revisionism and of relations between the revisionist countries and parties, belong to a single revolutionary trend—modern revisionism.
The Soviet revisionists have allegedly discovered in Czechoslovakia a "new," "unknown" form of counterrevolution. The sin of those who condemned the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia as aggression, they say, is allegedly the "deep incomprehension of the essence of this new historical phenomenon," as people have been so far accustomed to "imagine counterrevolution only in its armed form, through violence."
Summing up the experience of the revisionist tragedy that happened in the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries where the revisionist cliques are in power, the Marxist-Leninists have long since drawn the conclusion that the danger to the destinies of socialism does not stem only from external imperialist aggression nor only from the armed counterrevolution of the exploiting classes and their survivals, but also from peaceful bourgeois revisionist degeneration, which is the result of the influence of bourgeois ideology from inside and of the pressure of imperialism from outside.
The first example of peaceful counterrevolution was provided by the Titoites, then this road was pursued by the Khrushchevite clique of the Soviet Union and by the cliques of the other socialist countries of Europe in succession. The attempt of the Soviet revisionists to present peaceful counterrevolution as a "new historic phenomenon" which occurred only during the Czechoslovak events, is in reality an attempt, on the one hand, to justify their aggression against the Czechoslovak people and, on the other hand, to camouflage the peaceful counterrevolution which they themselves have carried out in the Soviet Union.
Although the ideologists of the Soviet revisionists speak a great deal of peaceful counterrevolution, they only skirt around this phenomenon. They present it in a very simple way, as something directly instigated and organised by the remnants of the exploiting classes and by the agencies of imperialism. In reality, peaceful counterrevolution is a counterrevolution which is carried out from above, by the degenerated and bureaucratized cadres of the very class and party which are in power. And this process of degeneration has its own deep internal and external social-economic causes, in the same way as it has also its own historic and ideologic sources. The Soviet revisionists do not and cannot make any analysis whatsoever of the causes and sources, because this would mean for them to make an autopsy of themselves. The autopsy of the birth of revisionism has been and will be made ever more fully only by the Marxist-Leninists, by the Bolshevik revolutionaries, who will throw out the revisionist carrion and will purge the whole atmosphere of its bad smell.
With their own words, the Khrushchevite revisionists expose themselves, because if they admit the danger of peaceful counterrevolution even after the liquidation of the exploiting classes, how can they proclaim that "the victory of socialism is complete and final," how can they say what was said in the program of the CPSU approved by the 22nd Congress that "in the countries of people's democracy the social-economic possibilities for the restoration of capitalism have been removed"? One or the other: Either the thesis of peaceful counterrevolution is a bluff or the other thesis that all danger to the destinies of socialism has been removed, is a deception, an attempt to legalize the revisionist treachery, to lull the vigilance and revolutionary action of the communists and the working people.
In contrast with what they have previously advocated, that allegedly with the liquidation of exploiting classes the class struggle also comes to an end and its place is occupied by the political and social-economic unity of society, at present the Soviet revisionists are not opposed to admitting the class struggle after the liquidation of the exploiting classes as such and to oppose also "abstract national unity." There is no end to demagogy. They speak of class struggle, but only in other countries, while they do not utter a single word about the class struggle in the Soviet Union, as if harmony and everlasting peace were reigning there. But what about the struggle which the Khrushchevite revisionists themselves undertook after the death of J.V. Stalin in the Soviet Union; is it not an open expression of the struggle of the class enemies who opened the road to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, to its transformation from a socialist proletarian state into a new bourgeois and imperialist state? This class struggle, but from the positions of the new bourgeoisie and its interests, is being waged most savagely by the Soviet revisionist leadership against the healthy revolutionary forces both at home and in the international arena, resorting to all the means of the military fascist dictatorship.
Life, facts, the very experience of revisionist treachery show that the class struggle continues, not only after the liquidation of the exploiting classes as such, not only after the victory of socialism, but indeed, for some time, even after the victory of communism on a world scale, as long as the influences of bourgeois ideology continue to exist. Therefore, the complete victory of socialism and communism can be achieved and be guaranteed only when, in addition to other things, there has been achieved the full victory of socialist ideology over bourgeois ideology in every individual country and on a world scale. And, as long as this struggle continues, the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat is indispensable, as the main weapon of the class struggle of the proletariat for the destruction of all the class enemies and for the building of socialism and communism.
The whole demagogy of the alleged fight against revisionism and of the alleged return to the Leninist-Stalinist positions is needed by the Soviet revisionist leadership to conceal its complete transformation into a social-fascist clique.
But the Soviet leaders, due to their very position as a revisionist clique, cannot go very far in the so-called "fight against revisionism," for such a thing is fraught with extremely dangerous consequences unexpected and undesirable for them. Therefore, at the same time they are furiously continuing their fight against revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and the parties remaining faithful to it, especially against the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania. This most clearly shows the falsity of their demagogical fuss about the "fight against revisionism."
Precisely to conceal its bluff, the Soviet leadership is striving to create the illusion that it allegedly stands on the Leninist positions of the struggle on two fronts, that it is allegedly fighting against the rightists, the revisionists, as well as against the "leftists," "dogmatists," "adventurers," etc. This dangerous manoeuvre must be fully exposed, and the real social-fascist features of the Soviet leading clique should be nakedly revealed.
Social-fascism in the home policy has social-imperialism as its direct continuation in foreign policy; and while they seek to camouflage fascism with "socialist" phraseology, the Soviet leaders strive to conceal their imperialism with the slogan of "proletarian internationalism."
It is known that the Khrushchevite revisionists started their treachery with capitulation and concessions to imperialism and with renouncing the fight against it; while the liquidation of the foundations of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, its transformation from a socialist state into a capitalist state of the new type, created the economic, social and class premises for its transformation into a great imperialist power in the international arena, and for the counterrevolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism. The Soviet Union has become an imperialist power which seeks to have its zones of influence, which is striving to enslave and exploit the peoples of other countries, which, in alliance with U.S. imperialism, is striving for the establishment of the world domination of the two great powers.
But if, until recently, Soviet imperialism was trying to preserve and extend its zone of influence, to dictate its will to others through "peaceful means"—through economic penetration and subjugation, through political and ideological influence and pressure, through military and economic alliances, etc., now it has passed over to open fascist methods, to the use of armed violence, to direct military aggression even against its own allies. Precisely this is the new feature in the evolution of Soviet imperialism. The most typical example in this direction is the Soviet fascist military aggression in Czechoslovakia.
By what they did in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet revisionists quite evidently showed that now for them there do exist neither friendship, alliances and treaties, freedom and independence, nor sovereignty of peoples. The only "principle" existing for them is the right of the more powerful to make the law everywhere, while all other principles are violated, trampled under foot, placed under the heel, through arms and bloodshed.
To justify this cynical and fascist policy, the Soviet revisionists are now seeking to convince none other than their own allies from the revisionist camp that the independence, self-determination, sovereignty of the parties and peoples of various countries have no value whatsoever, that they must submit to the interests of the so-called socialist community, in other words, to the interests of the chauvinist great power of the Soviet Union, that for the sake of these interests this power can violate these principles when, where, and in what way, it likes.
The demagogy of the Soviet aggressors, that by attacking and occupying Czechoslovakia with arms they carried out their internationalist duty towards the Czechoslovak people and towards the cause of socialism and the world revolutionary movement, inasmuch as they allegedly saved the victories of socialism in Czechoslovakia from the danger of counterrevolution, can hoodwink nobody. How can they defend the gains of socialism in another country who have destroyed socialism in their own country, how can they avoid the danger of counterrevolution who themselves are the head of counterrevolution? We showed above that all those things of which they accused the Czechoslovak revisionists in order to justify their aggression, the Soviet revisionists have done and are doing themselves. Therefore all the "arguments" of the Soviet revisionist leadership are empty and false. Their actions have no political, ideological, moral or legal foundation whatsoever.
Fully defeated also, was the "legal" argument of the Soviet revisionists to justify their aggression in Czechoslovakia. The "famous" letter of some Czechoslovak personalities allegedly addressed to the Soviets and to some other Warsaw Treaty countries "to ask for their aid in suppressing counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia" was absolutely proved to be a fraud. Nobody came out to confirm being the author of that letter. The Soviet troops were not invited either by the Czechoslovak Government, or by the President of the Republic, by the parliament or the Central Committee of the Party. Even Hitler in his time acted with some tact: at least he obtained by force the signature of the President Hacha, when he occupied Czechoslovakia.
As to the Czechoslovak people and the healthy socialist forces in Czechoslovakia, they had no reason to address themselves for aid to the Soviet revisionist renegades and their allies, for the defence of the gains of socialism from the Czechoslovak revisionist renegades, for both the Soviet revisionist clique and the Novotny or Dubcek revisionist cliques, are advancing, all of them, on the same anti-Marxist and anti-socialist road. And life showed, and confirms through numerous facts with every passing day, that despite the capitulation of the Dubcek clique, the Czechoslovak people met the armies of the Soviet revisionists as occupiers and, in various forms, they resisted and are resisting occupation. They are ever more clearly realizing that the actions of the Dubcek clique which overthrew the Novotny clique, were a counterrevolution within the counterrevolution, just as the Soviet military intervention was the suppression through the force of arms of the internal Czechoslovak counterrevolution by the Soviet external counterrevolution.
As an important instrument of the implementation of its imperialist policy, the Soviet leading clique is using the Warsaw Treaty military alliance. This treaty, which has changed its nature from top to bottom, from a treaty of peace into a means of war, from a defensive treaty into a weapon of aggression, is being used by the Soviet leading clique also against the very participants in this treaty. In reality, with the exception of Rumania, all the other member countries of this ill-famed treaty are under the control of the armed forces of Soviet revisionism. The so-called "socialist family" or "socialist community" resembles a concentration camp, a prison of peoples, Soviet troops are stationed everywhere and they make the law in these countries. In these conditions, the freedom, independence, equality and sovereignty of the peoples, have been turned into empty slogans which are used to deceive and lull the peoples.
But the appetite of Soviet imperialism goes beyond the limits of the zone which is directly under its influence. It is openly threatening the other Balkan countries, especially the People's Republic of Albania; it is committing open military provocations against the People's Republic of China, and, in close collaboration with the U.S. imperialists, the Japanese militarists, with the Indian, Indonesian, and other reactionaries, it is preparing the big anti-China plot. The Soviet revisionist rulers, in alliance and vying with the U.S. imperialists, are extending the zone of action of their military fleet, they have led their warships to the Mediterranean to threaten the People's Republic of Albania as well as to extend their imperialist grip at the expense of the Arab people and of the peoples of other countries.
This typical imperialist policy of the Soviet revisionists cannot be concealed. It cannot help meeting with the determined opposition and resistance of all the peoples who cherish the ideals of freedom, independence, sovereignty, revolution and socialism. This policy is ever more exposing and isolating the Soviet leading clique before the peoples of the whole world.
And not only that. In implementing its imperialist aggressive course it has had great difficulties also with its own allies. The Soviet leadership, in order to keep control of the other revisionist cliques, is openly passing over to the use of force, as was known by the Czechoslovak events, which are a very serious warning of what awaits the other cliques if they dare advance on the road of "polycentrism," autonomy, etc. But instead of strengthening the dominating positions of the Soviet revisionist leading clique, this will lead to a further division of the revisionist front and will still more undermine the positions of Soviet revisionism. This was very clearly seen in the reaction of the revisionist cliques of other countries which, in a joint chorus, rose up against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia and condemned it as aggression, taking the Dubcek clique under protection. The additional difficulties created for the Soviet leadership in convening an international meeting of the revisionist parties, which was against postponed, is further evidence of this.
The recent events, especially those in Czechoslovakia, are a catastrophic defeat for the whole of modern revisionism, which most obviously indicates its complete degeneration, especially of the head of modern revisionism—the Khrushchevite clique of the Soviet Union, into a social-fascist and social-imperialist clique. Nobody should allow himself to be deceived by the maneouvres to conceal this degeneration with demagogy, with the slogans of "internationalism." It is the duty of all the real Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries to expose and smash this dangerous manoeuvre. In the first place, the Soviet people themselves must rise with determination against this imperialist aggressive course and should not allow the Khrushchevite renegade clique in power to use Soviet men and women, the Soviet armed forces, for the realisation of its imperialist and oppressive aims. One should not forget for a single moment the great teaching of Marx that the people of a country that oppresses other peoples are not and can never be free.
Analysis of the facts shows that there can be no question of any moderation of the revisionist positions of the Soviet renegade leadership. All its efforts to create the impression that it is allegedly returning to the old Stalinist positions are a big bluff. There should be no illusion whatsoever that the events in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and the activation of the liberal extremists in the Soviet Union have opened the eyes of the Soviet counter-revolutionary clique and brought them down to earth. All this has only caused it to change its tactics, to adopt still more demagogical tactics to establish and consolidate the full fascist military dictatorship of revisionist capital and to disguise it.
The Brezhnev-Kosygin clique places great hopes in achieving this success inside the Soviet Union, where there is brutal oppression, a terrible censorship, where the communists and people have been educated merely to repeat and not to do a thorough-going study of the content of the formulas and slogans, and where, finally, the cult of megalomania of the "great and powerful socialist state" continues to develop. It hopes to achieve this also by speaking in a low voice about a "return to the Stalin epoch," to satisfy and deceive thereby the apolitical, the sentimental and the naïve.
It is a duty of all the Marxist-Leninists, in the first place of the Soviet Bolshevik revolutionaries themselves, to expose right to the end this diabolical manoeuvre of the Khrushchevite ruling clique, to reject any illusion with regard to this clique, to intensify the fight against it, to thoroughly expose its real social-fascist and social-imperialist countenance. Faced with the fact of the transformation of the Soviet State into a fascist-type military dictatorship, the Soviet revolutionaries must rise up, organise themselves and throw themselves into struggle and revolution. Their historic responsibility is today greater than ever. There is no doubt that this will be a difficult struggle which will require self-denial and heavy sacrifices. But the Leninist-Stalinist Bolsheviks have never been frightened. We express our deep conviction that they will one day perform with honor their great duty towards their own people and international communism. And the sooner they do this, the better it will be.
The demagogy of the Soviet leading clique for an alleged return to the revolutionary positions of the Stalin epoch, must be exposed also outside the Soviet Union, where it could be established and used by the other revisionist cliques. But, on the other hand, it is obvious that these tactics will sharpen the contradictions in the camp of the revisionists, will lead to the division of the revisionist parties into pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet groups. Indeed, right now the Novotnyists in Czechoslovakia, the Vermeerschists and Thorezists in France, are being called "tough," "Stalinist," because they are supporters of the Soviet revisionists, their agents. The Soviet leading clique is giving and will give to these elements, its whole support so as to establish through them, its control and shattered rule over the other revisionist parties. This cannot avoid meeting the resistance of the other revisionist elements, which will further deepen the division in the revisionist camp.
The duty of the Marxist-Leninists in these countries is to mercilessly unmask the pseudo-revolutionary phraseology of the pro-Soviet agency, to prevent the creation of any illusion whatever in this direction, to exploit the deepening of the contradictions in the fold of the revisionists and to intensify the fight against all the revisionist renegades for their complete destruction.
As to the countries which are ruled by the Soviet revisionists, and where they make the law through the military forces they have stationed there, this manoeuvre can hardly serve because the strengthening of the imperialist-fascist aggressive character of the policy being pursued by the Soviet leading clique cannot help arousing the ever more resolute indignation and protest of the peoples of these counties. Indeed, even the revisionist Quislings who are necessarily obeying the Soviet clique, for their ruling positions have been built on sand, do not want them to undertake a manoeuvre of an alleged return to the Stalin epoch, be it even as a bluff, because, on the one hand, this would attach them still more closely to the Soviet chariot, from which they want to be as independent as possible, and on the other hand, such a manoeuvre would undermine their foundations, inasmuch as they came to power precisely under the banner of the fight against Stalinism. Therefore, here too, divisions will be further sharpened and deepened, inside the revisionist parties as well as between the ruling revisionist cliques and the Soviet leadership. The submission of the revisionist Quislings to the Soviet fascist military dictatorship is temporary. There will be fierce disputes and blows between them up to armed clashes.
All these things create favorable conditions for the revolutionary struggle of the peoples and the Communists of these countries, to expose the local revisionist Quislings as well as the Soviet occupiers, to drive the occupation armies out of the country, and to overthrow the revisionist renegade cliques in power. The only correct road for the attainment of those aims is the creation everywhere of Marxist-Leninist parties, and the organisation of armed revolutionary struggle.
The Party of Labor of Albania, which has always consistently abided by the Marxist-Leninist line and principles, and has waged and is waging a resolute fight against modern revisionism headed by the Soviet renegade leadership, will mercilessly unmask the present dangerous, pragmatist tactics of the Brezhnev-Kosygin clique for an alleged return to the revolutionary positions of Stalin. It has not and it will never allow the name and the great Marxist-Leninist revolutionary activity of Joseph Stalin to be besmirched by the Khrushchevite revisionists, or to be used by them as a camouflage to conceal their revisionist treachery. Stalin belongs to the Marxist-Leninists, to the proletarian revolution.