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HAIII: 9 THE DECHOUKAOE HAS ONLY JUST BEOUN!

PERU: IHIT BLOOD THAT HAS BEEI{ SPITT SHAtt NEUER BE FORGOIIE]II

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Hoiti The Dechoukage Has Only Just Begun! Crisis in Haiti and the Tasks of Revolutionaries by the Haitian Internationalist Revolutionary- Group A Call to the Haitian Revolutionary Movement by the Haitian Revolutionary Internationalist Group and the Haitian Workers Party t6 People Are Disposed to Take Care of Business - Talks with Haitian Workers Party l8 Peru This Blood That Has Been Spilt Shall Never Be Forgotten 34 Flames Leap to Puno 37 Support for People's War in Peru Echoes on Every Continent 39 Excerpts From Worldwide Campaign Speech Five Years of People's War in Peru 44 RIM Committee Greets Peru Campaign 46 A "Shining Trench of Combat" Statement on the Massacre of Our Comrades in Peru's Prisons by the RIM Committee 28 "Day of Herois111" - Statement by the PCP Central Committee- 32 Forward Along the Path Charted by Mao Tsetung!42 Interview with Afghan Revolutionary 48 Romania: From Goulash Communism to Capitalist Austerity 58 The Weapon of Criticism: Book Reviews 64

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The Duvolier dictotorship, o "presidency for life" possed down from fother to son since 1957, ended obruptly Februory 7th when o U.S.- supplied militory plone corried Jeon- Cloude Duvolier ond his fother's hostily dug-up remoins to exile in I Fronce. aI The dechoukoge the efforts of the g - mosses to "uproot" the old order - e hod begun. Duvolierist ond Tonton ! Mocoutes (Duvolier's ormed thugs) P were driven out of their positions of a q{ outhority throughout society. Mony o were sentenced ond executed by the crowds in the streets. = Two things con be soid with certointy. One is thot Hoiti's ruling closses ore in disorroy ond the ormed forces which ore the bockbone of their stote qre tremendously weokened, while the mosses ore determined to corry through their dechoukage. fhe other is thot if the mosses in their millions do not toke up guns ond overthrow the old power ond reploce it with o new revolutionory stote led by the proletoriot, in order to do owqy with imperiolist dominotion, 5 DEGHOUKAOE JUSI BEOUN!

semi-feudolism ond bureoucrot copitolism, then one woy or onoiher the reoctionory closses ond the U.S. - for whom much is ot sioke in Hoiti, in regionol ond internotionol terms - will reossert their bloody power ond toke revenge. The obiective conditions for D revolution ore excellent in Hoiti. They E ore olso excellent conditions for the F- emergence of o porty embrocing oll tr Hoiti's genuine proletorion d revolutionories on the bosis of {\ Mo rxism-Leninism-Moo Tsetung u Thought qnd in relotion to the a6 Or Revolutionory I nternotiono list Movement. A porty thot would put Or itself ot the heod of the moss upsurge by corrying forword o protrocted people's wor bosed on the mosses ond especiolly the peosonts who form the greot moiority of the populotion. The ioint coll to Hoiti's Morxist- Leninists put out by the Hoition lnternotionolist Revolutionory Group (GRIA) ond the Hoition Workers Porty (PTH) is o very significont step in this direction. tr 6 Crisis in Hoiti qnd the Tqsks of Revolutionqries

By rhe Hoition lnternqtionolist Revolutionqry Group (CR lAl

Haiti is in the midst of the greatest partial transformation of the present system is vulnerable. They stood up crisis in its history. The class strug- order try to change things from and broke up that firm monkey tail gle has taken an unprecedented turn, above. But there are also the op- that Duvalier was bragging about, where all the centuries-old con- pressed masses, i.e., the proletariat, thus forcing the imperialists and the tradictions of Haitian society are the peasantry, the impoverished sec- ruling class to remove the lackey tied into a knot and ready for tors of the petit bourgeoisie, the Duvalier from the comfort of the I political resolution. In this national classes that suffer the most under the national palace and sending him in- I historic juncture, in this revolu- existing order. Their interests lie in to exile, to be replaced by a military- a tionary situation, all the classes are a total transformation of society: civilian junta. The imperialists and 3 in motion, contending among not reform and cosmetic changes in- ruling class were forced to make that themselves and trying to resolve the stituted from above, but a move in order to cut their losses 3 contradictions in their own class in- thoroughgoing new democratic short, and to deceive the masses, but i terest. revolution from below, led by the the masses were not deceived and o In this revolutionary period socie- proletariat, in which the reactionary have continued to wage battles h ty is divided into two big camps: forces are violently overthrown. against this rubber stamp {o those who are fighting to maintain Duvalierist junta put in place by the tr the existing structure, and thereby The Masses are the Makers of reactionaries to continue the "fine o continue the centuries-old exploita- History job" of repressing the masses that i tion, oppression, misery and suffer- In the past three months the oppress- Duvalier and his cronies have done ing of the masses, and those whose ed masses of Haiti not only made so well for the past twenty-nine interests dictate that the defenders of history, they changed history. They years. the status quo be overthrown and have stood up against the reac- the present structure dismantled and tionary hereditary dictatorship of An Historical Crossroad replaced by one that would serve Baby Doc's regime, the foremost In this national historic juncture, their own class interests. Both of representative of the ruling class and Haiti is at a crossroads, where two these camps, i.e., the camp of reac- the imperialists which have ruled paths are wide open before the Hai- tion and the camp of revolution, are over and oppressed them for almost tian Revolution. One is the path of further subdivided into two. In the thirty years. They forced that regime the past, the old path of continued camp of reaction there are the out of power and forced Baby to flee exploitation, oppression, suffering, hardliners who claim that the only the country. The masses forced this starvation, mass murder of infants way to crush the masses' struggle is reactionary out exactly in the period and ignorance... this is the path pro- with violence, and there are those when the regime stepped up its mised by the imperialists and the who maintain that while violence is repression against them and when Haitian ruling class. The other, the necessary, deception, i.e., petty the regime was claiming that it was path of the future, the path of reform, is also a powerful weapon. "firm as a monkey's tail." The revolution, is one of quick amputa- The camp of revolution is also masses through their struggle have tion of the decaying and gangrenous divided into two groups. The proven to the reactionaries how parts of the national organism. This bourgeois democrats and some petit weak they are and that even with all path could put an end once and for bourgeois sectors who want some their oppression and violence their all to all the suffering, misery, ex- 7

ploitation, oppression, starvation and ignorance of the masses. Thus it is obvious that the stakes are high for both the reactionary class and the revolutionary masses. It is this necessity that is forcing the imperialists and their national lackeys to frantically try to manoeuvre their way out of this crisis. The reactionaries are now on the defensive, they are trying to quickly recover from the blow they received from the masses' struggle. Now they are in the process of regrouping their reactionary troops for a counter-attack. For this attack they are calling on and are aligning all the compradors and aspiring compradors. They are calling on all their quacks and charlatans in order to perform micro-surgery on the monkey whose tail was broken by the masses' struggle so as to quickly restore the monkey's tail, strengthen the monkey and keep that monkey on the backs of the masses. But the mass demonstrations and other actions against the civilian- military junta show clearly that the oppressed masses are tired of carry- Masses topple stqtue o./' Duvalier. ing this monkey on their back. On the contrary, they are trying through their struggle to throw the dead weight of the monkey off their back and to slaughter it. The masses need a revolutionary transformation of the existing order, the overthrow of the ruling class, the dismantling of the neocolonial structure and an end to the imperialist domination of the country.

Is This Task Possible at the Present Moment? This task is definitely possible in this juncture. But the existing revolu- tionary situation, i.e., the weaknesses of the reactionaries in trying to control the situation and the intensifying of the masses' strug- gle, left to itself will not lead to revolutionary transformation and seizure of power by the oppressed masses. The one thing that could lead that process, i.e., the party of the proletariat and the leadership of the proletariat in those struggles, does not exist right now. It is true that the proletariat and its allies the peasantry, the petit bourgeoisie,- the youth and other revolutionary elements - are in the Mausoleum of 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. I

field and are waging struggle against and that of its allies to victorY. The Concrete and Existing Condi- Duvalierism and the whole reac- This revolutionary Period has tions in Haiti Today tionary order. It is also true that the created unprecedented opportunities A crisis exists that lays bare all the proletariat and the other revolu- to build the party of the proletariat. decaying parts of society. This crisis tionary forces are part of the forces Because we are at a historical turn- dwarfs all the preceding crises that demanding democratic rights and ing point in the history of the Hai- took place in this century, both in in- political liberty. But it is also true tian revolutionary movement, where tensity and in scope. No Preceding that the proletariat which, along millions are in the street waging crisis has so threatened the status with its allies, is the -only class force struggle against the old reactionary quo, the neocolonial structure and that can unreservedly carrY the order, many new phenomena and the ruling class. This crisis has many struggle through doesn't have its new forces are emerging and coming features that differentiate it from the independent party,- program, banner forward. These fresh forces are preceding ones. and flag in the field. Therefore the boldly stepping on to the stage of For one, it is taking Place in a Pre- proletariat and its allies now are history, wanting to assault heaven war period where the imperialists are marching behind the banner and and at the same time are questioning trying to consolidate their war bloc. position, flags of other class forces, whose in- both heaven and hell. There is a Because of Haiti's strategic terests prevent them from carrying strong desire among these new the U.S. imperialists who dominate through all the way the struggle forces to overthrow the old, Haiti are worried to death and are against Duvalierism and for new transform the world and bring about trying their best to manage and con- democratic transformation. the new. This new life is a source of trol this crisis. Further, the Haitian Thus, in this period of un- vitality that is strengthening and in- ruling class, which has maintained precedented revolutionary oppor- vigoratirtg the revolutionary move- "stability" for the past 29 Years tunity, there is also the danger that ment. ConsequentlY the revolu- through a fascistic and oppressive the struggle of the masses could be tionary Marxist-Leninists, the old dictatorship that violently crushed usurped by pro-imperialist deceivers movement peoPle, ihe disPersed every dissent and discontent of the and reformists who are contending revolutionary forces, suddenly con- masses, is losing control of the situa- for the leadership of these struggles front new challenges and new tasks. tion and is forced into a defensive and who are trying to resolve the We are faced with two oPtions: position. Never before in this cen- contradictions from above. To pre- either rise to the challenge, i.e., pre- tury have the oppressed in the entire uP challenge the vent that from happening the PartY sent a revolutionary alternative that country stood to I im- a of the proletariat must be built now, can channel these new forces for reactionary rule. And since the s and the task of all Marxist-Leninist revolution, or remain in our present perialists are in a pre-war situation, o\ revolutionaries is to work to build stage of small dispersed circles, con- their options and freedom are are in this party soon, in order to Put for- ducting local and amateurish work limited. Thus the imperialists ward a program for revolution, that history will certainlY leave a weaker position than theY were in = period were i begin the people's war that the Pro- behind. the l9l0-1915 when they o letariat and its allies must wage to Thus, in order for the Marxist- emerging as a new imPerialist h overthrow their class enemies, seize Leninist revolutionaries to rise to the power, and were converting the o{ power and establish a peoPle's new tasks and challenges of seizing countries of the Americas into neo- q democratic dictatorshiP over the the revolutionary situation and colonies, or than theY were in 1946 just vic- o reactionary classes. But in order to leading the new revolutionary forces when they had emerged War II and were i accomplish these necessary tasks the to make revolution, theY must first torious in World party of the proletariat has to be change their methods of work, their organizing capital internationally, built. As Mao Tsetung, the leader of orientation and vision' Second, they or even in 1956-57 when theY were the Chinese Revolution, summed must develop a clear understanding strong enough to resolve the crisis in up: "If there is to be a revolution, of what is taking Place right now, their favour. the context there must be a revolutionary party. and the different forces that are con- Furthermore, this sets racking Haitian Without a revolutionary Party, tending for power. Third, based on for the severe crisis without a party built on Marxist- this understanding, theY must for- society. During the past two decades Leninist revolutionary theory and in mulate a Program for a PartY that tremendous changes have taken the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary could lead the struggle of the masses place in Haiti. Imperialism has fur- style, it is impossible to lead the into a thoroughgoing revolution. ther penetrated and changed the working class and the broad masses Fourth, they must develoP and Put economic and political features of of the people in defeating im- forward a strategic and tactical plan the country, in both citY and coun- perialism and its running dogs." corresponding to the stage of the tryside. In fact, Haiti has become Thus it is of utmost importance that struggle and the revolution. In order almost a laboratory for experiments all Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, to do these things the revolutionaries for the imperialists. They have set up and all patriots who would like to see cannot simply resort to ready-made "free trade zones," where a lot of a revolution in the interests of the formulas; we must instead Proceed labour-intensive factories financed proletariat, come forward to take from concrete analYsis of the ex- by foreign capital (in league with responsibility to build the party of isting conditions of crisis in our some Haitian capitalists) emploY wages, the proletariat and lead its struggle society. mostly women at very low 9 and repatriate both profits and pro- took place in the period of l9l0- especially those in the capital, active- ducts back to the U.S. and other im- 1915. During that period the landless ly took up the struggle against perialist countries. Major imperialist peasants in northern Haiti were wag- Lescot, whom they viewed as a dic- organizations like the U.N., the ing armed struggle against the tator. But there were also sections of World Bank, the I.M.F., the Inter- landlords and the different reac- the ruling class, and aspiring com- national Development Bank, the tionary governments representing pradors from the petit bourgeoisie U.S.A.l.D., A.C.D.I., etc., have all that class. The peasants' struggle put who were excluded by the mulatto invested heavily in building new the entire feudal system that emerg- sector of the ruling class, who were ports. hydroelectric dams, primary ed after the 1804 Independence War active. These forces were able to ral- roads and so on to l-.etter serve them in jeopardy, thus forcing the U.S. ly the masses behind their flag, ban- in exploiting Haiti. These changes imperialists to intervene militarily to ner and reactionary program. They the construction of rads, etc., in the- crush the peasant masses, disarm purposely set out to deceive the countryside and the proliferation of them, and turn Haiti into a masses by reducing the struggle sweatshops in Port-au-Prince neocolony. They set up a state ap- against Lescot to a pigmentation have resulted in further disarticula-- paratus, including the army, police struggle, i.e., dark-skinned Haitians tion and distortion of Haiti's and justice laws, and consolidated against mulattos. Their main slogan economy and has led to the the comprador bourgeois class to was "Black power" (a slogan also dispossession of thousands and guard and maintain the new later used by Duvalier in 1957), and thousands of peasants from their neocolonial structure and to defend with this reactionary slogan they lands. This has created a double the interests of the entire Haitian rul- rallied a major sector of the pro- migration: both an internal migra- ing class, including the archaic and letariat and the masses behind their tion from the countryside to the reactionary feudal class that the banner, and thus diverted the main cities as well as an external peasants had fought to overthrow. masses' struggle by blurring its class migration to other Caribbean Even though a revolutionary content (and by concealing their islands and to North America. situation existed in that period and own contradictions with the com- For a while this external migration the peasant masses fought the reac- prador section in power represented acted as a safety valve, alleviating tionaries arms in hand, they still by Lescot). the internal situation. But during the could not take advantage of the It is worth noting also that dif- 1980's, under ihe Caribbean Basin revolutionary situation and ferent from the preceding crisis there Initiative of the Reagan Administra- transform it into a victorious revolu- was a small but emerging proletariat L tion, two factors have further ex- tion. All this struggle led to was and there were two so-called "com- acerbated the crisis: first, the em- some reforms, to mere change in the munist" parties in the field the phasis government, (Parti - E on export-oriented mere replacement of P.S.P. Socialiste Populaire) ! development in the countryside the reactionaries running the state and the P.C.H. (Parti Comuniste F which, along with the wanton for other ones. As a matter of Haitien). These parties, though in o destruction of almost the entire pig historical fact their struggle couldn't word they claimed to be the parties industry of the peasantry and its lead to anything better than that of the proletariat, in deed were petit d replacement by big capitalist pig because, as Mao said in talking bourgeois parties that promoted { farms, has led to even greater and about the Chinese peasants, the reform, class collaboration and elec- more intense dispossession and land peasants have fought for centuries toralism. In this sense their line = I robbery; and second, the im- for their rights, but not until the ad- made them like the other bourgeois 6 perialists have closed the safety vent of the proletariat and its party parties in the field. They ended up Or peasants the peasants proletarian valve, virtually stopping could struggle ofthe be deserting the cause of the Or from leaving Haiti. On top of that, successful. In the Haitian context of revolution and delivering the pro- the I.M.F. has imposed an austeri- the l9l0-1915 period we could say letariat and its allies to the ty plan that forced the government that one of the reasons the ruling bourgeoisie. to raise the price of staple food, to class and the imperialists were able In 1956-57 another crisis ration gasoline and to deny the to crush that struggle and control the developed. For approximately a year masses their very means of revolutionary situation was exactly different pro-imperialist represen- livelihood. Couple all that with the the absence of the proletariat and its tatives of various sectors of the rul- fascist regime of Duvalier stepping party, as well as the previously men- ing class violently contended among up its repression, and Haiti blew up tioned stronger position of U.S. im- themselves for power. During that like a pressure cooker, right in the perialism at the time. period several military juntas assum- face of imperialism and its lackeys. ln 1946 another crisis unfolded. ed power and slaughtered thousands So these factors, both external The then president Lescot, a mulat- of Haitians under the cover of main- and internal, differentiate the pre- to comprador, wanted to remain in taining law and order. During that sent crisis from the preceding ones. power after his term expired. A con- period the split in the ranks of the stitutional crisis developed that turn- ruling class reached a critical level Brief Elaboration on the Previous ed into a mass struggle. This strug- and the army which was supposed to Crises gle prompted the military to stage a be neutral was divided to the point The first revolutionary situation that coup to force Lescot from office, where partisans of the different can- developed in Haiti in this century and a junta took power. The masses, didates within the army had a brief to bout of civil rvar. portunity. Thus the ruling class was mulated and outlined his "two Once again the proletariat and its able to control the situation and con- elites" theory, which was a call for allies were in the field and actively solidate their dictatorship over the reconciliation among the rulers. waging struggle, but again had no masses. They were able to con- political Ieadership, no party. solidate their reactionary order not Duvalierism: Extremist Measures Things were left wide open for the because they were strong but for a Period of Crisis reactionaries to rally the masses because the revolutionary forces What is Duvalierism? Duvalierism is behind their banners and programs, were weak, and absent from the a specific form that the dictatorship and once again the ruling class used field. of the ruling class took in a crisis

Mqrch in Port-au-Princ'e. Writing on c'offin says, 'My place is here,'quoting Duvalier. the question of color and pigmenta- Duvalier came out on top in that situation. It is a fascistic ideology tion as a major rallying point. struggle with the help of the CIA and use of fascistic methods to crush The fratricidal war that the ruling and the army. Duvalier was exactly the oppressed masses into submis- class was waging among themselves the man they needed in this period of sion. This dictatorship serves the in- had opened up a lot of cracks and indecision and crisis. As soon as he terests ofthe entire ruling class and fissures through which a took office he outlined his program their imperialist backers. thoroughgoing revolutionary strug- based on the doctrine of Duvalierism was a method gle ol the masses could erupt, but Duvalierism, and to reassure the im- developed by the reactionary classes lack ol a revolutionary party and perialists and the Haitian ruling class to crush all forms of dissent among program to lead the oppressed to that he was their man, he proclaim- the proletariat, the peasantry and wage that struggle made the pro- ed that he wanted Haii.l to be a se- other oppressed sectors of Haitian letariat lose this revolutionary op- cond Puerto Rico. He also for- society. With sheer terror and nak- n ed oppression the ruling class robb- plundering the country's treasure the imperialists wish to limit the ed the Haitian masses of all the basic and milking the masses dry. masses' struggle to Duvalier alone, democratic and human rights they The most valuable service of but this time it won't work. Even the had formerly won through their Duvalierism to the reactionary junta they put in place to replace struggle; with the use of their death classes is that with its repressive ap- Duvalier, which the masses call a squads, better known as the Tonton paratus, its instruments of torture, photocopy of Duvalier, is under fire Macoutes, they destroyed all the the army, the dungeons... it held the now as it begins to show its true, i.e., mass organizations. masses hostage, terrorized them, its violent and reactionary nature. It Duvalier created the Macoutes, forced them to live in a miserable is clear that the forces of reaction are but it rvas the USA, Israel and other and exploitative situation for 29 on the defensive and they are trying reactionary imperialist states that years 29 years of "stability and to maneouvre to control the struggle trained and armed them. They were peace"- for the imperialists and the of the masses. But this time their created to maintain the status quo Haitian ruling class. But the op- chances are slim because the masses and to protect the interests of the pressive and terrorist methods utilis- are more and more identifying them propertied classes. The entire Hai- ed by the imperialists and the ruling as the class enemy, as accomplices of tian ruling class and all the im- class to keep the masses down and to Duvalier and upholders o f perialists benefited from their terror maintain stability for so long are Duvalierism. and crime. running up against their limitations Under Duvalier and Duvalierism and are now backfiring on the reac- The Struggle Between Two Orienta- it is not only Duvalier and his cronies tionaries. The oppression and ter- tions in the Camp of the Opposition that plundered the resources of the rorist action of the reactionar)' In the camp of the revolution there country. Haiti was a paradise for the classes breeds resistance among the are two orientations: the orientation ruling class as a whole and their im- masses and now the neocolonial of the bourgeois democrats and perialist masters. While Duvalierism structure the entire ruling class sits other petit bourgeois forces who turned Haiti into a living hell for the on is cracking underneath them. want to bring about reform from masses, it allowed the entire ruling In that context the struggle of the above, and the orientation of the class to exploit the masses with ab- Haitian masses against the Duvalier proletariat and its allies, who want solute freedom; it allowed the com- family and the Macoutes threatens to bring about a revolutionary pradors to accumulate millions on the neocolonial structure and the transformation of the entire society the backs of the masses; it allowed ruling class. If the struggle in Haiti from below. the landlord class to rob the peasants now aims at the corrupt regime of Even petit bourgeois and to the point of starvation, to Duvalier and the Macoutes, it is bourgeois democrats are now calling { dispossess millions from their land because these were and are the most on Namphy and the military junta to o E with impunity; it opened the coun- visible targets and the foremost eliminate all Duvalierists from the F try to the imperialist sweatshops and representatives of the entire reac- military and the government, to tr allowed them to exploit the masses tionary order and classes. But in dissolve the Macoutes, to lift the for a daily wage of $2.64 or less, and essence the struggle is a class strug- state of siege, to eliminate the tor- d for them to then freely repatriate the gle that will soon go beyond the ture chambers and torture in- { surplus value; it allowed imperialist most visible target to include all the struments, to try corrupt officials, to ? agro-industry to penetrate the coun- reactionaries. eliminate entry and exit visas for all tryside; it allowed the USAID to The imperialists and the Haitian Haitians, etc. s slaughter all the peasants' pigs in ruling class are aware of that, and These demands should be sup- q order to establish eight big capitalist- that is why they are frantically try- ported and upheld by all revolu- Or style piggeries; it dispossessed ing to put the lid on the struggle of tionary Marxist-Leninists, peasants from the most fertile land the masses and to distance regardless of the classes that are call- in the country in order to provide the themselves from Duvalier. A clear ing for them. Even if these demands imperialist sweatshops in Port-au- example of this tactic appeared in a come from bourgeois democrats and Prince with electrical power; it Miami Herald article where a petit bourgeois forces, they are ge- allowed thousands of unemployed, spokesman for the Reagan Ad- nuine democratic rights that would landless and starving peasants to be ministration claimed that "Duvalier benefit the proletariat and other op- employed by the imperialist in- was the only object of dissension pressed masses and they are correct frastructural companies for a which is very rare in the region, he demands for the stage of the strug- miserable bowl of food. Duvalierism was the only one they hated." All gle and revolution that has to be gave USAID, the World Bank, the this is wishful imperialist thinking; waged in Haiti, i.e., a new IMF and other imperialist institu- in reality this is not so, and the democratic revolution. tions so much freedom to implement masses are systematically hunting Although we support every just their austerity plans that the IMF down Macoutes, cutting off their democratic demand of the masses in complimented Haiti as "a textbook heads, setting up people's tribunals this period, what we cannot support example of how an austerity plan to try Macoutes, burning their is the notion that the pro-imperialist should be implemented." It also houses, demanding that all junta will truly democratize the enabled an army of petit bourgeois Macoutes be kicked out of the in- country and grant the democratic bureaucrats to live as parasites by terim government, etc. It is clear that demands of the masses. In fact what t2

we have seen is that every concession letariat can break imperialism's from their hiding places, and we made by the junta to the masses chains on Haiti, and break up not must support the students who results from the masses' struggle. A only the Macoutes, but the entire refuse to go back to the rotten school clear example is that to even change repressive machinery. system and instead want to go and the black and red flag of the It should also be clear that neither teach the masses how to read and Duvaliers to the blue and red, the the junta, the various compradors write. masses have to take to the street. In and aspiring compradors who are Besides supporting the initiative fact, the reason the junta didn't take lining up for the projected electoral and struggle of the masses, we must the black and red flag down when farce, the church, nor the bourgeois keep in mind that these positive steps Duvalier left is because it is their flag forces that are now leading the anti- taken by the masses wodld not in also! They have defended it with Duvalierism struggle can carry that themselves lead to a revolution. The weapons for the past29 years. Thus struggle all the way, i.e., for full proletariat and its party (which re- it is obvious that the junta will not democratic rights, the total mains to be built) are not leading the on their own grant the democratic dismantling of Duvalierism and the class struggle right now, and if the demands of the people, although, on establishment of a new-democratic proletariat does not lead it other the other hand, due to the masses' order that fundamentally breaks classes will, and these forces are pressure they would grant some of with imperialism. The proletariat already trying to restrain the masses. those demands. But even when they alone can lead those masses, Some are already saying to the grant those demands they are doing especially the peasantry, who have a masses that their actions are terrible, it to buy time in order to lull the genuine interest in driving out im- they are already calling for calm and masses into submission, or for them perialism and instituting the new- an end to the bloodshed, etc. They to be able to recover and regroup democratic revolution. are telling the masses that the their troops to repress the masses. Macoutes, the ruling class and the Could anyone imagine the junta What Should the Tactics of the repressive forces are their brothers, eliminating the Macoutes, the Revolutionaries Be in this Present that they should not hate them, that Leopards or the entire repressive Juncture? they should show them kindness and machinery in place to repress the In this present juncture we must not forgiveness! In fact, they are telling masses and to protect the interests of remain aloof from the class struggle the masses that all they need now are the ruling class and the imperialists? of the masses. We must not let the some petty reforms. I To do so would be illogical from the bourgeois democrats and other non- We revolutionary Marxist- I vantage point of class; for the class proletarian forces have the leader- Leninists and all conscious patriots a interests the junta is put in place to ship of the struggle for democratic should not let this happen. We Or defend, it would be suicide! It is for rights and the struggle to put an end should not let these forces co-opt the that reason that the junta is shelter- to Duvalierism. We must get right in mass struggle and turn it into a ? ing the Macoutes, giving some of the midst of this struggle, and con- reformist struggle. We should step i them safe passage out of the coun- tend for its leadership so that it can up our struggle to prevent that from o try and even putting others in army be pushed further. In this context all happening. We should fight to erect h uniforms! revolutionary Marxist-Leninists the party of the proletariat with its {a By saying that, we don't mean must support all democratic independent banner where its q that the junta is all-powerful. As a demands that are beneficial to the demands and program is boldly in- o matter of fact, regardless of the oppressed masses, even if these scribed. This task cannot be wishes and aspirations of the junta, demands are being put forward by postponed - it must be undertaken {= they have to objectively deal with the bourgeois democrats and other non- now. rage and the struggle of the masses, proletarian forces. At the same time, and the fact that they weren't able to we reject and criticize their "from Immediate Tasks of Marxist- let Luc Desyr leave the country is an above" or reformist orientation. Leninist Revolutionaries indication both of their weakness Also it is our duty to support the in- The main task of the Marxist- and of the power of the masses' itiative of the masses to take matters Leninist revolutionaries is to work to struggle to affect events. It is even into their own hands. Thus, we must lead the proletariat and the oppress- conceivable that from the pressure firmly support Opdration ed Haitian masses to resolve in their of the masses the jtnta may even put Dechouke, and even take part in it, own class interest the centuries-old some Macoutes on trial. But the jun- for the struggle to eliminate the contradictions of Haitian society ta is a carbon copy of the Duvalier Macoutes is a righteous struggle and through armed revolution, to seize regime and it will never dismantle a revolutionary initiative of the power through people's war and the machinery that is put there to masses. We must also support and then to establish the democratic dic- keep the masses down and to protect promote action such as the people's tatorship of the people over their the interests of the imperialists and tribunals that were set up in class enemies. To do that the party the Haitian ruling class. The junta, Gonaives that judged and jailed two of the proletariat must develop and and the bourgeois and the im- hundred Macoutes for crimes com- formulate a program that could lead perialist forces they represent, can- mitted against the masses. We must the proletariat and its allies to vic- not lead a thoroughgoing revolution support fully the masses when they tory. against imperialism. Only the pro- are dragging the Macoutes away The party must be built with the t3

and definite lines of demarcation between the science of Marxism- Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and revisionism, elevate the political consciousness of the masses with socialism, formulate correct strategy and tactics for each stage of the revolution, and rally the revolu- tionary masses behind the ideology, banner and program of the pro- letariat. (b) While bringing the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the proletariat we must also learn from them, learn about their needs, their demands, their methods of struggle, and learn also to rely on them and have faith in them. We must also support the demands of the masses for democratic rights and political liber- ty, while raising their sights and preparing them for the final assault on the enemy fortress. In that con- text, we fully support and call on all to fight for:

l) The struggle to destroy the Macoutes, from below, and prevent their reincorporation into the reac- tionary state apparatus. In addition, L support the struggle against the Leopards and other repressive s arms D of the state. F 2) The ouster from government, tr the state sector and the armed forces of all Macoutes and Duvalierists, d and their jailing. { 3) The freedom to speak out, z debate and discuss fully the question of transforming Haitian society in- G just s Bqnner carried by demonstrating Hairians in New york. to a one. Or 4) The right of the workers to Ot form unions and of the peasants objective leading to of the proletariat movement in the form of the organize. and its allies to wage people's war, Decloration of the Revolutionory In- 5) The right to publish literature. to lead the masses to make a ternationqlist Movement. Most fun- 6) The right political thoroughgoing for parties to revolution and then damental to that are the great con- organize. seize power. The party's program tributions made by Mao Tsetung, 7) The elimination should not only provide of torture answers to whose theory, as the Declorqtion chambers and torture instruments. how the proletariat is going to seize points out, forms "the point of 8) The abolition of the 1969 anti- power; it must also lead the peasan_ reference for elaborating revolu- Communist law. try to resolve the age-old contradic_ tionary strategy and tactics', in 9) The right for all Haitians to tion against the landowner, pro- countries like Haiti. enter or leave the country without viding concrete answers to waging To build this party as soon as visas. the agrarian revolution, based on possible, tfri the revolutionaries cannot l0) An end to the dispossession worker-peasant alliance. of stand aloof from the mass struggles land in the countryside. As a basic guide and framework now being waged, but should active- ll) Nullification of rhe USAID for developing such a program, we ly participate in this. We should project to take 3090 ofthe land out are fortunate to have and must make adopt a two-pronged strategy: of production of food crops. full use of the summed up experience 12) Return of all land that was of the international communist (a) Unite our ranks, draw firm taken from peasants during the past 29 years. 13) Extradition of Duvalier and his family and repatriation of all money stolen from the peoPle. l4) U.S. imperialism to im- mediately withdraw its 32 warships from Haiti's coastal waters. l5) Support the repatriation and compensation of Haitian cane- cutters now in the Dominican Republic. No more slaves to the Dominican Republic!

It should be clear to all that these 15 basic demands are not the Pro- gram to form the PartY. This Pro- gram remains to be forged in the coming period. But they are basic fighting demands for the current situation. While the ruling class and their imperialist masters are trying their desperate best to stifle and put a stop to the struggle of the masses, we the revolutionaries should fight to the death to keep the flame of the masses' struggle burning, for the more the crisis develops the more the possibility there will be for a revolu- tion, and the more chance for us to develop the fighting ability of the masses and ourselves to make that revolution. Lenin told us that "the proletariat seeks its salvation not by avoiding the class struggle but bY developing it, by extending its scope, its own class consciousness, organization and determination. The (communist) who debases the task of political struggle becomes transformed from a tribune of the people into a trade union secretary. The (communist) who debases the proletariat's task in a democratic bourgeois revolution becomes transformed from a leader of the people's revolution into a mere leader of a free labor union." Comrade revolutionaries! Let's be tribunes of the people. Let's be leaders of the people's revolution. Let's take part in the class struggle to develop and extend the scoPe of the organization and fighting deter- mination of the proletariat and the oppressed. In that spirit we call on all revolutionaries and conscious patriots to step up the struggle to form the party and to keep the crisis "out of control. " Thus all of us who are in exile should strive to return to Worusn setling water by the cup in a Port-au-Prince tnarket. Haiti in an organized and well- planned way to push the Process of t5 building the party of the proletariat stood on the verge of upheaval, as and to keep the flame of the masses' Haiti does today: struggle_burning. And a very impor- tant link to do these two things right "In a very short time, in China's now is the formation of a revolu- central, southern and northern pro- tionary newspaper, as described in vinces, several hundred million the call we have put out. peasants will rise like a mighty Comrades! This is indeed an ex- storm, like a hurricane, a force so citing and historical moment. Let's swift and violent that no power, seize the time, let's transform that however great, will be able to hold revolutionary situation into a it back. They will smash all the tram- revolution. To finish this text we mels that bind them and rush for- turn to Lenin and Mao: ward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, "Revolutions are festivals of the warlords, corrupt officials, local oppressed and exploited. At no tyrants and evil gentry into their other time are the mass of the peo- graves. Every revolutionary party ple in a position to come forward so and every revolutionary comrade actively as creators of a new social will be put to the test, to be accepted order as at a time of revolution. At or rejected as they decide. There are such times the people are capable of three alternatives. To march at their performing miracles, if judged by head and lead them? To trail behind the limited, philistine yardstick of them, gesticulating and criticizing? gradualist progress. But it is essen- Or to stand in their way and oppose tial that leaders of the revolutionary them? Every Chinese is free to parties, too, should advance their choose, but events will force you to aims more comprehensively and make the choice quickly." boldly at such a time, so that their slogans shall always be in advance of These passages capture exactly the revolutionary initiative of the what we must do and what our at- b masses, serve as a beacon, reveal to titude must be in this historic mo- them our democratic and socialist ment. Onward to the new- { ideal in all its magnitude and splen- democratic dictatorship of the o dor, and show them the shortest and revolutionary classes, led by the pro- -F tr most direct route to complete, ab- letariat. Comrades - let's go for it! solute and decisive victory." March, 1986 d And as Mao said, when China { z as & o\ O. t*# & & k s .s-j i: t

,

s s t$ Fs

s $s t6 A Ccrll to the RevolutionqrY

By the Hclition RevolutionqtY

qnd the Hoition I I g6 Haiti stands at a crossroads. landlords, the elite and the foreign pioneered by Mao Tsetung in the must aPP- 3 Every day more people take to the capitalists. They argue with one Chinese revolution, and Haiti's streets, struggling for their demands. another over who should run Haiti, ly those concepts to Par- i new But how to satisfy the deep hopes but they all agree that it should nol ticular conditions. This is not in itself P and dreams of the Haitian people be the masses! democratic revolution the relations o for freedom and genuine emanciPa- The second road is that of genuine socialist; its targets are { im- q tion? Behind all the various pro- revolution. The goal of present-day of structured dePendencY on rela- o grams lie two diametrically opposed revolution in Haiti is a new perialism and the semi-feudal and the answers to these questions; and each democratic revolution, in which all tions in the countrYside maintain = answer leads to a very different remnants of feudalism are classes and institutions that future. obliterated, all structures enforcing and defend them. But it must, to en- justice fun- We propose the following basic dependency on imperialism are sure final and even to break those relations, set answer as a starting point for action demolished, and a qualitatively new damentally the and unity among all true revolu- state power in the hands of the itself from the very beginning further to a socialist tionaries and conscious patriots: revolutionary classes comes into be- task to advance ing. The proponents of this road stage. l) New Democratic Revolution. support the masses' struggle now armY, the One road before us is that of the raging and want to see it grow into 2) "Without a PeoPle's This state- past. Its proponents loudly propose a revolution against those classes people have nothing." a few reforms, but would leave who maintain and profit from ment by Mao Tsetung is a Profound onlY be Haiti's neo-colonial dependence on Haiti's backwardness and who truth. True liberation can the U.S. (and other imperialist channel the sweat and blood of its won by a war of the masses. AnY powers) untouched. The proponents people into the hands of imperialists schemes for a so-called "peaceful re- of this road from Bazin to PUCH and reactionaries. revolution," or that alternately a small all talk about- the need for elec- To truly win emancipation, and ly on the heroic actions of strug- tions- and parliaments. But they say not just exchange one imperialist handful, can only set back the grasp not a word about destroying the master for another, this revolution gle. Alt revolutionaries must formulate the reactionary army, which will always must be guided by the concepts of this and begin now to enforce the interests of the big New Democratic Revolution strategy and tactics of mass armed l7 Hoitiqn Movement

Internqtionqlist Group (GRlAl

Workers Porty (PTHI ! E - struggle appropriate to the revolu- revolution in Haiti will not last contact be established among all F tion in Haiti. forever. While the U.S. and the Hai- who agree with these points in order tr tian army prepare to drown the to intervene and raise the level ofthe d 3) The backbone of the. new revolution in blood, we cannot current struggle, with the aim of democratic revolution is the alliance waste a minute! But a party must be launching the armed contest for s between the proletariat and Haiti's built on a firm foundation. In par- power at the earliest possible time; z vast and oppressed peasantry. political I But ticular, it must demarcate itself from And second, that the and I for the new democratic revolution to any trends aligning either with the organizational unity necessary to 6 win victory, it must be a people's Soviet Union, or Cuba, Albania, form a party be actively developed q war based on a united front of all the present-day China, etc., or social with the key link in that process : o\ popular classes whose interests lie in democracy. Instead, it should look organized debate and struggle the overthrow of the present order. internationally to those forces around a correct programme for the The tasks of leading and forging this grouping together in the Revolu- Haitian revolution. united front, with the worker- tionary Internationalist Movement, peasant alliance at its core, falls to including the Communist Party of Comrades! To those whom much the proletariat - the class which Peru (known in the media as is given, much is demanded. The alone has no stake at all in the pre- Sendero Luminoso) which current- eyes of the world are following sent order and represents a future ly wages people's war in Peru. Haiti, and what we do will affect not free from all exploitation and op- In the spirit of urgently forming only Haiti but even more impor- pression. this party and leading the revolu- tantly the whole- planet. The times tionary process forward we propose demand- that we set aside minor dif- 4) To shoulder these historic tasks, that Haitian revolutionary forces ferences, unite on true questions of the working class needs its own individuals, circles and organized- principle and rise to these truly vanguard party, based on Marxism- groups orient themselves historic challenges. Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. politically around the above four The need to form such a party cries points. And based on this political SEIZE THE TIME! out with special pressing urgency; it orientation: SEIZE THE HOUR! must be done as soon as possible! FORWARD WITH REVOLU- The current opportunity to make That organized and consistent TION! tr t8 t'People Are

Disposed to Tcrke Cqre

I of Business" aI s =i P a q{ Tolks wirh Hoiriqn Workers Porty (PTHI oi

Followino ore sliqhilv edited responses to o series tionaries' ability to manoeuvre. o{ ouesti"ons ootld in tolks with o member of the The people are in a mood to demonstrate in the (Hoition Workers Porty). streets. They don't want to ask the government and PoriiTrovoye Ayisiin . . - for them; they want to act -AWTW the armed forces to act The fundamental reason for Duvalier's overthrow for themselves. They are not only demanding that February 7th 1986 was the mobilisation of the peo- the military junta put the criminal Tonton Macoutes ple, the masses' eagerness to be involved in the on trial; they themselves are hunting down political process. This was the situation before and Macoutes and trying them in the streets, hunting after February 7th and it's a very important them down, holding trials, condemning them and characteristic of the political situation. The masses killing them. The fact that the masses are disposed in Haiti are standing up. They took part in to take care of business themselves is extremely im- Duvalier's overthrow and they haven't sat down portant for understanding the current political since. situation. It's not just a matter of Duvalier's being over- This desire among the masses to act, to take to thrown and the masses welcoming it. They played the streets, has in no way been exhausted since an enormous role in his overthrow and they are still February 7th, although it may have had its ebbs and for their demands. This is frightening the flows and not every moment is equally hot. The struggling junta, Haitian reaction and imperialism, because the reaction is trying to get them to stop. The the masses are remaining awake and this hurts the reac- armed forces and even a good part of Church forces E o ! F tr d { z 5 Tonton Mscoute brought to justice by the people. a Ot q who took part in Duvalier's overthrow are now months now all the Protestant churches have been talking about a time for "forgiveness." The Church talking about is the danger of communism. Not the says instead of hunting down and killing the danger of the Tonton Macoutes and the Duvalierists criminals, the people need "peace." For them, there who are still in power, but the danger of com- was no crisis under Duvalier's regime, but now that munism. In every church the ministers preach con- Duvalier has been overthrown and the masses are in stantly about how bad it is under communism, the streets, they're screaming about "crisis," as if about slavery in Cuba and other countries. This is this crisis were a bad thing. But this crisis is a good an orchestrated campaign involving the churches, thing for the people; they're demonstrating and the mass media and so on; it's not at all spon- making their will felt and that's a very good taneous. Can it be that every church spontaneously thing. - decided to do the same thing in the same way at the To a certain extent the reaction has been able to same time without orders from above? impede the further development of this crisis and They say communism is that if you have two this mood among the masses. As you know, the pairs of pants, I take one away from you. They're Catholic Church is very powerful. It's working very all repeating the same stupid lies in unison. They hard to keep things from developing further. The talk about how bad life is under communism in Protestant sects have done the same. The ruling other countries and then warn people, "there's classes as a whole have unleashed an extraordinarily communists among you, working in silence intense anticommunist campaign right now. For watch out because they want to take over your- 20

movement and lead you into slavery." So to avoid The manoeuvres of the reactionaries have imped- this slavery the masses are supposed to stop ed the development of this movement to some ex- demonstrating and stop their movements, to stop tent, but they have not been able to stop it, even their dechoukage, their campaign to tear up the very with their provocations. The massacre at Fort roots of the Duvalier regime. Dimanche, April 26, was a major provocation. The target of the demonstrations and the dechoukage is the Duvalierists, all of them, within Fort Dimanche Massacre the government, the army, the bourgeoisie or There had been an initiative from among the masses wherever they may be found. The masses want to and the rank-and-file church members who had drag them out. The masses are afraid that these decided to hold a mass wake for the thousands of forces won't be touched. In the first days after political prisoners who'd been killed over the Duvalier fell, "everyone" was in agreement with the Duvalier years at Fort Dimanche and in the streets dechoukage, with dragging out the Tonton and elsewhere. The people planned to hold a mass Macoutes but only the little ones. When the wake, get together throughout the country that regime saw- that the dechoukoge was continuing and Saturday night and drink coffee and play dominos that the people were dragging out the Macoutes in and cards and talk, in memory of those killed in the high places, civilian and military alike, even among jails or their homes or made to "disappear." There the most powerful bourgeoisie, then they decided it are no statistics about how many people had been had to stop. The army and some elements of the killed - some people say it was 30,000 or 50,000 or bourgeoisie were able to take part in the movement more. at first, and helped hunt down Macoutes, but only Some were killed in their homes. The Macoutes the least important ones, the neighborhood would go to a student's home, for instance. They Macoutes, not their bosses. Most of the Macoutes wouldn't arrest him on the streets. They would go killed in the first days weren't bigshots because the to his home, take him out and shoot him in front of bigshots enjoyed impunity. They had money and the whole family, then shoot everyone who lived in places to hide and when the army came for them it the house, parents, kids, grandparents, even the was to take them to safety. Sometimes the Army ar- family dog. Then they'd burn down the house and rested these bigshots in order to carry them to safe- leave the ruins to remind parents not to let their ty in the National Palace, where they're not children get involved in politics. In this way the prisoners but eat well and watch TV. family pressures against the students were very 2t

strong. Macoutes and communists. This wasn't true. At the In the early 1960s, when some people who'd gone same time, there were rumours that Duvalierists in abroad for military training came back, they were the army were about to launch a 'Ihe coup d'6tat against allcaptured and killed. head ot the military the junta. Perhaps it was true. But there's reason to commission of the revisionist party, the PUCH, the believe that these rumours were spread by the junta man who was in charge of infiltrating them into the itself, so that the people would support it instead of country, was a Macoute. The regime brought lycde opposing it, as if the people had to choose between students to witness the firing squads. a military junta and a Macoute junta. They're still Others were killed secretly, killed in jail or on the talking about the danger of a Macoute coup. That roads somewhere or simply "disappeared." Their possibility can't be discarded, because there are still bodies were left on the roadsides or thrown into a lot of Duvalierists, a lot of Macoutes, in the common graves or shallow holes. So if suddenly leadership of the army. But at the same time this you didn't see somebody, you wouldn't know for threat is a manoeuvre by the junta. The people say sure for a long time what happened to them, or you the junta's no good, that all these officers served might never know. After awhile, some prisoners Duvalier and that it's a Duvalierist junta, and the might be released and none of them would have junta says maybe some of them were Duvalierists seen so-and-so, so you'd figure he was dead. But but at least they weren't the most extreme you'd never know for sure. He'd just be gone, and Duvalierists, there's others worse than them who if he was gone, people figured it was better not to aren't in the junta. The junta is trying to keep itself talk about it because the Macoutes must have taken in power by frightening people with the idea of an him. even worse junta. So people wanted to have a national day of mourning for all these dead, a day that would be Enemy Greatly Weakened celebrated not just in Port-au-Prince but in every The armed forces include 6000 police and 2000 town and neighborhood in Haiti. That morning, soldiers organised into three battalions, all in the which was on a Saturday, there was a mass capital one at the national palace, one in Fort celebrated in Port-au-Prince. The church was small Desalines,- and one counterinsurgency battalion, the but about 10,000 people crowded into it. After- Leopards. The navy has one boat and 300 sailors. wards they had police permission for a demonstra- There's practically no air force. There were over tion that would pass by Fort Dimanche, the most 50,000 Macoutes, which was the main armed force, famous prison in Haiti, where political prisoners but they're mostly laid off now. Duvalier tore down L were held. Fort Dimanche was run jointly by the the army, kept it small and put in people who were national police and the Macoutes. It has a large personally loyal to him. He made some guys s prison yard ! overlooking the sea. Sometimes the generals who couldn't read or write because such F prisoners' bodies were thrown into the sea, people would be loyal to Duvalier and couldn't u sometimes they were buried in the yard. lt's a sym- hope to replace him themselves. Instead he built up bol of torture and murder in Haiti. Before this the Macoutes. So now the state has been very d Saturday, the demand had been raised throughout weakened. { the country to close down Fort Dimanche. Instead When Papa Doc came to power, and throughout ? of being a jail it should be turned into a museum so his years in power, he was a representative of the that future generations could make pilgrimages and landlords. He was their open representative. In the s learn about the past. a elections of 1956-57 when he came to power, other o\ So after this mass, people went to march to Fort candidates represented the bourgeoisie. Part of the o\ Dimanche. There were people of all classes, from bourgeoisie supported Duvalier, and part opposed the shantytowns and the middle class him. The army had seized power in June 1957, and neighborhoods, women and men, children, some organised elections in September 1957, but there priests and nuns. The Macoutes were waiting to am- were divisions in the ruling classes and within the bush the crowd as it approached Fort Dimanche. armed forces. Most of the bourgeoisie opposed Their intention was to provoke an incident, get peo- Duvalier. The elections were a farce. The army guy ple killed so that the government would impose a in charge of organising the elections was a curfew and ban the national wake that was to take Duvalierist. place that evening. And that's what happened. The Since the time of Haiti's independence from Macoutes opened fire on marchers, and the police, France, there has been a struggle between the including Duvalierists among them, started shooting landlords and the bourgeoisie in Haiti. At times this at the crowd, saying that the demonstrators were has taken the form of a struggle between blacks and about to assault Fort Dimanche and close it down mulattos, whose skin was lighter. The bourgeoisie is themselves, since it was still a jail. The police didn't mulatto and the landlords blacker. In reality this shoot above people's heads. They shot directly into has been a struggle between two reactionary classes the crowd to kill them. The junta used this as an ex- over which would have hegemony over state power. cuse to ban all demonstrations and gatherings. Duvalier was more a representative of the landlords The government talked about provocateurs; they than the bourgeoisie, and after he took power, he said that the shootings had been provoked by both forced the bourgeoisie to accept him. It's said that 22

at that time there were 30 millionaire families rn the big merchants as well, saying that they were bad Haiti. When Duvalier fel[, there were 200 such guys and thieves too. They began removing civilian families. What happened is that the bourgeoisie as a authorities. The movement began to take on certain whole became Duvalierist. There are many newly aspects of a class struggle and a struggle for wealthy families, people loyal to Duvalier who political power. became part of the bourgeoisie. Duvalier had a The point is that if the popular movement con- theory that he propagated, that Haiti needed a rinues, if it cuts off the heads of not just the little black bourgeoisie to deal with the mulatto Macoutes but the biggest ones as well, including the bourgeoisie. Duvalier used the whole negritude top army officers and the big bourgeoisie, it will movement that had arisen, the idea that Haiti need- destablise the regime. The dechoukage is a danger ed a black president, black bourgeoisie, more black to the whole ruling class and their system. When the priests black power, he called it, but basically it dechoukage began, it was directed against the was the- power of the landlords and other reac- Macoutes and often it united with army officers to tionaries. Really the bourgeoisie has had more get this or that Macoute. The military didn't mind weight in the state power than the landlords for a at all when the people killed some little Macoutes. long time now, before and since Duvalier, no matter But then the movement began taking on Macoutes who was president; but what happened after in the army. The people knew full well that some Duvalier is that the bulk of the bourgeoisie became people in military uniform, some officers, were Duvalierist. After all, he had 29 years to get his Macoutes Duvalier had sent into the army; they'd people into the bourgeoisie and every aspect of the go after some officer who'd been the top Macoute government and social life and the rest of the in a particular neighborhood and take him prisoner bourgeoisie had 29 years to come to terms with him. and beat him. They began hitting at the Macoutes At the beginning of the regime, Duvalier created who were army officers and the Macoutes who were the militia, the Macoutes, as a fanatical black Church officials - even Archbishop Ligondd organisation, to demagogically win popularity and himself, who was a Macoute. He was a cousin of take on the bourgeoisie that at that time opposed Duvalier's wife, Michelle Bennett, and used to be in him. He took some lumpen and gave them powen the presidential palace with the rest of Duvalier's and used them against his bourgeois opponents. His family. first recruits into the militia, almost all of them in As I said, the army is very weak, and what the I the countryside and most of them in the cities too, ruling classes fear most is that the dechoukage I were thieves and robbers. Of course he didn't tell movement will weaken it more. Some of the 6 them they were being recruited to massacre the peo- younger officers would like to get rid of the older S ple. He'd say, here, take this rifle, 4nd if any rich officers who are Macoutes so that they can advance man, any bourgeois, tries to overthrow me, you their own careers, and the U.S. agrees that some of 3 have to defend me. He'd take a guy who was shin- the most visible Macoutes within the armed forced ! ing shoes in front of some big business, some guy will have to go. But not all of them and not even g who'd spent most of his life in and out of prison, the majority of these Macoutes, because the U.S. and he'd say, here, take this rifle and you go in needs them to reorganise the armed forces. The plan {a there and arrest the head of this company because of the U.S. is first to reorganise the armed forces tr he opposes me. In this way he created a group of and then have elections so they can put in whoever o fanatics who thought they were fighting the rich. they want. They don't want to hold elections now i Soon enough they found themselves fighting the because the situation isn't sufficiently under their masses, but at the beginning it had another control. The armed forces are the heart of the state. character. There have been cases where the military junta has replaced the head of a public service or an Broadening the Target enterprise, put in their own guy, and the employees At the beginning, during the first few days of the of the service or enterprise have had meetings and mass uprising, the target of the spontaneous move- rejected the government's choice, saying that the ment was the Macoutes. They hunted down the guy was a Duvalierist. The minister would appoint Macoutes and beat them and killed them. This is someone and the employees would all walk out. The what gave the Haitian movement a particular junta would have to retreat. ln the post office, all flavour. The reaction thought they could keep it the employees had a mass assembly and chose their from going too far and some bourgeois elements own manager and forced the government to accept even participated in it, but what has happened is him. When other people saw this, they began to do that the dechoukage has weakened them, the masses the same thing. In the public television company, have not given up the initiative, and the demand to they began demanding not just the removal of the dechouke the biggest Macoutes in the army and in Duvalierists but a complete housecleaning and the junta itself is becoming stronger every day. The reorganisation. They said, some guys come in at dechoukage movement began in the city, but it has ll a.m. and leave at noon and get $3000 a month, spread throughout the whole country, including the while the cleaning women who keep this place countryside. In the neighborhoods, after going after beautiful make $25 a month. They wanted to put an the local Macoutes, the movement began taking on end to this inequality. 23

Hitting Reactionary Power in the Countryside Evangelical ministers were Macoutes and worked This movement spread to the countryside. The peo- with the CIA. They had guns and went out at night ple wanted to dechouke the chefs de section, kick to kill people. Nobody's hunting them down. So them out of office and put them on trial. The coun- why hunt down and kill voodoo priests who weren't tryside is divided into more than 500 sections. The Duvalierists? Why kill just them? The dechoukage chefs de section are police authorities, not civilian movement should go after all the clergy who were authorities. They're military authorities; they work Duvalierists, the houngans, the priests and the out of the police barracks and wear military preachers, but right now it should not target the uniforms. They are military authorities, mayors and houngans who weren't Duvalierists. Voodoo has as judges all rolled into one. They tried people right in much right to exist in Haiti as the Western religions. the barracks, they'd jail them or impose fines. Very The dechoukage movement is creating a power olten the chefs de section are the biggest landlords vacuum in the countryside. The state power exists in the section, and Macoutes, and voodoo priests only in the cities; in the countryside things are more too. For a very long time there's been a demand to contested. The old power is being destroyed. In replace these chefs de section with popular councils. some places there is no power. In others people Duvalier himself had to write a new part of the have chosen their own mayors, setting up their own rural code which was to replace the chefs de section local civilian governments. In a few places, power is vl'ith councils, but it was never implemented. The in the hands of the people. For example, in some dechoukage movement hit them too; in the coun- places no important measure gets decided unless tryside people are putting chefs de section on trial there's a mass meeting and everyone expresses and sometimes killing them. Sometimes the peasant themselves and decides. This has happened especial- movements demand that their representative replace ly when peasant organisations have arisen and when the old chef de section. Linked to this, there's the it's been these organisations who've overthrown the movement against the voodoo priests, who aren't all old chefs de section. The degree to which these pea- chefs de section. sant groups have become strong, which varies very ln a certain sense, the dechoukage movement has much, is an extremely important factor in the hit harder at the houngans, the voodoo priests, than revolutionary development of the countryside. at the chefs de section. That's not because of spon- Before Duvalier was overthrown peasant groups taneous reasons, and it's very controversial. had already developed out of the struggle in a few Everyone agrees that the houngans who were places. But during and after Duvalier's fall, poor L Duvalierists must be put on trial, because they're and middle peasants and agrarian labourers organis- criminals. But sometimes the movement is just ed themselves very quickly. s against the houngans in general. To promote a con- This rapid organisation of mass organisations is -F frontation between followers of voodoo, which is an extremely important point. Among them are pea- tr the religion of the masses of people, and followers sant groups, trade unions, organisations of of the Catholic and Protestant churches, is very students, youth and women. In some places, these d dangerous because it poses the danger of religious groups have an aspect of people's power they war in Haiti. It is the Catholic Church and above all meet and discuss and decide everything. They- knock s the Protestant churches that are promoting this. down old chiefs and put up new ones, and continue : The CIA is utilising this to sidetrack the mass move- meeting and struggling over all aspects of communi- a ment, to turn it away from political struggle and in- ty life. 6 to a religious war. There have long been religious Right now the peasants are playing a very impor- q conflicts in Haiti through which some people have tant role. Peasants make up 8590 of Haiti's popula- q tried to promote foreign religion against native tion, so you can see they have a certain weight. religion and thus promote cultural dependency. Haiti is basically a rural country and the Haitian Voodoo is part of the people's culture. It's a na- national question is basically a peasant question. tional religion, while Catholicism and especially It's not only a matter of the peasants being the Protestantism has come from abroad. So the overwhelming majority. The social inequality bet- bourgeoisie, in order to rob the people of their na- ween the peasants and the other social classes is so tional identity, has always promoted Christianity enormous that they might seem like two entirely and claimed that those who weren't Christian were separate nations. The differences between Haitian nothing but primitive heathens, that conversion to peasants and the reactionary classes is far greater Christianity was the only way Haiti could become than in many other countries, as are the differences part of Western civilisation. even between the peasants and the factory workers. Of course the whole voodoo structure was very The ruling classes don't even consider these linked to Duvalier, but that's not why the peasants as Haitians. They call them Africans, as if bourgeoisie and the CIA oppose it. There are plenty they were Africans who happened to be in Haiti. of Macoutes in the Catholic Church, lots of The living standards are extremely unequal, and this Catholic priests who murdered people, and they're in a country where living standards overall are very still in the Church. They're not being hunted down. low. The gap between the peasants and the other The Archbishop was a Macoute 10090 and they're classes is enormous in every way, even in language. not going after him. The majority of the The upper classes speak French and most education 24

is in French but 8590 of the people don't speak Now the question of pigs has become extremely French at all. important. For the peasant, having a pig or two to kill is about the only way to get some cash. Tradi- Rural Classes and Their Demands tionally it's their form of savings. But a few years Sometimes it's said there was agrarian reform after ago, there was a swine flu epidemic that killed off Haiti won its independence, but this isn't true. For their pigs, and the new breed of pigs being introduc- example, in Jacmel the peasants have no land. The ed requires a special kind of feed, a feed that costs land planted to coffee, cacao, etc., is all in the so much that some peasants would have to spend hands of the big landlords, and the peasants have more to feed such pigs than they spend to feed nothing. If they do have a little land, it's unproduc- themselves. Not only that, but these pigs require tive land. The demand for land is very strong medicines and so on which the peasants can't among the peasantry. In general, those who do have possibly afford. In a country where the masses can't land can't do much with it, because it's often divid- afford to eat meat, where they have no protein, the ed into different pieces; they have no irrigation, no U.S. is developing a giant agribusiness which seeds, nothing. The landlords and the agrarian monopolises pigs and other livestock, which raises bourgeoisie have tractors, but the peasant has pigs and so on for export, to be flown to New York nothing but a mdch6te and a hoe. The hoe is the and sold and eaten there. The peasants want to main tool in Haitian agriculture. rebel against this situation but the government Haiti has both big landowners and small lan- doesn't want to pay any attention to their demands. dholders. But wherever the land is good, that's It allocates resources to export-agriculture. where the big landowners predominate, that's where For example, there is an area of rice fields in,Ver- the land is concentrated in their hands and the rette where the government wants to build a dam peasants mostly have to work for them. It's mainly for generating electric power. If they build this dam where the land's no good that you have some small the rice fields will be flooded over. The peasant are landholdings by the peasants. So the demand for struggling against this plan. They are saying, what land to the tiller is important. are we supposed to do if we accept the little money ln the central part of Haiti, where the peasants the government is offering us for our land? It's not have a little land or where it's good land, that's enough to buy land somewhere else. Are we suppos- where there are the strongest agrarian conflicts ed to go to the Dominican Republic to cut cane? I because the landlords and their lawyers find ways to There's a big peasant movement against this dam' I take away the peasants' land and the peasants rise There are also other strata in the countryside. a up. The peasants take up their machetes and hoes There are many sharecroppers, who give the S and fight the landlords. Often these uprisings are landlord half of their crops in return for the right to z met with repression and even massacres but that plant on a piece of his land. Then there is a very im- doesn't prevent the peasants from rising up again portant strata of agrarian workers. Some work their ! and again. Now they are seizing land, especially own land part of the year and for the other part g land that the Macoutes had taken away from them. travel around the country doing wage labour for For example, in southeast Haiti, which is linked to various landlords. Others travel around the country {a the Dominican countryside, in Thiotte, for instance, all year round, working first in one crop and then in q the peasants haven't been waiting for the courts to another. There's a great deal of internal migration o give them their lands back. They just take them. in Haiti. These two extremely marginalised strata Often the chefs de section have fled and the make up the bulk of the Haitian peasants. = peasants hold mass meetings and invade the lands. To some degree you could say that the greater In this area there were several big Macoutes who part of labour utilised in the Haitian countryside is had a lot of land, who stole a lot of it, and who've wage labour, that the relations between the fled. Then the peasants work this land, usually on labourers and landlords are capitalist relations and an individual basis although sometimes they form not feudal relations, but you have to take into ac- mutual aid teams. Traditionally there have been all count the manner in which the landlords use both kinds of different forms of mutual aid teams all the feudal and the capitalist modes of production over the country, to carry out harvests and other and the interrelationship between them. After the aspects of production in common. But in addition slaves rose up against the slave system and to these teams, the peasants are forming new destroyed it, at the end of the eighteenth century, organisations, not just to carry out production but they thought they were going to get land, but in- to defend themselves. Such organisations are begin- stead the generals in the revolutionary army got it ning to appear in several places, and there have all. There arose something called combite, a feudal been some efforts to form national federations and tradition, which required the sharecropper to work a national organisation. At the same time the on the landlord's land part of the time for nothing. peasants are getting rid of the chefs de sections. The On a particular day the peasants would all be sum- peasants are forming these organisations to make moned to the landlord's land. They'd bring musical their voices heard regarding affairs on a national instruments and the landlord would provide a little level and to win their demands, which mainly means food and sometimes a cheap rum called clerin. The land. people would work hard all day. The music would Fort Dimqnche mqssocre.

be to get them to work faster. Then they'd eat a lit- to agrarian reform and the satisfaction of the tle and drink and then go home. That would be it, peasants' demands. In a sense it could be said that that's all they'd get for their work. They wouldn't the problem of the Haitian peasant and the Hai- get paid and they'd get nothing from the harvest. tian people is mainly a peasant people- is land. There were peasant rebellions against this system. Without satisfying the peasants' demand- for land In the mid-nineteenth century there was a massive there can't be any development of the internal peasant uprising, a peasant war, and this system market, because now they can afford to consume rvas finally weakened. People began to stop showing hardly anything, either Haitian or imported pro- up for combite, so that by the end of the nineteenth ducts. It is the petit bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie century the landlords had to start paying wages, that consume almost all such products. even though they were very low. But combite still At the same time, even the few industries aimed exists. All three forms of exploitation exist side by at domestic consumption that do exist are being side, sharecropping, wage labour and combite. edged out of the market by imports. For example, Above all, it's the chefs de sections and the Haiti's canned tomato industry is being wiped out houngons the voodoo priests who use the because the Haitian government is allowing in system of combite.- They have a lot- of people at Dominican canned tomato imports and the their disposition whom they have come and work Dominican tomato industry is much stronger. The their land for nothing. whole Haitian tomato industry is in crisis. The Dominican company lowered their prices at first, A Dependent Economy broke the Haitian competition, then raised their ln general, production in Haiti is not for consump- prices. In general, Haitian industry is being displac- tion, it's not for the internal market, but for expor- ed by imports from the Dominican Republic. This is tation. The principal crop is coffee. Some of this because of agreements between the governments of coffee is drunk in Haiti but the great bulk of it is Haiti and the Dominican Republic which the Hai- sent to the U.S. and Europe. The same with cacao. tian government justifies with the excuse that the Until recently Haiti exported sugar, but now sugar two countries are cooperating for their mutual production has fallen so much that it has to import good. This gives rise to conflict between various some. The interests of the ruling classes and the fractions of the Haitian bourgeoisie. state lie in promoting production for export and not The people eat rice, and corn in every possible for internal consumption. This situation is bound form, as well as sorghum, which is cheaper. They up with Haiti's dependence, with the fact that also eat some plantains. In the Dominican Republic Haiti's economy is completely dependent on the people eat a lot of plantains and consider it poor U.S. economy and serves the requirements of U.S. people's food, but in Haiti it's considered expen- capital. So Haiti's national liberation is very linked sive. In some places in the countryside people eat 26

potatoes sweet and something called reql trees which uprising. At that point some of them carried little is eaten a lot in the South. In the city they can af- American flags and so on to hide themselves and to ford rice but not much in the country. Beans are avoid repression. Others criticised this from the even more expensive for the peasants. They rarely first. As things developed, the masses, who'd seen eat meat or eggs or drink milk. So they don,t eat that the U.S., for its own reasons, had opposed much protein in any form, except the little bit there Duvalier, could see the U.S.'s game, could see how is in sorghum. the U.S. was trying to make the mass movements Infant mortality is very high. Since there,s no serve its interests and to make contacts among these social security, you have to have enough kids to mass movements. To some extent this process began feed you when you're old. even before Duvalier fell, but especially afterwards, Generally in the countryside women do the the people could see how the U.S. was demanding housework, but they often work in the fields too, "peace" and supporting the new junta. So the and they're especially active in commerce, since it's masses' understanding took a leap. Still, only a few the women who usually take the farm products and more advanced elements see the U.S. as a basic so on to market to sell. So far there have not been target of the movement; among the broad masses many women's organisations formed in the coun- that's still not generally the case. Agitation and pro- tryside. Many women work in the free trade zones, paganda and some time will be necessary to make in the factories where they produce for export. For this clearer. example they make baseballs - Haiti produces The peasant wars that Haiti has known are ex- most of the world's baseballs, including those in the amples that must be studied and followed to guide U.S. - and work in electronics, radio and TV the present struggle. Now, as before in Haiti's assembly, clothing manufacture, etc. This produc- history, the peasants have to wage war to win their tion is closely tied to production in the U.S., since demands. At the beginning of the nineteenth cen- often the pieces are made in the U.S. and sent to tury, just after independence, there was the first Haiti for assembly and then shipped back to the wave of peasant wars, /es Piquets, which lasted into U.S. again. If any of it is ever sold in Haiti ir's only the mid-nineteenth century, especially in the South. after being reexported from the U.S. More than They had a base area in the South between Les people 60,000 are said to work in the free trade Cayes and J6r6mie. For several years they were able zones, and most of them are women. For a long to maintain this base area in the mountains, where 5 time unions were forbidden in the free trade zones, the enemy was not able to penetrate easily because I but especially since Duvalier's fall they,ve organised of the terrain and the lack of roads. They defied the 6 unions and demanded higher wages and started go- army and one government after another, and S ing on strike. cultivated the land. Four-fifths of Haiti is moun- 3 tainous. In the North, too, there were peasant upris- The Development and Path of Revolution ings, /es Cacos, at the end of'r-he nineteenth cen- i When Duvalier went down, the masses saw it is an tury, and they too were able to hold out against the g opportunity to rebel; they were already rebelling, enemy for several years. In the beginning of the a and they wanted to get out into the streets. Other twentieth century, a strong peasant guerrilla army, { classes saw all this as anarchy. They'd say if there 15,000 peasants led by Charlemagne Peralta, fought tr are too many strikes the factories will shut down, the U.S. invaders for several years in the North and o that strikes cause unemployment. They'd say if peo- Centre of Haiti. You could compare Charlesmagne ple demonstrate too much the Yankees will come in. Peralta to Sandino in the war against the U.S. inva- = The masses say that the factory owners have plenty sion in Nicaragua. The situation in the countryside of money and they should share some of their pro- has not changed much. There are still many areas fits with the workers, although it's true that some with few roads. factories have shut down because the owners are Because of the social crisis, there's not much scared of the masses and have fled to the U.S. room for the development of a reformist movement The most rebellious and in fact the first to rebel in Haiti. They say they're going to have elections in were the unemployed who live in the shantytowns of some form or another but we think the crisis will Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, Cap Haitien and other grow and the popular uprisings will continue and, cities. For the most part, they're ex-peasants who sooner or later, grow stronger. Elections or the pro- came to the city seeking work. Others are factory mise of elections won't solve anything. There's no workers who've lost their jobs; many of them have tradition of elections in Haiti; there are no electoral had experiences in strikes and so on. Afterwards the cadre, nor electoral parties. There are no national struggle spread to the countryside, because these identification cards 8070 of the people have no people came from the countryside and have strong identification at all and- whatever identity cards the ties to the countryside. Now, in the cities, all the rest have don't have photos. There's no census, various sectors of the workers are active. hasn't been one for years, so it's not possible to At the beginning of the struggle against Duvalier, know how many voters there are in any particular some elements among the masses who were linked place or to make up voter lists. Traditionally it's to the leftist movement were able to play something always been the armed forces that have organised of a vanguard role in the midst of the spontaneous and carried out any elections. First they struggle out 27 among themselves what they want to do and then Haiti to get to know this common battle and they have phony elections to legitimise whatever become part of it, to join it. The struggle of the they decide. The masses, 1oo, have no electoral Peruvian people, their people's war and how they tradition and don't want elections now. When are dealing blows to the Peruvian ruling classes, is various people come to speak before the masses and known in Haiti, and it's also seen that this is the present themselves as candidates the people oppose road that the Haitian proletariat and people must them and say we don't want any candidates. There's take, that they can only develop their struggle by an anticandidate movement. People think that taking the same road of protracted people's war sooner or later there will be an uprising against the that the Peruvian proletariat has embarked upon. situation. It's the duty of the revolutionaries to So the experience of the people's war in Peru is be- prepare this uprising together with the masses. Fur- ing closely studied in Haiti and it has given hope, it ther uprisings and a peasant war, a protracted peo- gives hope to the Haitian people just as it does to ple's rvar, is inevitable. To make the leap from the international proletariat, to see the war being uprisings to protracted people's war, preparations led by the Communist Party of Peru. have to be made to actually begin this war. There has to be study of military strategy and other Haiti, the U.S. and the Dominican Republic clandestine preparations involving the masses. The U.S. may intervene directly with its troops or it may get others to do so for it. The initial U.S. in- Building a Single Marxist-Leninist Party tervention will probably be indirect, through the ar- The process of uniting the different Marxist- my of the Dominican Republic, which may come in- Leninist forces is underway. It is a process of seeing to Haiti on the U.S.'s behalf. But this wouldn't be a how to unite and on what basis to unite, of discuss- positive factor for the Dominican ruling classes ing the question of the party, of people's war, of quite the opposite and it would give even further- the united front and within that the worker-peasant impetus to the anti-imperialist- united front in Haiti alliance. These are questions that are being discuss- and redouble the strength of the Haitian revolu- ed in order to arrive at a common understanding of tionary struggle. Such a Dominican invasion would how to move the situation forward. Ideological certainly change things in the Dominican Republic. questions must also be discussed, including the On whatever half of the island it might be, a revolu- ideology of the party, which is Marxism-Leninism tionary spark from one side would catch fire on the and Mao Tsetung Thought. In general, most of other. The revolutionary sparks in Haiti have had a b those who are participating in this process of unity lot of influence in the Dorninican Republic and any accept Mao Tsetung Thought in principle, although revolutionary spark there would have a lot of conse- some who don't reject Mao Tsetung Thought in quences 5 for developments in Haiti as well. ! principle have some confusion which must be rec- So far, one problem is that there's a greater F tified. understanding of this in Haiti than in the tr The lines of demarcation are above all with the Dominican Republic, where the commonality of our d PUCH (Parti Unifi6 des Comunistes Haitiens), struggle is less well perceived among some of the which holds that the object of the struggle right masses and there's a certain problem among the { now is elections and that the forms of struggle Dominican masses of racism directed against Hai- should be legal forms. PUCH has a radio station in tians. But this influence of the Dominican ruling = Moscow which broadcasts in Creole to Haiti every classes arnong the Dominican working class can be 65 day and the Soviets have given them all sorts of aid overcome; this is an extremely important factor for o\ put so that they can themselves at the head of the the future of the comrnon struggle of the pro- o\ mass movement or at least appear to be leading it. letariats in both countries. There can't be a revolu- So the question of elections and legal struggle is a tion for the Dominican people except in relation to very big dividing line question right now, and within the Haitian revolution, and vice-versa. The hun- that there's the question of people's war. dreds of thousands of Haitian immigrant workers in The revolutionary Marxist-Leninist movement in the Dominican Republic are an extremely important Haiti has developed a bit on its own, and there's factor; an important feature of revisionism in the been a tendency to consider it isolated from the in- Dominican Republic is not considering these Hai- ternational movement and the world. When the ex- tian agrarian workers as part of the Dominican pro- istence of the Revolutionary Internationalist Move- letariat, but rather as foreigners. The division bet- ment and of new communist parties such as the ween the social position of many Dominican Communist Party of Peru which are waging war workers and that of the Haitian workers is an ob- became known in Haiti, the Marxist-Leninist forces jective fact and a part of the objective basis for in Haiti saw all this as a very favourable factor to revisionism within the workers' movement there. link the struggle of the Haitian proletariat with the The attitude one takes towards these lower sections struggle of the world proletariat and to take part in of the proletariat in the Dominican Republic who the battle on the international level so that the Hai- don't happen to be Dominican is an important tian proletariat could carry out its struggle as a part dividing line question for revolutionaries there and of the struggle of proletarians of the whole world. work among these sectors will be a very important It's very important for the Marxist-Leninists in part of preparing the Dominican revolution as well. E 28

,,SH/NNG IRENCH OF I aI S COMBAT" = = P {a tr the o -Stotement on Mossocre i of Cur Comrodes in Peru's Prisons By the Committee of the RIM

The Peruvian government, egged on by imperialism, has sent its marines arm- ed with heavy machine guns and antitank weapons, its helicopter gunships and its naval artillery to crush the struggle of the prisoners of war in the Callao, el Fronton and Lurigancho prisons. Since the Garcia government had failed to resolve its problem with propaganda outside the prison and repression within, it tried to wipe out the symbol of revolutionary resistance these prisoners have become by killing them. This is the same method it has used to try to quell the 29

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revolutionary flames which have flared throughout Peruvian society. We do not know how many of our comrades were murdered. We do not know how many fell in combat and how many were shot after they were captured. But we know that these comrades were our class brothers and sisters. We know them, though we have never met, because of the line of the Party whose leader- ship they so firmly upheld, and because of their proletarian disdain for all the enemy could do and even for death itself, as they raised the bright red banner of our proletarian revolution high above prison walls under enemy fire for the world to see. This is the courage of men and women who even in the bowels of the enemy's dungeons are infused with confidence in the ability of the Peru- vian masses to free themselves and who understand the importance that this revolution being led by the Communist Party of Peru, a participating party of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, has for all the wretched of the earth. It is a courage based on thoroughgoing materialism, on the ability to see the outlines of a future earth without classes, even in the midst of to- I day's gunfire and suffering and the twists and turns through which our com- I munist future is being fought for. a The Peruvian government tried to justify this massacre by claiming that our o\ comrades sought to "endanger the prestige of the Peruvian government" on the eve of the Congress of the Socialist International in Lima. The world's reac- 3 tionary media have parroted the outrageous lie that our comrades deliberate- i ly sought their own deaths at the hands of the army. In fact, the Garcia regime P had been planning this massacre for some time, as even the foreign press later a admitted. The Garcia government was anxious to prove its reactionary q{ capabilities to the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund and other o imperialist representatives to whom the Peruvian government is beholden. The I Peruvian government provoked the prisoners, went back on agreements previously signed with them, and deliberately timed the attack it unleashed when the prisoners of war reacted with courage and determination. The Peruvian government knew full well that the Socialist International and imperialism as a whole would applaud this action with which Gracia proved himself worthy of their credit. But with this crime Garcia and his regime have only dug their own grave deeper. The towering contrast between the government's murderous cowardice and the selfless resistance of the prisoners of war has become another powerful call for revolution in Peru and throughout the world. In unleashing this murder as the first course in an international banquet of false "socialists" and bloodthirsty "reformers" from all over, including representatives of the ruling parties and loyal oppositions from many imperialist countries, the Garcia government has shown again that it is like every reactionary government bound to preserve its -rule and -the reactionary social relations it embodies at all cost. There is nothing worse for the "prestige" of such a government than to show "weakness" in the face of the determination of the oppressed. After this massacre, the Garcia government acted in the honoured tradition of its fellow members of the Socialist International such as those in Israel: first kill as many people as possible and then call an investiga- 3'

tion to appease those who want to believe there is some peaceful alternative to revolutionary armed struggle. Isn't it the essence of social-democracy in power, after all, to alternate hideous crimes with the pious promotion of illu- sions which make more crimes possible? The Garcia regime has also been praised by the Chinese revisionist govern- ment and pro-Soviet forces as well, though it is linked to the U.S. bloc. With this massacre, once again a dividing line has been drawn between all those for whom imperialism and imperialist domination is intolerable on the one side, and on the other the various pillars, lackies and apologists even "radical" or "leftist" apologists of a system that thrives on the blood- squeezed out of billions of people on -a daily basis, a system that has committed uncounted blood crimes for which some day there must be an accounting and that is prepar- ing to shed even more blood on an unprecedented scale in a world war for the redivision of empires. This massacre, and the implacable resistance put up by our imprisoned com- rades, give proof to the truth that the Garcia government and its backers sought to wipe out: that no other basic course of action but revolutionary warfare led D by the proletariat and its party can possibly change this state of affairs, whether E this warfare come sooner or later in the various countries, and that only the - politics and ideology developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung F and not any pro-imperialist, reformist or social-imperialist outlook can guide tr the world's oppressed workers and peasants to achieve victory in the course d of this battle. It was the great advances the revolutionary proletariat has been making in s Peru that forced the enemy to react in a way that has only further exposed the : nature of all the various reactionary political forces which have united against s the just people's war in Peru. People all over the world will draw lessons from 6 these events. The red base areas in Peru are base areas for the world proletarian o revolution. Proletarians and oppressed people all over the world are proud of the spirit and the advances won by our class's detachment in Peru. These events inspired them with both class hate and an uplifting, renewed resolve to hasten the elimination of imperialism and reaction from the face of the earth. We know that it is on the field of battle that the Peruvian revolution will give its reply to this massacre and its homage to these fallen comrades. Com- rades everywhere will also give theirs by fighting in revolutionary war or prepar- ing to do so at the earliest opportunity. Other comrades will step forward. As the comrades in the women's prison in Callao put it, in their defiant chants which could be heard outside the prison walls even after the military regained control, "La Sangre Derramada Jamas Sera Olvidadn" This blood that has been spilt shall never be forgotten. -

27 June 1986

(Released by the Information Bureau of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, London) 32 Resolution of the Centrol Committee of the Communist Pqrty of Peru

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Proletarions of All Countries, lJnite! ' 'Doy of H eroism "

The reactionary APRA government, since the very start, followed in the footsteps of its predecessor and carried out genocide against the people's war, covering it up with high-sounding demagogy supported and aided by the electoral opportunists. This was amply proven by the crimes com- mitted by the police and armed forces of the Peruvian state in Aqomarca, Umaru, Bellavista and Llocllapampa. The reaction took sinister aim against the prisoners of war and planned their genocidal annihilation. This took concrete form the 4th of October last year in the cowardly and brutal murder of thirty fighters in Lurigan- cho prison. This abominable crime, as well, has not been punished; the triumphant people alone will punish it. On the 18th of June 1986, in El Fronton, Lurigancho and Callao, the prisoners of war rose up in rebellion against the new genocide under way. They had repeatedly and publicly denounced, before the courts and the authorities themselves, the butchery that the government and its armed forces were plotting. They arose in defense of the revolution and of their lives, putting forward twenty-six very just and reasonable demands. On the l9th, the reactionary APRA government headed by Alan Gar- cia went through the grotesque farce of manipulating the so-called "peace commission" and then unleashed a reactionary and perverted extermina- tion operation, mobilising the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and police, under the Joint Command, to carry out the most monstrous genocide, killing hundreds of guerrilla fighters and sons and daughters of the peo- ple, soaking themselves once more in the people's fiery blood. Let Alan Garcia, his Cabinet, the Joint Command, the armed forces and the police be covered with indelible shame that the people shall never forget and that only the people will punish! The fighters of the People's Guerrilla Army, prisoners of war, with their watchword "It's right to rebel," fought heroically and boldly, set- ting a landmark of heroism, valor and courage that history will cherish as exemplary of the heroes that only a people's war can bring forth. This 19th of June is forever stamped as the DAY OF HEROISM. The blood of these heroes is already nurturing the armed revolution, fan- ning its flames, arising like a tremendous flag unfurled and likean inex- haustible war cry summoning the inevitable final victory. The glorious death of these prisoners of war in battle is wrapped in the blood already spilt before, and before it we communists, we fighters and sons and daughters of the people, pledge our unwavering commit- ment to follow their shining example, to advance the people's war in order to serve the world revolution until the unextinguishable light of com- munism remains upon the whole earth under the unconquered banners of Marx, Lenin and Mao Tsetung, of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism ever green. Glory to the fallen heroes, long live the revolution!

Central Committee Communist Party of Peru Peru, June 1986 34

Mossqcre in Peru's Prisons

El Fronton prison, 1984. "This Blood Thqt Hqs Been Spilt Sholl Never Be Forgotten"

The massacre the Peruvian and the Fronton island prison about war at Callao, Fronton and Lurigan- government unleashed against the l0 kilometres offshore. People all cho seized guards as hostages and revolutionary prisoners of war was over the world would come to look took their weapons, and dug premeditated and planned in ad- to these prisons with respect and ad- themselves in. They demanded that vance. What was unexpected was the miration for the way these prisoners the government sign an agreement fierce resistance of the prisoners, persisted in their revolutionarY with them, the main point of which who for several days battled the struggle even under these conditions was that those jailed as "suspected government troops who had come and for their determination to turn terrorists" would not be dispersed to to kill them. The contrast between these places into "shining trenches other prisons or transferred to the the heroic resistance of the prisoners of combat" where they carried out new high-security prison being con- and the cowardly brutality of the political, ideological and physical structed at Canto Grande. The out- reaction has further unmasked and training and the production of going Belaunde government gave in weakened the Garcia regime and revolutionary art and handicrafts. and signed these agreements. In Oc- propelled the revolutionary struggle These prisons became a sYmbol of tober 1985, the Garcfa government, forward. the political and moral bankruptcy which had then just taken office, re- The revolutionary conduct of the of the regime and its increasing in- nounced the agreements and sent in hundreds of captured fighters in ability to quench the raging peoples assault guards to Lurigancho. This Peru has been an increasingly severe war. act of revenge led to the murder of political problem for the govern- There were a number of attacks about 50 prisoners. ment. In 1982, after an astonishing on the prisoners, both outright In mid-1986 the Garcia govern- PCP attack led to the freeing of hun- murderous assaults which have ment revived the idea of sending the dreds of prisoners held in the resulted in many deaths over several prisoners to Canto Grande, and/ot Ayacucho gaol, the authorities years as well as daily harassment and transferring many of them back to adopted the policy of concentrating attempts to break their health and prisons in the emergency zone under suspected revolutionaries in the spirits. In July 1985, simultaneous- military rule. In April, NavY Rear Lurigancho prison for men near ly with nationwide military actions Admiral Ponce Canessa, a com- Lima, the Callao women's prison, directed by the PCP, Prisoners of mander of the marines who'd been 35

in charge of counter-insurgency At 6 a.m. on the morning of very few captured arms. Television operations for the Armed Forces Wednesday June 18, prisoners at the news shots showed the red flag with Joint Command, a man who had three penitentiaries once again rose the PCP's hammer and sickle supervised a series of mass murders up in unison and seized hostages and emblem flying amid the smoke atop ofpeasants, had been shot, alleged- weapons. The press later reported Lurigancho's walls. The TV ly by the PCP. All kinds of that on Fronton's walls was written, transmission was soon cut off due to authorities in and out of the govern- in giant letters, "Finish Off the "technical difficulties." Finally, ment were talking about how the Creat Leap With a Gold Seal," combined forces of the Army, Civil armed services had to take referring to the final phases of the Guard and Republican Guard used vengeance to restore their sinking Party's Great Leap military cam- dynamite to blow down the walls of morale - and that the armed forces paign to win revolutionary base the cell block where political themselves would have to "restore areas in the countryside. The prisoners are held. order" in the prisons. The plan to prisoners issued three demands: that The women at el Callao also ap- transfer the prisoners to where they the Garcia regime abide by the parently held out until Thursday would be under direct military con- agreements the government had morning. Three or four of the ap- trol was an open threat to murder signed with the prisoners the year proximately 100 imprisoned there them. before and recognise them as the numbers differ according to dif-- A letter written by prisoners at "special prisoners and not as ter- ferent reports were killed. Many Lurigancho appeared in the l9 May rorist criminals"; that there be a law others were wounded- in the fighting. 1986 issue of the Peruvian magazine passed guaranteeing that none ofthe After the prison was retaken by the Equis X. This letter denounced the prisoners of war would be transfer- authorities and declared a military massacres committed by the Navy in red to Canto Grande; and that area ofl'-limits to civilians, including Aucayacu, Llochegua and Tambo meanwhile none be transferred lawyers, family members and and "the killings carried out by the there. reporters, the women could be seen Marine intelligence service in Huam- The government called together from the streets defiantly thrusting bo, Huaychao, Iquicha, Uchuraccy, the "Peace Commission" it had their heads out between the bars and with the direct participation of the created to find a "political solution" chanting "This blood that has been CIA." The letter then accused the to the people's war, the "Parliamen- spilt shall never be forgotten" and authorities of planning to use the tary Human Rights Commission" "Long Live Chairman Gonzalo," threatened transfers to carry out the and the Armed Forces Joint Com- the chairman of the PCP. D same kind of massacres against them mand. This meeting decided to send The fog rising from the "in order to deal a moral blow to the in the armed forces. Peruvian Vice LimalCallao bay prevented anyone s revolution and the class. They want President Luis Alberto Sanchez later on shore from seeing what happen- ! to take vengeance on the prisoners claimed that this group had tried to ed at el Fronton. The fighting went F of war; they are planning tr to commit negotiate with the prisoners but that on for two days, until Friday morn- t genocide against us to pay off this they had refused, due to "an almost ing. Helicopter gunships and naval o blood debt" of the rear admiral. religious obedience to a new artillery blasted the small island con- "Their main target is Fronton. fanaticism." The world's reac- tinually. Frogman demolition teams { There is the possibility that they will tionary press duly repeated this lie placed explosive charges. Apparent- z cook up a provocation. If the that the prisoners' "fanaticism" left ly there was a series of air and sea a Republican Guards (prison guards) the government no choice and that assaults. After the military finally a can't deal with it they'll send in the they had actually sought their own seized the island, it too was declared Oi Marines. deaths to "tarnish Peru's prestige" a military area, so that two weeks o\ "In Lurigancho, they plan to on the eve of the opening of a Con- later, it was still not possible to say follow genocide with genocide. gress of the Socialist International in exactly how many men had died or "In Callao, they plan to deal Lima. what had exactly happened. The blows to the women. However, the only thing the armed forces informed relatives of "We are going to resist. They will government was interested in thedeathof l4l outof l69men.The not transfer us out of here alive. We negotiating was a quick death for the authorities have not been able to ex- demand guarantees against the prisoners of war. plain why the prisoners released five government's plans." Not one of the 159 fighters was prison guards alive early in the Lawyers for the prisoners de- left alive at Lurigancho. Apparent- fighting. nounced the plot to wipe out the ly many of them were taken alive Hundreds of relatives of the prisoners to the press and the public and then methodically bayonetted prisoners who demonstrated to de- several times during the next month. and shot to death. The government nounce the murder then in progress Later, after the massacre, the New admits 100 killed in this way. The were attacked and fought with York Times would reveal how "of- Lurigancho prisoners had held off police. There were reports that some ficers told of a premeditated plan to armed forces commandos and of them had been killed as well. mow down every last Sendero cap- marines throughout the day. They The government reported that tive." built fortifications in the cell block three soldiers were killed. These revolutionary prisoners and the prison yard and fought back Lurigancho was also declared chose the path of struggle. with home-made weapons and a under military control for a week, 36

long enough to clean up the Guards and the expected Carcia government. Carcia made it evidence. The military disposed of resignations of a few other easier for them by appearing before the bodies within hours "to avoid government officials, the Armed them and promising to investigate propagandistic actions by subversive Forces remained untouched and the actions his government had groups which operate through legal publically unrepentant. "My men taken. Brandt cynically warned of fronts." But the explosive wave of are trained to kill, " General the danger of a military coup in protest that engulfed Peru forced Cisneros told the magazine Oiga order to make Carcia seem palatable Carcia to take certain demagogic when he was asked if the by comparison. measures. government knew what it was asking But none of this could hide the A week after the massacre Garcia for when it sent the armed forces fact that a few hundred prisoners allowed reporters to tour Lurigan- into the prisons. "If the Senderists armed with slings, crossbows and a cho, since there was no one left alive would rather be dead than handful of captured weapons (four to dispute the official story there. Of transferred to the Canto Grande at el Fronton, according to the course the prison where there were prison, they got what they wanted. government itselfl had held off a survivors remained off limits. It was one of the few times we could modern army. The strength of their Garcia announced that he would give the subversives that pleasure." political line and their class stand see that these events were thoroughly Garcia added, "The opposition is under such conditions only made it investigated and that "all those trying to foment hatred between clearer how strong such a line and responsible would be punished." civilians and the military. The Army stand can become - and are becom- In the same message Garcia also deserves respect." ing - when they are applied to expressed his supreme confidence in In the immediate wake of the building up a revolutionary army in the Armed Forces Joint Command, massacre, before the political storm the course of a people's war. Almost and specifically in the Marines, Ar- began to break, the chief of the all the bourgeoisie's commentators my and Air Force. "I support the ac- United Left, Lima Mayor Alfonso are now saying that Garcia, im- tion of the joint command," he said. Barrantes, issued a statement saying perialism's great white hope who "The Armed Forces Joint Com- "when the law is broken it must be was supposed to fool some sections mand has loyally carried out the restored" referring to the of the masses while the armed forces orders given by the government and prisoners, not the military, although killed off others and thus stabilise we support their actions. " However, he did think to add "authority the situation for reaction, is facing I he went on to say, some people had should be excercised by carrying out the worst political crisis of his young € committed "excesses, instinctive the law and not violating it." Later, regime's life. The Socialist Interna- a and criminal vengeance." About l5 this leader of the motley legal left tional itself found its role in this S of ficers and 80 men of the found himself outflanked by the massacre and the subsequent Republican Guards were arrested demagogy of the President. manoeuvring to justify it so damag- for having commited "excesses." The Socialist International pro- ing that press accounts in countries i= The Republican Guards are a nounced itself completely satisfied such as Spain, where the Socialists I police unit responsible for the securi- by Garcia's actions. are in power, began calling the con- o ty of prisons and other public The Socialist International open- gress "a disaster ." El Pais, a Madrid { buildings. They are the smallest, ed its first world congress in Latin newspaper associated with the tr least politically influential of the America in the final hours of the Spanish ruling party, issued a fran- armed services; their head was massacre and it could not have tic call for a new "extraordinary 3 recently forced to resign because of happened -at a more fitting moment. congress" to repair the damage done ( other conflicts with the ruling This congress, presided over by the at what was supposed to mark the classes. They are not represented on former W. German Chancellor Wil- triumph of the Socialist Interna- the Armed Forces Joint Command ly Brandt, had been planned to step tional in Latin America. which directed the assault on the up certain reactionary efforts by As we go to press there have been three prisons. In other words, they West European imperialism in Latin reports of demonstrations and are convenient scapegoats - though America. These included supporting preparations of demonstrations in a murderous ones - for both the Carcia himself (Garcia's APRA par- growing number of cities. In Peru government and the armed forces as ty is a member of the Socialist Inter- itself, newspaper accounts give every a whole. national), as well as establishing the indication that in the midst of the It cannot be said that Garcia Socialists as the "good guys" ofthe Garcia regime's grave political crisis retreated, however. He assured U.S. bloc by criticising the Reagan and isolation the PCP is striving to reporters that he would do the same administratio'n to some degree on deal it military blows so as to further thing all over again if he were ever Nicaragua while fundamentally sup- weaken the regime and build up the faced with anything else like these porting Reagan's justification that People's Guerrilla Army and the prison revolts. "There's nothing to the Nicaraguan government has revolutionary base areas where a negotiate with those who have no "violated its promised non- new democratic, revolutionary right to anything but legal punish- alignment." regime is being born. I ment," he declared. In both its opening and closing Despite the cosmetic resignation sessions, the Socialist Congress pass- of the head of the Republican ed resolutions of confidence in the 37

Big Strides in Peruviqn Revoluiion Flqmes Leqp to Puno

Reports, from Peru indicate that replace it with revolutionary Peo- war.t' the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) ple's Committees made up of Various forms of revolutionary has made good its immediate stated representatives of the masses political power have emerged: the aim of establishing a series of guer- themselves. Based on the strength of People's Committees themselves in rilla fronts extending the length of the revolutionary armed forces, areas where the reaction has been the country along its mountain spine these People's Committees are em- overthrown and driven out; people's from Cajamarca in the North to bryonic forms of a new revolu- power reorganising committees in Puno in the South, as well as in the tionary state power which is to de- areas where the government had cities of the coastal plains in the fend the land the peasants have been able to come in and overthrow West and in the jungle highlands to seized from the landlords and state the People's Committees but where the East. authorities. As the main, mobile the guerrillas are now reestablishing In the guerrilla fronts in the coun- forces of the People's Guerrilla Ar- revolutionary power; clandestine tryside, armed revolutionary actions my move from village to village, People's Committees in areas where during 1985 began to involve more mobilising the peasants to attack the reaction has set up authorities and more guerrilla ambushes of ar- semi-feudal ownership of the land who in reality cannot rule for the my units, including of army vehicles. and overthrow the old political reaction; and people's power D For the first few years of the war power, Party units among its ranks organising committees in areas launched in 1980 they had centred also carry out agitation, propagan- where the old political and feudal E on attacks on police outposts and da and organisational work and authorities have been chased out but ! clashes police peasants F with units. On 4 bring new into the PGA. where the enemy armed forces still tr March, for example, a mounted They leave behind Party units whose operate. These various forms reflect military patrol in Ayamonte, in the task is to help establish and con- the twists and turns the development d department of Ayacucho, was "sur- solidate the new People's Commit- of the revolutionary base areas has prised," according to government tees; organise revolutionary mass taken. { reports, and the officers killed. The organisations of women, youth, In addition to the guerrilla fronts z ability of the guerrillas to take such peasants and workers whose elected in the central mountains, others s offensive actions directly against the representatives (along with represen- have begun to develop in the 6 armed forces shows some qualitative tatives of the small merchants and southwestern coastal region of Are- q increase in their military strength, other rural petit bourgeoisie) choose quipa and in the eastern jungle Or even within this period when the the members of the People's Com- highlands "eyebrows of the revolution is still on the strategic mittees; form village militias and jungle" -thealong the Huallaga river. defense vis-a-vis the enemy and still locally-based units of the PGA; and In these jungle- highland areas where faces an arduous process ofbuilding recruit and train the most advanced coca leaves are a main crop, the up strength through protracted peo- as Party members. In this way, by peasants find themselves fighting ple's war. relying on the masses of peasants against landlords who steal their The PCP had announced, in mid- themselves, by arousing, organising land and drug dealers who steal their 1984, the beginning of a campaign and training them, guerrilla zones crops, on the one hand, and on the called "Begin the Great Leap," to where the enemy has political power other against the UMOPAR, the "seize power piece by piece" in the but guerrillas can launch frequent U.S. "drug police" who often countryside along the main axes of attacks, are transformed into base cooperate with drug dealers but the guerrilla struggle and develop areas, where the revolutionary always work to terrorise the revolutionary bases areas. In these classes hold power. peasants. areas the PCP leads the peasants and Although these revolutionary There have also been reports that organises them into various revolu- base areas are apparently not even indicate that the PCP has tionary mass organisations, above relatively consolidated at this point, strengthened its ties with the miners, all the revolutionary armed forces, they are emerging in wide areas of who form an important part of to smash the old feudal landlord and the country. The PCP calls such Peru's industrial working class. The governmental political power and base areas "the essence of people's Minister of Mines and Energy claim- 38

ed that the PCP had led workers in military regime which seized power military to concentrate its forces as armed clashes during a strike of in the 1960s instituted a "land it has so far in the central mountain 17,000 workers at the state-owned reform" which consisted of turning regions and, above all, in Ayacucho. Centromin mines in the department over some of the biggest feudal The entry of the military into Puno of Pasco in March. Three thousand estates and their extensive herds of would also aggravate a host of strikers along with their wives and cattle to state-run "cooperatives" political contradictions. children set off on a five-day owned by a handful of rich peasants This scene in Puno - devastating "sacrifice march" across the moun- and often administered by the same attacks on the landlords and police, tains to dramatise and win support feudal authorities as before or the driving out of old authority, the for their demands for higher their children while the vast- ma- arousal of the peasants on a mass salaries. jority of peasants- remained com- scale and their organisation into the "Sendero Luminoso made a pletely or virtually landless. These revolutionary armed forces - is strategic mistake," Peru's President "co-ops" have been an important how revolutionary political power Alan Garcia declared in February, social base for the various reformist first began to emerge in Ayacucho, going on to affirm that the PCP had and revisionist parties which have six years ago. While the 1982 entrY become entrenched in five central dominated political life in the area of the regular armed forces into the and northern mountain depart- until recently. fray and the subsequent jump in the ments. "If they had expanded into There are press reports of seven reaction's quantity and quality of the 'Andean Trapeze"' the major guerrilla-led attacks on Puno firepower was able to inflict some departments in the south-central- and co-ops in February and March. The losses on the revolution, these recent southern Andes "vvs would have PCP reportedly pledged to "turn events show that the revolution has had much bigger- and more serious Puno into another Ayacucho," been able to take deep hold in other problems. Perhaps the subversion referring to the department that has parts of the country even while would have won overwhelming vic- been the revolution's main retaking important areas previously tory.... Now it's too late." stronghold until now. Puno's retaken by the government. Garcfa gave this gratuitous advice peasants are taking up arms and Peru is currently undergoing a at a time when the PCP was carry- seizing land on agrand scale. In one mass upsurge on many fronts, in- ing out major attacks across Peru. case poor peasants spontaneously cluding many different rural areas Apparently they were not confined attacked and burned down the ad- and sections of the peasantry, I to the central mountain region. In ministration buildings of a big "co- coastal farmworkers in the large- I fact, even as he spoke a bomb blew op" and took the land. In another scale sugar cane plantations who a up a nearby bank, disrupting Gar- case, after PGA guerrillas attacked recently seized the country's main S cia's attempts to address an outdoor and burned down an estate and then coastal North-South highway, and celebration of his party's founding marched on, when the sun rose the urban workers and some profes- in Trujillo, a coastal city in northern next morning they found peasants sional sectors who've waged a i= Peru long considered his party's from a neighboring village waiting number of major strikes and mar- main stronghold. Two other party for them atop a mountain pass to ches. This is the situation in which P offices and six embassies were hit in ask the guerrillas to come to their the PCP is striving to strengthen the {a Lima at the same time. A state of village too. If the guerrillas don't "three magic weapons" of the e emergency Garcia had been forced come to a village, peasants anxiously revolution: the party, the revolu- o to call and then extend in Lima had ask, "Where are the comrades?" tionary army, and the new revolu- obligated his party to hold the rally After a district governor was shot tionary forms of the joint political = in Trujillo in the first place. Tanks in February, other local officials power of the revolutionary classes. enforced a I A.M. to 5 A.M. curfew began resigning. Along with big The "Andeantrapeze" is a key to in the capital after a series of attacks merchants they began leaving the Peru's future because of the millions on government buildings. During department altogether, not only in of peasants who live there. Garcia's the three months following the im- the countryside but even in government has given it a great deal position of this curfew in February, Azangaro, the biggest town in the of importance in speeches, in plans the military detained 38,1 I I people central region of the department, to allocate funds for clinics, dams and shot four of them dead in the where the PCP reportedly posted a and other sugar-coated bullets to course of their night-time patrols. list of l5 top officials and merchants win over or neutralise some strata of A few days after Garcia's boast, who were warned to leave town im- the peasants there, and in Promises a mass peasant uprising under PCP mediately under threat of death. to carry out a real agrarian reform leadership began exactly where Car- Press reports quote police officials this time. So far, his government given inch of land cia had declared it impossible - in complaining that their forces are hasn't out'an the southern department of Puno. small and scattered in 40 police out- while the peasants have been seizing This Belgium-sized department high posts across the department. So far it themselves, taking over estates in the Andes (3,600 meters) borders the Army has not been sent into thousands of hectares in extension Lake Titicacq, Bolivia and Chile. lt Puno, although the matter is cur- and establishing revolutionarY has an important history of peasant rently being considered, because political power. n struggles, especially in the 1960s. among other reasons such a move The self-styled "revolutionary" would make it more difficult for the 39

Support for People's Wqr Echoes on Every Continent D Handicraft from Lurigancho prison. s D F tr The people's war being led by the ternational struggle to do away witt the RIM.) A cassette of revolu- Communist Party of Peru has found all imperialism and reaction and tionary songs recorded in the Callao d an echo on every continent. A deter- bring about a world free of classes. women's prison also contributed to mined international campaign has There has not been another interna- infusing these meetings with the { spread and organised support for tional campaign quite like this in re- spirit and content of the Peruvian e that war, and in so doing has helped cent years. revolution. s change political conditions in many These meetings had a common The activities in Bangladesh were 6 countries. report, "Summing Up Five Years of a particularly successful example of Ot The Worldwide Campaign to People's War in Peru and the Cur- the carrying out of both legal and il- O. Support the People's War in Peru rent Political Situation," prepared legal work, which was an important involved dozens of major public and in numerous cities delivered by element of the campaign. meetings in capitals and other cities a Peruvian residing abroad who A report on the campaign there around the world, as well as other closely follows the situation. This said, "The people of Bangladesh forms of meetings and discussions. comrade also prepared an extensive know little about Peru a country There have been reports about ac- slide show on this subject. In addi- of the other hemisphere.- Even the tivities in Austria, Bangladesh, Bri- tion there was a mini-exhibition of progressive left intellectual circles of tain, Colombia, Denmark, the revolutionary art and posters from this country had long had little ac- Dominican Republic, France, Peru, many of them done by revolu- quaintance with the great mass arm- Holland, India, Italy, Kurdestan, tionary prisoners of war. The most ed uprising and advancing war ofthe Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the commented-upon piece, without a people under the leadership of the United States and West Cermany. doubt, was a large and intricate Communist Party of Peru. During Even more remarkable than the multicoloured rug celebrating the the last year A World To Win spread geographical range of this campaign 1984 foundation of the Revolu- among intellectuals information was its unabashedly revolutionary tionary Internationalist Movement, about the great people's war in character a campaign in support woven by prisoners at Lima's Fron- Peru.... Up until now almost no of a revolutionary- war being led by ton island prison for the Committee reports on the people's war were the Communist Party of Peru as a of the RIM. (The Communist Par- published in the legal information conscious and proud part of the in- ty of Peru is a participating party of media. Even the imperialist slander- 40

ing of the Peruvian reality had not defied the so-called father organisa- involving cannery workers on strike reached our country. The im- tion and actively cooperated to 'sup- and others); in an immigrant area of perialists and reactionaries practis- port the people's war in Peru'.... Los Angeles; in San Diego, near the ed the tactic of silence about the Some pro-Moscow and pro-Deng Mexican border; at the University of revolution in Peru." revisionist agents tried in vain to Michigan at Ann Arbor; and New Reports from both the Pro- disrupt the meeting at Rajshahi York City, where there was a discus- letarian Party of Purba Bangla University. They raised nonsense sion in French involving Haitians as (PBSP) and the Communist Party questions like 'who said the present well as a major Spanish-English of Bangladesh (BSDIM-LI), par- Chinese party is revisionist' and meeting which drew a wide variety ticipating parties of the RIM which 'prove with data and information of people of different classes and na- are both underground, describe how that the Soviet Union is a social- tionalities. they "jointly distributed a few thou- imperialist co untry. ' But the Altogether about 2000 people par- sand leaflets in different urban and speakers instantly rebuffed them ticipated in Europe. Perhaps the rural areas and especially amongst with correct data and information. most noteworthy was a programme the workers, peasants, students and As the (revisionists) left the venue in Paris attended by over 400 people intellectuals; in some places they car- with their tail between their legs, the of the most varied nationalities and ried out propaganda with posters, listeners praised the initiators and ages, including many Iranians, wall-writings, etc. Alongside these became more interested to know Latin Americans and Africans, a the PBSP printed a separate leaflet about Mao Tsetung Thought and contingent of 60 workers from and distributed it in the rural areas the people's war in Peru. It can be Turkey, as well as an impressive especially amongst the peasants of mentioned in this connection that in number of French people given cur- areas where armed struggle is going the not-too-distant past Maoist rent political conditions in France. on. Encouraged and inspired by the revolutionary and left politics had a Many people remarked that Paris heroic advancement of the people's good influence in this part of the hadn't seen a major explicitly war in Peru, the people of these country but due to the fact that the revolutionary programme like it in areas became more confident of the persons concerned degraded to pro- years, nor had Marxism-Leninism- prospect of their own revolutionary Deng revisionism, that influence got Mao Tsetung Thought recently en- armed. struggles.... The glorious eroded. Recently revolutionary joyed such a broad audience. episode of the people's war in Peru politics and activities are getting In Paris, in Scandanavia and in a a has among our ranks created much stronger in the area." whole series of cities in West Ger- I enthusiasm and inspiration.... " The rally at Dhaka University was many and elsewhere in Western a (From the PBSP account) A presided over by a renowned in- Europe a certain sense arose in g "World Mass Solidarity Council" tellectual and educator, a retired political circles that "the Maoists are comprised of progressive and left department head, who declared, back" and from now on have to be 3 workers, students and cultural "We support the people's war in reckoned with. At the same time, i organisations held public mass Peru because we feel the necessity of because of the prestige won by the meetings and seminars in four cities a similar type revolutionary move- people's war in Peru among P in Bangladesh. An average of 400- ment in our country" (quoted from revolutionary-minded people in the {a 500 people took part in each. Three the BSD[M-L] account). This rally broadest sense, other political forces q were on university campuses, involv- on a campus lawn was sponsored came forward to organise and par- o ing high school students as well as by nine different organisations in- ticipate in the campaign, including i local university students and other cluding several worker and peasant somewhat anarchist (autonomen) forces, and one, in a union head- groups as well as student groups and elements with influence among im- quarters, was attended mainly by in- other prominent professors. portant strata of revolutionary- dustrial workers as well as students In the U.S. the Committee to Sup- minded youth who have been who came from far away to par- port the Revolution in Peru spon- isolated from Marxism-Leninism- ticipate and support the people's war sored mass meetings in five cities, in- Mao Tsetung Thought. Their par- and the RIM. At this union hall the volving a total of about 1000 people, ticipation was facilitated by the art show "drew huge fistfuls of spec- both politically active forces from revolutionary character of the cam- tators from almost dawn to dusk." among the middle classes and some paign and the way in which unity "Despite the hindrances faced by people from among the lower was sought (on the basis of suppor- the Peru campaign that it was an masses (including a large number of ting the war the PCP is leading, altogether unfamiliar- and new Spanish-speaking people from Mex- rather than simply "supporting issue... [and that] a great number of ico and Central America). These human rights" on the one hand or sincere patriots and intellectuals are programmes took place in the main- having to be in agreement with the being misled by pro-Deng revi- ly Black and proletarian city of overall line of the PCP or the RIM sionism, these are the very sections Richmond in the San Francisco Bay on the other). of the people where the campaign is Area and in a Central American For these reasons many of these creating repercussions... In Rangpur neighborhood in San Francisco meetings enjoyed a much broader town the local unit of the student where there is a lot of political activi- audience than has often been the front of a pro-Moscow social- ty (there was also a smaller meeting case recently. Many of the question- democratic political party, the JSD, in the nearby town of Watsonville and-debate sessions were long and 4l

line of the RIM provoked important discussions on the nature of people's war versus other forms of armed struggle which have become notorious in Colombia, as well as on the question of self-reliance versus depending on Cuba or the USSR for arms, the question of a party and of a united front, two-line struggle, revisionism and on the RIM itself. A series of small and medium-sized private meetings took place in four different cities and on a banana plantation, where there was a secret, lantern-lit programme and deep discussion in the midst of the night in a region where the reactionary armed forces maintain permanent vigilance. Mass meeting to support people's war in Peru, Dhqka University. This campaign initiated by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was an important step lively. They centred on questions tionary tide in the world in general) forward in carrying out an interna- such as is a revolutionary party can become a powerful internal fac- tional joint campaign on a revolu- necessary or desirable, what is the tor among certain strata of Western tionary basis. It has helped deepen role and character of a united front, European society. and widen the revolutionary move- what is the road to revolution in the The campaign in the Dominican ment in those countries where the oppressed countries and how is it Republic involved small, well- revolutionary forces are preparing different from the imperialist meetings, ac- power coun- organised clandestine to contest for state by force of D tries, what is revisionism and companied by a large-scale circula- arms, according to the path of whether or not upholding Mao tion of a pamphlet reprinting ,4 revolution and the conditions in dif- Tsetung can be considered a dividing World Win articles on Peru and ferent has played a s to countries, and it T line between Marxism and revi- extensive leafleting and postering. It similar role in countries where such F sionism, the criticism made by some was reported that no political ac- revolutionary armed struggle is tr people of what they call the "cult of tivist in the country remained un- already a reality. the personality," and many specific touched by the campaign. In this This campaign apparently had d questions about the line and ex- way it had an especially refreshing some effect on the enemy as well. A s perience of the PCP. and significant impact in a situation series of wild and lurid but vicious ? An important element in many of of governmental instability, recurr- tales concocting some connection these countries was the role played ing mass outbreaks and sharp between this campaign and Libya I by small groups of revolutionary im- political crisis among the legal left have been circulated in the German q6 migrants, including especially pro- whose electoral politics have recently and French press and especially the q letarians from Turkey. When led by held hegemony in the political move- press in Peru (and then reprinted a revolutionary line, these forces ment there. The revolutionary situa- elsewhere as "facts" proved by the were often able to activate both tion in neighboring Haiti also helped fact that they appeared in a other immigrant masses and charge the atmosphere in which this newspaper). The imperialist media European-born revolutionaries as campaign took place and heighten- which blacked out and slandered the well, including both youth and older ed the seriousness with which people's war in Peru for so long can veterans who felt left on the beach Dominican and some Haitian no longer call it "isolated," either in when the Sixties tide receded. Such revolutionaries discussed and Peru or the rest of the world, nor can a potent combination testifiesto the debated the Peruvian experience in they so easily lie about its character potential of a clear revolutionary order to solve urgent problems. as they once did. So this latest round line in such countries and also shows In Colombia, where the pro- of lies directed at the international how the influence of events Soviet revisionists and some other campaign to support the people's elsewhere (such as the people's war political forces have built up large war in Peru indicates both in Peru in this case, with its specific armies, and where the government something of the degree to which the political and ideological content, as and the pro-Soviet forces have been campaign has been successful and well as the training immigrant forces jockying for advantage in the course also the fact that it has been and will have received in the context of the of a reactionary "truce and be even more sharply an arena of political movements in their home democratic opening," the cam- class struggle. D countries, and the rising revolu- paign, the line of the PCP and the 42 lnternqtionql Compoign Forwqrd Along the PqthChqrted by MqoTsetung!

Twenty years ago Mao Tsetung kindled the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. As the Declaration of the Revolutionary Internotionqlist Movement puts it: "The Cultural Revolution represents the most advanced experience of the pro- letarian dictatorship and the revolutionising of society. For the first time the workers and other revolutionary elements were armed with a clear understan- ding of the nature of the class struggle under socialism....Great victories were won in the course of the Cultural Revolution which prevented the revisionist restoration in China for a decade and led to great socialist transformations in education, literature and art, scientific research and other elements of the superstructure... The Cultural Revolution was waged as part of the interna- tional struggle of the proletariat and was a training ground in proletarian in- a ternationalism.... a "The Cultural Revolution was the living proof of the vitality of Marxism- a Leninism. It showed that the proletarian revolution was unlike all previous S revolutions which could only result in one exploiting system replacing another. z For all these reasons the Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung earned the I lasting and vicious abuse of all the reactionaries and revisionists and for these o same reasons the Cultural Revolution remains an indispensible part of the h revolutionary legacy of the international communist movement." {a For all these reasons it is fitting that the Revolutionary Internationalist Move- e ment has decided to launch a coordinated, international campaign entitled o "Forward Along the Path Charted by Mao Tsetung" on the occasion of the i twentieth anniversary of the opening salvos of the Cultural Revolution. Nor can we forget that it was ten years ago that the great leader and teacher Mao Tsetung died and that right on the heels of his death the capitalist roaders in China launched a vicious coup d'6tat and began restoring capitalism. Combatting the current revisionist rulers in China remains an on-going task of the genuine revolutionary communists. The upcoming campaign must be an occasion for further exposure and denunciation of these usurpers and a time to refute the lies and calumnies generally directed against Mao Tsetung and the Cultural Revolution. Most importantly, this campaign must be a further occasion for the dissemination of the teachings of Mao Tsetung on the widest possible basis. At a time when revolutionary struggle is again on the rise it is all the more vital that this struggle be infused and illuminated by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. Those who remember the exhilarating victories of the Cultural Revolution and who were inspired by the example of the construction of a new society in China must not forget that a new generation of revolutionaries is coming to the fore who did not share this experience. It is vital that the legacy of Mao Tsetung and the Cultural Revolution be made the common property of all who are striving to tear down exploitation and oppression. The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, along with other Maoist forces, must vigorously spread this campaign throughout the globe. [t must be a campaign of denunciation of revisionism, but also of holding aloft the great accomplishments achieved under the leadership of Mao Tsetung. It must be a living example of proletarian internationalism, with the multiple forms of activity most reflecting the ability of the genuine communists to apply our revolutionary science to the concrete realities of different countries. This campaign must be at once both a celebration of the victories won and the achievements accomplished along with a renewed declaration to use the weapon bequeathed us by Mao Tsetung to defeat imperialism and reaction and march forward on Mao's road toward a communist world. The Committee of the RIM

All those who ogree with the necessity of thls compoign ore urged to por- ticipote octively. fhe porties ond orgonisotions of the RIM should be con- tocied directly. Where this is not possible, write to the RIM lnformotion Bureou, BCM RlM, London WCIN 3XX.

t+z 44

Excerpts from Worldwide Compoign Speech

Five Yeqrs of People's Wqr

I I a Following ore excerpts {rom the political power: revolutionary carried out in our homeland by the I moin speech given ot meetings held violence. The theory of seizing Peruvian people and the Communist oround the 'irorld os port"of the power by the peaceful road is wrong, Party of Peru, guided by the invin- Worldwide Compoign to Support impracticable and revisionist. cible banners of Marxism-Leninism- 'The i= the People's Wor Tn Peru. Revolution is the overthrow of one Maoism, Guiding Thought of speech wos prepored by o Peru- class by another and the old classes Chairman Gonzalo. I vion living obrood who closely will never give up their political Let's look at some historical o { follows events in Peru. -nWfW power voluntarily, not even in the background. c worst crisis. The only way to deal The Communist Party of Peru, o SUMMING UP FIVE YEARS OF with them is to sweep them away the PCP, was reconstituted as a Par- i PEOPLE'S WAR IN PERU AND through revolutionary war, by ty of a new type, based on Marxism- THE CURRENT POLITICAL means of revolutionary armed force. Leninism-Maoism, Guiding SITUATION We should keep this universally Thought of Chairman Gonzalo, in valid principle in mind. other words, as a fighting machine PART ONE: SUMMATION OF We should also keep in mind one and not just an organising machine. FIVE YEARS OF PEOPLE'S of Marx's great teachings: If this hadn't been done, it would WAR "Once the banner of revolution is have been impossible to make raised, it cannot be lowered again." revolution. Without a Party there is Dear comrades. This means that the armed strug- no revolutionary general staff We will begin our exposition with gle must be organised and persisted leading the masses to seize power. a quote from Chairman Mao in. In order to launch the people's The Party is the principal instrument Tsetung: war in Peru the Communist Party of of the revolution, the heroic comba- "The seizure of power by armed Peru made the great decision never tant who leads the other two in- force, the settlement of the issue by to lay down its arms until com- struments, the united front and the war, is the central task and the munism is reached. armed struggle. highest form of revolution. This Founded October 7th 1928 by Marxist-Leninist principle of revolu- THE DEVELOPING PROCESS Jos6 Carlos Mari6tegui, the PCP tion holds good universally, for OF THE PEOPLE'S WAR IN could not consolidate as a Party of China and for all other countries." PERU a new type, because communist par- Chairman Mao teaches us that These five years of people's war ties have to undergo a process of there is only one way to seize represent a great epic, an epic being maturation. In the decade of the 45

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D 1960s Marxism and revisionism within the Party and smashed the war on May lTth 1980, a far- s clashed on a world scale. This had its other factions whose actions were reaching step that has opened up a ! reflection within the Communist not open and above-board. Thus, new historical period in Peru. F Party of Peru. Thanks to Chairman through a long struggle, this red fac- In conclusion, this is the historical tr Mao, the PCP rediscovered tion became the Party. The background from which a Party of d Mariiitegui. At that time great mass reconstitution of the Party can be a new type arose, mature, fit to seize movements were unfolding: between divided into three periods: power, reconstituted through fierce { June 1963 and February 1964 half a - From 1963-69 is the period of two-line struggle, whose basis of z million peasants mobilised spon- Deciding to Reconstitute, guided by unity as a Party is Marxism- taneously to struggle for the land. the strategic line of surrounding the Leninism-Maoism, Guiding a! Workers and employees carried out cities from the countryside. In 1969 Thought of Chairman Gonzalo. o\ massive strike movements, without it was agreed to reconstitute the Par- Now let's talk about the different Or any central coordination, and ty, taking as its basis of unity periods in the armed struggle in university students did the same. All Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Peru. of this contributed to the develop- Thought, Jose Carlos Mariiitegui First period - the Definition, in ment of a movement within the and the Fifth Party Conference. 1979. The launching of the armed Communist Party itself. - From 1969 to 1975 is the Ap- struggle took place in the midst of a The revisionists within the Party plication of the Reconstitution, two-line struggle against those who were expelled in 1964. After that, a guided by the strategic line of wanted to continue reconstituting handful of communists became a rebuilding the Party on the basis of the Party and convert the Party in- faction within the Party. Chairman Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung to an organising machine instead of Mao says: outside the Party there Thought to carry out people's war. a fighting machine. The Party, are other parties and within the Par- - From 1975 to 1979 is the under Chairman Gonzalo's firm ty there are factions. He also says Culmination of the Reconstitution, leadership, didn't split during this that all groups of people can be whose strategic line was to culminate struggle, because once their reac- divided into left, centre and right. the Reconstitution and lay the basis tionary positions were smashed Lenin taught that a faction is a for the armed struggle. those who opposed initiating the grouping of communists who fight With the Reconstitution com- armed struggle left the Party in- to apply communist principles in the pleted, the Communist Party of dividually, as revisionists. Thus a purest manner. lt was Chairman Peru under the leadership of Chair- new stage, a different direction, had Gonzalo who forged the red faction man Gonzalo launched the people's (Continued to page 70). 46

RIM Committee Greets Peru Compoign

The following is o stotement from perialist powers, the contradiction it has served as a manifesto to the the Commitiee of the Revolutionory between imperialism and the op- proletariat and oppressed peoples of lnternotionolist Movement which pressed peoples and nations, and the the world that communism is on the wos reod oloud of the numerous contradiction between the agenda and that the revolutionary meetings which were held os port of bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the movement is once again on the rise. I the Worldwide Compoign io Sup- imperialist countries. All of these A revolutionary war which has firm- aI port the People's Wor in Peru. contradictions have a common ly drawn a line of demarcation with o\ -AWTW origin in the capitalist mode of pro- all forms of revisionism, which dares comrades and friends, duction and its fundamental con- to make revolution without the fatal z tradiction. The rivalry between the tutelage of any imperialism, a The People's War being waged two blocs of imperialist powers led revolutionary war which declares its i under the leadership of the Com- by the U.S. and the USSR respec- aim of serving the overthrow of all munist Party is ho of Peru certainly not tively is bound to lead to war unless imperialism and reaction and the a the only revolutionary war in to- revolution prevents it and this world-wide advance to communism { day's world, nor the only struggle rivalry is greatly affecting world - such a war is indeed extremely tr worthy of support, but it is an ex- events. " significant in today's world. o tremely important ray of hope that Despite these sharpening objec- These meetings and the i shows the potential for a new turn in tive conditions, "the Marxist- Worldwide Campaign to support the history of humanity and helps Leninist movement continues to the people's war in Peru are also part prepare the conditions for it. We say confront a deep and serious crisis of something new and important in this not just out o[ quite correct which came to a head following the the world. With this campaign pro- pride that this Party is among the reactionary coup d'6tat in China letarian internationalism and the ranks of our Revolutionary Interna- following the death of Mao Tsetung Revolutionary Internationalist- tionalist Movement, but also and the treacherous betrayal of Movement is indeed becoming because of our understanding of Enver Hoxha. However despite stronger, broader- and more organis- what is going on in the world today these reversals there are genuine ed, more of a material force. In the and what is needed to change it. Marxist-Leninists on all continents course of supporting the Peruvian The world situation this assess- who have refused to abandon the revolution which is increasingly ment is based on was analysed by the struggle for communism." looked to by oppressed and Declaration issued by the 1984 Se- This context is what has given par- revolutionary-minded people on cond International Conference of ticular significance to a People's every continent, our Movement bas- Marxist-Leninist Parties and War that would have been welcome ed on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Organisations which formed the and important under any cir- Tsetung Thought has had broad op- Revolutionary Internationalist cumstances. It has raised high amid portunities to join together in strug- Movement: "All the major con- the clash of battle itself the banners gle with other political forces. tradictions of the world imperialist of Marx, Lenin and Mao Tsetung, The Declaralion issued by the Se- system are rapidly accentuating: the and thus served to advance the cond Conference indicated the uni- contradiction between various im- prestige of revolutionary Marxism; ty of will and political understanding 47

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OO q * io \ \ s ! F upon which our Movement is based. Decloration says, "the October ly declares, "The revolutionary tr It contains an analysis of the two Revolution remains the basic point struggle of the masses of the people component parts of the world pro- of reference for Marxist-Leninist in all countries is crying out for ge- d letarian revolution and the different strategy and tactics." In other nuine revolutionary leadership. The { tasks and road to revolution in the words, in general in the imperialist genuine Marxist-Leninist forces, in z imperialist countries and the coun- countries it is not possible today to individual countries and on a world tries oppressed by imperialism. In launch the armed struggle in a way scale, have the responsibility to pro- 6s the countries oppressed by im- that contributes towards the revolu- vide such leadership even as they o\ perialism, the Declqration says, "it tionary seizure of power; preparing continue to struggle to solidify and o\ is often the case that the revolution for the moment when that does raise the level of their unity." takes the form of protracted revolu- become possible through agitation, We will organise the most tionary warfare in which the revolu- propaganda and revolutionary widespread and powerful support tionary forces are able to establish struggle is urgently required. Today for the people's war in Peru. Pro- base areas of one type or another in supporting the people's war in Peru letarian internationalism and the countryside and carry out the is not only an important task in its revolutionary-minded people all basic strategy of surrounding the ci- own right but also an important part over the world demand it of usland ty by the countryside." This is the of getting ready for the armed strug- in correctly so doing we will advance road the revolution in Peru is gle that the revolutionary proletariat the revolutionary movement in following under the leadership of the must prepare to lead at the earliest many countries and on a world level. PCP and its Chairman, Comrade possible moment. Gonzalo. In doing so it is playing a These meetings to Support the LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST vital role in advancing the revolution People's War in Peru and the PARTY OF PERU! in other countries, above all because worldwide campaign of which they LONG LIVE THE REVOLU- of the political and ideological line are part, Iike the people's war in TIONARY INTERNA- that is leading it and which in turn Peru itself, represent advanced ef- TIONALIST MOVEMENT! it is unfurling before the world's forts to turn revolutionary SUPPORT THE PEOPLE'S WAR revolutionary masses. possibilities into revolutionary IN PERU! f, In the imperialist countries, as the realities. As otr Declarotion solemn- The Committee of the RIM Ever since the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan has been perhaps the most damning evidence of the real nature of Soviet social- imperialism. The following interview with a member of SAMA who feels it impossible to reveal his identity in AWTW clearly demonstrates that the USSR has been pursuing the same rapacious and brutal exploitation of Afghanistan and suppression of the liberation struggle that the old-style imperialist powers have long practiced in the countries under their domination. But in Afghanistan, as elsewhere, oppression has bred resistance. From the beginning the Afghan people have arisen in a just, revolutionary struggle against the Soviet invaders and their Afghan puppets. Genuine revolutionary and democratic forces, such as the Liberation Organisation of the People of Afghanistan (SAMA), have played an important role in this struggle. The battlefield in Afghanistan is complex indeed, for on it one finds the expression of some of the different yet interrelated contradictions that shape today's world: the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism and social-imperialism on the one hand and the contradiction between the different imperialist powers themselves. lt is not possible to understand Afghanistan unless both of these contradictions are understood. Ever since the Soviet invasion, the Western imperialist powers (especially the U.S.) have pumped an enormous amount of aid to phoney "liberation" organisations in Afghanistan. The purpose of such "assistance" is clear to try to manipulate the just struggle of the Afghan- people and pervert it into a weapon in the Western bloc's own arsenal aimed at the Soviet Union. ln particular, the U.S. has sought to support and prop up the most reactionary forces in Afghanistan opposed to the Soviet Union feudal chieftans, religious authorities, and the- like. This complex situation makes the need for the independent role of the proletariat, of a genuine vanguard party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, all the more evident. Without such a party it is not possible for the proletariat to hoist its independent banner. Without a genuine vanguard it is not possible to thoroughly demarcate politically and ideologically from those who would characterise the Soviet invaders and their Afghan puppets as "communists" nor, on the other hand, defeat the propaganda of the Soviets and international revisionism which have tried to portray the Afghan resistance as solely the work of feudal reactionaries in the pay of the US or the current rulers in China struggling against the so-called "progress" represented by the Soviet puppet regime. Although there is no vanguard party in Afghanistan today, there is an important legacy of the Marxist- Leninist movement in Afghanistan and many of the fighters in today's revolutionary and democratic organisations have been influenced by the Marxist- Leninist movement. ln the early 1970s a Marxist- Leninist newspaper was founded with the name 49

Eternal Flame. This journal which was published by according to the official statistics, in 1976 the those who upheld Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung average income of the Afghan people was 85 U.S. Thought and supported the Cultural Revolution in dollars per year. Now in view of the division of China enjoyed a very wide influence in Afghanistan. income in the country, one can see how much goes To this very day, the genuine revolutionary and to the toiling people of Afghanistan. democratic forces are often referred to by both the Considering the organic relation between the Soviet invaders and the lslamic reactionaries as social-economic development of a society and its "Flameists" (Shohlehiin Farsi) from the name of cultural development, Afghanistan, which this early Marxist-Leninist journal. compared to its neighbors is a relatively closed The genuine resistance struggle of the Afghan nation, has preserved its past cultural traditions, people is already playing an important role in both the positive and negative aspects. And here weakening and exposing social-imperialism and this what is most important is the indestructible spirit of struggle should be supported by revolutionary the people of Afghanistan, a spirit born in battle masses the world over. But this struggle can only against various kinds of invasion over the centuries reach its full potential if it is openly led as part of and which in the beginning of the anti-Russian the world proletarian revolution. By raising proudly upsurge has been an important element. In the l9th the red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung century, British colonialism dominated and ruled Thought amidst the flames of the Afghan people's the major part of the known world of those days, war of resistance and right under the noses of yet in two invasions of our country attempted by social-imperialism, the Afghan Marxist-Leninists can their army in 1839 and 1879 they gained nothing but significantly alter the nature and prospects of the disgrace. With unprecedented courage and with current armed struggle and make an extremely united ranks the Afghan people wrote an epic story important contribution growth to the of the world which the hitherto always victorious army of proletarian revolutionary movement. -AWTW England had not seen until that time. The British armies were destroyed in Afghanistan from one of them there remained only a single person- to take home the news of the destruction of the army.

The Logic of Social Imperialism Since the Russian invasion, when people have D Afghanistan, which today is suffering intense wanted to explain the reason for it, some have seen crisis and an invasion by Russian social- it only from the point of view of Afghanistan's role s imperialism, is a country located in the heart of as a diving board to get to warm water, that is, its ! F Asia. Its surface is 650,000 square kilometres, and geopolitical situation.... Some others have tr its population, as of 1977, was 18,200,000, of which 'scientifically'evaluated the Russian invasion as a 8590 is rural and the rest urban or transient. tactical move serving a defensive strategy, not d Official statistics show that 9590 of our people can't grasping how by this they justify the murderous acts read; they are mainly concentrated in the of the Russians, or if they grasp it, they consciously t countryside, while the 590 who can read are mainly worship that imperialism. What is not being said z in the cities. The social-economic structure of the here is that the Russians, like any imperialist force, I country is related to its particular geographic look for profit in our country, for commodity a situation: it has for centuries been a passageway for circulation, that they have come to fulfill their o armies and caravans, and today it consists of many imperialist necessities, to steal our natural Ot nationalities and tribes. Because each area of the resources, to find markets and to increasingly country has generally been separated from the exploit our toiling people. influence of the others, lopsided social-economic The enemy tries, with full force, to hide its weak growth took place in the agrarian structure of points from the sight of the people worldwide, and society. In the not too distant past, the country's we should continue our struggle because we know economic structure was based on tribal communal well that exposure of the murderous crimes of ownership of the forests and fields and remnants of Russian social-imperialism from a revolutionary primitive relations, alongside small commodity point of view, from a stand which fulfills the needs production and the expansion of commercial and of the most oppressed social strata in our era, is a usury capital, in the context of a dominant feudal tremendous task that should be done, and we know mode of production - all this at the same time. that any force involved in the Afghan resistance Such particularities are generally found in a semi- exposes the murders of the Russians from their own feudal semi-colonial society. class standpoint. Considering Afghanistan's natural resources, we Before going into how Russian social-imperialism can say it is a rich country, but because of the penetrates Afghanistan, there is something to be dominant decadent socio-economic relations which pointed out: the Talayee tyranny, which since 1927 have blocked the normal growth and improvement cruelly ruled over the fate of our nation, after 20 of the well-being of the people, Afghanistan is listed years in which they imposed various kinds of among the ten poorest countries in the world. Again oppression, force, prison, etc., on our people, had I 50 become no longer capable of ruling over the people be used for their helicopters and jets, and with the same policies. Together with this, the birth armaments with which, according to the confessions of a new country, Pakistan, and intensifying of these murderers, more than a million Afghan disputes on the borders between the two countries, people have been martyred. These loans were also alongside the West's push on Afghanistan to get used for economic enterprises for refining gas and closer to Pakistan, caused the Talayee Dynasty and petroleum, as well as for agricultural enterprises - later Daoud to search for another supporter in the the entire product of all of these goes to the Soviet international arena. Union. In the mid-1950s, the Russians, hoping to If we take a brief look at one or two of these, we swallow Afghanistan and steal its natural resources, can see the nature of the relations of Russian started their economic relations with the Afghan imperialism with the Afghan people. For example, goyernment with a large loan at 390 interest which during Afghanistan's second five-year plan and part was used to build a silo system. This does not mean of its third five-year plan, the Russians created that Afghanistan did not have any prior economic something called the farming project of Dorunteh, relations with the Soviets it did, but these which consisted of three farms at Ghasi Abad, relations were limited to some- commercial levels in Hadeh and Dorunteh. Apart from the way they which we cannot see any evidence of relations of chose land and other technical problems (for plunder, which we do see afterwards. After the loan example in order to be able to use the land they had for the silo system, other loans followed, the major to bring soil from somewhere else to make the land part of which were used to build and strengthen a suitable for their purposes), the contract between dependent infrastructure in Afghanistan. Thus up Afghanistan and Russia was that in place of interest until 1977, the Soviet Union gave more than $1,200 on the loans the totality of the production of these million in loans to Afghanistan, which was used farms, which consisted of citrus fruit, was to be only for building a dependent economic base, sent to the Soviet Union for 25 years, which is including transport lines that connect Kabul to the basically the entirety of the trees' fruitful period. Soviet border, military airports which were later to The price was also decided by them: for example, in

I aI AFGHANISTAN s z i P o q{ o = 5t

1976 the price of a kilo of imported oranges in a A point that should be mentioned here is that for Soviet port was 2 l/2 Afghani lttre Afghin unit of over 20 years we have been exporters of gas in the money), while at the same time in Kabul and re.gion and our people have no understanding of Jalalabad, right by the farms, people would buy what gas is. The people of Afghanistan both in the oranges at 16 Afghani per kilo... and these were cities and villages and even in the areas where the oranges people had to bring from the marketplace extraction of the gas and petroleum takes place do in Pakistan! AIso the administration of the farm not use these products themselves because their use was Russian. is monopolized by the Russians. These relations which began in the economic Typical Neocolonialism sphere increasingly penetrate and influence every pefore the government began its five year plans, sphere of the economic and social life of de^spite the country's agricultural bacliwardness, Afghanistan. At the end of the Talayee dynasty, Afghanistan was l/3 almost self-sufficient, especialiy in of Afghanistan's foreign debt was to Russia. And providing food, which mainly consisted oi wheat. 6590 of import-export trade is with Russia, not But afterwards, in 1971, we imported 250,000 tons including Eastern Europe. of wheat, most of it from - naturally - the Soviet fJnlon, Thus they changed rhe form of agriculture The Local Puppets in Afghanistan so that wheat gave way to cotton. When they economically built the dependent Cotton is turned into money, which then goes to infrastructure in this country, they hid to buy wheat from the USSR. When the govirnment accomplish their preparations in the military, undertook its agricultural reform, whai counted for cultural and social spheres. The raison d,€tie of the them was not uprooting the centuries-old feudal People's Democratic party has in fact been relations in fact even limiting - these relations is accomplishing the task of opening up the road to something that rarely went beyond the planning Russian invasion. This was what hisiory showed us stage, as the only real plan the government had the when they started killing our people and riding the opportunity to realize was genocide. that of Their Russian tanks. Russian imperialism, after two programs alloted 30 acres of excellent land for each decades of preparation, and by changing heads of feudal, and in fact they intensified the small state, bringing in Daoud in place of Zaiir Shah landlord relations in favour and of the colonial system. finally cutting the troth of Daoud and putring in As for cooperatives, the Russians give would 5 or Taraki instead, took the first bcld step to capture D l0 acres to the peasant, but he didn't havi any Afghanistan and reduce it from a semi-colony to a means of production, neither seed nor fertilizer _ complete colony, and with nothing more than these were available a s only from the cooperative and party which was founded by the the peasants most infamous - were obliged to plant whaiever kind of elements of the society. F plant the cooperative wanted tr them to, which was As one friend answered, when asked about invariably in accord the with the economic division of difference between Khalq and parcham, labour in COMECON. it is as if d "whoever is the door, I'm the hall; Additionally, during part whoever is the { of the first and all of donkey, I'm the pack-saddle.,, So, for example, the second five-year plan, the Russians built the taking Zahir Shah and his government as the : base for a gas and petrol industry in north donkey, then Babrak yells through parliament that Afghanistan in Balkh and Shabarghan. a Aside from Zahir Shah is the most progressive shah in the 6 this fact, they also destroyed all the oil wells they East... and Taraki would kiss Zahir Shah,s hand in o\ considered dangerous for their own natural the international airport at Kabul when Zahir Shah q res,ources, saying that they are expensive and not returned from a trip to Moscow. If you take utilisable, and they took all the documents with Daoud's government as the donkey, Babrak and the them. It may seem incredible people to most that Parcham faction as a whole, which had an the meters which showed the amount of pitroleum important role in Daoud,s coup called upon people exported to the Soviet Union were installed in to uphold and support Daoud and they wouldn,f Soviet territory and were out of the reach of forego any murderous act in order Afghan citizens, to ireserve the so that at the end of each month or positions of Daoud and the dynasty. year the Soviets would Ii we consider say that well, you exported the Russians the donkey they this much petroleum. both feel honored to be considered as lackeys by Russian As for the price, social_ take for example l9g0: the imperialism; in the words Russians of one of their very own wanted terribly to help their dependent leaders, fly coming government "a from the Soviet Union is and in fact put the money back in their useful. " own pocket, and so they considerably raised the "red." coup which was the result of 20 years price of gas to $100 per 1000 cubic ^The meters, whereas of preparation, suddenly took our society from at the same time they bought gas a from Iran at $160 state of relative stagnancy into a state ofrelative per.1000 cubic meters; meanwhile West Germany turmoil. On one side stood the whole nation (taking paid the Russians $200 per 1000 cubic meters foi into account that different social strata, which are the same gas! This is one example of the relations considered in the nation, took part, preserving their of plunder of the Russians with the Afghan people. own class interests) and on the other-side a handful 52

of traitors, the representatives of state finance spontaneous movement which in a very short time capital. These are the two sides involved in this swept all over Afghanistan, without any party bloody controversy. Despite the class base of this having instigated all this. People started by relying government some "leftis[s" or we'd better say on their own strength, according to the means they the disoriented of the Afghan- movement had in hand, under the leadership of heroes who sometimes call it petit bourgeois socialism- or feudal came from their own community. The government socialism, etc., without realizing what they're had not yet put forward its supposed land reform, painting on the low and disgraceful face of the there had been no ideological questions raised, and government. As Majid Kalakani (a leader of the also, the reactionary parties installed in Pakistan Marxist-Leninist Eternal Flsme, who later founded did not exist, contrary to what they claim. If the SAMA in 1978 and was later captured and martyred spontaneous upsurge of our people hadn't by the Soviets AWTW) said, the character and happened, these forces wouldn't even exist - they fate of this government- is decided by its class base, were a handful, instruments of alien governments, which is Russian dependent state capital - and not used from time to time by one imperialist against only the character, but even the fate, because it another. wants to struggle for preserving the interests of its Why do we say these movements are master, a superpower, inside Afghanistan. Thus it spontaneous? cannot belong to the people and the other social This is opposed to the claims of some who today' strata of Afghanistan, and they should confront it want to ride on the movement and use the fruit of and bury it next to its master. the blood of our people whose struggle can be realized only in freedom,- democracy and social The Popular Upsurge justice, which will allow our society to progress and Since the beginning of the movement, both Russian develop - in order to make it serve their own social-imperialism and the Western media have master. And these people claim to be leaders or explained what's behind the war from their own even founders of the movement! As opposed to point of view, and the question is not so clear for this, we say that the movement is spontaneous. our friends in the international arena. Is it the case A barefoot people, a people with the most primitive that there are feudal elements fighting for their arms inherited from their fathers, organized feudal or tribal interests which are somehow not according to tribal relations, with whatever I adapted to structural and democratic reforms of the leadership happened to be found in a village - a I Russians, or is it an ideological war, or is something white-haired old man, an influential person etc., a else involved? who could mobilize others in military matters to the S The relentless defense of a handful of puppet extent possible - this is how they started to oppose mercenaries, the pitiless murder of a people to force the Russians. And the suppressive and oppressive z them to kowtow to the master, rape, injustice, acts Taraki committed to confront this upsurge only i etc.... these are the motives or reasons for the widened and strengthened the upsurge of the people upsurge of our people which, together with the - for example, when one village witnesses how a P tradition of struggle against foreign domination of neighboring village has been reduced to dirt and {a our people, has resulted in a tremendous ashes, and so joins the struggle to save its own tr o Soviet 'aid' to A.fghanistan. = ,* fr JT

existence. On the other hand, the dependency of the lackey regime also enforces the struggle against it. The misfortune is not that the movement started spontaneously, the misfortune will occur if the

.r,l;l'l', revolutionary forces who can draw a bright . ; historical perspective for Afghanistan society do not guide and lead this movement. From the beginning of the movement, every force involved in the struggle, both progressive forces and the reactionary forces installed in Pakistan as well as those who i:ii*if feed from the watering trough of the Pasdaran of 53 the Islamic Republic, all have tried to orient the revenge, and seeing these22 people, even though spontaneous movement according to the particular they were all old and not armed, just ordinary historical stand they represent. people from some village, the soldiers made them If the revolutionary forces are not able to fulfill stand together and shot them all.... there are many their historical task of uniting the people and examples like this all over Afghanistan. There exist leading the spontaneous movement of people in all documents, photos, films, etc., of all this. spheres, whether the reactionary forces installed in Inside the corrupt army itself hashish is the Pakistan take power due to concessions of the two demand of the major part of the soldiers, and superpowers or our war of resistance subsides for a robbery and pillage during night-time inspections is long period of time, the blood of a million and a commonplace. They have also invented a new half martyrs that the people have offered to gain tactic, which they use especially in winter: they stop their freedom up to today would be trampled on by the tanks a bit away from the village, destroy it Russia and its agents. completely and then come in and take the wood the Despite the idea that by invading Afghanistan the houses had been built of and sell it in the cities to Russians took a step forward, by marching into the people who need wood in order to warm country they politically suffered a disgraceful themselves. This happens so often that even the strategic defeat. What they wanted to control puppets of Khalq and Parcham cannot deny it. through their lackies, they were forced to control Today, wherever the Russian soldiers pass, they with 85,000 soldiers. In order to preserve its leave nothing behind but the bare earth itself. Like colonial stature and its profits from the plunder any colonial army, the soldiers don't even think which it had prepared for 25 years, Russia invaded about where their own interests lie they simply Afghanistan; today it is still continuing to kill our aim to attack the opposing side. Their- attacks may people, and even remote parts of Afghanistan have include the forces of the resistance or simply become its slaughter-houses. The Russians were not unarmed people who have no evident relationship to able to act even according to their own military the resistance. They destroy their food, their homes, strategy, which called for taking over Afghanistan kill their animals, etc. They even steal each other's in a short period of time and suffocating the weapons, so one way that you can get yourself a movement. With every day that passes, the flame of weapon and especially ammunition is from Russian our war burns higher and draws in more people in soldiers, since for a minimum of money they will spite of all the destruction. Our barricades in the steal the gun of one of their own fellow soldiers and D war are sparkling. We still fire on Russia, and still sell it. offer victims and take victims from our colonial At the end of 1985 the number of Russian army enemy. And this has actually brought about a soldiers in Afghanistan was around 140-170,000; E military defeat for the Russians. Now, whenever the but the Russians in Afghanistan are not limited to F- issues are seen from our point of view, or whenever soldiers. The other institution that is directly run by tr Russia adds to its soldiers in Afghanistan, this in Russians and we must point out that everything fact strategically puts another stamp on its political in Afghanistan- is done by them is the KGB. They d and military defeat. have administrators in every branch- of government. { They control the universities too. They want to run e The Russian Army all our economic, political, social and cultural life, The hostile repressive apparatus which today is and they've sent people to Afghanistan according to I carrying out the task of suppressing our people this desire. If we were able to say how many qs could be considered to consist of two main parts: Russians there might be in Afghanistan now and q one part, which is directly administered by Russia that would be really hard to do you would- and is built by Russia herself is the Russian Army understand how many people are- needed for a and the KGB; the other part is connected to the country to run a colony relying on its own forces. puppet government and consists of various sections. The forces used by the puppet government to As far as the Soviet Army is concerned, both the suppress the people consist of that part of the army policy and action of this army displays the most that is left to them; KHAD or the security naked characteristics of a fascist army of organisation which is built by Parcham; the forces occupation: mass slaughter, destruction of villages of the Interior Ministry which, because of the role like Karhol, Khakriz of Qandahar, etc. In one town of the Khalq faction not only consists of police but the only people left alive were those who were away also of remnants of Babrak; the state militia; and at the time of the slaughter, people who had gone to other organizations gathered around the two work away from the town - everybody else was national-traitor parties Khalq and Parcham, like killed. In a mass roundup in an area where the youth organizations, women's organizations, and so Liberation Organisation of the Afghan People on. Whatever soldiers the army has, they took by (SAMA) is present, in Kalakan, 22 people were force in night-time kidnappings or in roadblocks sighted by Russian soldiers it should be said that during the day... and so when these people are the day beforehand people of- SAMA had blocked a asked to act as soldiers they count themselves not road and destroyed one or two Russian tanks and with the army but with the opposing forces, with killed some Russians - the soldiers had come for the anti-Russian forces. Usually they are simply 54

waiting for an opportunity to escape and join the of the reactionary forces in Pakistan. Thus in this opposition. Khad or the security organization which way, while treating the national and revolutionary the Parcham created is built by its own most loyal forces as their main enemy, they confront their lackies. But Khad is not limited to a mere security plunderous rival and preserve their own interests. organization in fact, all Parcham people carry So it is that some of the forces among the out the tasks -of Khad, as do many corrupt parasitic reactionary groups those who in carrying out elements, the kind of lumpen strata that exist in any murder and other crimes- are bolder than the others society. They act as Khad's agents. Up to now, the openly declare in their party programme that spy apparatus has been more effective than the before- kicking out Russia they have to get rid of army in dealing blows to the resistance movement, other forces who are involved in the war and are and it is because of this relative efficiency that they opposed to them and supposedly to the Jihad. In are promoted to higher positions. one document published by one of the reactionary The police as a whole is led and controlled by parties an Emir who headed one of these parties Khalq. openly gave orders to his forces, that when they are The militia is connected to the government and is fewer than their opponents, don't fight the based on buying off sell-out commanders in the Russians, instead ask the Russians' help in order to ranks of the resistance and by intensifying defeatism destroy these forces. This is how far these people go in the resistance. Its main role consists of in opposing revolution and the revolutionary forces controlling some rural areas, especially because of and in serving the Russians. their knowledge of these areas. And the fact that The hardship our people have suffered in this they are installed in these regions means that they war, especially the national and revolutionary can be a real problem for the Afghan resistance. forces, is thus double-sided: there is the pressure of The national and revolutionary forces and the Russian imperialism and that of the reactionary resistance forces as a whole should take the question forces installed in Pakistan and their imperialist of the state-run militia more seriously than they masters in the West. But we have one advantage have. This is especially because the government of relative to our Iranian brothers, and that is that the Afghanistan is trying to use this militia to create the revolutionary movement of Iran experienced the army they need. What makes this question more black reaction after its seizure of power but we are pressing is that so long as the destructive policies of experiencing it before it gets to power. Thus if in I the reactionary Afghan parties exists and splits and Iran illusions caused some to have hope in reaction, I internal fights continue, there will always exist a the national and revolutionary forces of 0o o\ basis for the militia forces to expand, and this is a Afghanistan, because they have experienced this danger all forces must be aware of. reaction in the war, have no illusions about it and z understand well its historical character and The Afghan Feudals potential. l The contradiction between Russian social- To show you the anti-human and anti-national P imperialism and the feudal forces under fire in role of the pro-West reactionary forces in Pakistan a Afghanistan could be characterised like this: the and Iran by facts and documents, we call your { decadent feudal forces of Afghanistan and their attention to the disaster of Kouh-e-saffi (Saffi tr class interests are endangered by the Russians and mountains) and to the mass slaughter of Sholkar o their lackies, for whenever imperialism wants to and of the Khondoz front and other such cases. In i establish itself in a country it not only relies on the every one of them dozens of our national heroes, local exploiting forces but also tries hard to develop people active through SAMA, were martyred. The strata in that society completely dependent on itself Russians had placed a bounty of a million Afghanis in order to gain the most and prepare the ground on the heads of each of these SAMA members. for more plunder. Now whether this contradiction For example, Engineer Sarwar was a hero ever will be solved by the reduction of the feudal class to since his front existed in Khondoz, and he had held dependency on Russia or by replacing it with high the banner of the anti-Russian struggle in its another class is a question that will be discussed name. By the testimony of all the resistance forces over and over again during our social revolution. that have passed through that area, no Russian has What is important here is that in the current dared to take one step onto the main roads to situation this class, in its own class manner and in venture into the rural areas there. The people in and order to preserve its own class interests, wants for around Khondoz would say that everywhere that the one last time to put its fate up for examination in helicopters bomb, Engineer Sarwar was there for the great national war. sure. Alone with his group in a moving series of The feudal forces' social base and their complete battles, he had so harrassed the enemy that the dependence on Western imperialism, and their Russians were willing to make many other victims ability to profit from their extensive financial and suffer in an effort to kill him. Engineer Sarwar was military support as well as their ability to use the finally martyred by a notorious and shameful Islamic beliefs of the people, all this has enabled conspiracy hatched by the pro-West reactionary these forces to impose themselves on the forces, those pillars of colonialism, and from that spontaneous movement of the people, in the form time there are those who say that killing Engineer 55

s Fa tr Afghan guerillas d { Sarwar was opening the gate to the Russians. hostile to all other classes and strata, bloodily z suppressed filled its prisons with people. them and 5 "Divide and Rule" In Kabul alone under Taraki 12,000 political 6 The nationalities we can count in Afghanistan prisoners were executed without even a trial - this Or include Pushtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazareh, Turkmen, is cited in an official document revealed by Amin o\ Gajour, Nuristani, etc. Pushtuns are the largest when he wanted to expose the crimes of Taraki. nation with 4090 of the population, then there And Amin himself, that other despicable traitor comes Tajik, Uzbeks, Hazareh, Turkmen, ... who took power and shed a few crocodile tears for The coup d'6tat regimes under Amin and Taraki our nation, declared that the total number of loudly have warned the Pushtuns to beware that the victims during the time of Taraki and Amin has Tajiks and Hazareh want to take power. This was been 1 million, of which 100,000 were political even declared in an official speech by Taraki. He prisoners executed in Kabul. These are the figures and especially Amin gave the Pushtun nation the coming from their own mouths. Behind this system task of eradicating the Hazarahs, saying that their of murder lies Russian social-imperialism, which money is yours, their lives ours. Accordingly, bears people like Taraki, Babrak and Amin in its around 1979-80, Amin gave 3000 guns to the belly. Today in the known prisons of the Pushtuns of Vardak in order to suppress the Afghanistan government, in cities like Kabul, Hazarehs. But fortunately, the people of Vardak Qandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, there are tens of were conscious of who their enemy is, the enemy thousands of political prisoners in the worst who had put their national existence in question, the conditions, with no rights whatsoever. When a Taraki regime; after they took the guns they went to political prisoner is locked up nobody knows where the mountains and started to use these very guns to he is until he gets out. He has no contact with the fight the government. outside. The most vicious torture, physical and After taking power, the coup d'6tat regime, mental - this is what every political prisoner 56

awaits, every night. Under Taraki they mass the historical task of such a force to resist, to raise murdered thousands of people in Pol-e-Charkhi. the consciousness of the people and defend their They executed l6 members of SAMA without trial, righteous interests, to chart the direction of and there are hundreds more examples like this. revolution against those who in their absence want It is the historical experience of our people's to kick colonialism out the front door and bring it struggle that whenever the masses of people were on in through the backdoor. the scene, and that has been mainly on the Today the Russians and their gold have bought battlefield, we were not defeated. Studying the servants all over the world who support and uphold history of these struggles is sometimes really tragic. their dependent compradors and who try to call the You see a nation at the height of victory accept bloody coup d'etat of Sour, this disaster that has defeat. When the masses were on the scene we won soaked our nation in blood, a revolution. At the victory, military victory, but whenever they left the same time all the reactionary forces regionally and scene and questions went to be solved on the globally, including Western imperialism as a whole, negotiating tables and the role of the ruling classes try with all their might and using any trick came to the fore, with their effort to preserve their whatsoever to support the historically doomed, backwards forces of our country. From their reactionary standpoint they want to attack their rival and at the same time in the guise of attacking this rival attack as their main enemy the highest achievement of mankind in the arena of ideology and thought, the ideas that are the fruit of years of struggle and work of the advanced masses. Amidst. all this what history is witness to is that though alone, we advanced a difficult struggle. We have hardly found the opportunity to lift our voice to our comrade fighters in the national and international arena. Now that we have got that opportunity to talk about the problems of our revolution with ,4 World To Win, we call on all I national and revolutionary forces, that even if they ! cannot materially aid the national revolutionary a forces of Afghanistan at least they can propagate s our righteous stand for the world to see. z Though it is clear from the articles in AWTW that they expose Russian social-imperialism from a i theoretical viewpoint, we tell you that the P manifestation of this theory is in practice. The laboratory is Afghanistan. Everyone who wants to {a see that Russia is social-imperialist come to this q laboratory: witness their butchery and mass murder, o how they colonialize, how they turn their back on the achievements of their own revolution and = liquidate them. We are convinced that this era is not an era in Studying SAMA literqture. which colonialism can ignore the identity of nations, instead today is a time when national liberation revolutions can gain victory step by step, class interests, the outcome was political defeat. The while colonialism is headed towards defeat. The absence of a leading revolutionary force, of such great revolutions which can take the most oppressed revolutionary institutions as could secure the long- forces of society from poverty and misery to victory term interests of the millions of toilers and orient and prosperity advance step by step. We believe that the society toward progress and development and the revolution in Afghanistan is part of this towards eliminating injustice and oppression, such revolution. The freedom of the Afghan people side an absence has resulted in the political defeat of the by side with people liberated all over the world will people. herald another world, a world in which mankind is The absence of such a force in the current always free. Forward to that world! I resistance war has whetted the appetite of some of the Western imperialists and their agents, who for 50 years during the Talayee dynasty have lived by sucking the blood of our people and selling them out at the negotiating tables. Here the task of the national and revolutionary forces is multiplied. It is The Declsrqtion of the Revolutionary Internstionolist Movement was adopted in March 1984 by the delegates and observers at the Second International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisa- tions which formed the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. The following are the participating parties and organisations of the RIM: Central Reorganisation Committee Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Ceylon Communist Party Communist Collective of AgitlProp Italy] Communist Committee of Trento [Italy] Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) [BSD (M-L)] Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) Mao Tsetung Regional Committee Communist Party of Peru Communist Party of Turkey./Marxist-Leninist Haitian Internationalist Revolutionary Group Leading Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, India Nepal Communist Party [Mashal] New Zealand Red Flag Group Proletarian Communist Organisation, Marxist-Leninist IItaly] Proletarian Party of Purba Bangla (PBSP) [Bangladesh] Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia Revolutionary Communist Party, USA Revolutionary Communist Union [Dominican Republic] Revolutionary Internationalist Contingent (Britain) Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran) Available in the following languages (partial list): Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Creole, Danish, English, Farsi, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Kannada, Kurdish, Malayalam, Nepali, Punjabi, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, 1f plus 50 p handling. For more information write the Information Bureau of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement at the following address: BCM RIM London, WCIN 3XX U.K. 58 Romoniq:

Goulqsh Communism or Copitqlist Austerity

The crisis in the Eastern bloc is ed austerity measures, the striking legends that were the source of Bram perhaps nowhere more acute than in workers pelted him with rocks and Stoker's Dracula vampire novel. a Romania. In the last few years the bricks. Ceausescu fled for his life. During those same years, other ties I ruling Romanian Communist Party Such an episode would be developed as well: the U.S. Congress a has imposed austerity measures humiliating for any chief of state, granted Romania Most Favoured 3 which have not been seen in Europe and much more so for the head of a Nation trade status, entitling it to since the Second World War. These party which still proclaims itself the significant trade tariff reductions. include extensive rationing, drastic communist vanguard of the pro- Yet on the other hand Romania i= reduction of energy consumption, letariat. has throughout this same period severe labour discipline, and been attacked as the most ho numerous repressive measures to en- The Original Land of the Yampires "Stalinist" country in the bloc, rul- o force these and other steps. Romania has for years been the sub- ed by unrepentant totalitarians, with { There is of course no simple one- ject of a seemingly quasi-schizo- a "cult of personality. " Some tr to-one correspondence between phrenic assessment on the part of the Western commentators have even o economic crisis and political revolt. Western bloc. It has, on the one attacked Ceausescu for supposedly i Yet the depth and tenacity of the hand, been portrayed as the patria resurrecting elements of the Cultural crisis in Romania is without doubt of Nadia Comaneci and her gymnast Revolution in China(?!). Further- building up pressure which is strain- cohorts, whose countrymen are said more, especially in the last few years, ing the social fabric of the country to be engaged in a one-sided but the acute economic difficulties of the and dramatically altering the com- courageous struggle for in- country have been held up as yet fur- portment of rulers and ruled alike. dependence from the heavy-handed ther proof of the failure of It is a situation which the Western Soviets. Romania was, for example, socialism, particularly of the more imperialists, eager to seize on widely hailed in the West when it "orthodox" variety. whatever openings in the East bloc became the sole East bloc member to This two-pronged propaganda they can, as they showed in Poland, break the Russian boycott of the reflects U.S. imperialism's stated are eyeing seriously; it is also a 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. policy of "differentiation," which is development which genuine Often depicted as quaint, the coun- based on maximizing U.S. influence Marxist-Leninists need to follow as try was for a while a stopping-off within the Soviet bloc by dividing well, though for completely dif- point for the idle Western rich in bloc members into "good" and ferent purposes. their endless search for new, exotic "bad," without forgetting that they In one incident not long ago, thrills. During the 1970s, for in- are still members of the enemy when Nicolae Ceausescu, who has stance, planeloads of American camp. In fact, Romaniaconforms as headed Romania for over twenty tourists disembarked in Bucharest to little to the fairyland image of vam- years now, attempted to negotiate a visit an ancient castle in Tran- pires as it does to the genuine conclusion to a revolt in the mining sylvania where they were regaled socialism that existed under Stalin in region against some recently impos- over a night-time campfire with the the USSR or to Mao's Cultural 59

Revolution. Like the rest of right of each country to follow its including demands for the the East bloc, Romania is capitalist. own "national path to socialism". withdrawal of the nuclear missiles of Its present situation, including the The Romanians raised this par- both blocs, and has advocated economic crisis, is the product of ticularly in opposition to the Soviet schemes for a "nuclear-free years of development as part of the revisionists' demand for an "inter- Balkans." For a while Ceausescu Soviet imperialist system, ruled over national division of labour" of even went so far as to implicitly en- by the new revisionist bourgeoisie. Comecon (the economic organisa- dorse Reagan's "zero option," call- One does not have to follow the tion of the Soviet bloc, at that time ing for the removal of the Soviets' tourists to Transylvanian castles to including only the USSR and SS-20s already in place in return for find true-to-life vampires in the East Eastern Europe), whereby each which the U.S. would refrain from bloc. member was to specialize in doing introducing its own cruise and Per- what they already do best. Romania, shing missiles. Gaullism, East-bloc St1'le the least developed European coun- In general, the U.S. and the West The "maverick" stance that is try in the bloc, pointed out that this have tried to use openings like these typically attributed to Ceausescu would reduce the country to the throughout East Europe in order to and the Romanian Communist Par- status of a provider of raw materials consolidate their own positions of ty is a reflection of his continuing at- and foodstuffs (Bulgaria has gone influence for the moment, in order tempts to advance Romania's ou'n on to become the self-proclaimed to advance more dramatically when national interests within the Soviet "gardener of Comecon," a jolly lit- an opportunity presents itself. But it imperialist network, as a sort of East tle nickname for its own similar is not as if the Soviets are fundamen- bloc de Gaulle. This policy has roots subordinate functioning). tally opposed to this sort of which go back even before What Ceausescu and the RCP manoeuvring by the East European Ceausescu himself. fought for was not at all to join Mao countries, or even to Romania's It was at the time rvhen Mao Tsetung and the Chinese party in ex- more maverick stance overall. In- Tsetung and the Chinese Com- posing the capitalist character of the deed, Romania's connections in munist Party launched their attack Soviet revisionists or to launch a places where other bloc members on the Soviet revisionists in the late revolutionary initiative to retake the have none occasionally serves the 1950s that Romania, then headed by socialist road in Romania or in the Soviet bourgeoisie well. For exam- Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej, began to bloc as a whole; instead they were ple, Romania has recently played a mount its own opposition to the content to take advantage of the pivotal role in smoothing the path Soviets. However the terms of manoeuvring room opened up by for initial steps towards normaliza- { dispute raised by Gheorgiu-Dej Mao's attack on the Soviet revi- tion of Soviet relations with China, o and, after 1965, by Ceausescu - sionists in order to advance the na- and it has also proved useful in F- had little in common with Mao- tional interests of Romania within maintaining rapport with the tr Tsetung's revolutionary battle. The the Soviet bloc. Accordingly, Ayatollah Khomeini regime. In latter inaugurated his critique of the Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu both some ways, Romania plays a sort of d Soviets on the international situa- endorsed the Soviet revisionists' at- mirror-image role to that of France, tion, exposing Khruschev's theory tacks on Stalin and subsequently using its occasional blusterings { of "peaceful coexistence" as a sought to project the RCP as a against the bloc leader in order to ex- z justification for the revisionist' col- "neutral arbiter" between Mao and tend its own influence and, in so do- I lusion with imperialism. Mao later the CPSU, between revolution and ing, the influence of the bloc overall. 6 developed his famous analysis of the counter-revolution. In addition, the Soviets recognise o\ restoration of capitalism in the This independent stance has in- the role of Ceausescu's demagogic il USSR, succinctly summarized by his cluded opening up to an unusual ex- nationalism in maintaining internal statement that "the rise to power of tent to Western economic and stability in Romania. Ceausescu has revisionism is the rise to power of the especially political relations. for years touted his own success in bourgeoisie," and developed the Romania is, for instance, the sole averting any kind of Soviet occupa- thesis ofthe need for continuing the East bloc country with diplomatic tion and has fed the idea that Roma- revolution under the dictatorship of relations with Israel, which it refus- nians enjoy a relatively privileged the proletariat to prevent such ed to condemn in the Six Day War position vis-a-vis their neighbors restoration and advance towards in 1967 .It also maintains privileged because they alone have not a single communism. As for Gheorghiu- relations with Iran (under the Soviet soldier on their soil. In 1968, Dej, Ceausescu and the RCP, as one Ayatollah as under the Shah), and when he announced before throngs Western historian put it, "at no time has relatively developed ties with the of Romanians his refusal to allow was there any discussion of the fun- U.S., W. Germany and France (in Warsaw Pact troops to cross damental issues confronting the the last two years both U.S. Vice through Romania in order to invade socialist camp - Stalinism, revi- President Bush and Secretary of Czechoslovakia, he was indeed sionism, dogmatism, liberalization State Schultz have visited fervently supported. But the bottom and the like." Bucharest). In order to further line of his message is that the sole The point that interested the RCP polish his image as a global arbiter, way that Romania can maintain this leaders was "the separate path to Ceausescu has also mobilised large relatively "privileged" status is, as socialism," by which was meant the demonstrations for disarmament, he drums in repeatedly, for the peo- 60

ple to stay in line. ln 1977 , during a behind the Soviet lead. The majori- severely hurt by the recession which strike by 50-90,000 miners, ty of Romania's trade, for instance, hit the West in the mid-1970s, in Ceausescu, a former miner, in- is with other Comecon members, general and also because as marginal tervened personally in the negotia- with the USSR by far its largest exporters they were often the first tions and was finally successful in single trading partner. cut by Western importers. Then too bringing the strike to a halt with his there was a serious rise in the price appeal that, if the strike continued Economic Crisis of petrol, which had to be imported to rage out of control he could not Recent economic developments have in increasing quantities in order to ensure against "external interven- given rise to serious cracks in the fuel the export sector. This became tioi1." And everyone knew what that consensus that Ceausescu has at particularly acute after the fall of the meant. In fact, with this line of least maintained certain advantages Shah of lran, who was Romania's Romania's "relatively privileged for Romania, that "things could leading petrol supplier. At the same position," Ceausescu is dangling a always be worse." The development time interest on the debt mounted. carrot before the masses, in part to of this crisis can only be sketched Thus Romania found itself in a get them to passively accept the way briefly. Its more recent roots stem situation where it had to export to things are, including relatively high from the late '60s. At that time pay its debt while at the same time doses of repression, in the interests Romania, like most of the other East it had to borrow ever more heavily of protecting their supposed European countries, adopted a to import increasing quantities of privileges. The real content of series of economic reforms in the petrol in order to produce for ex- Ceausescu's concern about external wake of the so-called Lieberman port. This situation was exacerbated intervention was displayed pro- reforms in the USSR, which restruc- for Romania relative to the rest of minently during the Polish events of tured planning more thoroughly the Soviet bloc first, because it had 1980-81 when Ceausescu was more along capitalist lines and establish- for decades been energy self- vociferous than any other bloc ed profit as the leading indicator in sufficient with the rich Ploiesti oil leader in calling for a crackdown on the planning process. While fields and had a high level of energy Solidarity, which he denounced as Romania's economy (and East consumption per unit of output; and "an emanation of reaction and im- Europe's generally) was at that time secondly, because it got almost none perialism" and which he compared growing faster than those of the of its oil from the Soviets, who had s to "those cliques" in Poland before West, the rate of growly'l has since provided natural gas and petrol to a WW2 who, according to Ceausescu, then begun a serious decline. In the other COMECON members at a so '70s, Romania undertook a series cheaper than world market prices as o\ destablized that country and of brought on the world war. adjustments which relied on heavy a means of consolidating intra-bloc To the extent that this nationalist imports of Western technology, paid unity and maintaining a grip on the ? reasoning has taken root in for through loans floated from jugular vein of the Eastern Euro- ! Romania it has promoted an Western banks, with plans to pean economies. Thus Romania was outlook that is not only bourgeois significantly upgrade their export hit especially hard by the rise in ho and conducive to passivity, but capability to the West, thus enabling world market prices. In addition, a largely illusory as well. Romania is them to compete economically and historical dif ficulties with q{ solidly in the Soviet bloc. True, improve their technological base for agricultural production were ag- Soviet soldiers are not stationed on strategic purposes. In particular, gravated, including by the diversion o its soil, but it does take part in such Romania planned to gear for expor- from that sector of energy- Warsaw Pact manoeuvres as the re- ting petrochemical products. In consumptive products (eg. fer- = cent Soyuz exercises, in which 1972, as this growth strategy began tilizer). Romanian officers participated as to take shape, Romania was even In the late 1970s initial measures advisors in Romania itself and took admitted into the International were taken to cut imports, especial- part at the level of coordinating Monetary Fund and the World ly by tightening up energy consump- command, control and communica- Bank. The country's debt to tion, and to seek other domestic tions. Furthermore, Ceausescu Western banks climbed rapidly, sources ofenergy, such as low-yield made clear the bottom line when he from $1,000 million in l97l to coal. These were deemed insufficient proclaimed that, whatever the state $10,000 million in l98l it was a however and in late 1981, taking ad- of the Warsaw Pact relations, rate of growth in the debt- which, vantage of the wave of demoraliza- 'should imperialism unleash war, relative to GNP, was matched only tion which was felt throughout the Romania, a socialist state, would by Poland. East bloc with the clampdown in fight alongside other socialist These moves did lead to a brief Poland on Solidarity, Ceausescu an- states,' * period of high growth in trade with nounced a series of unprecedented Economically, Romania's objec- the West bloc, which in Romania's austerity measures, which had been tions to Comecon have always been particular case continued longer generally recommended by the IMF. couched in terms of opposing any than most other Comecon members. These included: "supra-national" authority it has The effects of this on Romania's - bloc economy, however, were not exact- no objections to overall r Cited in Romania: Politics, Economicsand economic policy, and it is fully in- ly those anticipated. Romania's Sociely by Michael Shafir. Frances Pinter tegrated economically into the bloc reliance on expanding exports was Pubiishers, U.K. 6t

reduced to 40 hours by 1980, was continued through 1990. Prison sentences were authorized for drink- ing on the job or even showing up at ,*r:.t+tf1rr' work drunk. In a democratic i- #],ffi flourish, Ceausescu also announced '$iffi& a new "self-management" plan, rd**S*r+' really a very old profit-sharing . nrj6!4*fii; scheme. Workers are compelled to , +,*r{*,:, : invest a share of their earnings in ,,,#F.u., tii:&:i;Bs.;.r their individual factory, so that the , -;l t;tir: larger their factories' profit, the larger their own salaries, and of course vice versa as well. This variable portion can go as high as 25Vo of the individual worker's B*4; wage. In addition, the already widespread use of piece-rates is made even more general, to the point that individual workers are now required to negotiate with their boss for a separate contract with their own personal work quota. The RCP's increasingly heavy reliance on material incentives and other appeals up and down the line to individual self-interest as the key link in motivating the work-force - all in the name of innovative "self- L management" and even "pro- letarran are long- { democracy" - o familiar hallmarks of capitalism in ! any form. They find ready parallels F with innovations popular in post- tr '60s W. Europe, particularly in W. Germany, such as "co- d determination" and the like. Thus { the revisionists, faced with crisis, act like their Western counter-parts, = dangling carrots with one hand, I brandishing a whip with the other. 6 The RCP's explanations for the q necessity of such measures are also (r revealing. They denounce Western imperialism for causing austerity Food rationing: including Television broadcasting has been cut and famine throughout the world bread,- flour, rice, sugar, cooking back to 2hrs./day, restaurants close (with of course not a word on any oil, etc. Hoarding of more than a at 21.00 and most city street lights responsibility the Soviets might bear one month's supply per family was are permanently turned off. (It for, for example, Ethiopia). Second- made a criminal offense, with a se- should be pointed out that consump- ly, and more pointedly, Ceausescu cond offense punishable by up to 5 tion of energy by individual blames... the Romanian people, and years in prison. Compliance is households amounts to a mere 790 almost all of them at that. In his facilitated by restricting each fami- of Romania's entire energy con- view, the peasants routinely divert ly's purchases to a single local store. sumption.) To ensure compliance cereals to their private animal stocks Rationing of energy consump- with these measures "flying teams" to line their own pockets, the tion:- gas and electricity have been of party and police agents conduct workers work too little and too routinely cut to consumers for up to surprise house searches. poorly and steal and waste state 8 hrs./day. It is illegal for the public - Inflation: a 3590 price hike was funds, and for the right price the to use refrigerators, washing announced f or 220 basic foodstuffs. merchants will sell anything at all machines, etc., to heat their homes Productivity increases: the under the counter. In short, while or apartments to more than lOC Romanian- workers' 46-hour work hypocritically encouraging rampant (50F), or to drive personal cars. week, previously scheduled to be individualism with a program based 62

on material incentives, Ceausescu is thinker and present-day strategist. " the Mayor of Petrosani, Negruts, outraged because everyone is out for An official song hails him as "the and the local Prefect, Radulescu, to himself... instead of for the Roma- star of our race,' ' part of a mounting bring in reinforcements of Securitate nian bourgeoisie! crescendo of panegyrics to the and party functionaries from In a fitting finale to this logic, "Romanian race" (whatever that is) Craiova, Tirgu-Jiu and Deva. They Ceausescu accuses the masses of and to the "national road to weren't able to do much though people of yet another crime: eating socialism" all of which is not so against miners in work-clothes, with too much. Ceausescu and his wife far off from- "national socialism" their lamps, helmets and pick-axes. personally promulgated " scientific" itself. Not only were they unable to state guidelines on a proper diet and The enshrinement of Ceausescu disperse the strikers, even with their declared that rationing is in large also includes the elevation of his en- firehoses and firetrucks, but the part necessary because Romanians tire family: four of the eight current miners got hold of Verdets and Pana are fat. Thus diet guidelines and ra- RCP Politburo members are from and locked them up. 'Until tion limits are directly linked for Ceausescu's immediate family, and Ceausescu comes, we won't let them example, no one can buy more- than a larger number of his extended go.' This happened despite the ef- 180 kg. of cereals per year because family are placed throughout the top forts of the Securitate, under the this is said to be the limit for good ranks of the party. Together they are orders of Colonel Mihuts, who health; instead people are advised to popularly known as the "Ceausescu didn't cease repeating that eat more meat. The "scientific" mafia." Ceausescu \\'as on his way. Finally basis of these guidelines is belied by he arrived. the fact that local people's councils The Spectre of Revolt Haunts the "Our discussions with the chief of are authorized to lower the norms "Ceausescu Mafia" state lasted from noon until 5 p.m. even further depending on locul The recent austerity measures and No one uould have uanted to be in agricultural production. No doubt the generally deteriorating situation Ceausescu's shoes: he was booed, Romania has obese citizens: it is a in the country have given rise to hissed, whistled at and cursed all European capitalist country and sporadic outbreaks of resistance. In kinds of names.... does not witness African-style 1977, tens of thousands of miners "As for reforms, yes, they took famine. At the same time, it is a fact struck in the Valley of Jiu, the cen- place: the 'cleaning-up' of the a that it is about the poorest country tre of Romania's mining industry workers who demanded their rights I in the East European bloc and that and thus especially critical for the was begun. Two helicopters were a there are millions of poor collective energy-oriented economy. What brought in, the Securitate and local s farm and factory workers whose took place there is described in a militia were doubled, the mines were main nutrition, at least from late fall public letter from a group of 22 surrounded and Securitate agents to early spring, comes from a steady miners: were engaged as workers in the i= diet of corn meal mush. For them, "We want to communicate to you pits.... 4,000 of us were also put on o fresh fruit entails an orange or two in general what has happened in the the streets...expelled from the L for Christmas, while meat is a not Valley of Jiu, at the Lupeni mine, a Valley. a too common luxury. The city of mine of long-standing working class "Never fear if you learn that there { a tr Timisoara in the west has already traditions. On the lst of August, has been a strike in Socialist coun- o witnessed a mass demonstration some of our comrades told us that a try. There will be others, and maybe demanding bread. It is in such cir- strike had broken out that very day we will have no other choice than to ! cumstances that Ceausescu advises at Lupeni. So miners from all over get justice ourselves, with our mat- the masses to eat less grain and more the Valley went there, since that was tocks and pick-axes.... At Lupeni we meat just as Marie Antoinette where the action was. There were cried, 'Down with the proletarian proclaimed- to the hungry Parisians, miners from all the mines: Cazda, bourgeoisie!',.. "let them eat cake." Uricani, (etc.),... mines which "At Lupeni too, Mister In the RCP's view, everyone is employed a great number of miners, Ceausescu told us, 'Calm yourselves guilty... except the guilty, the revi- 90,000 in all. On Wednesday, Aug. and go back to work otherwise, sionist capitalists at the head of the 3rd, when President Ceausescu ar- we will be crushed.' This- was his way party. On the contrary, the crisis is rived, three days had already pass- of telling us, 'Off to work you go!' paralleled by unprecedented adula- ed during which at least 35,000 The 4th, he was called up by tion of Ceausescu, who is hailed for miners assembled in front of the Brezhnev and that made everything introducing Romania into a whole Lupeni mine, where we had some clear.... And to think that it was at new historical epoch "the age of serious confrontations with the Lupeni in 1929 that the flame was Ceausescu." At the- most recent Securitate (the Romanian secret lit!" RCP Congress, the opening speech police AWTW), the police and This last phrase alludes bitterly to exalted him as "the politician who, party functionaries.- Among the lat- the fact that it was in 1929 at this constantly concerned with ter were Ilie Verdets and Gheorghe very mine, Lupeni, that the RCP patriotism and with the destiny of Pana, both sent by the Central Com- originally established a national his people, and acting toward the mittee, no doubt to explain to us the presence by leading a fierce strike of constant progress of his homeland, laws passed before Aug. l, but who the miners. Indeed, one cannot talk has asserted himself as a great in fact were very anxious, along with to many East European workers or 63 read their statements without obser- by the generals and party hacks in tied down in a major war in Viet- ving the pervasive sense of treachery Poland exerts its most poisonous nam; in fact, the U.S. bloc is ag- by a new elite, by a "proletarian influence- and continues to have a gressively looking for any openings bourgeoisie," "red bourgeoisie," or hold on sections of the Romanian it can exploit in the Soviet fold, and whatever other name by which it is people. While there is fertile soil for has recently raised its voice loudly popularly known, and equally by the revolt, the limitations of spon- about its discontent with the 'yalta' painful absence of any kind of scien- taneous resistance are evident too. It division of post-World War 2 tific analysis of the restoration of is a situation crying out for a revolu- Europe. capitalism in the Soviet bloc, even by tionary analysis and conscious In the past few years the Soviets those who seem to have few illusions Ieadership. have made certain efforts to tighten about the nature of life in the West. As for the economy, here too up relations with Ceausescu. Short- Even so, as Mao pointed out, op- developments will not proceed in a ly after Ceausescu's last round of pression inevitably breeds straight line. On the one hand, the disarmament propaganda, resistance, and such battles as those country has succeeded in reducing its Gromyko stopped off in Bucharest waged by these workers continue to debt by over $2,000 million in the for a chat. Following the meeting, tear gaping holes in the revisionists' last three years. But even as far as Ceausescu issued a fierce denuncia- tattered claim to represent the pro- the debt goes, the road continues to tion of the cruise and Pershing letariat. It was a few years later, in be rocky: a large chunk of debt missiles, without mentioning anY December 1981, when the incident payments was postponed until this Soviet SS-20s. They also concluded recounted at the first of this article year, and are just coming due. The a deal to multiply Soviet exports of took place: miners seized a local par- U.S., seeking to fish in troubled oil to the erstwhile maverick bY ty headquarters, and finally waters and quite aware of several times - hardly a coin- Ceausescu again intervened. Only Romania's recent moves to tighten cidence. This is not to say that the this time he was met not with hisses relations with the USSR, has Soviets want the kind of subser- and curses but with rocks and threatened to end the country's vience exhibited for instance by the stones. Similar incidents in the wake Most Favoured Nation status. This Bulgarian revisionists, for ofthe austerity decrees in late l98l would significantly reduce the trade Ceausescu's reputation is still abound: two towns in the South surplus Romania has managed with something that can be traded on. were pacified only when the army in- the U.S., which amounted to $800 Among other things, this means that D tervened; a crowd in another town million in 1984. the Soviets are not likelY to force preparing a mass lynching a Most fundamentally, the historic Ceai,.escu to publicly eat his own { was of o party secretary, who was saved on- problems with agriculture, the lack words and repudiate his maverick T ly when other authorities intervened, of improved prospects for exports, stance, even while objective F grabbed him and fled. This wave of the need to dramatically improve developments force a certain tr revolt eventually subsided, replaced productivity in the face of a sullen tightening of relations between the by an intense calm which now reigns and resistant work-force, these and USSR and Romania. The Romanian d over the land. many other problems are certain to bourgeoisie does have its own na- { give the revisionist rulers no peace. tional interests, and this the Soviets in fact encourage. The Prospects One U.S. policy analyst writing on recognise and = It would be a mistake to assume that developments in 1985 in Romania What they demand is that the striv- s Romania is headed straight towards concluded that the danger of a ing after these interests be realised in 6 an imminent explosion: the imposi- "palace coup," triggered by unrest the context oftheir bloc, and this the o\ tion of the austerity measures was caused by workers' strikes or na- maverick Ceausescu has Proven d= certainly met by outrage and tional minority rebellions, "is pro- himself quite willing to do. tr rebellion but also by heavy bably as clear in Bucharest as it is in repression.- Events in Poland were Philadelphia." It is testimony to the followed closely in Romania, and fragility of the social fabric in im- workers inspired by Solidarity tried portant areas of bothblocs. to f orm similar trade union And this final concern is of no organisations with some success small worry to the Soviet Union but the subsequent suppression -of itself. Internal stability in Eastern those groups and, more fundamen- Europe is a threat to Soviet strategic tally, of the Polish movement too concerns, and increasingly so. A se- formed a deep impression. Discus- cond Poland is an intolerable pro- sion of resistance turns quickly to spect, for the Soviet imperialists can the question of the threat of Soviet not stand by idly and watch another invasion, and to this there are no of their junior partners explode in easy answers. Moreover, it is exact- dissent without risking major ly here that Ceausescu's own political fallout. Nor is this 1968, demagogic nationalism - "go back when the Soviets could carry out an to work or we will be crushed, ' ' the invasion like that of Czechoslovakia same appeal which was used so often to stabilize things while the U.S. was z64 dred kilometres long in the region of oF cRlilclsM Cu Chi alone; similarly, only a just, o revolutionary cause could motivate men and women to endure the hard- o- ship of living and f ighting underground for months and years The Tunnels of Cu Chi at a time. Tom Mongold Penycote ond John The region of Cu Chi was long a Hodder & Stoughton .l985 stronghold of the NLF. Because of London lII its proximity to Saigon the U.S. (olso ovoiloble French: in army spared no effort in trying to Les tunnels de Cu Chi .l985) control the area. A huge U.S. base Albin Michel; Poris housing an Army division was con- structed near the village of Cu Chi. There are few examples of Huge expanses of land were heroism more telling than that of the bulldozed, burned and sprayed with EI= Vietnamese people's just struggle pesticides. The authors report that against U.S. aggression. One of the wells in the area were systematically J.- merits of Mangold and Penycate's poisoned by U.S. soldiers who threw work The Tunnels of Cu Chi is to the corpses of dead animals into l- rekindle memories (for those of us them. Villagers were herded by force old enough to remember) or present into the infamous "strategic a first picture of the unbelievable hamlets." Those who escaped were courage, self-sacrifice and ingenuity considered fair game for attack by that the men and women of Vietnam artillery fire and bombs or the Cobra demonstrated. To a certain extent helicopters that flew low to the such a picture shines throu gh despite ground machinegunning everything the intentions of the authors, who that moved. Pilots returning to their attempt a "balanced" and "two- bases were encouraged to drop any sided" account of a war whose reac- remaining explosives or napalm on tionary character on the part of U.S. Cu Chi. Yet despite this incredible imperialism and just character on barbarism the U.S. imperialists were the part of the oppressed who took never able to "pacify" Cu Chi and up arms makes any such al- it remained a strong hold of the tempt at bourgeois objectivity revolutionary forces throughout the derisory. war. In fact, at the height of the U.S. The Tunnels of Cu Chi is a lively presence, in 1969, the NLF was able account based mainly on interviews to carry out a daring raid inside the with the participants of the war Cu Chi base, destroying a great deal waged by the National Liberation of military equipment. Front (NLF) against the U.S. army Cu Chi is located on the southern in one particular area of Vietnam edge of the plain that extends from near Cu Chi, located less than forty the Mekong River Delta in the south kilometres from what was then to the highlands to the north and Saigon, the capital of the puppet west. Except for some forests, the South Vietnamese regime. As its ti- region does not have any particular tle implies, the book examines in favourable geographical features for particular the "tunnel warfare" waging guerrilla war. It does have a waged by the NLF in the area which concentration of the peasantry. The bordered a region known to the authors refer to Cu Chi (at the U.S.during the war as the "Iron beginning of the war) as a "densely Triangle. " Tunnel warfare is a form populated agricultural area" con- of combat that is suited to the weak sisting of both rice fields and rubber in their struggle against a stronger, and coconut plantations. highly armed and technically Tunnel warfare was a key means superior force. The ability to con- by which the NLF utilised the duct tunnel warfare depends upon positive factors (above all, the sup- the overall character of the war port of the population and, linked to itself: without relying upon the this, the sense of self-sacrifice of its masses the NLF would never have fighters which resulted from the fact been able to construct a network of that they were fighting for a revolu- tunnels that were almost three hun- tionary cause) to neutralise the t-e :'

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negative factors - the overwhelm- became aware of the importance of at reminding the soldier of the ing superiority of the U.S. in the tunnels in the NLF war strategy "American Way of Life" he was weaponry and technology. While and therefore tried to come up with supposed to protect. Usually the the tunnels might seem to be a defen- new weapons and methods to Americans would be transported sive measure (and they certainly did neutralise them. Most of their high back to the base by helicopter after have that aspect), they were above tech weapons proved completely un- a busy day of burning villages and all a means and method l'or combat- suited to this kind of warfare murder. ting the enemy. because of their unwieldiness. Tunnel warfare also led to a close Even the term "tunnel" is In the last analysis, as Mao hand-to-hand combat that favoured somewhat of rnisnomer. In fact, pointed out, people not weapons, those fighting for a revolutionary they were really labyrinths of firing determine the outcome in war and line. One story, not recounted in the posts, dormitories, kitchens, storage all the technology available to the book, illustrates this. A Black GI rooms, even hospitals and con- U.S. could not change the fact that descended into a tunnel when he ference rooms all constructed at dif- their soldiers were thoroughly hated heard the unmistakable sound of a ferent levels underground and con- by the people, demoralised and in- bullet being chambered. He turned nected to one another and to the capable of acting out of any noble his head expecting to get a final surface through an ingenious system interest. While the men and women glimpse of the person who was of passageways and trap doors. In of the NLF endured incredible hard- about to kill him. He found himself Cu Chi, some tunnels reached ship living in caverns, the American face-to-face with an NLF fighter within a kilometre of the U.S. base soldiers enjoyed a comfort never who told him in English, "our fight itself and played a vital role in the before seen in history of warfare. is not with you Black man." This GI daring attack referred to earlier. Their base at Cu Chi was equipped never picked up a rifle again! Other tunnels joined networks hous- with movie theatres and swimming The tunnels were dug using hand ing NLF command centres. pools and supplied by daily convoys shovels and simple baskets to Bit by bit the imperialist army of lorries filled with amenities aimed evacuate the dirt.The latter wasno 66 tn -= simple matter as evidence of fresh blem throughout the war, even this left leaderless and often demoralised tJ soil would invite certain U.S. attack. barbaric weapon was resisted to a when the immense sacrifices of the E The peasants of the area who did large degree by the system of tight offensive failed to achieve quick vic- 4 most of the tunnel construction also seals leading from one passageway tory as had been promised. It seems L, had to carry and distribute the dirt to another and ingenious methods of that the Tet Offensive was part of an t! a considerable distance from the using water to filter the air. overall strategy aimed at seeking a o tunnels themselves. The entrances to An even more deadly challenge to negotiated settlement (which finally the tunnels were disguised with tunnel warfare came from the B-52 occurred). With this kind of a z foliage or sometimes (before the carpet bombings the U.S. began political line it is not surprising that, o U.S. had devastated the area) would conducting systematically around in the last few years of the war, the O. exit into a barn. There would always Cu Chi in April 1969, when it ceased Vietnamese leadership put increas- be multiple ways out of the tunnel in using these B-52s to bomb the ingly less emphasis on mobilising the ul case the enemy stumbled upon an North. These bombs blasted enor- masses of peasants and encouraging entrance. The tunnels were con- mous craters that did destroy many them to continue along the Path of =ut structed using only earth and clay, of the tunnels that the U.S. had been arming themselves with the weapons I sometimes reinforced with bamboo. unable to wipe out in five years of of the enemy. F Nevertheless the walls were so hard war. Despite the tragic fact that the many of the U. S. soldiers were con- The Tunnels of Cu Chi makes no heroism and sacrifice of the Viet- vinced they were made of cement! pretext of being an overall history of namese people was increasingly Their strength, their depth the Vietnam War, but in passing betrayed by a centrist and ultimately underground (sometimes several makes some interesting observations revisionist political line on the part metres) and their intricacy made about some of the war's broader of the Vietnamese leadership, the them very difficult to destroy. military and political features. The Vietnam War remains not only a Simply throwing a handgrenade in authors attempt to draw a firm line source of inspiration for today's the tunnels caused little or no of distinction between the NLF and revolutionary communists but also damage and the NLF would soon be the "North Vietnamese," which a treasure chest of experience, able to return. But the typical GI would give credence once again to positive as well as negative, of car- would rarely dare venture into one the bugaboo of "invasion from the rying out revolutionary warfare. of the NLF tunnels, even though the North," but clearly, the struggle of The experience of the NLF in wag- only sure way to destroy them was the people of Vietnam, north and ing tunnel warfare on a grand scale by actually going in and placing ex- south, constituted a single historical will undoubtedly prove to be very plosive charges. process. valuable in the period ahead. To try to solve this problem the The changes in some of the A.S. U.S. army developed special elite military features of the resistance groups known as "tunnel rats" after 1970 that the authors describe whose task was to neutralise the (in particular, a greater reliance on NLF's underground warfare. The conventional warfare and a cor- rhe Purges authors euphemistically refer to the responding diminution of the role Origins of Greoi J. Arch Getty ''mixed motivations" of these rats; played by the local NLF guerrillas) .l985 Combridge University Press even their own deliberately seem to be less a result of the entry charitable portrait reveals a vicious of regular North Vietnamese band of psychological misfits and soldiers into the war in the south There are few subjects in modern pathological killers. Sometimes than a negative development in the history so thoroughly (and when these rats went underground, political-military line guiding the deliberately) distorted as the 1930s they would be ambushed or booby conduct of the war as a whole. The period of class struggle in the Soviet trapped. The authors report that one authors touch on the Tet Offensive Union. The mountain of memoirs group of women guerrillas would which marked a radical shift in Viet- and studies aimed at denouncing wait until a GI stuck his head and namese tactics away from the idea of Stalin and the Communist PartY of arms through a trap door leading protracted war aimed at whittling the Soviet Union, whether written from one level to another, and then away the enemy's strength. Of by Trotskyites and social democrats, would spear him through the neck course, the Tet Offensive did indeed bourgeois liberals or avowed with a sharpened bamboo stick. spectacularly demonstrate the nostalgics of Tsarism like Solzhenit- These rats' most successf ul vulnerability of U.S. imperialism syn, all have in common one very weapon however, seems to have and helped strengthen anti-war sen- central point: vilifying and slander- been the poison gas, including tear timent in the U.S. itself. But the cost ing the dictatorship of the Pro- gas, which is usually deadly when to the NLF was very high: according letariat and trying to wiPe out the used in a small, confined area with to Penycate and Mangold, more immense prestige that the socialist no ventilation. (Interestingly, the than 40,000 NLF fighters were killed system won during that tumultuous authors never mention that the use during the Tet Offensive, including decade. In the face of this or- of any gas in warfare is outlawed by a very high percentage of their chestrated campaign one cannot the Geneva Convention.) Although cadre. According to the authors, help but welcome the appearance of poison gas remained a serious pro- rank and file guerrilla fighters were a book by J. Getty which sets out to 67 { I ltt "reconsider" the Soviet party of commonly held stereotype of a tight- gram of crash industrialisation yet 1933 to 1938, the period often refer- knit bureaucracy thoroughly was extremely lacking in trained € red to (and as Arch Getty points out, beholden to Stalin and anxious to scientific and technical personnel lil incorrectly) as the "purges." crush on his behalf any trace of dis- and those that did exist were, more Professor Arch Getty is not a sent does not conform to the facts often than not, conservative 1' Marxist historian, nor has he broken that Getty convincingly presents. elements who generally opposed the o with all of the prevailing prejudices Most of Getty's work is based on line of going all out to develop a z about this subject. He feels obliged, a meticulous study of the Party ar- socialist economy. Far from being for example, to make a gratuitous chives in Smolensk, the capital of the totalitarian, all-controlling o-ll and unfounded reference to "the the Western Region (Oblast') of the machine that anti-communists like monstrous crimes of Stalin" even Russian Soviet Federated Socialist to portray, Stalin's Party was a still r) though - and perhaps because - Republic (RSFSR), a region with a relatively small organisation based F his work would tend to argue against population of 65 million bordering upon the proletariat in the cities -{ such a view. Nevertheless, by apply- the Ukraine on one hand and the which faced great difficulties in 6 ing the methods of the modern Leningrad and Moscow regions on leading socialist construction in the an- historian - especially reliance on the other. Getty also read Pravdu country as a whole. The archives of primary sources together with a and other central Party documents. the Western Region show that in healthy disrespect for the What comes through in Getty's ac- many areas there was only an = "testimony" of those who have the count is a picture of a central leader- average of one party member for most to gain from a distortion of ship which is itself divided on a series every two collective farms! history - Getty succeeds in of outstanding questions but is Within the Party itself there were demolishing a number of myths con- nevertheless committed to a policy a number of obstacles to the im- cerning the "purges" so widely held of energetically unleashing the plementation of Stalin's line. Getty that they have long been considered workers and peasants and the shows an often sharp contradiction almost sacrosanct. rank and file of the Party- to, as between the regional and local of- Who, for example, cannot recall Mao was to put it later in relation- to ficials and the central Party ap- the often repeated charge that the China, "achieve faster, better and paratus, as well as the contradiction "purges" were directed against the more economical results in the con- between the leadership and the led in "Old Bolsheviks," that is to say, the struction of socialism. " the region itself. Again with the aid original followers of Lenin? Getty It is also clear that in trying to of documents, Getty points out how musters a convincing set of statistics carry out this line Stalin and the resistance from lower and middle- to demonstrate that nothing of the leadership of the CPSU encountered level Party organisations was often kind was the case. Many have accus- a great deal of resistance. First, from able to bury the central directives in ed Stalin of having organised the among certain sections of the Party red tape. assassination of S.M.Kirov in 1934 leadership itself (or former Party Getty shows that the target of the because of the latter's support for leadership) such as Trotsky and "purges" was, in fact, the Party more "moderate" policies and in a Bukharin who argued, either open- bureaucracy itself. The term purge Machiavellian attempt to lay the Iy or simply in essence, that it would (chistka, to cleanse) was originally basis for suppression ofthe opposi- be impossible to construct a genuine applied to periodic movements laun- tion. Getty shows that Kirov was socialist economy in the Soviet ched by the Soviet Party, the first of thoroughly identified with the same Union. Getty confirms, again rely- which took place in 1921. As the political line as Stalin and cites a very ing on the writings of Trotsky name implies, the goal of the chistka interesting and damning statement himself, that an oppositional bloc was to "purify" the Party by remov- by Trotsky. "Trotsky, writing three had indeed been formed between ing those unworthy of Party years after the assassination, called Trotsky and the followers of membership. In the period 1929- Kirov 'a clever and unscrupulous Bukharin as the Soviet leadership l93l Party membership more than Leningrad dictator, a typical was to later claim. doubled as the doors were thrown representative of his corporation,' But the opposition to Stalin's open during the great battle of the and maintained that terrorist attacks policy of vigorous socialist construc- collectivisation of agriculture and like the killing of Kirov by the tion based upon the collectivisation the first Five Year Plan. It is not sur- 'younger generation' 'have a very of agriculture and the rapid develop- prising that amongst the million- high significance.' " This should ment of industry was not only from plus new members there were more give food for thought to those who amongst leading oppositional than a few who had joined for dismiss as preposterous the charge figures in Moscow. The revolution dubious reasons, to which must be that Trotsky and his cohorts were in- had also to contend with the horri- added those Party members who volved in criminal counter- ble force of habit, the inertia that degenerated. The relative privileges revolutionary activity! still marked rural life, the fact that, that accompanied the title of Party Getty's greatest service, however, even if the bulk of the population member also made it unlikely that is his recreation of the general at- supported the Soviet regime, only a many such elements would quit the mosphere prevailing at the time of minority was won to the cause of ranks of the Party organisationally the "purges" and fairly insightful communism. In addition, the Soviet of their own accord, even if they had description of the "victims". The Union was embarked upon a pro- long ago abandoned its ideological 68 I= (J stance. It is, therefore, not the least Given the nature and goals of the concentrated in the two-line struggle -F surprising that around l8 percent of chistka it is not surprising that it in the Party itself - the struggle a the membership of the Party was (and subsequent "purges") met with over industrialisation and collec- (, "purged" in 1933. Getty cites the different forms of resistance by tivisation, the struggle with following criteria that was to govern bureaucratic elements in the Party Bukharin, the fight to further pro- IL the 1933 chistkq: leadership. Getty suggests some letarianise culture, the important o forms of this resistance - either try- Stakhanovite movement aimed at z l. Alien class, hostile elements who ing to carry through the chistka in a shattering the stranglehold of o try to deceitfully demoralize the closed-door manner, away from the bourgeois experts on technique,and o. Party. masses or (as the Chinese revolu- so on. 2. Double dealers, who deceitfully tionaries were to put during the There was ideological confusion ul undermine Party policy. Cultural Revolution) "aiming the on the part of Stalin and the Soviet 3. Violators of discipline who fail to spearhead down" that is trying to leadership concerning the nature of carry out Party decisions and who divert criticism of- themselves with the class struggle in socialist society. =llt are pessimistic about the "imprac- wholesale expulsions of rank and file Stalin did not understand the - ticality" of Party measures. members. Although the Central material base within the socialist F 4. Degenerates who merged with and Purge Commission had specifically economy itself for the emergence of do not struggle against kulaks (rich warned against it, 70,000 members a new bourgeoisie and thus saw on- peasants), loafers , thieves, etc. including many workers and ly the remnants of the oidexploiting 5. Careerists and self-seekers who peasants, were thrown out for classes and world imperialism as a are isolated from the masses and "passivity. " danger for capitalist restoration. disregard the needs of the people. The central leadership of the Par- Although both of these sources did 6. Moral degenerates whose unseem- ty, however, said that a majority of indeed contribute to the eventual ly behavior discredits the Party. these people were actually "staunch overthrow of proletarian rule in the Party people." In fact, a great many USSR it was the newly engendered It is clear thatthe chistkawas con- expulsions pronounced at the local bourgeoisie, represented politically ceived as part of a movement aimed level were later overturned upon ap- by Khrushchev and his clique, that against bureaucracy and sought to peal. played the central role in the involve the masses. Local and fac- Getty also examines a series of counter-revolution. tory newspapers (and, interestingly, other "purges" that came after the Stalin never ceased to wage class wall newspapers) were called upon 1933 chistka: the Verification of struggle, but his metaphysical view to explain the reasons for the purge. Party Documents (or proverka) in of socialist society itself (his inabili- Party meetings at which each 1935 and the 1936 Exchange of Par- ty to understand the contradictions) member would be examined were to ty Documents (obmen pqr- meant that he often did not unders- be open to non-Party people who tidokumentov). These movements tand howto carry out the class strug- were called upon to raise their were originally aimed at restoring gle. When one reads, for example, criticisms and the official purge an- order to the Party's membership the six criteria for the 1933 chistka nouncement called for "open and records and, in the process, weeding cited above one notes that the target honest self-criticism by Party out the non-negligible number who definitely seems to be bourgeois members." had fraudulently obtained Party elements but there is little further Lest one try to argue that all of the membership cards. The conduct of clarity. In fact, one is reminded of above was merely a smokescreen to the proverka also seems to have been the statement attributed to Mao's hide something more sinister, the of- an important realm of struggle. In close comrade Chang Chun-chiao, ficial directives seem to have been 1935 the central leadership found it "what is the use of criticising foxes translated into practice. An impor- necessary to directly criticise the when the wolves are in power?" In tant eyewitness account by Anna Western Region authorities for other words, it is correct and Louise Strong entitled The Stqlin bureaucratic obstruction of the pro- necessary to criticise the bourgeois Era describes a number of these verka and called on the rank and file elements and the rightists in the par- mass "purge meetings" marked by to carry out criticism. ty but what about "the leading per- vigorous and uninhibited criticism Far from being aimed at the sons in the Party taking the capitalist of Party officials by rank and file political opposition the purges (and road" that Mao warned against? members and non-Party workers. (It here we are talking specifically about The seemingly contradictory is unfortunate that Getty does not the aforementioned mass movement statements and attitudes that Getty refer to Strong's account. Written and not the subsequent trials) seem cites from Stalin (alternating calls right after Khruschev's attack on ' to have been an effort to address real for more vigilance and opposition to Stalin, The Stolin Era remains one problems of the organisation, com- local bureaucracy with concerns of the most important non-Soviet position and functioning of the Par- about "excesses," etc.) are mainly a sources. The credibility of the book ty separated to a large degree from result of Stalin's own lack of clarity is all the more reinforced given the the ongoing struggle over political on the vital problems of the socialist fact that Anna Louise Strong herself line. The period under study was, revolution. As Mao put it in a war- had been falsely accused and im- after all, a period of intense class ning to the Chinese Party shortly prisoned for espionage.) struggle in the Soviet Union that was before his death: "you are making 69 { I llt socialist revolution but you don't appear to have been, in general, aim- "The radicalism of the thirties did know where the bourleoisie is. It is ed at the same targets as the previous not last. Although ritualized right in the communist party." purge movements. In this case, krit iks / sqmo k rit i ku (criticism/self- =m Getty senses that Stalin's laun- however, a particular effort is made criticism) became a regular Party ching of the slogan "cadres decide to connect the political opposition practice, it would never again have ! everything" in 1935 has important with different forms of criminal ac- 'he impact it did in 1937. Although o political significance, but Getty's tivity, particularly espionage and :litics in the thirties were often z own limitations keep him from get- sabotage. Much of this is to be ex- populist and even subversive, the ex- o ting to the heart of the matter. Stalin plained by the prevailing interna- igencies of World War II combined 'n specifically put forward the slogan tional tension right on the eve of the with the practical demands of run- "cadres decide everything" in op- Second World War which Getty ning an increasingly complicated t.) position to the previous slogan sloughs off as a factor (again, economy meant that radicalism and ? "technique decides everything" Strong's account is better on this anti-bureaucracy would fade and be which he viewed as outdated. Stalin point). It is certainly truethat terror replaced with a new resPect for = Stalin was a links this slogan to a criticism of is an aspect of any dictatorship, in- authority. In the thirties, a bureaucrats who had learned "to cluding the dictatorship of the pro- a populist muckraker, and his im- value machinery" but that failed "to letariat, and that under certain con- age, as Avorkhanov remembered, value people, to value workers, to ditions this aspect may take on more was of someone who hated neckties. = value cadres. " This important prominence. Nevertheless, the The real petrification of the Stalinist recognition of the decisive role of Yezhovshchina seems to have been, system set in during and after the man in constructing socialism, at least in large part, an effort to war, when commisariats became however, was also separated to a substitute terror for a more ministries, when the Party leader large extent from politics as if thorough and deeper going struggle became premier, and when the man bureaucracy was simply a question- against the bourgeois line that who hated neckties became the of method and not of line. This kind sought to restore capitalism. Not generalissimo. ' ' of understanding seems also to have surprisingly, many Party officials weakened Stalin's efforts to combat sought to protect themselves by ac- A.S. bureaucracy during the purge cusing others. Within months the movements. It is interesting in this situation was way out of control and respect to contrast Stalin's slogan Stalin and the Central Committee "cadres decide everything" with the were forced to take stringent slogan Mao and the Chinese revolu- measures, including the arrest of tionaries were to insist upon during Yezhov himself. Getty calls this a the Cultural Revolution: "the cor- hypocritical effort on Stalin's part to rectness or incorrectness of the shift the blame to others. Actually it political and ideological line decides is once again the sometimes clumsy everything." It seems that the and contradictory actions of a great parallel construction of the two leader who was striving to wage class quotations is hardly accidental. struggle and bring about com- Getty relegates to an Epilogue munism but was not clear on the what is commonly understood as the nature of the very enemy he was "purges," that is, the arrests and combatting. trials of opposition Party leaders The Origins of the Great Purges is and the widespread removal of a very useful examination of Soviet middle-level officials after 1937. society in the 1930s. The author's Again Getty argues that the Yezhov- avowed effort to take "a political" shchinu (or time of Yezhov, the Par- approach to the problem is useful, ty leader responsible for state securi- but, unfortunately, he remains ty) "was not the result of a petrified wedded to an outlook and method bureaucracy stamping out dissent which often lead him to pick up on and annihilating old radical revolu- secondary factors while ignoring the tionaries. In fact, it may have been essence of the matter. He talks of the the opposite. It is not inconsistent contradictions between the "centre with the evidence to argue that the and the periphery" or between Yezhovshchins was rather a radical, "moderates and radicals" but even hysterical, reuction to misses the conflict between the pro- bureaucracy. The entrenched of- letariat and the bourgeoisie! Getty's ficeholders were destroyed from combination of often insightful above and below in a chaotic wave observations with a non-class (which of volunteerism and revolutionary we know to mean bourgeois) aP- puritanism." proach is revealed in the last In fact, the Yezhovshchina does paragraph of his work: 70

(Continued from page 45). theory of people's war, with the been defined. building of the revolutionary armed Second period - the Preparation, forces and with strategy and tactics. from 1979 to the beginning of 1980. 3. The Programme of the Com- The Party agreed on a series of basic munist Party. In essence, it is a ques- political strategies to carry out the tion of the stages of the Peruvian revolution. These political strategies revolution: complete the democratic were: revolution, begin the socialist L Revolutionary violence. The revolution and then carry out several Party deeply studied the writings of cultural revolutions in order to the proletariat's great teachers from achieve communism. Marx to Chairman Mao Tsetung, on 4. The building of the three in- subjects from the necessity of using struments. revolutionary violence to seize - Regarding the Party. The power, to the theory of people's strategic plan to militarise the Par- war, which is the proletariat's fully ty was decided upon. This is a developed military theory. universally valid contribution by 2. General Line of the revolution Chairman Gonzalo. Lenin said that and the military line as its centre. we lived in the era of imperialism With Maoism's contributions, and that imperialism would collapse Chairman Conzalo developed in the midst of wars. Chairman Mao Maridtegui's thinking and establish- said in the 1960s that we were ed the General Line of the Peruvian undergoing a period of 50 to 100 revolution. ln 1979 this line was years in which the world would be adopted by the PCP. has five It Shantytown near Lirrter. greatly transformed and that the aspects: parties should adapt themselves for a. The character of Peruvian tion; and a revolutionary united these transformations. Chairman society. Our society is semi-feudal front, for the purpose of the armed Gonzalo says that therefore, the and semi-colonial. Semifeudal, struggle, based on the worker- Communist Party must militarise I because of its vast masses of peasant alliance and including those itself, the Party should be the I peasants who are doubly subjugated classes that make up the people: the vanguard of these wars against im- a by the feudal lord and the land. proletariat, peasantry, petit perialism, developing actions from S Semicolonial, because even though bourgeoisie and national small to large, centring on the gun. our country is relatively independent bourgeoisie. Since Marxism - Regarding the united front. The = politically it is economically depen- understands that who is com- identity between united front and i dent on imperialism, especially U.S. prehended within "the people" can state was determined. They are the imperialism. Bureaucrat capitalism change, we'll see later who actually P same in terms of their class composi- is developing within this semi-feudal makes up the united front today. tion. For example, Peru today is {a and semi-colonial society. It is a d. The character of the under a landlord-bureaucrat dic- q monopoly capitalism tied by a thou- democratic revolution. As we've tatorship, that is, a dictatorship of o sand threads to feudalism and im- pointed out, the democratic revolu- the big landowners together with the perialism. tion must accomplish two great big bourgeoisie. The state is a reflec- = b. The character of the Peruvian tasks, directed against feudalism tion of the front the reactionaries revolution. ln its present stage the and imperialism. It is a bourgeois- enter into. The same thing happens Peruvian revolution is a democratic democratic revolution of a new type, with the revolution: the united front revolution to carry out antifeudal a New Democratic Revolution as is of four classes; this is reflected in and anti-imperialist tasks. With the Chairman Mao called it. the New State which has .already completion of this stage, the Peru- e. Mass line. There are specific arisen under the leadership of the vian revolution will continue lines for the different sections of the Communist Party, with the par- without interruption as a socialist broad masses of our people: ticipation of the proletariat, peasan- revolution, within which there will workers, peasants, women, youth, try and petit bourgeoisie. Today the be several cultural revolutions to intellectuals, etc. national bourgeoisie isn't in the continue the revolution under the To carry out the revolution united front, but the front represents dictatorship of the proletariat, so as military line must be made the cen- its interests as well. to achieve classless society, com- tre. As Chairman Mao taught, - Regarding the armed struggle. In munism. military line arises and is further the Preparation period the task c. The three instruments of the developed in the midst of war. In the arose of working out a Military Plan revolution. To make revolution period of preparation, following the to carry out the agrarian war. there must be a Communist Party as line laid out by Chairman Gonzalo, 5. The Decision to Form the First the leading and highest form of the PCP began to militarise itself, Company in the Course of Action. organisation; a revolutionary army putting the gun at its centre. The Once this political strategy was as the principal form of organisa- military line has to do with the agreed upon, it took material form 7l after 1982 with the heroic guerrilla cipal form of struggle, the armed these steps, the preparation, the action of the attack on the Ayacucho struggle, given expression in these overwhelming response, etc., are jail, which succeeded in liberating first 98 actions, and the principal carried out simultaneously several hundred prisoners of war. form of organisation, given expres- throughout the whole country. 6. The basic orientation. The Par- sion through these detachments. b) Plan to Unfold Guerrilla War- ty decided upon the basic orientation Highly mobile guerrilla actions fare, from May 1981 to December of developing the Party's militarisa- against the landlords began. For in- 1982. This plan has three moments: tion in the course of action, in order stance, a feudal estate in Ayrabam- - First moment: Seize arms and to carry out actions and form ba, July lOth 1980. Simultaneously means. Arms are acquired by attack- detachments. came the smashing of a position ing police outposts, and the means 7. The Plan to Launch the Arm- within the Party which failed to by attacking mines to seize ed Struggle. Three great watchwords understand that the armed struggle dynamite. were established: a) Armed struggle, was centred in the countryside and - Second moment: Shake the b) Workers' and peasants' govern- wrongly claimed that it was centred countryside with armed actions. The ment, c) Fight the new reactionary in the city and that the line the Par- main action of that time was the government. The revolutionary ty was applying was "Hoxhaist." At 1982 breakout from the Ayacucho struggle was put forward as a unity that time collective harvests also jail that we've already mentioned. of the countryside and city, with the began to be carried out. - Third moment: Hit the Enemy. countryside principal and the city Another important action was in This moment is extremely important complementary. It was agreed to in- Aysarca, December 24 1980. This because it represents the key link in cite the peasants to rise up for land was the first annihilation, that is, at- order to be able to achieve the leap and to carry the New State in a knap- tack on the enemy's living forces. to forming clandestine People's sack. The rules for launching the For the first time some reactionary Committees. In the face of the Par- armed struggle were established: elements hated by the people were ty's onslaught the police forces fled start out with harvests and invasions executed. the countryside along with the reac- (of landlords' land), guerrilla ac- ln this third period, the launching tionary authorities, creating a power tions, and boycott of the elections. of the armed struggle, the five com- vacuum. That's when the People's On April l9th 1980 the Communist ponent steps of any action were Committees arose. This period of Party of Peru declared war on the determined (determination of the dealing blows to the enemy involv- enemy. plan, forces and means, prepara- ed destroying feudal forms, direc- D Third Milestone - Launching the tion, execution and summation). ting the spearhead against the power armed struggle, a period which Platoons and special detachments of the feudal tyrants, or in other s lasted until the end of 1980. It com- arose. words, against feudal political - prehends the launching of the arm- Fourth Period - Developing Guer- power in the countryside. In F ed struggle, that is, the Initial Plan, rilla Warfare. This period, which December 1982 the reactionary tr and the beginning of guerrilla war- began in 1981, is the longest phase of Armed Forces (mainly the Army d fare. Chairman Mao said that every the people's war because it includes and Navy, as well as the Air Force) revolutionary war has three phases: the whole strategic defensive. came in to destroy the People's { strategic defensive, strategic Several military plans have been car- Committees and reestablish the old z equilibrium and strategic offensive. ried out one after another. political power. The bloodthirsty, a Militarily the Party had begun the a) Plan to open guerrilla zones, criminal Armed Forces organised 6 strategic defensive - which at the from January to April 1981. The ap- "mesnadas," armed bands who o\ same time represented an offensive plication of this plan led to opening massacred People's Committee q politically speaking. This period eight guerrilla zones and nine opera- leaders. In the Middle Ages the begins May lTth 1980 with the tional zones. Guerrilla zones are mesnadas were bands armed by the assault and destruction of a voting areas where armed guerrillas con- landlords to oppress the peasants. In station in a small town in Ayacucho tend with the reaction for political the face of this new situation, the named Cuschi, where the enemy was power. Operational zones are places Party instructed that these armed about to carry out its electoral farce where the revolutionary forces come bands should be annihilated. the following day. Thus, the new in, hit and retreat. In this period the Punitive actions were carried out road was opened up in deeds, the five steps to be carried out were against them at the beginning of emancipating road of the armed established: preparation, over- 1983, which impeded the reactionary struggle versus the reactionary and whelming response (initial battle), plan to organise mesnadas. oppressive road of maintaining the guerrilla warfare, coup de grace and c) Great Plan to Win Base Areas. old order through elections. complementary actions. Revolutionary base areas are the In less than l5 days, by the end of The strategic plans to open guer- essence of people's war. Beginning May 1980 98 actions had been car- rilla zones are established on a na- in 1983 a military plan with four ried out and the first detachments tional level; the Central Committee political tasks was laid out: were formed. These detachments works out strategic operative plans. - First task: the overall reorganisa- were, as Lenin said, armed groups Then, in each region the tactics are tion of the Party. without arms to lead the crowd. worked out and carried through in - Second task: the creation ofthe Something new had arisen: the prin- a decentralised way. Each one of People's Guerrilla Army, and the in- 72

corporation of the militia within it. reestablishment and counter- make it look like what is going on is - Third task: development of the reestablishment, the new political a struggle between peasants, when in front. In the countryside, the power developed, and there was also fact what they're doing is modeled Revolutionary Front for the Defense a great expansion and growth of the on "strategic hamlets" used in Viet- of the People was established. In the struggle in the cities. In 1984 the nam or the "peasant organisations" city, it was the Revolutionary Move- reaction unleashed a terrible blood- formed in Cuatamala under Yankee ment for the Defense of the People. bath. Thousands of sons and advisors. The reactionary Armed Thus the new state power is arising daughters of the people were bar- Forces have augmented their troops through the People's Committees, barically murdered and their bodies and established field camps. lt giving shape to revolutionary base thrown into common graves for wild should be kept in mind that the arm- areas and advancing the People's animals to feed upon. The "disap- ed struggle never proceeds in a New Democratic Republic. pearances" began - flagrant, straight line, but rather through ad- - Fourth task: the Great Plan. In disgusting murders carried out with vances and setbacks in which we can other words, the preparation of impunity. see that the principal tendency is strategic plans at the national level. d) Plan for the Great Leap. This development. In this Great Plan to Seize Base plan, part of the overall plan to seize The second campaign, against the Areas, the principal and secondary base areas, was worked out and elections, fulfilled its goals. Today axes were defined. The axis is the began to be applied in June 1984. Its the PCP is struggling to expand line of movement of the guerrilla political strategy is to concretise and throughout the mountain region, fighting. Four forms of struggle and develop revolutionary base areas. widening its guerrilla warfare, so I I methods were defined: Because of the electoral political that fluid guerrilla actions can ex- - Cuerrilla actions in the form of conjuncture the following cam- tend from Cajamarca to Puno. This collective planting and harvesting, paigns have been carried out: means developing the people's war. assaults, ambushes, seizures of - First campaign, beginning June In conclusion to this brief analysis towns, confrontations, prison 1984, to begin the Creat Leap and of the process of the people's war in breakouts and tactical street- win political space so as to make the Peru, we'd like to point out the fighting. new state the principal aspect in the following: - Sabotage. contradiction between the new one - The PCP is unfolding a people's - Selective terrorism, including ex- and the old one. In opposition to the war in the countryside and city. I ecutions and people's trials. continuation of the bureaucrat road - The Party has assumed its I - Psychological warfare, through through the elections, the Party put responsibility for the seizure of a agitation and mobilisation. forward the democratic road power, in accordance with Marxism- s Within the overall orientation of through armed struggle, not the Leninism-Maoism, Guiding this Great Plan to Seize Base Areas power of votes but that of the rifle. Thought of Chairman Gonzalo. there were two campaigns to Defend The reaction was saying "these elec- - The people's war has successes i= the People's Committees, Develop tions are against terrorism" and all and setbacks, but the overall trend the Base Areas and Build the Peo- the candidates took that up and is that it is developing. P ple's New Democratic Republic. united to struggle against the Com- - The people's war unfolding in {a The first of these campaigns began munist Party, which reflected the Peru aids the struggle in other coun- q in January 1983 and the second end- success of the Party in this cam- tries. o ed in April 1984. paign. - It can be seen that in Latin The most important thing about - Second campaign, from January America the conditions are ripe for =q the period of these two campaigns is to June I 985, to further develop the the application of Marxism- that the struggle was centred around beginning of the Great Leap and op- Leninism-Maoism. reestablishment and counter- pose the elections, with the slogans - The PCP is becoming the leading reestablishment, or in other words "Don't Vote lmpede and Prevent force in the democratic revolution counter-revolutionary war to the Elections."- and will become the recognised destroy the new political power and - Third campaign, beginning in vanguard and centre of the revolu- revolutionary war to defend it, July 1985, to further develop the tion. develop it and build it up, little by lit- people's war and oppose the new - Through the armed struggle the tle destroying the old outworn and government's assumption of office. Communist Party is being forged in reactionary order. In this period the This campaign is being successfully the furnace of war, where the poor struggle became fierce, and the three carried out right now. peasants carry the main weight of instruments of the revolution were We will take up these campaigns the war, a reflection of the fact that greatly developed: the ranks of Par- again in the second part of this ex- it is a peasant war led by the Party. ty members swelled greatly, position. It is the masses who make history. thousands of people joined the Peo- Today the reaction is carrying out - The main achievement won in ple's Guerrilla Army, especially forced regroupment of peasants. this war has been the new state poor peasants, and hundreds of First they wage campaigns of power. People's Committees sprang up. destruction and then concentrate - The Party carries out the policy During 1983 and 1984, through some of the peasants together in one of self-reliance, which means that the course of this struggle between place, under threat of death, to the people's war is a continuation of 73 the class struggle. Historical conditions demand this structure. Its essence is democratic - The Party applies the policy of modification. The militarised Party centralism. It is centralised in order deciding for itself, which means that develops in the midst of war, which to lead the war as a single whole it will not submit itself to super- allows three things: l) it gives rise to strategically and decentralised tac- powers or imperialism. war communism, which means an tically. The social composition of absolute lack of self-interest that the Party has changed. Today it has ON THE BUILDING OF THE creates a spirit that keeps the flames a membership of a new type, THREE INSTRUMENTS OF THE of revolution burning; 2) it allows basically poor peasants. Each Par- REVOLUTION capitalist restoration to be ty member has three functions: prevented, because it gives the Par- political, military and ad- Chairman Mao Tseiung teaches us ty absolute control over the army; ministrative. The Party member of that handling the three instruments and 3) it develops a militarised socie- a new type is forged in the war and well is a sign of correct leadership. ty, that is, the general arming of the develops the revolution by force of To build the Party, the army and people. arms wherever he or she may be, and the front, the Communist Party of The experience of the PCP shows with great disdain for death. Peru bases itself on the following the correctness of Chairman Gon- Third question: organisational principle: build organisation on a zalo's thesis. The Party matured system. This refers to the disposition political and ideological basis, in the through a l5-year process .of of forces for the purpose of war. To- midst of class struggle and two-line Reconstitution which was carried day the Party is working to cover the struggle simultaneously, for the pur- out with the clearly defined aim of region from Cajamarca to Puno pose of armed struggle to seize leading a peasant uprising. The Par- with continuous and sporadic political power. ty culminated this process by for- military actions, with the Party's Let's look at some aspects of the mulating a whole set of basic main Regional Committee located in building of the three instruments: political strategies to carry out the the poorest area. The task is to ad- l)Regarding the Party revolution, beginning to militarise vance through the mountain valleys, a) The ideological-political aspect. itself, putting the gun at its centre, spilling over through the jungle The Party applies Chairman Gon- and thus preparing itself to launch highlands and the headlands of the zalo's great thesis of the militarisa- the armed struggle. Then the Party rivers leading to the coast, while at tion of the Party. As we've said went over to carrying out armed ac- the same time carrying out work in D before, we have entered an era of tions, from small to bigger, forming the cities. { wars, we live in an epoch foreseen by detachments, then platoons, com- Fourth question: organisational o Chairman Mao, an epoch of 50 to panies, etc., forming its military work. The Party carries out open - 100 years of profound social units in the course of action and thus and secret work. F changes, and therefore we should building the heroic People's Guer- c) The aspect of leadership. The tr il prepare ourselves to take up dif- rilla Army. Party has a leadership system. In ad- o ferent forms of struggle. It has to be In this way, the Party has been dition to the Central Committee, taken into account that even after carrying through its militarisation in there is a Political Bureau, a Perma- € imperialism is defeated, there will the course of war, making itself fit, nent Committee and the Chairman- z still be capitalism. The proletariat as Chairman Mao taught, to fulfill ship of the Party. will definitively consolidate its the proletariat's responsibilities to d) The aspect of two-line struggle. I political power. This is the strategic lead the revolution in this era of wars Within the Communist Party of qr6 offensive of the world revolution. and great transformations in which Peru the red line, the Marxist- Since it is an era of wars and great imperialism is hastening towards its Leninist-Maoist line, is in com- d= transformations, the Party ruin and in which the main trend is mand. Its highest expression is undergoes changes which lead to its revolution. Chairman Gonzalo. Rightism, modification, its militarisation. b) The organisational aspect. which is the main danger, is dealt Let us recall that Marx spoke of Let's consider four questions: with by decapitation, which means the necessity for the proletariat to First question: concentric con- that the right is not allowed to raise constitute itself into a Party. Lenin struction. The Party in arms leads its head; it must be made to trod on taught the construction of a Party of the army absolutely, it is the army's its own black banners and defend its a new type. Chairman Mao showed backbone. The army is the backbone communist qualifications. how to build a Party in relation to of the state and the state is led by the e) The aspect of mass work. The the united front and the armed Party through what is at this point Party aims to organise new struggle. Today, Chairman Gonzalo a joint dictatorship of three classes, organisms which can resist reac- says: the Party must be militarised. the proletariat, the peasantry and tionary attacks. The communist parties must the petit bourgeoisie. The state is 2) Regarding the People's Guer- militarise themselves, that is, taking built according to the three-thirds rilla Army into account the unevenly develop- policy, that is one third of its The People's Guerrilla Army was ing revolutionary situation, the par- members are communists, one third created out of political necessity. It ties must be constituted or are peasants and one third pro- is made up of three forces: the main reconstituted with the rifle at their gressives. forces, the local forces and the com- centre and go over to armed actions. Second question: organisational munity forces. This has allowed the 74

Wall mural, San Francisco Bay Area.

revolutionary forces to multiply and arms because it doesn't want to mor- the People's New Democratic contend with the reactionary Arm- tgage the revolution. The Party Republic Organising Committee ed Forces. The People's Guerrilla relies on the masses; Peru's revolu- which has three tasks: leadership, Army is absolutely led by the Party tion is being carried out with planning and building. and has three functions: to fight, dynamite. Little by little, the reac- In the countryside political, produce and mobilize. To mobilize tion's arms will end up and are en- economic, military and cultural bas- means carrying out propaganda ding up in the hands of the people. tions of the revolution are being among the masses, mobilising them 3)Regording the State created. The New Democracy is face and arming them. Today there are People's Com- to face with the old one. The social s The militia has been incorporated mittees which exercise real state life of the masses, production, the I a into the People's Guerrilla Army. functions, which give shape to a new administration of justice, com- Or Lenin said that the state is a people's state system through the joint dic- merce, education, recreation, etc. is militia that fulfills three functions: tatorship under the leadership ofthe being organised. Today it has e the functions of an army, a police Party as the representative of the become necessary to formulate laws force and an administration. This proletariat, a new system ofgovern- regarding the land and the people's ! was aimed at preventing the forma- ment, of the organisation of power, rights. New production and social o tion of castes. Nevertheless Lenin based on assemblies. There is a relations are coming into being step h had to create the Red Army because representatives' assembly, made up by step. {a l4 foreign armies invaded the Soviet of delegates of the various organisa- The Party sees to it that the under- tr Union. The Red Army developed so tions that arise. This assembly elects dogs seize power, that the masses o greatly that today, when revisionism the five clandestine commissioners themselves give rise to people who has transformed the Soviet Union who make up the executive. These can carry out state functions. = into a social-imperialist superpower, commissioners are: As a conclusion to this brief it is a powerful aggressive apparatus The Political Commissioner, who analysis of the building of the three centred on guns. The left within the is a Party member. instruments of the revolution, we Communist Party of China pur for- The Security Commissioner, a would say the following: ward that the Party should control Party member who coordinates The armed struggle is giving rise the militia and then swallow up the responses to the reaction together to new things. The PCP, understan- army, as Lenin had proposed. with the People's Guerrilla Army. ding how to lead newly arising Military men who do not become The Commissioner of Communi- things, has developed its political vi- proletarianised, who are not trained ty Affairs, who is a peasant, and has sion. Today the Party is the heroic as communists, become tyrants. to do with trials, births, marriages, fighter who leads both the armed They think that the political power etc. struggle and the front. Of course, belongs to them and they end up The Front Commissioner, who is the work of construction follows the running feudal fiefdoms. Chairman a petit bourgeois, for example a fluid lines of war. Gonzalo, with great historical vi- shopkeeper or intellectual. He sion, has anticipated this problem organises the people into the IMPACT OF THE ARMED with the army and therefore he has organisations that are generated. STRUGGLE ON THE CLASS incorporated the militia within it. The Production Commissioner, STRUGGLE The building of the army is who is a peasant. Organises plan- Here we see how the reaction has primarily ideological-political. To- ting, collective harvests, etc. responded to the armed struggle and day there is not enough arms and The People's Committees in a the armed struggle's profound im- materidl, but the Party doesn't buy zone are joined together to make up pact on the development of the class 75

struggle in Peru. solidating," bragging that they reaction has ever faced. The Party The reaction, faithfully carrying would end the state of emergency will never declare a truce nor will it out U.S. imperialism's guidelines, and give political power back to the ask for one. The armed struggle is began by labeling the PCP "ter- civilian authorities. But since the war without quarter. There are no rorist." It should be kept in mind Party responded with a mighty of- deals. The development of new that the individual terrorism of the fensive in January 1985, they were things unfolds through the armed nineteenth century was condemned forced to postpone their "consolida- struggle, shattering the old order. by the great teachers of the pro- tion." In May 1985 the reaction letariat, but when the bomb has passed a law regarding the state of MARXISM-LENIN ISM-MAOISM become a weapon in the hands of the emergency and state of siege which AND THE ARMED STRUGGLE. masses, as it has today in Peru, it gave the Joint Command carte Now let's say a few words about the becomes a correct form of struggle. blanche against the guerrillas. Thus doctrine, the philosophical basis Then the reaction sent in the police, the reactionary Armed Forces have which guides the Communist Party as if they were fighting common come in to fight as the main forces, of Peru. criminals. At intervals they carried augmenting their troops, which, The proletariat, the last class in out three police operations which when they are scattered, are more history, a class whose historic mis- failed miserably one after another. vulnerable to ambushes. sion is to emancipate itself and all The purpose of these intermittent The United Left, for its part, mankind in order to achieve com- operations was to gather informa- headed up by the slimy and accom- munism, can do this because it has tion on the Party and find the guer- modating Menshevik Barrantes, is in an all-powerful doctrine: Marxism- rillas. In January 1983 the reac- favour of smashing the guerrillas Leninism-Maoism. Lenin repre- tionary Armed Forces came in, and defending the old order. sented the development of Marxism utilizing armed bands made up of This is how the reaction has to a new stage, the stage of feudal tyrants, petty tyrants and desperately tried to save the ruling Leninism. Chairman Mao Tsetung their followers. Later the Armed classes whose existence is menaced represents the development of Forces organised them into by the onslaught of the revolution, Marxism-Leninism to a higher stage, paramilitary units. When the Arm- unleashing criminal actions in- the stage of Maoism. Chairman ed Forces came in, they were faced cluding genocide which have led to Mao developed Marxism in its three with insufficient authority, a lack of the death of more than 10,000 sons component parts: philosophy, b economic support and problems and daughters of the people. political economy and scientific with the country's borders. They The armed struggle led by the socialism. The PCP fights for the { feared being drawn into a civil war. PCP has opened up the third period universal recognition of Maoism, so o In November 1983 the reactionary in contemporary Peruvian society, that the world will recognise F- Armed Forces began carrying out which means the destruction of the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the tr wholesale slaughter and genocide. three mountains which weigh upon ideology which guides the world About the time of the municipal our people: imperialism, feudalism revolution. Maoism means a univer- d elections that year the first mass and bureaucrat capitalism. The first sally valid school, current and stand. graves appeared and the "disap- period was from 1895 until the end The guiding thought of Chairman s pearances" began. In 1984 they of World War II; this was the begin- Gonzalo is the fusion of Marxism- e began carrying out a plan to sub- ning and development of bureaucrat Leninism-Maoism with Peru's reali- jugate the masses. They penetrated capitalism, led by the comprador ty. It is the key to the Peruvian aI into the People's Committees trying bourgeoisie. The second period, revolution. This guiding thought is o\ to group the peasants together in after 1945 more or less, marks the Chairman Gonzalo's and not a col- Or relocation camps. Thus they carried deepening of bureaucrat capital, lective product. Forged in the out a militarised corporativisation. with the increasing presence of a reconstitution of the Party and The old state divided in two: the bureaucrat bourgeoisie. The third developed further with the armed bourgeois-democratic state with period, which began in 1980 with the struggle, this guiding thought has representative democracy, and beginning of the armed struggle, is made important, universally valid militarised corporativism which the period of bureaucrat capital- contributions : the strategic offensive ruled over 1090 of Peru's popula- ism's crisis and destruction. of the world revolution, the tion, both face to face with a rising Thus l3 centuries of reactionary militarisation of the communist par- People's New Democratic Republic. states have begun to be swept aside. ties, regarding people's war, the con- The Party is working to unleash This is the greatest and most far- centric construction of the three in- uprisings among the masses of reaching epic in our history. Today struments, the analysis of fascism, peasants imprisoned in the reloca- the exploited are beginning to build the analysis of bureaucrat capitalism tion camps. their own state. The Peruvian and the factions which collude and In July 1984 the government gave masses now have found their contend within the big bourgeoisie, the Armed Forces Joint Command vanguard and that is the main thing. regarding the two-line struggle, etc. the authority to fight the guerrillas The PCP is the definitive demand of To produce a universal develop- wherever they wanted throughout the oppressed, above all ofthe poor ment, a fourth stage of Marxism, the country. By the end of 1984 the peasants led by the proletariat. It is many communists in the world are reaction began to talk about "con- the most thorough challenge the contributing and working together. 76

This will give rise to a fourth stage. tional Communist Movement. rying out the orientation of 'stoke The Peruvian revolution has the bonfire, spread the flames, THE ARMED STRUGGLE AND received internationalist support, develop the struggle of the masses THE WORLD REVOLUTION especially from the RIM. For exam- principally as an armed struggle, and The world revolution led by the pro- ple, support committees for the let the repression spur us onward.' letariat through its communist par- Peruvian revolution have been In this way the people's war in our ties is a fairly protracted process. formed. The PCP is a Marxist- country continues to blaze defiant- The bourgeois revolution took 300 Leninist-Maoist party in arms and ly, expanding, spreading its roots years to take hold. The Communist that means that it has a greater and preparing for newer and higher Party of Peru calculates that it will responsibility because with the arm- tasks, guided always by Marxism- take 200 years to consolidate the ed struggle it must demonstrate Leninism-Maoism, battling for the proletariat's dictatorship, counting Maoism's validity to the world. emancipation of our people for the from 1871 when the proletariat first purpose of and at the service of the took power in the Paris Commune. THE PRESENT SITUATION FOR world revolution. Thus we are con- The world proletarian revolution THE ARMED STRUGGLE AND tributing and will contribute to the has had very important milestones: THE PERSPECTIVES FOR THE tasks of the RIM, more and more - In 1871, with the Paris Com- FUTURE willing and able to aid in every possi- mune. Marx put forward that the The development of the three in- ble way our glorious common cause: proletariat should have applied struments of the revolution, the Par- the emancipation of the proletariat more violence, which means dic- ty, the armed struggle and the united and the prevailing of communism tatorship. front, finds its expression in the new throughout the earth." tr - In l9l7 with the Russian revolu- state power. To develop the new, tion. With it a new era in the world three things are necessary: a) a cor- proletarian revolution began. rect line, that is, correct political and - In 1949 with the triumph of the military lines and specific policies; b) Chinese revolution. China establish- the development of organisational ed a New Democratic state under a forms; c) a great outpouring and joint dictatorship and went over to even overflowing of energy, because \ the socialist revolution. Thus the the old tends to reestablish itself I correlation of forces in the world within the new. The Party is bring- a changed in favour of socialism. ing all its forces into play to draw the 3 - In 1966 with the Great Pro- masses into organisational forms to letarian Cultural Revolution. It carry out the people's war, and z resolved the problem of the con- tenaciously and firmly escalate the tinuation of the revolution under the guerrilla war in order to expand = dictatorship of the proletariat. throughout the mountain regions oh Today we find ourselves in the and retake lost positions in the main a strategic offensive of the world Regional Committee. { revolution, in the period of 50 to 100 Today the latest events show that q years when the principal contradic- the People's War is developing and o tion is between the oppressed na- advancing. As the PCP said in its i tions on one hand and the super- May 1985 letter to the Committee of powers, imperialism on the other. the RIM, "Today the PCP is Thus the main trend in the world to- finishing off five years of people's day is revolution. Therefore one war. Through the course of these must dare to seize power, the com- five years it has carried out around munist parties must militarise 25,000 armed actions, in whose themselves, the oppressed nations, forge it has formed a People's Guer- whose masses play an important rilla Army which is the backbone of part in making history, must march the base areas of the new state as the main force led by the com- power, of the New Democracy munist parties. which is making its way among our In order to achieve communism people. The difficulty of this situa- all the oppressed must emancipate tion is concisely expressed by its cost themselves. The Peruvian revolution of 10,000 fallen in combat or'disap- is part of the world revolution and peared.' Nevertheless, despite the in- the Communist Party serves the tensification of this genocide being world revolution because it is inter- carried out by the reactionary arm- nationalist. This is why the PCP has ed forces, during the last year our joined the Revolutionary Interna- work has expanded into new zones, tionalist Movement, through which as well as persisting in the zones the Party is rejoining the Interna- where we began, so that we are car-