initial enthusiasin, and mainly to a gradual loss Hot the voluntary spirit with which the masses launched the revolution and the building of socialism.
The Party Ieadership becomes divorced from the rank and file, and the Party line from the working class and the people as a decisive subject of power The marses cease to andermand the Party. The Party and State leadership seeing no other way out, resorts to the exercise of administrative power through waich it imposes respect for its line, and the obedience and 'uniform discipline' of communists. This is how power begins to be exercised over those in whose hands power ought to be invested, with regard to their leading role in society:
The principle of respecting special features and differences in socialist revolution and sociatist construction is Important not only in the implementation of internal policy, but also in relations berween communist, worker and socialist parties. Violation of this principle can damage and has damaged the communist, social and aiso national-bberation movements.
Would it be right for us to instruct the com rades in Poland on how to collectivise their agriculture, a problem which we aolved a long time ago and which has not yet been solved in Poland? And if, in addition, we were to construe a theory that they were thereby conserying capitalism and private enterprise? No, this would not be right, for they know best way, when and how they will soive this problem.
All the same time I must state that it was not right of the leadership of the Polish United Workers" Party to attempt to drive us to illconsidered actions in 1968 while we were trying to solve our own problems, when at that time all the unversities in Warsaw wete closed, the lecturers had been dismissed from their posts.
and there was general dissatisfaction with their policy which eventually led to such tragic.
events as shooting at workers. Perhaps the Party leadership in Poland at that time thought that by attacking our policy and our leadership they would solve their own domestie conflicts.
If there are to be firmn and good relations between communist parties, the principle should be chiserved in practice that the splution of internal problems in a Party and a country is the exclusive concern of the respective PartyPerhaps this principle should be chronicled in a Copyright: Czechoslovak Socialist Opposition resolution at a world or European forum of communist parties. The resolution passed by the Government of the USSR in 1956 could serve as a basis.
Regarding principles governing the mutual relations between communist parties, a factional policy inside another CP should not be supported. I mean by this the actions of a group which six years ago formulated a conception of the solution to our internal problems which dirfered from that of the Central Committee of the CP, the Government and the National Assembly, going us far as military intervention by some Warsaw Pact countries (1 am referring to an official report issued by the Soviet Press Agency on 21 August 1968 concerning an appeal for intervention in Czechoslovakia by the troops of some Warsaw Pact countries)
This group took upon itself too great a responsibility without the knowledge of the autborities competent to take this step, Al though today they brandish Leninism, they have jettisoned the principle of a democratic majority. They have gone to extremes unparalleled in the communist movement beginning with the arrest of leading official representatives and ending with the gradual liquidation of the policy accepted by the people; expiciting a Tavourable situatiun to Impose their own views which they try to pass off as Marxist-Leninist and intemationalist. (If Lenin could only rise from the dead for a while to see everything that is sanctilied by his name.
Today they cry out on all sides thac they are loyal to the Warsaw Pact, and so on. This is common demagogy. Did such a question ever arise in our Party and State leadership? Did our leadership violate this Pact? The existence of the Wursaw Pact is given by the need for the collective defence of its members in the event of an attack on any one of them. Our attitude to the obligations arising front the alliance is expressed in the documents signed by all the members, as is the attitude of the other coun tries including Rumania. There has heen no violation on our pait. This fully attests co our internationnlism.
1 Tolerand how mofe ban eret that tha rustem of personal power is an amalgamation of pulitical, ideological, orginisational, care and other instruments and messures wielded primsrily from a position of power. It is not cough
Twice the Russian Army has been thrown against the governments of workers' states: in 1956 against Imre Nagy's Government during the Hungarian revolution; and in 1965 against the Government of Alexander Dubeek in Czechoslovakia. Similarities between the two men are striking: both spent more of their lives in the USSR than must other East European leaders; both showed aminense courage and honesty. Furthermore, both sincerely believed in the traditions of the international Stalinist movement, yet tried to break with aspects of those traditions in order to resolve the crippling crises which Stalinism had brought to their Hungary 1966: Russian army contr countries, and finally fell from power being accused of playing into the hands of the counter-revolution.
The fates of these two men were different. Nagy, tricked by Krushchev's promise of safe conduct, was kidnapped to Rumunia and butchered there on the Kremlin's orders in 1958.
red weekly, 8 may 1975 the streets of Budapest. Twelve years later it was the turn of Czechoslovakia.
dubcek letter inevitable in any workers state while the world is still dominated by capitalism and where the disappearance of the state machine is therefore impossible.
With the winning of freedom of expression various different currents of opinion will emerge within the working class, and these currents must be granted the right to organise themselves and struggle within the mass organisations - above all the workers councils — to win a majority. Without the existence of Soviets, which bring the masses directly into the running of the affairs of state, the rendency for the political parties to become bureaucratised is greatly strengthened. But without the right to form political parties, the workers councils inevitably become empty shells, since all the key decisions will be taken not in the Soviels but inside the single party, Today, as in 1965, Dubcok has been unable to grasp these fundamental lessons of the history of the revolutionary workers REAL INTERNATIONALISM Implicitly, Dubcek repudiates the Kremlin's notion of internationalism. But to find an alternative internationalist perspective wo must turn to the Manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in Crechoslovakia, published clandestinely in 1969 This declares: "Ourstruggle and our organisation must have an international character. Our position is very little different from the position of the workers in the neighbouring peoples democracies" and it is above all with them that we must link 4P — and it is finally little different from that of the people in the USSR, where social oppression s often joined to oppression of nationalities - in the Ukraine, the Baltic Repub lics, Transcaucasia, ete. Even if the political awareness of the people of these counties is often lower than here, they are our allies, our brothers, who are gradually becoming our comrades in struggle, just like the French and Italian workers. just like the oppressed people of Africa and Latin America, Just like the workers of the whole world."
Aguin the Party of Workers Councils purs forward clearly Internationalist aims. It proclaims its task to be 'to acquaint the workers of the Warsaw Pact countries with our Party's prop-