Q. What are the major opposition currents in the Soviet Union? Are there Marxist currents?
A. The principle division of the opposition in the Soviet Union is the division between the democratic movement and the antidemocratic movement. The chauvinists or all stripes (up to and including the fascists) and certain far-right Christian currents consultute the ann cemocran movement. But it must be noted that numerically these groups constitute only a very small fraction of the opposition.
As far as the democratic movement Is concerco. It mondes democrats wad are ngnung simply for respect or soviet aw on individua treedom. releous currents that demand freedom of conscience, patriotic currents of the various nationalities, and neo-Marxists, the socialThe above is condensed from a more extended interview with Plyushch which appears in the current issue of Inprecor, the fortnightly information journal of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. It appears as part of a dossier on *The Soviet Union after the 25th Congress' which also includes a balance sheet of Brezhnevism and an interview with dissident Ahores Medvedev.
Other articles in this special double issue cover the death agony of the Arias Government in Spain, the elections in Portugal, the civil war in Lebanon, and the repression in Uruguay. Copies can be obtained for 40p (plus 10p p&p) from Red Books, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. - or why not take out a subscription? Just send £7 to the Leonid Plyushch, a Soviet mathematician and communist, was freed from jail and deported from the USSR after an international campaign to secure his release. We are pleased to reprint extracts from an interview taken by our French comrades of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire List currents, wnien are sum not very num crous. but i is necessary to stress une much too general and conventional character of these labels.
The neo-Marxists are trying to analyse the causes of the defeat of the October revolution and the other socialist revolutions, to analyse the changes that have occurred un me wore since me certi of Lenin, and to work out a new action programme lor Marxists in the USSR Nevertheless, I have not read any serious Marxist programmatic document in the samizaat (sell-puonsned) pudncations.
Q. Do you think it is possible to speak of a crisis of the opposition, and if so, what are the reasons for the crisis?
****************************** Inprecor HE SOVIET UNIO FTER THE 25th PARTY CONGRES same address and receive every issue for a year. dence only of discontent against the regime and not of activity on the part of the workers.
Q. One gets the impression that the national question is one of the society today. What do you think of this?
A. One can say that the Soviet Governsues the policy of Tsarism, The Russification of culture and the falsification of the history of all peoples (including the Russian people) are some of the aspects of this policy. Behind verbal internationalism lurks great Russian chauviwhich is applied under the pretext of and Lionsm, but were was aiso the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the Meskhets, and the Black Sea Greeks, deportations which Stalin carried out by accusing these peoples of treason to the fatherland'. Can a whole people be traitors? Traitors to whom? To the Kussian people.
The bureaucracy is the essential source of this great-power chauvinism. The nationalism and chauvinism of the non-Russian peoples is a reaction to this. The role of the bureaucracy in this chauvinist policy is more and more understood by non-kussian patiots Also, it seems to me that the struggle of nations for their self-determination will take on an increasingly anti-bureaucratic character, fusing with the democranic movement. crate manacement or me economy wul popular masses.
Q. Do you think a gradual democratisation of Soviet society is possible?
A. I hope so.
Q. Do you think that a wing of the Soviet bureaucracy is favourable to a democratisation of Soviet society and is capable of carrying this out? A. No, I don't think so. prisons and the camps. The fourth reason workers strikes and acmonstranon:
take home to do.
major contradictions of bureaucratic ment consciously and unconsciously purOne of the most repugnant manifestaons ous chauvinisms ana-semiusn domestic commitments Q. How will the new Five Year Plan A. I think that the difficulties of bureauincrease, and this will obviously have consequences on the standard of living of the
Red Weekly 15 April 1976 GREGOR BENTON explains why the factional China
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affect the standard of living of the popular masses?