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UNITE! Info #019en-rep: Social-imperialism's Afghan war
[Posted: 16-17.03.2008]
Note: The "UNITE! (etc) Info" posting series (1995-) advocates the
political
line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong. For all items, see
www.rolf-martens.com.
INTRO NOTE:
Here I'm bringing, in more easily readable html form, with a few notes
added
too, a repeat of my "UNITE! Info #019en", which was sent to some
newsgroups,
mailing lists and individual e-mail addresses on 09.10.1996.
I'm doing this above all because obviously still today, there are some
people
in the world, including some who otherwise have appeared neither to be
totally
ignorant nor totally reactionary, who say that there was "no"
social-imperialism in the former Soviet Union, "neither" from the
mid-1960s on
approximately "nor" from some later point or other on, up until that
state's
demise in 1991.
One may wonder then, whether those people perhaps have never heard of or
read
about that war in Afghanistan which that state engaged in from 1979 to
1989 and
and which certainly - at least to all who had or have eyes and ears of
their
own, and possibly a head among whose functions was/is not only such as
that of
nodding approval to the statements of some groups or other of other
people, but
also that of thinking - exposed the true character, at that time, of that
state, the Soviet Union, as clearly and indubitably as did the somewhat
earlier
Vietnam war expose the true character of that other big power in the
world,
the United States of America.
This repeat Info item above all is intended, as was its original version,
to
provide some information about that war to those who so far have had only
very
little such, or perhaps none at all.
Some further things which it's also intended to bring some information
about,
in the same context, readers will see in its table of contents which
appears
further below too and which I'm showing, in a "condensed" form, already
here:
Chapter 1: What took place in Afghanistan in 1979-1989 - Chapter 2: A
discussion among Soviet leaders, 1979 - Chapter 3: Certain "Marxists"
today on
events '79-'89 - Chapter 4: On Quisling "Marxism" and its root causes, on
the
strange "theory" of "Stalinism" and on the superpowers as rivals and
allies.
One "highlight" from Chapter 2 which I think is particularly instructive
concerning one still today interesting method by some people to try to
disguise
themselves and their intentions, in a manner also demonstrated in the
rather
well-known fairytale "Little Red Riding Hood", I want to show readers at
once
too. It's an excerpt from a discussion held in the Soviet Union in March
1979.
I'm bringing it here without those comments of mine within brackets which
are
included when the same passage appears again in Chapter 2 below.
That person by the name of Taraki who is mentioned here was one of the
then
Soviet leaders' "friends" in Afghanistan, of that type of such who at
least in
certain countries in the world since back in World War II are known as
"Quislings". And whether (even) that rather well-known member of the
Soviet
revisionist ruling clique of that time, Kosygin, was genuinely shocked at
one
certain request by that particular Quisling (who, it should be mentioned,
was
also masquerading as a "Marxist"), or whether he just was feigning to be,
I of
course cannot know:
"During Taraki's continued consultations with Kosygin, Gromyko, Ustinov
and
Ponomarev, Ustinov was able to promise Soviet ****pment of 12 Mi-24-type
helicopters. Citing the unreliability of those Afghan helicopter pilots
who had
been trained in the Soviet Union ("Moslem brothers" or "pro-Chinese"),
Taraki
asked for the assistance of pilots and also tank crews from Cuba, Vietnam
or
other socialist countries.
This proposal was bluntly turned down by KOSYGIN:
'I cannot understand why this question arises...The question of sending
people
who would climb into your tanks and shoot on your people. This is a very
serious political question.'"
Today as everybody knows, there, since October 2001, is going on another
genocidal imperialist aggression against Afghanistan, this time one
perpetrated
by the US imperialists and some of *their* "friends".
Against this and not least against the criminal participation in it by the
internationally-exploiting and miserably hypocritical ruling cliques here
in
Sweden too, a small but no doubt, at least indirectly, very
widely-sup****ted
organization in this country is protesting, Föreningen
Afghanistansolidaritet,
of which I'm a member and which has a website at www.afghanistan.nu.
That other and now ongoing imperialist aggression against Afghanistan is
another question, which I shall not go into further here, except for only
mentioning, for completeness' sake, some articles which I on my part so
far
have written, entirely or in part (or, in some cases, have reproduced),
concerning that aggression, in the "UNITE! Infos":
#156en, "After NY & Toulouse, now Kabul" (10.10.2001), part 1/2 and part
2/2
#157en, "The Afghanistan war 'success'" (29.11.2001), part 1/2 and part
2/2
#158en, "Kama Ado - US: 'nothing happened'" (06.12.2001)
#159en, "E. Margolis on US' Afghan war" (11.12.2001)
#173en, "Kick the USA out of the UN!" (28.06.2002)
#226en, "Tyranny weaker than Bush pretends" (28.01.2005)
#263en, "Afghanistan invaders' atrocities and failure" (22.09.2006)
#281en, "US-NATO atrocity in Afghanistan, with Swedish sup****t"
(02.07.2007)
#302en, "On Pakistan, Afghanistan, A-bombs and oil" (03.01.2008)
INTRO NOTE (1996):
Two recent "UNITE! Info" items, #16en [Added in 2008: See part 1/2 and
part
2/2] and #17en, of 04.10.96 and 05.10.96 respectively, have been dealing
indirectly and in part also directly with the question of the aggression
by
Soviet social-imperialism (which today no longer is in existence as such)
against a third-world country, Afghanistan, in 1979-1989. This item too,
and
now more or less wholly, will be dedicated to the same theme. Why? Why do
I
hold this question to be such a relatively im****tant one?
The social-imperialists' overt aggression in Afghanistan in '79-'89 today
is
already history. But it's still something which shows up with quite
extraordinary clarity the sharp difference between Marxism, on the one
hand,
and revisionism, on the other. And the phenomenon of revisionism, that's
one of
the most im****tant political phenomena of all in our century.
What is revisionism? It's Marxism, socialism, proletarian politics in
*words*
but bourgeois politics, even imperialism, in *deeds*. A discussion on this
phenomenon and its root causes follows in one of the chapters below.
The openly bourgeois media, in the Western countries, for instance, of
course
never use the word "revisionism", at least not in this im****tant political
sense. To them, everybody is a "Communist" who has proclaimed him/her/self
to
be one, and the same goes for parties - indeed, such revisionist parties
as no
longer even find it tactically wise even to try to pose as "Communist"
still
continue to be called so by the openly bourgeois media. This of course is
done
in order to make it more difficult for the masses of people to distinguish
between actual Communism on the one hand and revisionism on the other, and
to
discredit the very idea of Communism. For Marxists, naturally it's vital
to
draw a sharp dividing line between the genuine and the faked
(notwithstanding
the fact that it sometimes may be difficult to see which is which) and to
enlighten everybody on this.
An infamous example of a state ruled by revisionists is the China of
today,
which, as all (who know some elementary facts of history) can see, is
completely different from the earlier, socialist China which was guided by
Mao
Zedong's genuinely Marxist political line. An even more infamous example
of
such a state was the Soviet Union of yesterday (from approximately the
mid-50:s
until 1991).
The aggression of that state against Afghanistan exposed to the whole
world,
even more clearly than its earlier crimes, the true character of it, and
im****tantly contributed to its eventual downfall.
Just as the US war of aggression in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the late
'60:s and early '70:s very clearly and to the whole world exposed the true
character of US imperialism, and that of its hackneyed sup****ters too, so
did
the Afghan war of the Soviet Union expose the true character of *that*
state
and of *its* hackneyed sup****ters.
This was so, despite the fact that in both of those cases of superpower
aggression there was a certain amount of meddling on the part of the other
superpower too, which tried to further its own interests under the guise
of
"sup****ting" the resistance of the respective country against the invader
and
his puppets.
After the invading Soviet troops were forced to leave Afghanistan, in
1989,
internal strife has continued in that country, undoubtedly to a great
extent
caused and aggravated by continued interference by both superpowers. One
of the
warring factions, the Taleban, recently conquered the capital and i.a.
executed
one of the earlier leaders of the Soviet social-imperialists' puppet
regime in
the country, Najibullah. This occasioned a heated exchange among some
people
who all are calling themselves "Marxists".
I on my part expressed, on the Jefferson Village Virginia Marxism list, my
opinion that this at least was a just action on the part of the Taleban.
Some
others protested against this, and in quite violent terms too. They made
clear
their staunch sup****t for the earlier actions undertaken by the Soviet
Union in
Afghanistan and for those of its puppet regime. How could someone who
*opposed*
these "very beneficial" and "civilizing" deeds even be allowed on a
Marxism
list at all, how could he indeed be considered a "civilized" person? In
this
direction went one "trend of thought".
This discussion, or whatever you might call it, is the immediate reason
why
I've now dedicated some Info items to the question of events in
Afghanistan
1979-1989. The present one contains the following more or less brief
chapters
(each in one of the four parts of this item) [Added in 2008: In this
repeat,
there's only one part]:
Chapter 1: What took place in Afghanistan in 1979-1989
Chapter 2: A discussion among Soviet leaders, 1979
Chapter 3: Certain "Marxists" today on events '79-'89
Chapter 4: On Quisling "Marxism" and its root causes, on the strange
"theory"
of "Stalinism" and on the superpowers as rivals and allies
CHAPTER 1: WHAT TOOK PLACE IN AFGHANISTAN IN 1979-1989
In essence and very briefly, events in that country during that time may
be
described in the following terms.
Soviet social-imperialist aggression against Afghanistan was initiated on
27.12.1979. In a manner infamous in connection with other imperialist
invasions, Soviet troops were "called in" by a "government" which thereby
wholly transformed itself into a puppet "government". They were resisted
by the
people. By January 1980, the number of Soviet troops in the country had
reached
85,000.
The US imperialists eventually sup****ted (with or without quotation marks)
the
resistance but did not intervene directly. In 1989, the
social-imperialists
were forced to withdraw their own troops, leaving behind some forces which
to a
greater or lesser degree continued to act as their proxies.
During the 10-years long war of open aggression,
* 1.5 million Afghans were killed
* 5-6 million were forced to leave the country - the biggest refugee
catastrophe in our time - and 1 million more forced to leave their homes,
to
become refugees in Afghanistan itself
* 7,000 villages were annihilated and 5,000 more seriously damaged
* between 10 million (UN estimate) and 60 million (other estimates) mines
were
laid throughout the country by the invaders
* these mines have so far caused 200,000 deaths and 400,000 maimings; they
continue today to take a heavy toll and several decades will be required
for
their removal
* large parts of the vital and scarce forests were systematically
destroyed by
the Soviet forces
* the infrastructure and the fields for agriculture were destroyed to a
great
extent
In other words, this was a very "typical" genocidal imperialist war.
To the elementary and well-known facts mentioned above, some descriptions
of
events in Afghanistan in 1979-89 which I'll quote in Chapter 3 should be
compared.
In a pamphlet published in English in 1985 by the solidarity movement in
Sweden
for the Afghan people's struggle against the aggression, this kind of
propaganda in favour of that aggression was also commented on. I'll quote
some
passages from that pamphlet, "Soviet Out of Afghanistan!", which initially
mentioned some facts on the Swedish solidarity movement:
"The largest demonstration to date in Sweden against the Soviet
intervention in
Afghanistan was held on March 23, 1985. The demonstrators in Stockholm
marched
from Norra Bantorget to Kungsträdgården. The organizers counted more than
6,000
participants."
"Manifestations were also held simultaneously in the towns of Falköping,
Ludvika, Alingsås, Göteborg and Skara."
"In four years the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan has grown from five
people
to more than 2,000 members today, with local groups in 42 towns."
[From the 23.03.1985 speech by Sven Lindquist:]
"The strategy employed by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan is a well-known
one.
The same strategy utilised by the USA in Vietnam. A guerrilla movement
which is
sup****ted by the people is hard to defeat. And so the people must be
driven
away. To drive the people away one bombs villages, burns crops and poisons
the
wells."
"This is what the USA did in Vietnam. And this is what the Soviet Union is
doing in Afghanistan. They are bombing the civilian population in to the
cities
or in to the refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. Now that the spring of
1985
has arrived, every fourth Afghan (more than 4 million people) is on the
run
from the bombs and from starvation."
"When a superpower decides to bomb a people back to the Stone Age, it is
always
done with the best intentions. When the Americans carried out their
bombings in
Vietnam, they said it was to protect freedom and democracy against
communist
tyranny. When the Russians carry out their bombings in Afghanistan, they
say it
is to sup****t the Afghan revolution against the tyranny of
fundamentalism."
"But if one looks closer at these statements, they turn out to be
completely
hollow. There is no revolution in Afghanistan to sup****t. A revolution
comes
from below, it grows out of the demands of the people. The so-called April
revolution in 1978 was not a revolution, but a military coup."
"A gang of Moscow-trained officers seized power without any popular
sup****t
whatsoever."
"That these officers were members of the Communist Party" [as Sven
Lindquist
calls it] "does not make their coup a revolution, since it has the vast
majority of people against it."
"There isn't any 'fundamentalist tyranny' to fight against in Afghanistan.
Nor
has there ever been. Afghanistan is not Iran. Afghans are dedicated
Muslims in
a traditional and relaxed manner - as long as their faith and country are
not
threatened."
"Not until after the Russian intervention has created the very religious
extremism they pur****t to be fighting against."
"And so it is with all the other good intentions with which the Soviet
Union
beautifies its power play in Afghanistan: the land reform, literacy,
women's
liberation."
"A few farmers have been given land through the land reform after the
Russians
arrived. Far greater numbers have had their fields destroyed and their
houses
burned. A small number of women have learned to read and write since the
Russians arrived. Far greater numbers have had their men killed and their
children crippled by the Russians."
"To pass oneself off as the liberator of women is an old imperialist
trick. The
British in India, the French in Northern Africa, the Russians in
Afghanistan -
all of them have declared themselves to be struggling for the liberation
of
women. And everywhere has it been just as impossible to change the
relation****p
between the ***es by foreign occupation."
"In Afghanistan, women had progressed a little way towards their own
liberation. In the capital, most young women had thrown away the veil.
Some of
them even wore short skirts. At the University of Kabul young women
studied to
become doctors, teachers and [to take up] other intellectual professions.
And
out in the countryside women worked the land without veils and moved
around
freely in the secure environment of their home villages."
"The Russians have not liberated these women, but have instead forced them
into
refugee camps in Pakistan, where they are now shut up indoors and heavily
veiled. Even in Kabul the veil has returned as a protest against the
Russian
occupiers."
"The veil, the sign of oppression of women, has been resurrected as a
religious
and national symbol of freedom. And due to the Russian invasion, the fight
for
women's liberation has been pushed back to where it started 50 years ago."
"The Afghans are not Swedes. It is their human right not to be Swedish, to
have
completely different sets of values from us on decisive points. But we do
have
at least two sets of values in common: national independence and the
policy of
neutrality."
[On the last-mentioned here, I on my part would like to comment that the
Swedish so-called "policy of neutrality" of course always did contain a
considerable amount of hypocrisy. Sweden was and is among the exploiting
countries; Afghanistan was and is a third-world country, one of the
exploited
countries in the world.]
"For centuries Afghanistan has lain like a grain of wheat between two
immense
millstones, the Russian Central Asian empire and the British Indian
empire, and
still refused to let itself be crushed. For 150 years the Afghans have
pursued
a policy of neutrality every bit as consistently as the Swedish." [See
comment
above.] "That policy has now been ended by the Russian occupation."
"When the superpowers attack a small country they always have an
invitation to
refer to. The Americans said they were in Vietnam by invitation of the
South
Vietnamese government - a puppet government they had installed themselves.
The
Russians say that they are in Afghanistan by invitation of the Afghan
government, also a government they themselves have installed."
"This is a very old trick. Soviet troops are specialists in letting
themselves
be invited to take over their neighbours."
.............
"It would be naive to think that one can achieve peace by giving the
superpowers a free rein. Resistance, here as elsewhere, is the only
language
that the Mighty understand. That is the most im****tant lesson to be
learned
from the war in Vietnam."
"It took us 20 years before we discovered the war in Vietnam. But then a
solidarity movement grew up which played a decisive role in bringing the
war to
an end. It has taken a long time to discover the war in Afghanistan.When I
first held a speech at an Afghanistan demonstration four years ago, there
were
just 50 participants gathered. Today there are several thousand
demonstrating
against the Soviets' war in Afghanistan. The solidarity movement for
Afghanistan grows ever stronger. Ten years ago today the Vietnam war
entered
its final phase. On March 23, 1975, the Vietnamese cut off all links
between
the American troops in the north and those in the south. At the end of
April
the last American soldiers left Saigon."
..........
"Our protests will continue to grow ever stronger until the day comes when
no
more bombs fall. And the last napalm fires have burned out. And the last
Soviet
soldier has left Afghanistan."
[It may be of interest, also in other contexts, to note that at that time,
23.03.1985, Swedish Prime Minister Palme, among others, sent a message to
the
demonstrations. As far as I remember, this was the first time he had
sup****ted
this solidarity movement in this manner. (Added in 2008: See also Info
#058en,
"Palme's murderers protected", 07.12.1997, part 1/2 and part 2/2.) Two
brief
excerpts from the message, as reproduced in the same pamphlet:]
"The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan is a flagrant violation
of
that nation's sovereignty and national integrity."
.........
"Throughout Sweden, protests are being held today against Soviet policy in
Afghanistan. This is an im****tant contribution to the world-wide efforts
to
restore to the people of Afghanistan their right to self-determination and
national independence."
CHAPTER 2: A DISCUSSION AMONG SOVIET LEADERS, 1979
After the breaking up of the Soviet Union in 1991, many earlier
confidential
Soviet documents were made public, among them some protocols of
discussions in
the Soviet revisionist party's Politbureau. Here I shall quote from some
extracts from one such protocol, that of a session lasting three days in
March
1979. My source is the issue No. 4/1994 of the Swedish-language magazine
Afghanistan-Nytt, organ of the Swedish Afghanistan Committee, a solidarity
organization for sup****ting the Afghan people's resistance against the
aggression. (This organization was sup****ted by a quite large number of
people
in Sweden, including many who considered themselves "left-wing". I joined
it in
the early 1980s.)
What's interesting, among other things, to note here are the terms in
which the
Soviet social-imperialist chieftains themselves are describing that
possible
action in Afghanistan which they were later in fact to undertake. Again,
those
descriptions of events in that country in 1979-1989, by people calling
themselves "Marxists", which I'll quote in Chapter 3 should be compared to
those judgments on them which appear here, judgments already made in
advance,
so to speak, by some of the very persons responsible.
I reproduce in translation from an article in Afghanistan-Nytt No. 4/94 by
Stefan Lindgren [Added in 2008: He in that article brought translations
into
Swedish from the Russian, and incidentally is now the chairman of our
abovementioned organization Föreningen Afghanistansolidaritet, which is
protesting against that other and now ongoing aggression against
Afghanistan],
who re****ts on the Soviet protocol [comments within square brackets are by
me]:
THE HERAT UPRISING
In March 1979, almost nine months before the Soviet invasion, considerable
disturbances took place in the third-largest city of Afghanistan. On 17
March,
the Soviet Politbureau convened for a three days long meeting. During the
first
two days, Brezhnev was not present.
GROMYKO:
"The situation in Afghanistan has seriously deteriorated. The centre of
disturbances is now the city of Herat....As is known from earlier
telegrams,
the 17th Afghan division is stationed there. It restored order but now
seems in
practice to have disintegrated. The artillery regiment and one infantry
regiment which were part of that division have gone over to the side of
the
insurrectionists."
According to Gromyko, the uprising was caused by thousands of revolters
from
Pakistan and Iran who with US help had caused chaos in Herat. Over 1000
people
had died in Herat, he re****ted.
The situation had not been adequately met by the Afghan government,
Gromyko
held, and he continued:
"As a characteristic thing may be noted that at 11 o'clock this morning,
I had
a conversation with AMIN, who is foreign minister and the deputy of
TARAKI, and
he expressed no anxiety whatsoever concerning the situation in Afghanistan
but
spoke with Olympic calm about the situation's not being all that
complicated
(...). Amin even said that the situation in Afghanistan is normal. He said
that
not one single case of insubordination on the part of the Governors had
been
registered. (...)"
"Within about half an hour we got a another message, which said that our
comrades, the military Chief Adviser comrade Gorelov and the Charge'
d'Affaires
comrade Alekseyev had invited comrade Taraki to visit them (...) As far as
military assistance was concerned, Taraki said in passing that perhaps
help
will be needed both on the ground and in the air. This must be understood
to
mean that we are requested to send ground forces as well as aircraft."
"I hold that we must proceed from the most im****tant fact when helping
Afghanistan, and this is, under no circumstances must we lose that
country."
[A statement which of course was just as candid as, and similar to, for
instance the discussion by the US imperialists in the late 1940s and early
1950s on how it came to be that "we" had "lost" China, about "who was
responsible for that", etc etc.]
Several other speakers expressed their distrust of the Afghan government
and
its heavy-handed purges of rivaling Communist [as those people of course
would
call them] factions.
Even at this point in time, there within the Politbureau were put forward
various proposals on armed intervention and even on a complete invasion.
Defence minister USTINOV briefly re****ted: "Tomorrow, 18 March, operative
groups will be sent to Herat's airfield."
He at the same time presented two possible lines of action. In the one
case,
smaller forces would be sent. In the other, the Soviet Union would
dispatch two
divisions, or about 36,000 men.
The proposals were met with some objections.
KIRILENKO:
"The question arises, against whom our Army will wage war if we send them
there. Against the insurrectionists, but the insurrectionists have been
joined
by a large number of religious persons, Moslems and among them a large
number
of the common people. In this way we will be forced to a considerable
degree
to wage war against the people."
The following day, KOSYGIN re****ted on his telephone conversation with
Taraki.
The anti-aircraft batallion in Herat had also gone over to the enemy. "If
the
Soviet Union does not help us now", Taraki had said, "we will not be able
to
stay in power."
This was understood by both Kosygin and Ustinov as a request for direct
military assistance. But still, individual Politbureau members raised
serious
objections to an invasion.
ANDROPOV:
"We know Lenin's teachings about the revolutionary situation. What such
situation might there be in Afghanistan? There isn't such a situation
there at
all. We can only help the revolution" [the counter-revolutionary Soviet
revisionist leaders of course used such upside-down terms when speaking
among
themselves, too] "in Afghanistan by means of our bayonets, and this is
absolutely impermissible for us. We cannot take such a risk."
[Like the "traditional" imperialists, the Soviet revisionists would mix
"moral"
statements with candid ones. Here of course "impermissible" was the
hypocritically "moral" and "it's too risky" the candid.]
GROMYKO:
"I wholly sup****t comrade Andropov on our having to exclude such a measure
as
sending troops into Afghanistan. The Army is not reliable there. In this
case
our Army, if we send it into Afghanistan, will be an aggressor. (...) We
must
consider the fact that neither can we justify juridically the sending in
of
troops. (...) Afghanistan is not subjected to any aggression. (...)
Furthermore
it must be pointed out that the Afghans themselves have not officially
made a
request to us concerning the sending of troops."
The discussions went back and forth and a decision seems to have been
reached
only on the third day of the Politbureau session, when BREZHNEV was
present and
unequivocally made clear that sending in Soviet troops could not be the
right
thing to do at this moment.
The session was ended by a decision immediately to call Taraki to Moscow.
This
meeting did take place on the following day, 20 March. In a rather
patriarchal
tone, Brezhnev educated his colleague and warned him on his purges.
"Repression", Brezhnev said, "is a sharp weapon which must be used very,
very
sparingly".
As the same time, Brezhnev repudiated the idea of dispatching Soviet
troops.
"I'm saying it quite plainly: This is not necessary. It would only play
into
the enemy's hand."
He also asked Taraki why he had not "had the borders closed", as if it
would be
possible to close the over 2,000 km long borders of Afghanistan to
Pakistan and
to Iran by means of a governmental decree.
During Taraki's continued consultations with Kosygin, Gromyko, Ustinov and
Ponomarev, Ustinov was able to promise Soviet ****pment of 12 Mi-24-type
helicopters. Citing the unreliability of those Afghan helicopter pilots
who had
been trained in the Soviet Union ("Moslem brothers" or "pro-Chinese")
[Whom
indeed *could* those "great" Afghan "Communists" trust, among "their own"
people?], Taraki asked for the assistance of pilots and also tank crews
from
Cuba [! - note the method here!], Vietnam [!] or other socialist [well
now....]
countries.
This proposal was bluntly turned down by KOSYGIN:
"I cannot understand why this question arises...The question of sending
people
who would climb into your tanks and shoot on your people. This is a very
serious political question."
[Even one of the leading Soviet revisionists himself was shocked by the
vile
proposals of those people, or at least pretended to be.]
After their meeting with Taraki, [the Soviet revisionist chieftains]
Gromyko,
Andropov, Ustinov and Ponomarev worked out a proposal for a decision by
the
Politbureau, in which the Afghan leader****p were criticized for their
suggestion of introducing Soviet troops into the country. This line was an
expression of "lack of experience" and "...it has to be held back also in
the
case of new anti-government actions in Afghanistan".
[So far Stefan Lindgren's re****t on the Soviet revisionists' Politbureau
session of 17-19 March 1979. - As is known, those people who held that
meeting
were to make quite a different decision only nine months later. And the
"words
of warning" uttered by some of them at that session of course were to be
proven
"wise" indeed; only, the various imperialists did not always listen to
such
words yesterday and they will not do so tomorrow either.]
CHAPTER 3: CERTAIN "MARXISTS" TODAY ON EVENTS '79-'89
A) Opposing standpoints
On the recent execution of Najibullah, one of those people in Afghanistan
on
whose "political line" even the Soviet revisionist chieftain Kosygin had
earlier commented (see Chapter 2): "I cannot understand why this question
arises...The question of sending people who would climb into your tanks
and
shoot on your people. This is a very serious political question.", I wrote
to
the Jefferson Village Virginia Marxism list on 02.10 i.a.
[QUOTE:]
The Islamic "Talibans" who have recently conquered Kabul in Afghanistan,
in the
unfortunate internal fighting which has followed on the
social-imperialists'
forced retreat, are a pretty reactionary lot, it seems. But one thing they
did
well: They hung Najibullah, the infamous pro-Soviet Quisling.
[END OF QUOTE]
This stung one other writer to that list into replying on the same day,
giving
his own version of what had taken place in Afghanistan in 1979-1989,
[QUOTE:]
I was frankly sickened by Rolf Martens recent post celebrating the
execution,
by the new Taliban fundamentalist regime in Kabul, of the former Afghan
President, Najibullah.
I won't comment here on Mr Martens' assessment of the historical
viccissitudes
of the past 17 years, other than to say that while the Peoples' Democratic
Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] made numerous (and highly visible) errors in
their
twelve years of rule, their sins were and are dwarfed by the actions of
their
enemies.
As far as Mr Martens' reading of the historical record itself is
concerned,
well, the less said about that the better.
The governments of the PDPA, it should be remembered, instituted a system
of
universal education, literacy, health care, and subsidized housing in
nearly
all of the 30 provinces of the country. They fa****oned a labor law that
was
the most progressive in Asia, admitting workers from both the public and
private sectors to specialized secondary and higher schools regardless of
nationality, age, *** or other factors, providing for free child care,
and
raising wages by an average of 26 per cent (with the lowest paid receiving
raises of up to 50 per cent). They subsidized the distribution of petrol,
diesel fuel, kerosene, sugar, wheat flour, and firewood and other
staples to
such an extent that famine in areas under their control was virtually
eliminated.
But by far the most im****tant reform instituted by the successive PDPA
governments involved land reform. In the three major land reform acts
(1978,
1981, 1985), the effects were not confined to a redistribution of land in
favor of the poorest peasant families. They gave impetus to the growing
cooperative movement and freed the peasants from the grip of landowners
and
usurers. The same acts provided for the mass education of all in the
countryside under the slogan "Everybody at the school desk", and attempted
to
put an end to discrimination against ethnic minorities, especially in the
areas
of culture and language.
Opposed to this was the mujadaheen--a cancerous class of parasites, the
mullahs, the landowners, the usurers - frenziedly feeding on the largesse
of
the Saudis, the Iranians, the Pakistanis and, of course, the most
loathesome
entity of all, the Reagan--Casey CIA. And since this is the Marxism
list,
let us not fail to acknowledge the SWP, the ISO, and others who, while
as
notably effective as a wet fart in a monsoon as far as doing anything
good, are
always willing to jump in at imperialism's behest, increasingly now even
before
being asked. The back of my hand to all of them.
And to you, Mr Martens.
[END OF QUOTE]
Reading this posting, you might think there wasn't any war at all in
Afghanistan during that time - no 1.5 million people killed, no 5-6
million
refugees, no 7,000 villages completely destroyed by the invader through
helicopter gun****p bombing, for instance.
What that invader's puppet forces did, according to this writer, was in
the
main to "institute a system of universal education", "put into effect a
labour
law", "raise wages", "subsidize petrol" etc etc. - all while the foreign
ground
and air forces they had begged for on their knees to be sent in were
ravaging
the country. And "the most im****tant ting of all" they did was a "land
reform"
- when in fact what was done to agriculture in Afghanistan during the
decade in
question was its largescale destruction, when in fact the whole country
was
littered with the enormous amount of anything between 10 and 60 million
mines,
far more than had been used in any country in any of the world wars and an
enormous hindrance to the toiling of the land in Afghanistan for many
decades
to come too.
"Well", he concedes, those puppet forces "made numerous (and highly
visible)
errors". That's the *sum* of what he has to say about the Soviet
social-imperialists' 10 years long war of aggression and the sup****t of it
on
the part of their puppets.He doesn't like my reminding people of it today:
"The
less said" about my "reading of the historical record", "the better".
And he's "frankly sickened" by my finding the later execution of one of
those
Quislings a good thing. "The back of his hand" he gives to me, since I
condemned the foreign genocidal aggression and their part in it.
B) What's a Quisling?
I don't know whether people on all continents of the world are familiar
with
the term "Quisling". In Europe, and in particular here in Northern Europe,
it
has been in general use since the great anti-fascist war (World War II) as
signifying a particular type of persons held by most people to be among
the
most despicable of all: One who rules "his" country as an underling to,
and by
the sup****t of the occupying troops of, a foreign reactionary big power.
The term originates from the name of the Norwegian - born in the same
country
as I, in fact - Vidkun Quisling, who as leader of the insignificant and
ridiculous Nazi party "Nasjonal Samling" in the late 1930s made several
visits
to Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator of the big neighbouring aggressive and
expansionist power at that time,Germany, to ask him please come and invade
his
country and so, incidentally, provide him, Quisling, with the sup****t, so
sadly
lacking on the part of his countrymen, necessary for him to become "Prime
Minister" of Norway.
It was a similar request, of course, as that made by the Afghan Taraki to
the
Soviet social-imperialist leaders some 40 years later - cf Chapter 2.
Quisling also, as is well known, eventually turned out to be just as
"lucky" as
later Taraki or at least his colleagues. (I'm not very well-informed on
the
exact fates of the various Afghan social-imperialist puppets but as far as
I
remember, Taraki became one of the victims of these colleagues of his even
before the Soviet invasion of the country had begun.) Nazi Germany did
invade
Norway (and also Denmark) by a surprise attack on 09.04.1940 and installed
"the
original Quisling" as their puppet.
Precisely seeing such a particularly vile, ridiculous and despicable
creature
as "their Prime Minister" it was that in particular angered the Norwegian
people into resistance, eventually including armed resistance in the form
of
sabotage and a budding guerrilla movement, against the occupying Nazi
German
forces; this touched people to their souls even more than the presence and
the
actions of those foreign military forces themselves.
Even the officers of the invading army themselves were not too fond of
this
lackey. The commanding German general, von Falkenhorst, when he had gotten
military control over Olso, the capital, and Quisling came to him and said
that
he would now "form a government" of the country, telephoned his boss
Hitler and
asked: "What am I to do with the fellow? Can I arrest him?"
A similar distaste, thus, on the part of the perhaps
insufficiently-briefed
general, as that (perhaps completely faked? perhaps to some extent
genuine?)
later expressed by Kosygin to Taraki at the idea of "sending people who
would
climb into your tanks and shoot on your people".
But not even such distaste, for such persons, was in the least hinted at
by the
above-quoted writer to this Marxism list. On the contrary, he had
practically
nothing but praise for the Afghan invading-power-puppet "colleagues" of
Taraki.
It was against me, who condemned them and wrote that they deserved to be
killed, that his "moral indignation" was directed.
This then is an example of something which experience has shown to turn up
again and again: The not only bourgeois, but - when "the moment of truth"
arrives - actually *arch*-reactionary political standpoint of some people
who
proclaim their adherence to Marxism, their desire for proletarian
revolution in
the whole world. This is an im****tant point I want to make in this
posting: How
sharp is the struggle between genuine and phoney Marxism, how absolutely
necessary it is clearly to differentiate the one from the other.
C) A writer of contradictory words
In the case of the writer I've quoted above, he had earlier seemed to
represent
quite a positive political standpoint. Although a member - as far as I
understand - of the utterly revisionist party the "CPUSA", he had, as one
of
the quite few who did this on an individual basis, endorsed the call for a
World Mobilisation Commission to defend the revolution in Peru which was
put
forward publicly in March of this year. This call for a WMC had a
particularly
positive significance - or seemed to have so, at least - in that it among
other
things declared as one task for the proposed Commission really to
propagandize
and to represent internationally the political line of Marx, Lenin and Mao
Zedong, which would then have meant, if acted on, the establishment of
some
sort of genuine international leader****p for the proletariat, something
which
it's of the utmost im****tance today to achieve.
Now as it turned out, the initiators of this call for a WMC, together with
an
unknown but obviously small number of close friends of theirs, last August
went
ahead and constituted a "WMC" all by themselves, without bothering about
such
details as perhaps consulting on this all those other organizations and
individuals, in a number of other countries, who had likewise endorsed
that
call - by which they of course flagrantly went against the whole basic
principle of internationalist proletarian democracy and in fact created
nothing
but a *Wrong* "Mobilisation Commission", as I publicly pointed out. (I'll
return to that subject.)
The above-quoted writer responded to this, that he saw no fault whatsoever
in
that action by those people, and now after I have become aware also of his
standpoint concerning the Quislings in Afghanistan and the entire
social-imperialist war of aggression against that country, I no longer
find
this strange. But he for a while had me (and probably others too) fooled
into
presuming that he was sincere when signing that document (the original
call for
the WMC), and thus among other things stating his sup****t for the
political
line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong.
What was and is the standpoint of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought
on
the character of the Soviet Union of the last couple of decades, up until
its
downfall in 1991? As all know, that standpoint consists in pointing out
that
which is also obvious to all about the character of that state, its
completely
revisionist and social-imperialist character. As far back as in the late
'60s,
Mao Zedong clearly pointed out the similar character of the bourgeois
dictator****p in the then already long-since degenerated Soviet Union to
that of
Hitler fascism.
[Added in 2008: In fact this was already in 1964. As published later in
"Some
Interjections At A Briefing In The State Planning Commission Leading Group
May
11, 1964", Mao Zedong said: "The Soviet Union today is a dictator****p of
the
bourgeoisie, a dictator****p of the grand bourgeoisie, a fascist German
dictator****p, and a Hitlerite dictator****p. They are a bunch of rascals
worse
than De Gaulle."]
So why then did that writer I quoted above sign such a call at all that
sup****ted the correct standpoint of Mao Zedong, thus naturally on the
character
of the Soviet Union too, if he in fact was against that standpoint and in
reality condoned such actions by that state as its aggression in
Afghanistan? I
don't really know. But it's another clear example at least of some
people's
gladly speaking with double tongues, gladly signing one statement the one
day
and one in the quite opposite direction the other, if this serves their
purposes, whatever more exactly those may be. With Marxism, such behaviour
has
nothing to do. Such people are frauds - whether more harmful or less, and
whether or not they're deceiving themselves too - is another matter. It's
absolutely necessary that the actual revolutionaries very clearly
differentiate
themselves from such people and publicly distance themselves from them.
Otherwise they will not get, and will not deserve, any trust on the part
of the
masses either.
D) Excuses for a perhaps not conscious Right-extremism?
Can there, in this particular case, be any excuses for the above-quoted
writer's writing as he did? On one level, it could perhaps be said that
there
might be some. I don't hold the silly attempts by the Soviet
social-imperialist
leaders, sup****ted in this of course by all Western bourgeois media too,
to
make people believe their state was a "socialist" one, to be much of an
excuse
for any half-way enlightened person to believe in this.
After all, even the Hitler fascists had said they were "socialists" - the
very
word "Nazis" of course is short for "National-Sozialisten" - and those who
knew
of at least some of the crimes of those people could by no means be
excused by
their maintaining that they had actually believed them.
But it's possible that the writer in question, a citizen of the USA, had
been
skeptical to what had been re****ted by "his" government and "his"
bourgeois
media about the atrocities of that government's rivaling superpower in
Afghanistan. If so, then not wholly without reason. I've seen some
"re****ts"
here in Sweden, for instance, on (supposed) events in that country that
did
seem to be untrue and in fact the result of some CIA fake "advertising".
Even
so, such skepticism cannot really justify a "belief", by someone in the
USA,
that there was "no" war of aggression being perpetrated by the
social-imperialists in Afghanistan. The standpoint of pretending this
remains a
morally very degenerate one, even if it in my opinion would have been even
worse if the writer had been sup****ting an aggression by "his own"
government
and not, as in this case, that of a foreign one, of which "his"
imperialist
country was (more or less hypocritically) stating its condemnation.
The role of the US imperialists in Afghanistan undoubtedly *was* a murky
one
too, but nobody could sincerely have believed that it was they who had
tens of
thousands of troops in the country, bombed the villages there from the
air,
littered the countryside with an unprecedented number of mines etc etc.
Neither
were these things done by the largely Moslem-led national resistance,the
backward and in part feudalist character of which of course could be no
excuse
for them either.
E) Some more propagandists of aggression
Some other writers to the same Marxism list likewise presented matters in
approximately the same way as the one I've chosen to quote at length,
and/or
likewise expressed their moral indignation, not at the
social-imperialists'
genocidal aggression or their miserable puppets' sup****t for it, but at my
condemnation of these crimes.
Someone actually wrote that the Soviet social-imperialists had "exerted a
civilizing influence" on Afghanistan. If killing 1.5 million people,
forcing
5-6 million more to flee, littering the country with mines and destroying
7,000
villages is thought to be an act of "civilizing" a country, what
atrocities, in
the eyes of that "Marxist", would then be sufficient for him to call them
"barbarism"?
A couple of people even quoted with approval and satisfaction the opinion
of
someone or other who had said "if any country deserved to be raped, it was
Afghanistan"(!) *That* at least was a somewhat more candid statement, in
the
vein of that "declaration of policy" by some US imperialists back in the
late
60s in relation to the peoples of Indochina: "We'll bomb'em back to the
stone
age." (They failed in that too, of course.)
[Added in 2008:
I later saw another and not less remarkable statement on the
social-imperialists' aggression against Afghanistan, by some other people
who
likewise called themselves "Marxists", and commented on it in Info #302en,
"On
Pakistan, Afghanistan, A-bombs and oil", of 03.01.2008. It was a
Trotskyite
organization called "ICL" ("International Communist League"), which in an
article in 1998, typically, *attacked* the acquisition then, by that
third-world country, Pakistan, of nuclear weapons, and in that same
article,
that organization had also written something which I commented on in Info
#302en as follows,
[QUOTE:]
What the abovementioned "ICL" says about the big-power aggression of today
against Afghanistan I don't know, but that of yesterday it *openly
sup****ted* -
how about these lines which it had in the same abovementioned article, in
1998:
"We [the 'ICL', from late 1979 on] proclaimed 'Hail the Red[!!] Army'[!!!]
and
called to 'extend social gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan
peoples.'[!!!] The Kremlin bureaucracy’s treacherous[!!] withdrawal[!!] in
1989
led to the barbaric, anti-women Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan and
gave
enormous impetus to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism elsewhere."
Precisely turning things upside-down also concerning the causes of the
rise of
Islamic fundamentalism, which in reality of course got a big impetus from
the
*aggression*, from 1979 on, by Soviet social-imperialism, and certainly
*not*
from its troops' finally being forced by the Afghan people to withdraw,
which
helped in the largescale defeat of that particular big enemy of the
peoples in
the world too.
[END OF QUOTE]
So far this addition in 2008.]
Is it any wonder, considering that such persons are invariably presented
by the
openly bourgeois media as "the Communists", that quite a lot of people in
several countries today hold the opinion that "Communism means nothing but
dictator****p and oppression"? The genuinely Marxist-Leninist forces in the
world today are so pitifully few - I'm not saying that they despite this
don't
hold enormous possibilities in their hands - that it's natural,
unfortunately,
if many people never heard of any other "Communism" than one or more of
those
caricatures of it that are rightly known as revisionism or
phoney"Marxism".
In the next chapter, I shall discuss how this phenomenon, that of
revisionism
and, as in this case, a revisionism accentuated to the point of its really
deserving to be called "Quisling 'Marxism'", may be explained in social
terms.
CHAPTER 4: ON QUISLING "MARXISM" AND ITS ROOT CAUSES, ON THE STRANGE
"THEORY"
OF "STALINISM" AND ON THE SUPERPOWERS AS RIVALS AND ALLIES
A) The root cause of the revisionist sup****t for the new tsars
What are the social causes of such a revisionism, such a completely fake
"Marxism", that even wholeheartedly sup****ts the aggression of an
imperialist
superpower against a third-world country? What was it that made a small
number
of persons here in Sweden, for instance, extremely friendly towards Soviet
social-imperialism - an arch-reactionary power rightly hated and despised
by an
overwhelming majority of people - even at a time, some 20 years ago, when
that
power was visibly not only oppressing and exploiting a number of East
European
peoples but also threatening this country and several other European
countries
militarily?
And still today, there are some pur****ted "Marxists", in various
countries, who
are weeping over the (partial) downfall of that reactionary power. Why?
Can it be blamed on ignorance? To a certain small extent, in some cases,
perhaps yes. Under the rule of imperialism, in our time, there is always
massive suppression of information to "ordinary people". Thus, those who
live
in regions of the world very far from the former Soviet Union and not so
directly affected by the political and military activities of that power
may
well have had greater difficulties in seeing through its mask of
"socialism".
But for people calling themselves "Marxists", ignorance on such a matter
cannot
be much of an excuse. If you're to become a Marxist and try to guide and
lead
other people politically, you're obliged, among other things, to inform
yourself on the vital matters in the world. And it cannot be said that
today,
for instance, the utterly reactionary character of the Soviet Union of the
last
few decades is something that you can miss, if you study Marxism in some
way
and take a somewhat closer look at world events - no matter in which
country
you live.
The extremely pro-social-imperialist revisionism that was expressed
recently,
for instance, by some persons writing to the Jefferson Village Virginia
Marxism
list in the main has a very definite social cause. On this, I'll quote
from an
article, originally written in 1973 and published in English in 1976,
which I
intend later to post in full too.
[Added in 2008: See Info #041en-rep.]
It's a passage from "The International Situation, Europe and the Position
of
the Marxist-Leninist Parties", written by Klaus Sender, chairman of the
KPD/ML
(NEUE EINHEIT), Germany, in his exile here in Malmö, Sweden, in 1973;
English
translation made by me in co-operation with others and published in
Britain in
1976 (pp 19-20):
"The Soviet Union was formerly a connecting link between the oppressed
nations
and peoples in the East and the proletarian revolution in the West. It was
a
fundamental principle of the Soviet Union to give fully equal state rights
to
the peoples and nations formerly oppressed by the tsar and to aim at
developing
and promoting these countries in the economic respect as well. But with
the
establishment of revisionism was also re-erected the old, tsarist, prison
for
the people of all nationalities."
"A prop for Soviet revisionism is op****tunism, or rather a handful of rich
countries' exploitation of foreign countries from which imperialism is
extracting additional giant profits enabling it to bribe the upper stratum
of
the working class and to unburden the people of these rich countries of
the
dirty and hard labour. The tendencies connected with this, towards
philistinification and petty-bourgeoisification of part of the working
class,
were, and still are, a certain protection against the emergence of a
genuinely
Marxist-Leninist movement, against there being fought a real ideological
struggle which would unmask Soviet revisionism completely."
"What one the one hand is causing op****tunism must, on the other, cause an
intensification of international class struggle. Modern revisionism has
its
root cause in the massive, extensive exploitation of the countries of the
third
world. And it is from this aspect that it must necessarily reveal itself
the
most. The Soviet revisionists' social-imperialism is bound to clash openly
with
the oppressed peoples and nations. Such a power as the social-imperialism
of
the Soviet revisionists must fear to the utmost every genuine movement,
every
movement of the oppressed peoples and nations for independence and every
genuine Communist movement."
"Soviet revisionism today has become a vanguard of political reaction in
the
world. This is what the Marxist-Leninists must see."
In the social-imperialists' Afghan war, 1979-89, that which was predicted
here
was confirmed. That power did clash openly with an oppressed people.
What Klaus Sender had written about "philistinification and
petty-bourgeoisification" eventually came true about him and his party
too. In
the late 1980s, this earlier so im****tant - though always very small -
genuinely proletarian revolutionary force degenerated and turned into that
in
reality bourgeois force today sometimes posting things on the Net as
<klasber@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>.
[Added in 2008: In 1997-98, that already degenerated party, the KPD/ML
(NEUE
EINHEIT), also liquidated itself as a such and was replaced by a likewise
swindling phony"Marxist" so-called "Group Neue Einheit", which still
exists and
which today is publi****ng statements, sometimes also in English, at the
website
of the "Verlag [Publi****ng House] Neue Einheit" at
http://www.neue-einheit.com/.
It camouflage is so relatively clever,
because of
the great knowledge of that earlier existing actually Marxist-Leninist
party
from which it originates, that I'm recommending others today to read that
website. It sometimes may provide many with information on certain matters
which otherwise you won't find in many places elsewhere. Only, you should
take
care of course not to fall into one of the traps of that "group's"
leaders, who
absolutely are on the side of arch-reaction in the world.]
B) The Trotskyite and openly-bourgeois "theory" of "Stalinism"
In 1917, there was the great Russian revolution, and in the years
immediately
following this, the socialist Soviet Union was formed. From the late 1950s
on,
capitalism was completely restored in the Soviet Union and that former
socialist state turned into a pillar of reaction, from which in the
mid-1970s
even the main danger of largescale imperialist war emanated.
These are the most basic facts about the Soviet Union, although things are
not
quite as simple as stated here in this fa****on. From the very beginning,
there
were certain deformations in this socialist state. And a number of
reactionary,
revisionist and social-imperialist, actions were undertaken by the Soviet
leader****p long before the end of the 1950s too. There are several
questions of
history concerning the first socialist state which still remain open. They
need
to be investigated.
These problems of course have facilitated the continued advocacy of a
reactionary "theory" which attacks what it calls "Stalinism". In the
above-mentioned discussion on the Jefferson Village Virginia Marxism list,
some
people rightly condemned the aggression against Afghanistan by the Soviet
Union, but they said that this aggression was an expression of
"Stalinism".
Openly bourgeois media have presented things in a similar manner too.
But the essentially upside-down character of this description of things is
obvious. What was the standpoint of the Soviet revisionists, who
perpetrated
the aggression in Afghanistan, concerning Stalin? As is well-known, one of
the
most im****tant turning-points in the restoration of capitalism in the
Soviet
Union was the 20th party congress of the CPSU in 1956 and the "secret
speech"
held by Khrushchov, the first openly revisionist Soviet leader, at that
congress, in which he totally *repudiated* Stalin and tried to blacken him
as
"completely reactionary". The later revisionist regime under Brezhnev,
which
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