INTRODUCTION

BY

SENATOR JAMES O. EASTLAND

Chairman, Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security

"The Assault on Freedom" has been conceived as a compendium of theoretical and policy statements by the Moscow and Peking Communists and by the bevy of other extremist organizations committed to the destruction of free institutions (almost all of which take pride in describing themselves as "Marxist" or "Marxist-Leninist").

It is important in any situation to "know one's enemy". This is especially so in trying to deal with the special kind of political warfare that has been forced on the free world by the communists and their allies. There can be no better way of understanding the communists or anticipating their actions than by systematically studying their press, their broadcasts, and their manuals, with a view to determining their policy on various issues, domestic and international. This also holds true of the sundry other extremist organizations which, on the one hand, are independent of the Communist Party and frequently at odds with it, and, on the other hand, often march parallel to the communists and even engage in formal united fronts with them.

IS THERE A WORLD COMMUNIST MOVEMENT?

The world communist movement is not the tightly unified monolith that it was in the 20's or 30's, when the Soviet Union was the only communist state, and the Soviet Communist Party, by virtue of this fact, was able to impose its will on the communist parties in other countries. As a study put out by the subcommittee last fall 1 put the matter: "What made the crucial difference between world communism before 1945 and in the two and one-half decades after 1945, was the fact that Moscow could command revolutionary conspiratorial parties without state responsibility, but when those parties assumed state power, they took on a system of national values and priorities that often conflicted with the demands of Moscow's so-called "proletarian internationalism." The result has been the emergence of Titoism, Castroism, polycentrism on the Rumanian model, and, above all, the Sino-Soviet split.

The growing differences within the world communist movement have led some observers to conclude that the movement no longer exists

1 World Communism, 1967-1969: Soviet Efforts to Reestablish Control.

or that it has lost the capacity to operate as an effective international organism. They are right in the sense that it will be virtually impossible to reconstitute the centralized discipline of the Stalin period. They are wrong when they conclude from this that the movement has lost its capacity to function in a unified manner.

It operates on a different basis now. But that it operates effectively is apparent from the world-wide clamor that the world communist movement has been able to generate on behalf of Angela Davis, or in opposition to American policy in Vietnam, or to the American invasion of Cambodia, or to the sentences recently imposed against communist leaders in the Sudan. Common sense suggests that when demonstrations against American policy in Vietnam take place simultaneously in some 40 or 50 countries, this orchestration is the work of an international apparatus-and the communist apparatus is the only mechanism in existence today capable of stage-managing such a world-wide extravaganza.

Increasingly, the communist movement has come to function through international front organizations like the World Federation of Trade Unions, the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization, the World Peace Congress, and the World Federation of Democratic Youth; through special Conferences on Southeast Asia or even on the separate question of Laos; and through United Front movements, national and international, sometimes focusing on special issues, sometimes sweeping so broadly that there is little to separate their programs from the program of the Communist Party.

Perhaps the most spectacular and successful example of an international united front movement under communist control is the AfroAsian and Latin American People's Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO) which was set up at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January of 1966. This development enormously enhanced the communists' capacity for international subversion, because it brought together in a single organization dominated by them numerous militant and nationalist movements, which, while not communist, share the antipathy of the communists towards the West and towards the United States in particular. It is also a development which has dramatically affected the internal security of the United States.

Since its establishment, the Tricontinental Organization has acted as the central fountainhead of terrorist and guerrilla activities throughout the Americas-including the United States.

It is of more than academic interest that the Tricontinental Organization has published and distributed in its own name-in Spanish, Portuguese and English-Carlos Marighella's infamous "Handbook of the Urban Guerrilla," which provides detailed instructions on the entire spectrum of terrorist actions, from making bombs and robbing banks to political assassination and kidnapping.

In the case of the United States, the Tricontinental Organization has sponsored, taken under its wing, or struck up an alliance with, virtually all of the left-wing extremist organizations in this country that are committed to violence and terrorism-the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, the Fuerto Rican Independence Movement, the Chicano Liberation Movement, and the Weathermen.

The alliance with the Weathermen is implicit in the history of the Venceremos Brigade. The Tricontinental Organization has played an important role in the indoctrination and training of the 1549 young Americans who have traveled to Cuba as members of the Venceremos Brigade. And, at the American end, the Weathermen organization played an important, if not central role, in the initial organization of the Venceremos Brigade; this is substantiated by documents seized at Weathermen Headquarters in Chicago and submitted in testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security by representatives of the Illinois Crime Investigation Committee. (See "Extent of Subversion in the New Left," part 4).

All of these facts must be kept in mind in assessing the obvious disunity which today infects the communist movement.

THE MEANING AND LIMITS OF POLYCENTRISM

2

A realistic appraisal of the situation certainly requires that the differences within the world communist movement be given their due weight. In the course of examining these differences, the Subcommittee on Internal Security has taken testimony suggesting the serious possibility of a Soviet preemptive strike against Red China; it brought out a study of events which led to Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia; and it has more recently published a major study of the centrifugal tendencies within the world Communist movement and of Soviet efforts to reestablish control.*

3

No one can predict the ultimate outcome of the Sino-Soviet split and of the other fissures that have opened up in the ranks of world communism. For the time being, however, these differences have not prohibited joint action, or parallel action, in the communist cause-even in the case of Moscow and Peking. Certainly, they have not prevented Moscow from taking decisive action when it deemed such action necessary.

Despite the protests which Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia evoked from certain sectors of the world communist movement, the fact nevertheless remains that Moscow was able to oblige four of its European creature regimes-East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria-to join it in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. And it then compounded the terror which the action was intended to induce by promulgating the so-called Brezhnev doctrine, under which it formally claimed the right to intervene in any "socialist country" which veers too far from the Moscow line.5

At the time it was promulgated, there were bitter protests from many sectors of the communist community against the Brezhnev doctrine. Gradually these protests tapered off. In the joint statement issued by the parties participating in the Moscow Conference of 1969, the issue was not even mentioned.

It would be a dangerous oversimplification to conclude that because certain communist parties differ with Moscow on certain issues, they

"Threat to U.S. Security Posed by Stepped Up Sino-Soviet Hostilities." Testimony of Dr. Stefan Possony-1970. "Aspects of Intellectual Ferment and Dissent in Czechoslovakia"-1969. "World Communism, 1967-69: Soviet Efforts To Reestablish Control"-1970. See Brezhnev Doctrine, page 147.

are, by virtue of this fact, disposed to be more friendly to America. Ceausescu of Romania walked out of the 1969 Moscow Conference ostentatiously by way of manifesting his displeasure over Moscow's effort to utilize the conference against Red China. But during his recent visit to Red China, the same Ceausescu issued a joint statement with Peking's Cambodian puppet, Prince Sihanouk, denouncing American imperialism in language that would have done credit to Mao Tse-tung, and calling for the support of the Communist cause in Cambodia. (See page 185.)

The Sino-Soviet split has certain obvious advantages for the Free World. But it is not an unmitigated blessing. In balance it is questionable that the free world is safer in consequence of this division. On the contrary, the record suggests that the competition between Moscow and Peking has brought about a stepped-up tempo of subversion, each side racing against the other to see who can take over first in different parts of the world.

There is a dichotomy to the Moscow-Peking relationship which can be deceptive if one looks at one side only. They abuse each other daily in their radio broadcasts, and both sides are engaged in serious and enormously costly military preparations along the Sino-Soviet border. And yet they frequently take parallel action in the "anti-imperialist" cause; and sometimes, under instructions, their followers have even take joint action.

Both China and the Soviet Union participated prominently in the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966-competing for influence, and yet cooperating on basic policy.

They have both given massive military aid and unstinting political assistance to Hanoi-again, competing for influence and sometimes trading accusations.

When the April 24 anti-Vietnam demonstration was being organized, pro-Moscow and pro-Peking communists, Trotskyists and SDS'ers, responding to an appeal from Hanoi, decided to bury their differences in the interest of a United Front against their common enemy"American Imperialism." (See pages 92, 93.)

In the case of Cuba, there have been a series of highly publicized differences with the Kremlin, and relations were so strained at one point that the Kremlin brought pressure to bear by holding back on oil shipments. And yet the Kremlin has continued to finance the Castro regime to the tune of several hundred million dollars a year and has equipped it with the mightiest military arsenal in Latin America. On its side, the Castro regime is permitting Moscow to develop facilities in Cuba which will enable the Soviet Navy to build up a continuing submarine deployment in the Caribbean and along the American. East Coast.

THE ESSENTIAL CONTINUITY OF THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT

The world communist movement is remarkable for its theoretical continuity. This continuity stems from the fact that all communists tend to regard the writings of Marx and Lenin as dogma-and this despite any differences of emphasis or interpretation that may exist between the several sectors of the world movement. For example, when

The Guardian of July 7, 1971, reproduced a long statement from Lenin on the subject of revolution, they were, in effect, saying to their readers that what Lenin wrote more than 50 years ago is still valid for today. Milovan Djilas, the former Yugoslav Communist leader, points out in the article we quote on page 13:

The essence of Communist teaching has remained completely unaltered from the time of Marx, except for questions of tactics on how to gain and hold power. The essence of this teaching, moreover, cannot change, for the very reason its alteration would lead to its destruction.

When one talks about world communism, one means in the first place the Soviet Union. This is not only because of its primacy as the world's first communist country, but even more because of its enormous economic and military strength. The remarkable continuity of Soviet policy constitutes another manifestation of the essential continuity of the communist line.

Speaking specifically about the question of Soviet policy, Professor Leonard Schapiro, one of Great Britain's most respected scholars of Soviet affairs, testified in April, 1970, before the Jackson Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations:

the profile of Soviet foreign policy has, in essential features, remained quite constant since 1917, notwithstanding, the great differences which characterized the leading personalities over the years-Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev,

Soviet policy is unremittingly dynamic. It is not directed towards achieving equilibrium, or balance of forces, or peace, or collective security, or certain specific concrete objectives: its ultimate aim is victory, which means Communist rule on a world scale. (See page 13.)

The organizational continuity is also there-despite their misleading "dissolution" of the Communist International as a World War II gesture to Western opinion, despite the significant differences which have developed between sectors of the world Communist movement, and despite what has been described as the phenomenon of polycentrism.

It may no longer be called the "Communist International." But as the documentation here presented demonstrates, there certainly still exists an international communist apparatus, modified in a manner which corresponds to the requirements of today's polycentric situation, but still committed to the destruction of the free world and to the global triumph of communism.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND "THE MOVEMENT"

Especially in connection with the anti-Vietnam demonstrations, it has become commonplace for communists and sundry radicals who have been working with them to refer to "The Movement." The term is generally used in a very broad manner, intended to cover the aggregate of organizations which seek not only an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, but the progressive paralysis and eventual overthrow of American society-in short, the aggregate of organizations belonging both to the Old Left and the New Left.

There are important doctrinal differences within "The Movement." In the case of certain New Left organizations their attitude towards the Communist Party sometimes borders on contempt-not because