ee

Fresh vegetables in January
through a network of greenhouses
surrounding the northern cities.

In the Yumak-Nenets Autonom-
ous district, the children of rein-
deer breeders, fishermen and
hunters study in their own uni-
‘versities to become doctors. Be-
low: new generation of Ust-
llimsk, one of the youngest Rus-
sian cities, the average age is 26.

PHOTOS — ADN

Maria Pogodayeva, a Yakut, and Alexei Yettietu, a Chukchi, both are Norilsk, in the Russian Federation, a modern city 500 miles”

veterinarian surgeons on a state farm.

Socialism tapping new frontie

SOVIET FRONTIERS OF TO-
MORROW, Harold Griffin, Pro-

| gress Publishers, Moscow, 2nd

edition 1984, 221 pages, illus-
trated. Hardcover, $6.50.

Thoughtful reflection on the
irony of the first lines of our Na-

tional Anthem should leave one.

with a feeling of anger. Running
through the fabric of Canadian
culture is a flaw that reveals more
of ‘Canadian identity’ than it has
ever. covered. It is the lie, re-

peated each time Canadians sing

— often with a sense of mis-
begotten pride — that Canada is
“our home and native land’’.

The fact that Canada has grown

upon the land that was brutally
taken from Native Canadians,
stained by the barbarism of colo-
nial conquest, is not mentioned.
Nor is there recognition of the

exploitation, toil and struggles of:

the immigrant working class that
created Canada’s wealth upon
this frontier born of theft.

The title of Harold Griffin's
latest book may be misleading.

Soviet Frontiers of Tomorrow

now in its second printing, tells
the story of many frontiers. It is
unique, in many respects, and a
joy to read. Griffin criss-crosses
international boundries, moving

~ backward and forward in history

to weave a rich exposition that
draws together Canadian history
and the lives of the people of the

Soviet frontier, contrasting their —

similarities and differences.

Griffin, a well known Canadian
historian, poet, past editor of The
Fisherman (paper of the United

Fisherman and Allied Workers

Union), and the Pacific Tribune,
travelled through Siberia in 1980,

~ gathering materials for his book.
He has brought to light in Soviet

Frontiers of Tomorrow, the
unquestionable advantages of
socialism and its implications for
Canada’s present potentials and
future prosperity.

Siberia is the first frontier in his-
tory to be developed on an eco-
nomically sound, planned basis.
It has achieved a tremendous ad-
vance in the material and cultural
wealth and freedoms of its Native

Arctic Circle.

peoples. Before socialism was
born, Siberia was one of Russia’s
most backward areas where the
lives of the Native peoples were
trodden under foot by the same
genocidal forces that continue to
thrive in Canada, in a more
sophisticated form.

Like Canada the wealth of
Siberia was owned and controlled
by international monopolies bent
on éxploiting the natural riches
and the labor of its inhabitants.
The victory of socialism marked a
profound turning point in the lives
of the peoples of the Soviet
North. ‘“‘With one half of the
world’s known coal reserves, the
world’s greatest forests, almost all
the precious and rare metals and
immense deposits of base
metals’, Siberia now produces 10
percent of the Soviet income, 8
per cent of machinery output and
has an annual growth rate of 5.5
per cent.

The true measure of the
superiority of socialism, is much
deeper than statistics. The lives
of the people of the Soviet north

Canadians set free the pote?”

has improved by leaps
bounds and is well doculm
through interviews and d p
graphs in Griffin's book.
Yakutia in the Yakut AU!
ous Soviet Socialist
more than 6,000 studen
university, 5,000 of Native
Yakuts, Evenks, Evens,
chis, Yukaghirs and othe
area has become a leading ™
of scientific researc”
development where the —
peoples, through the
ministrative bodies, run the
tific, educational, industfia
cultural organizations.

ei

_ Griffin notes that “when I
to explain to a group of Ya
basis of the land claims ™ au
Canada’s Native Indian and ,
people, the demands for ree,
tion voiced by the Métis:
shook their heads in disbelié
can be said, as well, that

our frontier, and look back 0”
past of today, their react
probably be the same.

John

Washington’ S secret war against Afghanistan

WASHINGTON’S SECRET WAR
AGAINST AFGHANISTAN by
Phillip Bonosky, New York: In-
ternational, =. 264 pp., )7.95
paper.

“““Why, in your opinion, did
President Carter say that Amin
was the only ‘legitimate’ presi-
dent of Afghanistan? Why do you
think Carter was so fond of
Amin?’”

This was the question the wni-
ter, Phillip Bonosky, finally suc-
ceeded in asking Afghanistan's
President Babrak Karmal at a ©
press conference in 1980 in
_ Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
This was after Karmal had en-
dured the harassing, phony ques-
tions by capitalist press journa-
lists.

The consternation was
tremendous because Bonosky
was clearly not playing the others’
game.

Karmal responded, in essence,
that ‘“‘Amin was his (Carter’s)
bully boy.”’ Bonosky proceeds to
explain precisely what Karmal
meant in his beautiful, artistic
style with a well-documented his-
torical analysis in his recent book,
Washington’s Secret War Against
_ Afghanistan.

is to Shakespeare that
ae looks for a comparison
to illustrate the events in Afghan-
istan from April 27, 1978, when

Noor Mohammed Taraki took |

power from Mohammed Duad to

the taking of state power by Ha-’

fizullah Amin after Taraki
‘resigned’ on Sept. 16, 1979 and
the assistance provided by Soviet
troops at the request of the
government of Afghanistan in ac-
cordance with a mutual defence
treaty.

It is Shakespeare’s Othello,
with Taraki compared to Othello
and Amin compared to lago as a
betrayer that provides the leit-
motif for the recent history of
Afghanistan in which Bonosky
‘“‘attempted to seek that reality
that survives the storm, to find
that rock on which to stand, not
away from the storm, but inside
the storm itself: there only to rest
on judgment.”

Bonosky compares the rule of
Amin to the genocidal terror of
the ‘‘ultra-leftist’’ Pol Pot of
Kampuchea. After documenting
Amin’s CIA connections as far
back as his student days in the
U.S. in 1963, he notes that,
according to the Kabul New

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 14, 1986

Times, Jan. 5, 1980, ‘‘*Amin’s
diabolical machine was bent on
liquidating at least one million of
our people...“

A warden of an Afghan prison
believed, according to a UPI re-
port, that ‘‘‘One million Afghans
are sufficient in order for us to
build socialism. All others are

"infected with the old a as HLS and

266

must no longer live.
He compared this to a state-
ment attributed to Pol Pot that
“““We need only one million
Kampucheans to build a new
society,’ and to Mao Tse-tung’s
statement in the pamphlet, Long
Live Leninism ‘‘made hardly 10
years earlier, that no revolution-
ary should fear an atomic war be-
cause, though two-thirds of
mankind might perish, a ‘greater
civilization’ could be built by the
surviving one-third on the ruins.’
Bonosky notes that Afghan-
istan was certainly not the ideal
place for a revolution, that “‘the
conditions under which they tried
to drag the 12th century into the
20th — almost literally by the hair
— were anything but favorable.”
This was a society where “‘it
was taken for granted that 50 per-
cent of the children should die and

that women should be slaves,”
where “‘illiteracy was almost to-
tal, and among women, where the
exceptions were so rare, one
could say that-it was total.”
Bonosky makes it clear that it
s “the sons and daughters of
peasants and workers, (who) felt
themselves literally reborn by the

Revolution. ... From the children
of peasants, they were trans-
formed into ... workers. ... For

them, too, to become a worker
was to become free.”

How is it possible that freedom
‘‘meant being a worker?’ He
takes‘us to a bakery with women
workers to elucidate his point that
‘‘what was true of the entire era
— (was) that the emancipation of
mankind lay in its becoming the
full expression of the working
class:s.<* :

He notes that “‘the contrast be-
tween the women they were, im-

prisoned behind their masks, and _

the women they now are — their
faces as open as their minds — is
dramatic. Only a workers’ revolu-
tion freed them.

“As Afghanistan industrializes
itself, it recreates itself in the
image of the working class which
it simultaneously gives birth to.”’

-non-alignment.”’

He adds, ‘*Feudalism# h
sisted into a world |
capitalism itself is beginine
long decline into its [as
night.”” “

It is also true that imperil
may ‘“‘try to adapt feudalis™
own ends under the guise
spect for religion.”

It is American a
the Soviet Union, which P°
threat to Afghanistan. Sin
“Every Afghan governm@
built its foreign policy
demonstrated solid foundatl
friendship with the fic
Union, coupled with a po

Bonosky proves, over an?
again, that the news ston
murder committed by sovie
Afghan government fot
complete fabrications. e
pares the lies about Aff
to the lies about Nicaraé
demonstrate that ‘the P&
one is the peace of the ol?

He reminds us that th
another ‘‘fanatic’’ in hist0!
looked upon the Soviet
the ‘‘evil empire’? which
destroyed, namely, Hitlet

Lee