3

itical’ life the most ideologically and
politically steeled Communists who
took a determined stand against the
Right-wing opposition. Indeed, how
else can one interpret, for instance,
the statement of C. Cisar Secretary
of the Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party of Czechoslovakia, who
urged the enrollment into party mem-
bership of some 200,000-300,000 young
people in order to give what he called
an “aging” Party a “shot in the arm”,
while ignoring the class aspect of this
essential issue?

The course of the wholesale re-
moval of leading functionaries in-
volved not only the party apparatus;
it was also extended to key echelons
of the state machinery, to the trade
unions and the youth league. Most
government members had been _re-
placed. Among the people removed
were also several functionaries whom
the leaders of the Communist Party
of Czechoslovakia characterized as
trustworthy and considered staunch
Communists even after the January
Plenary Meeting.

It has been publicly stated that the
Communists ousted from leading party
and government bodies had in the past
committed mistakes in their work.
But to what extent was it justified
to raise on this ground the issue of
political non-confidence in thousands
of functionaries and to expel people
from political life virtually for no other
reason than that they had actively
participated in the life of the Party
and country prior to the January
Plenary Meeting?

It was to be hoped that the Pre-
sidium of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of Czechoslo-
vakia would avail itself of the oppor-
tunity furnished by the preparation
for the 14th special Party Congress
slated for September 9 to put an end
to the defamation of the party core.
This, however, did not happen. On
the contrary, the preparation, for the
Congress was utilized by the Right-
wing elements to intensify the offen-
sive against the Party’s healthy forces,
place their own men in district and
regional party organizations, and foist
their own policy upon the Party.

The Right-wing-controlled press
openly interfered in the election of
delegates to party conferences and the
Congress and even published “recom-
mendations” as to who should and
who «should not be, elected to the
future Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party of Czechoslovakia, ob-
viously trying to exert impermissible
pressure on the delegates of the fu-
ture Congress.

That was how matters stood. The
Party is not an abstract concept. The
Party means people and principles en-
suring the joint action of the Com-
munists. When the principles of party
life were discarded and the party core
was defamed, the conclusion that the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
was in danger was quite warranted.

Equally dangerous for socialism in
Czechoslovakia was the fact that along
with the drastic diminution of political
organizational work the Czecho-
slovak Communist Party leadership in
effect placed into the hands of the
Right-wing anti-socialist forces con-
trol over the mass media for influ-
encing the people ideologically. Many
newspapers as well as the radio and
television of Czechoslovakia were
actually at the disposal of “certain
groupings who pursued patenty anti-
socialist aims. Irrefutable facts proved
that these groupings operated purpose-
fully in their attempt to discredit the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
and socialism.

Publications like Literarny Listy,
Mlada Fronta, Prace, Lidovo Democ-
racie, Svobodne Slovo, Zemedelske
Noviny, Student and Reporter carried
on frenzied anti-socialist propaganda.

The Czechoslovak working people
also openly noted that the mass pro-
paganda media were being employed
not in the interests of the Czechoslo-
vak people but to their disadvantage.
Thus, at a nation-wide rally of the
Czechoslovak activists of the workers’
militia, its participants pointed out
that’ ‘the party leadership and propa-
ganda organs were taking no steps

against the activities of the reaction-
ary elements. The workers adopted
their well-known resolution and with
good reason deemed it necessary to
call on the Soviet Embassy with this
resolution and ask that it be trans-
mitted to Moscow. So significant a
meeting of worker representatives,
however, did not receive due coverage
in the Czechoslovak press while for a
long time its appeal to the Soviet
people was concealed from the work-
ing people of Czechoslovakia.

Many Czechoslovak comrades tried
to speak out in the press on this ques-
tion but were not permitted to do so.
Only with difficulty did comrade Jo-
das, a veteran Communist and under-
ground. resistance movement fighter,
manage to get published his protest
against the activities of the Right-wing
anti-Soviet forces who tried to mon-
opolize the mass media. This is what
he wrote: “Currently a certain well-
organized reactionary group in the
Party, which controls all information
media, is making over the television,
the radio and in the press, vicious
attacks against the Party. For five
months now this group in whose work
various reactionary elements are act-
ively participating has waged this
campaign, which must inevitably re-
sult in the destruction of party unity.
This calls for decisive outright action
against this group, which must be duly

assessed and whose designs must be:

publicly exposed.”

The situation with regard to the
communication media aroused the leg-
itimate anxiety of the working people
of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
In their letter dated July 18 the work-
ers of the Avto-Praha plant wrote:
“We are categorically against the ra-

dio, press and television creating a.

bilious atmosphere around the USSR
and the socialist countries and parties.
. . . Fear for the future of- our coun-
try curdles our blood.”

In short, a situation was brought
about in Czechoslovakia in which
Right-wing elements could openly
come out in the press with anti-
socialist statements and stage demon-
strations and rallies under their own
counter-revolutionary slogans, while
pronouncements in which the situation
in the country was assessed from
Marxist-Leninist positions were shroud-
ed in silence and their authors per-
secuted.

The baiting of honest Communists,
the discrediting of the Party and the
attacks against Marxism-Leninism, pro-
letarian internationalism and the fra-
ternal friendship between the Soviet
and Czechoslovak peoples, took place,
one might say, before the very eyes
of the Central Committee of the
Czechoslovak Communist Party.

Denigration of the Communist Par-
ty, especially of its work over the
past 20 years, the vilification of the
party cadres, the placing of the mass
media into the hands of elements at-
tacking the Party and the trampling
underfoot of the principle of demo-
cratic centralism all served to de-
moralize the broad party rank-and-
file, cause them to become myopic and
uncertain, aroused consternation in
Party organizations and at the same
time tended to enhance the influence
of Right-wing elements and intensify
the activities of counter-revolutionary
forces.

IV

Reactionary attempts to destroy the
Communist Party and weaken the po-

sitions of socialism in Czechoslovakia

went hand in hand with an all-out
offensive on Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Distinctly discernible in the pro-
nouncements of the enemies of so-.
cialism are their persistence and de-.
votion to their purpose. Though they
operated from. different quarters they,
pursued the common aim of under-
mining the ideological and theoretical
basis of the Communists and supplant-
ing scientific socialism by other ideolo-
gical concepts.

The Czechoslovak press willingly
opened their colums to writings by-
outright adversaries of

lication in many Czechoslovak periodi-

Ce” ps BET aed “eee

Marxism-.
Leninism: -Suffice it to recall: the: pub-:

cals of articles by the notorius Trot-
skyite Isaac Deutscher and also ex-
cerpts from his book.

However, the anti-socialist forces in
Czechoslovakia went even further than
that.

One may call to mind the so-called
“Memorandum of the People of Czech-
olslovakia” drafted by the organiza-
tional committee of the self-styled
“Party of True Czechoslovak Social-
ists,” mentioned in Mlada Fronta on
June 14. With unveiled arrogance the
authors of this lampoon declaimed:
“The law we shall adopt must ban all
communist activity in Czechoslovakia.
We shall forbid the activity of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
and dissolve it.” They further urge
the destruction of the classic works
of Marxism-Leninism.

The Hitlerites who burned Marxist
books! in bonfires in city squares in
Germany would only too willingly sub-
scribe to such demands.

In the National Assembly Deputy
Turosek raised with understandable
anxiety the following question on this
subject: “When and how will there
begin in our country a drive against
such phenomena which besmirch the
Communist Party andthe Commu-
nists?” Certain functionaries of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
also had a hand in the onslaught on
Marxism-Leninism mounted in Czecho-
slovakia.

Widely advertised throughout the
country was the frankly revisionist
speech of C. Cisar, Secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia, at the Karl
Marx 150th anniversary memorial
meeting in Prague. Digging into the
essence of this speech we find that it
amounts to apostasy of Leninism, ne-
gation of its international significance,
the denial of the idea of Leninism re-
maining the guide to action in present-
day conditions.

Unfortunately, some leaders of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
could not muster the courage to criti-
cize this speech and defend the ideo-
logical foundations of the Communist
movement in Czechoslovakia. More
than that, a sweeping campaign was
launched in Czechoslovakia assailing
the Soviet press for having protested
against the new-fangled decriers of
Marxism-Leninism.

Incidentally, the speech C. Cisar
made, was far from being the only
attack mounted against Leninism. Sim-
ilar allegations could be also found in
other publications that have appeared
in Czechoslovakia of late.

Small wonder, since the atmosphere
that has been created in Czechoslo-
vakia was such that it became fash-
ionable and profitable to attack Marx-
ism-Leninism and dangerous to cham-
pion the tenets of communist teach-
ings.

What explanation can we find for

this? Is this theoretical indiscrimina-.

tion of certain leaders, or deliberate
encouragement of those seeking to de-
prive the Party of its theoretical wea-
pon and to destroy the foundation for
the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s
ideological cohesion with the other
detachments of the world communist
movement?

We are all well aware how impor-
tant it is to constantly develop Marx-
ist-Leninist theory, to generalize and
analyze the new processes and devel-

opments in the world. Marxism-Len- -

inism would be a dead letter were it
not developed in each new historical
epoch by the collective effort of its
theoreticians and followers. It is abso-
lutely clear, however, that the - pro-
nouncements quoted aim not ‘to de-
velop Marxism but to revise and de-
pose it. Z

The leaders of the Communist Party
in Czechoslovakia have done nothing

to protect the ideological positions of

the Communist Party.
The corrosion of these positions was

undoubtedly facilitated also by the
uncritical non-class approach to cer-
tain pages of national history which
is gaining increasing currency in
Czechoslovakia. :

It is a fact that there has been re-

-vived of -late the-cult .of. Masaryk .who

such a

-communist movement and one of the

masterminds of intervention against
Soviet Russia. It is strange that even
some Communists in Czechoslovakia
sang praises to a bourgeois person-
ality, at whose orders the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia was perse-
cuted and warrants were issued for
the arrest of its leaders including
Klement Gottwald. The cudgels were
again taken up for Benes who brought
the country to Munich.

Ought the press of a socialist coun-
try and of a party, to be concerned
with such history and such men while
having their own glorious revolution-
ary history so full of heroism, gal-
lantry and courage displayed in the
struggle for the freedom of the people
and for national independence?

One can hardly understand why in
the Czechoslovak press of late there
has been scarcely any mention of out-
standing leaders and organizers of the
Communist Party, the internationalists
and heroes of the working class and
communist movement who gave up
their lives in the struggle against the
Hitlerite -occupationists, in the strug-
gle’ for socialism and stronger friend-
ship between our peoples.

On the other hand, there have been
utterances of appalling political cyni-
cism similar to the contribution of one
Mlynirek in Literarny Listy of August
15 in which an attempt was made to
besmirch the entire history of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,
especially after the Socialist Revolu-
tion had taken place in the country,
and to slander Klement Gottwald and
whole generations of heroic fighters
of the Communist Party of Czecho-
slovakia.

Yet one more circumstance. Of late
quite a sizeable effort has been made
in Czechoslovakia to stir up among
the people sentiments that can only
by qualified as nationalist. Such pre-
cisely was the aim of the vociferous
propaganda campaign artificially or-
organized in late July in support of

- the positions of the Presidium of the

Central Committee of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia at the forth-
coming talks with the Politbureau of
the CPSU Central Committee. The
appeal to the Czechoslovak Commu-
nist Party delegation to this meeting
which was published in this connec-
tion in the Czechoslovak press served
to whip up precisely these low na-
tionalist passions.

Some leaders of the Central Com-
mittee of the Czechoslovak Communist
Party did everything to popularize this
document. It was broadcast on TV;
its authors were received with con-
spicuous cordiality; and leading func-
tionaries appeared in the streets where
a drive for signatures to the text of the
appeal was organized. Can this be con-
sidered a normal way of preparing for
talks with a friendly fraternal party?
~ What is most serious about the mass
campaign fomented in Czechoslovakia
by such artificial means was that it

was directed not against the class ene-

mies of the working people of Czecho-
slovakia, not against the circles en-
dangering the Republic’s security, not
against the imperialists. It was di-
rected, however monstrous this may
seem, against socialist Czechoslovakia’s
closest friends, the USSR and the
other fraternal socialist nations.
From this the question arises: if the
leaders of the Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic did not wish to reckon with
the considerations of their friends, to
heed their words, to follow a common
path together with them, then to whom
did they plan to turn, whose company
did they seek? Furthermore, where did
they wish to find the guarantee for the
security and sovereignty of the Czech-
oslovak people and protection for their
socialist gains from imperialist attack?
Incidentally, noteworthy in _ the
above-mentioned appeal, around which
clamorous campaign was
launched, is yet one more fact to
which one must attach very great sig-
nificance. The point is that in this
appeal, in the passages .enumerating
the historical stages of Czechoslo-
vakia’s development not a word is
said about Czechoslovakia’s turn to-
wards socialism,in. February. .1948. . It

was always a sworn enemy of the,; oo Will, be- absolutely, plain, to, anyone who

_ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 13, 1968—Page