Editorial

To the Organizing Committee:

Dear comrades:

After we (PCE(r)) received the Proposed Statutes for the International Council" and the proposed Agenda for the "World Congress" that will be held in 2001 and having thoroughly read the aforementioned documents, we do not consider it necessary to add anything as regards questions related to the organization of the event, since you have already taken into account all these questions. We are conscious of the difficulties that the project of the Congress brings about, since in it you try to harmonize very different, and on some occasions even opposed situations, ideas and wills. Due to all these reasons we appreciate very much the effort of synthesis that you have made. However, in your proposals there are other questions that effect the political contents and that we consider should be discussed previously if we want to avoid that the "United Front" of support to the cause of the re-establishment of socialism in the USSR may end up being reduced to an artificial set-up without any content. What we mean by this is the fact that we have missed in the Statutes of the Council some reference to the disastrous role played by the Khrushchevite and Brezhnevite mob; besides, we have been astonished by the part of the Statutes where it is stated that "it must be clear that the participants in the Congress must not use this venue for ideological debates about how the Soviet people must achieve their resurrection or what kind of Socialism must be achieved by them. These two questions must be decided by the Soviet people themselves".

We consider that in the same way as the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia was, in Stalin's own words: "before all, a revolution of an international character, of a world character", the process of capitalist restoration in the USSR and of the destruction of the socialist camp also had and still has deep consequences for the revolutionary and communist cause in all the world. To put a single practical example, the confusion and the demoralization provoked among the world masses by that process is something that is still very strongly felt when the communists begin to work among them and to combat this requires much effort. For all these reasons we believe that nowadays the debate to clarify what has happened in the former USSR, as well as in the whole of the International Communist Movement, is something that is completely necessary in order, precisely, to advance firmly towards the socialist revolution. Besides, it is obvious that this question is not something exclusively for the Soviet people but, on the contrary, it effects the communists of the whole world.

The cause of socialism in the former USSR is, effectively, also our own cause. For this reason we do not understand why we cannot make any statement on the character that this "socialism" must have. For us there is only one type of socialism for Russia as well as for the rest of countries. In the Political Report approved two years ago by our IV Congress we stated: "There cannot be any other way of construction of socialism than the one that was showed long time ago by Marx and Engels, which is determined by the nature and contradictions of the capitalist system that rules the world, by the immanent laws of this system that lead, through the class struggle, to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, to the establishment of State property or of all the people and to the socially planned economy, with which are settled the foundations for the suppression of the economic laws of the market and the reactionary ideology and culture." That is to say, when we speak about "the restoration of socialism in the former USSR" we are referring to the socialism that was rightly put into practice by Lenin and Stalin in accordance with the circumstances of the epoch and without excluding the inevitable mistakes; of course, what we are not ready to support in any way is a return to false "socialism" of the revisionists like Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and the present, Zyuganov, whose disastrous consequences are so well-known.

On the pages of "Northstar Compass" we find that on some occasions there have appeared articles in which the Soviet communists themselves assume the responsibility for "remaining silent" in the Brezhnev epoch and in which they state that the task of reorganizing all the communist ranks comes through breaking all ties with revisionism.

Therefore, you will understand that the above mentioned express proposal of not speaking about all that has happened in the USSR in the last decades and its incidence in the present and the future has worried us very much and, in some ways, has reminded us of the "old times" in which critical opinions were considered as "attacks against socialism" by the revisionist leaders of the former USSR and, as a real consequence, everybody should merely witness silently - and even applaud - the process of destruction of the work of Lenin and Stalin at the hands of the bandits Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. For all these reasons, the fact of pretending to come back to that accomplice "silence" and to that false "unanimity " can only serve once more for the introduction within the communist movement of all kinds of opportunist deviations and aberrations under the name of "socialism". Besides, that type of conciliatory attitude towards revisionism that seems to come out of that point of the Statutes is something we, as well as any other communist, will never be able to accept.

We share the idea about the open character that the Council must have towards all kind of progressive and revolutionary organizations; however, you must understand that we will be participating as a Communist Party and this compels us not to renounce all these questions that for us have a character of principles. For that reason, and also bearing in mind the experience that we have accumulated in previous projects of associations, we want to state the following:

1. Contrary to what has been expressly stated in the draft Statutes, we think that the future International Council is precisely the most adequate forum to tackle such important questions as the above-mentioned ones. We agree with the fact that, given the scarce time available at the Congress, such debate will have to be limited in its length but not regarding its content.

2. We believe that it would be necessary to make clear the kind of socialism whose future establishment in the USSR we must support unreservedly. We consider that if we want to support truly the revolutionary process in Russia we have to put at the order of the day not the conciliation of the false formal unity that lacks any principles in the struggle against the revisionists and the rest of the agents of Russian imperialism and of the imperialism of other countries. We don't know any other way of doing this.

3. It is absolutely necessary to make clear that the support to the Soviet people and also to the reestablishment of socialism in former USSR must not serve as a pretext to cover up the imperialist plans of the new Russian bourgeoisie. It becomes therefore, indispensable to all of us to mark the boundaries clearly between the revolutionary movement and its capitalist enemies, both in Russia and in the rest of the world. Only upon this basis the movement of support and solidarity with the establishment of the true and only socialism in the former USSR will be able to develop and also strengthen.

4. Of course, everything that we have stated here is an opinion of our Party and, therefore, is open to discussion and debate. Precisely, due to its draft character and because we are sure that there will be other parties and organizations that may express themselves in the same-terms, and in order to avoid misunderstandings, we consider it to be convenient that the Organizing Committee make some type of declaration on principles in which all of the questions that we have pointed out will be made clear or, at least, will be elaborated as proposals to be debated in the Congress as a particular motion.

To finish, we reiterate once more our deep interest in taking part actively in the project of the Organizing Committee for an International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People as well as in the World Congress in year 2001; in this aim you can count on all the help that we can provide from our own modest resources and forces.

Communist Party of Spain (reconstructed)
International Relations Commission

COMMENT

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