First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 27, November 8, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Despite the strict rule of the fascist dictatorship in the Soviet Union and its censorship of all news of internal resistance, the movement of the Soviet working class and the various oppressed nationalities is making itself heard.
The Soviet bosses have promoted the revisionist notion that the USSR is a “state of the whole people” with no antagonistic class contradictions. But the mass resistance that is growing inside the country illustrates that oppression breeds resistance. In an imperialist country like the Soviet Union, just as in the United States, the struggle of the working class is bound to lead to revolution and socialism.
The Soviet people have a long, proud history of revolutionary struggle. It was here that the first socialist country was born 59 years ago in the storm of the October revolution. Under the leadership of Lenin, and later Stalin, the USSR smashed the rule' of imperialism and defeated the attempts by class enemies both inside and outside the country to make a comeback. It wasn't until the late 1950s that Khrushchev and company were able to seize power in the state and the party and embark on the road of the complete and all-round restoration of capitalism.
In the process, the new tsars unleashed a monstrous fascist assault on the rights of the working people and especially against the oppressed nationalities. Fascism has been necessary to keep down the heroic determination of the Soviet peoples. However, like the Hitler fascists in Germany, the actual carrying out of fascism is combined with rhetoric about “socialism.” Socialist demagogy is combined with open terror to chain the masses ideologically as well as attack them physically.
In recent years, the Soviet people have begun to organize themselves once again. Operating in the most secret of methods to avoid arrest, jailing, torture and mental hospitals, the resistance movement has issued leaflets, manifestos and agitation and propaganda against the rule of the Brezhnev regime. Strikes, which are illegal, have become widespread throughout the country. Resistance has also grown among the peasantry and within the military. Soviet and world press confirm a new wave of revolutionary struggle unfolding.
When the 25th Congress of the Soviet revisionist party was convened last February, for example, the workers at a telecommunication plant of more than 20,000 workers in Leningrad struck in defiance of suppression by troops and police. At the same time, leaflets were issued in the streets calling on the Soviet people of all nationalities to unite and overthrow the reactionary rule of the new tsars.
The leaflet said: “We have seen with our own eyes that the Soviet Union has entirely turned into a traditional prison of great-Russianism for the Soviet people of various nationalities,” The leaflet attacked Brezhnev and company for their use of “concentration camps and 'psychopathic hospitals. ” It adds: “Through KGB terror, deceptive propaganda and economic pressure, the new tsars endeavor to keep the peoples in fear. .. ” The leaflet called on the Soviet people of all nationalities and the oppressed people of the Eastern European countries to unite and fight against the national and social oppression by the new tsars in the Kremlin.
Other signs of resistance were seen on April 12 when a bomb exploded outside the government building in the capital city of Georgia, the home of the great Soviet leader J.V. Stalin. The process of capitalist restoration began with a slanderous attack on Stalin by the Khrushchev revisionists. This bombing was one of many acts of opposition by the Georgian people, who have never lost their love for Stalin and for socialism.
On October 5, an 84-year-old veteran of 58 years in the party announced his withdrawal from the CPSU in an open letter to Brezhnev. He denounced the present regime for autocratic rule and militarism at home. He accused the Soviet leaders of forming a “privileged caste” and “wallowing in wealth, isolated from the people, riding roughshod over them .. .”
He added that, “While preaching 'international detente' and 'peaceful coexistence,' the Soviet Union is in fact amassing nuclear weapons and rockets at an even faster rate and preparing a new generation of mass destruction weapons, and for wars of aggression.”
Some of the most open signs of revolt have come from within the armed forces which the Brezhnev regime is preparing for a new world war. Just like the thousands of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and Cambodia who revolted when they saw first-hand the injustice of their government's actions, the Soviet troops are being affected by the orders they are forced to carry out. Soldiers of certain units have refused to carry out orders to crush strikes and rebellions. Many soldiers among the Soviet occupation troops in Czechoslovakia openly showed discontent and some even sided with the Czech people who resisted the invasion and permanent occupation.
In November 1975, hundreds of Soviet sailors mutinied on the missile-carrying destroyer “Watch,” one of the most modern ships in the Soviet fleet. The revolt in the Baltic Sea was crushed when Soviet jets and warships attacked the ship, killing more than 50 sailors. The rest of the mutineers were court-martialed. According to the Swedish paper Express, “the immediate cause of the mutiny was the Angolan war” as “the crew resented the prospect of further extension of their service.”
The mutiny of the “Watch” was one in a long list of Soviet ship mutinies. In 1969, sailors were arrested and hundreds were questioned and had their homes searched following the distribution of a letter aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine. The letter accused the ruling class of oppression and exploitation and denounced great-Russian chauvinism. In 1972, a mutiny broke out on a Soviet submarine as it was stationed in a Norwegian fjord.
Last Sept. 6, Lt. V.I. Belenko of the Soviet air force made headlines around the world as he flew a MIG-25 fighter plane from a Soviet airbase to Hakadate airfield on the Japanese island of Hokkaido Belenko then refused the most insistent demand and bribe offers to return, According to the Japanese press, Belenko said, among other things, that “the Soviet Union today resembles tsarist Russia.” The Japanese press took note of the “laxity in morale within the Soviet forces” and speculate that it “may have an enormous psychological impact on the Soviet people.”
Belenko's desertion was followed a weeks later by the defection of Lt. V.I. Zasimov, who flew a Soviet plane from Tiflis in the Soviet Union to Iran. Zasimov reportedly said in Iran that he “could put up with the (Soviet) system any longer.” He was returned last week to face Soviet military police.
The list of rebellions, strikes and agitation against the regime is much too long document in one article. Word of the rising resistance movement shows only the tip of the iceberg as most of the peoples' struggles go unmentioned in the press. Numerous underground organizations have sprung attacking exploitation, fascism, oppression and the oppression of Soviet women in their literature. These organizations have also agitated against the continued expansion and aggression of the social-imperialists which is leading to a new world war.
The fascist attacks against the Soviet people are backfiring against the Brezhnev regime. The more the attacks continue, the more the resistance grows. The Soviet people are the ones who have to carry the weight of the rule of the new tsars. The people of the USSR have a common struggle with the US working class against imperialism, exploitation and all forms of oppression.