CYPRIOT "INDEPENDENCE"
One phase of the Cypriot revolution has just been com-
The Zurich and London Agreements have led the rationalist leadership of the Cypriot revolution to satisfied with formal independence for the island, embellished by all sorts of limitations imposed by British imperialism and its "Atlantic" allies, the Turkish and Greek governments.
The Cypriot masses have accepted, especially since 1955, immense sacrifices, in a tenacious, heroic, day-by-day struggle really to get rid of imperialism and to attain genuine self-determination. In this struggle the aspiration of the overwhelmingly Greek majority of the island to be integrated in the Greek nation has not been lacking for a single moment.
The agreements reached at Zurich and London, in the absence of any democratic consultation of the Cypriot masses, guarantee the continuance of the military bases • British imperialism on the island. add thereto the mili ary presence of the Turkish and Greek governments and authorize the counter-revolutionary intervention of all of them against any attempt by the Cypriot masses to alter the statect or a exclude to status of partic a of have inand between the Greek majority (four fifths) and the Turkish
Far from guaranteeing the legitimate rights of the Turkish minority within the framework of democratic fraternal coexistence with the Greek majority of the island, the Zurich and London Agreements set up a most complex mixed administrative status aimed at perpetuating ethnic Greetonisms to the detriment of union between the Cypriot
Turkish toiling masses against their common imperialism, the Greek and Turkish bourgeoisies, and the native
The agreements were the result of pressure by Washington on London as well as on Ankara and Athens to find an acceptable compromise and thus to safeguard the higher interests of the Atlantic alliance. The Greek government of Karamanlis was only too hasty to see the Cypriot question "solved," for the Greek masses had a tendency to use it in order to fight in reality against imperialism and the Greek bourgeoisie.
As for Archbishop Makarios, the Cypriot national leader, he represented the combination of interests of the Greek bourgeoisie and of the Cypriot "notables." The EOK A, judged from the viewpoint of its leadership, was military instrument of the political leadership of the nationalists. As for Grivas, it must not be forgotten that this new national "hero" was, in Greece, along toward the nd of the German occupation and immediately thenafter the leader of the fascist organization "Khi," launched gainst the revolutionary movement of the Greek masses Makarios and Grivas the uncapturable leader of the E OK A, had to capitulate to orders received from Athens and to their own fear of seeing the mass movement in the island become once more polarized to the left.
But this danger is only postponed. The Cypriot masses, who were able to develop ingeniously specific forms of armed struggle adapted to the conditions of the island a "terrorist" organization that was disseminated, camouflaged, and protected by the complicity of the whole population - will not be ready to swallow the bastard regime of "independence" under the real control of the Taking as their point of departure the first results won by their tenacious struggle, they will continue their already commenced revolution to reach genuine self-determination. This will be in the framework of a Cypriot
Workers and Peasants Republic, possibly federated with
Greece, with the rights of the minority fully guaranteed, and all the after-effects of imperialism definitively liquidated. The Cypriot Stalinists have for a long time been satisfied to let the Cypriot question degenerate into an apple of discord among the British, Turkish, and Greek Atlantic partners. For this reason they reacted only in a very mild way to the shift in the leadership of the national movement from their hands to those of nationalists of the Makarios and Grivas stripe. Now, with the island becoming entirely a military base of the NATO, and the nationalists having laid down their arms, it is casy to foresee that the Stalinists will again become the ardent champions of the national struggle, while once more sabotaging the masses' aims of a specifically social nature. According to statements by E Papaioannou, leader of the A KEL, reported in 14 February The Cypriot Left, despite its issue of the Stalinist organ lima, published in London. reservations about the Zurich-London Agreements, ing to work with unselfishness and patriotic consistency for the unity of all the Cypriot Greeks, independent of deological and political divergences," etc
The Cypriot Trotskyists, while participating in the natinal no the way to put inder the geol is tradershipl programme, both national and social, capable of leading the Cypriot revolution to complete victory.