Paris
To justify the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, the Kremlin had its spokesmen put forward a doctrine of so-called limited sovereignty for the countries of the "socialist camp." According to this doctrine, one workers state is justified in intervening in the internal affairs of another if socialism is threatened there.
There is little point in inveighing against such a doctrine in the abstract. It is sufficient to note that the Soviet government has not intervened directly in Vietnam - which might mean that in its view socialism was not threatened there by the American intervention. However, the Kremlin did intervene in Czechoslovakia because it felt that socialism was threatened in that country by the introduction of a few freedoms which might have led to the establishment of a system of workers' and socialist democracy.
It might be observed, too, that according to this doctrine, Albania has the right to intervene in the Soviet Union, where it has denounced the reestablishment of capitalism. This doctrine of "limited sovereignty," it can be seen, is a "theoretical" fabrication designed for use by the Kremlin.
Moscow, it is true, has not explicitly espoused this doctrine, but it has had its agents openly advocate it, a fact which throws a certain light on the recent developments in the relations between China and the Soviet Union.
A "journalist" by the name of Victor Louis — we have to put journalist in quotes because he is better known for the missions he has undertaken for Soviet government departments than for his talents as a publicist- wrote the following lines in the September 17 issue of the London daily Evening News, that is, at a moment when the Sino-Soviet dispute seemed on the verge of going over the brink into an armed conflict:
"Some circles in Eastern Europe are asking why the doctrine that Russia was justified in interfering in Czechoslovakia's affairs a year ago should 1022
not be extended to China. Events in the past year have confirmed that the Soviet Union is adhering to the doctrine that socialist countries have the right to interfere in each other's affairs in their own interest or those of others who are threatened.
"The fact that China is many times larger than Czechoslovakia and might offer active resistance is, according to these Marxist theoreticians, no reason for not applying the doctrine. Whether or not the Soviet Union will dare to attack Lop Nor, China's nuclear center, is a question of strategy, and so the world would only learn about it afterward." [See "Nuclear Strike or Renewed Alliance" in Intercontinental Press, October 6, p. 867-68.]
In the same dispatch, this "journalist" added that it is a common assumption in Moscow that "Soviet nuclear rockets are pointed at Chinese nuclear installations."
The "Marxist theoreticians" who used Victor Louis to make known their doctrinal conceptions are closer in outlook to the Washington "hawks" than to Marx and Lenin, to say nothing of Trotsky. But the developments in the relations between the Soviet Union and China, which have occurred since the lines quoted above appeared in the London daily, show that these "theoreticians" have had and— it is quite reasonable to assume - will have less success in their sphere of influence than their American counterparts.
It is not a matter of Marxist principles so far as Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Company are concerned. What is involved in Moscow, as we shall see further on, is merely a more accurate appreciation of the real relationship of forces than that shownby the White House and the Pentagon when it comes to political and military calculations.
The propositions put forward by Victor Louis, as imprudent as they were shameless, may result in some unpleasantness for this "journalist."
But his fate is of little concern to us. Nevertheless, the comparison he made between the Soviet Union's policies toward Czechoslovakia and China is interesting and merits some analysis.
In 1968 the Dubcek leadership, which had with difficulty succeeded the Novotný team, was not looking for any quarrel with the Soviet leadership. To the contrary, it reaffirmed its friendship with the Soviet Union.
What the Brezhnevs blamed the Czechs for was their weakness toward the mass movement which by its logic was heading toward establishing socialist democracy in the country. Since Dubcek was incapable of repressing this mass movement, the Kremlin sent in its armored divisions.
The operation did not go as smoothly as Gretchko's logistics had anticipated. Nevertheless, a little more than a year after the invasion, by extracting concession after concession, the Kremlin eliminated Dubcek from the leadership.
Next, Moscow won a thoroughgoing shakeup of the Czechoslovak CP Central Committee and the reestablishment of "order" à la Novotný.
And all of this was crowned by the revocation of the August 1968 decisions of the Central Committee and the party congress.
The official proceedings will thus be corrected, and as a result, it may no longer be said, on the word of the Czechoslovak party itself, that there was a Soviet intervention. Everything has officially returned to "normal"...
Now let us turn to China. For almost ten years the Chinese leadership (even when Liu Shao-chi was part of it) has endeavored to undermine the Kremlin's authority and prestige. This is not the place to state the Fourth International's position on the underlying causes of the Sino-Soviet dispute, its developments, and the domestic and foreign policy of Peking. But one thing is certain- the Chinese leadership has succeeded to a large extent in achieving its objective, without this always being to its own benefit.
As for Moscow, which started the conflict by taking measures to put pressure on Peking, it has sought in this same period to isolate and intimidate China. In the case of the Communist parties, the Kremlin succeeded with great difficulty in holding an international conference this year. However, China was not mentioned explicitly in the resolution of the congress and even this resolution was not adopted unanimously.
In the diplomatic sphere, the Kremlin's anti-Chinese activity has been considerable. Besides the criminal withdrawal of aid to China in 1960, there the aid-including military supwas plies - that Moscow gave to India during the period of the Sino-Indian border incidents, the spreading of propaganda among the imperialist chancelleries about some kind of "yellow peril" at the time of Sino-Soviet border incidents, an attempt at establishing relations with Taipei (through the good offices of this same "journalist" Victor Louis, mentioned early in this article), the proposal to the Asian nations of a pact clearly directed against China, and finally the threat of a military strike against the Chinese nuclear centers.
All this has not intimidated the Chinese leadership. In answer to the openly expressed threat of an attack on its nuclear installations, Peking let it be known that it would respond with a "people's war." This is where we come to the calculations made by Victor Louis's esteemed"Marxist theoreticians."
It is quite probable that a surprise preventive operation would succeed in destroying the Chinese nuclear centers. But once this result was achieved, the Chinese would not remain quiet.
In the present circumstances, they have no reason for, no interest in, deliberately starting a war against the Soviet Union. And, to my knowledge, no one outside the Kremlin - which has done so for obvious propaganda reasons - has attributed such an intention to them.
But if the Soviets engaged in such a "preventive operation," a qualitatively new situation would be created in which the Chinese inevitably and legitimately would be compelled to respond by armed action.
In this case, the Chinese strategy would inevitably be a long war of raids and harassment, which would be painful for the Chinese, unquestion- ¡ ably, but in which the Soviets would be condemned to exhaust their forces, as the Japanese did in the 1930s and November 17, 1969
WALDECK ROCHET. On stage in Paris with a vulgar farce.
1940s and as the Americans are doing now in Vietnam.
The Kremlin bureaucrats have sel dom sinned by adventurism in the international field. Those "theoreticians" who put Czechoslovakia and China on the same plane could not have much success.
Already at the time of the incidents on the Ussuri in the early months of this year, Moscow tried to telephone Peking, but the Chinese refused to pick up the receiver. This time, the Chinese leadership agreed to meet with Kosygin on Chinese territory. * Negotiations are to be undertaken to achieve an agreement or perhaps only a modus vivendi on the border question.
China and Czechoslovakia represent the most extreme cases so far, but they show that Moscow's relations with its "sister states" and "sister parties" are governed simply by the relationship of forces without regard to any principle.
This was always true; it was apparent when the Yugoslav affair came to a head in 1948 and Stalin's excommunication fell flat. Now it is incontestable.
The resistance of the Chinese has had the consequence, among other things, of giving other countries a certain margin for maneuver in their relations with the Soviet Union.
This margin, however, is restricted as the Hungarians found out in 1956 and the Czechoslovaks in 1968. Even the Rumanians and the Yugoslavs have put a damper on their statements since August 1968.
It is evident that a positive solution for this situation can be provided only in the Soviet Union, when the Soviet masses rise up against the bureaucratic regime and overthrow it in favor of a system of workers' and socialist democracy.
But, no matter how little the Kremlin leaders regard the Communist parties throughout the world, they are not totally indifferent to the attitude of these parties, as is shown by their efforts to bring them together in an international conference. In this regard, the differences in attitude existing among the various Communist parties must be pointed out, along with the present limits of these divergences.
On the Chinese question, the Communist party leaderships are, with some exceptions, hostile to the policy of Peking. And there are very few that have dared say anything at all openly on the provocative policy toward China followed by the Kremlin. It is only behind the scenes that efforts have been made to prevent the rupture from becoming irremediable.
The PCF [Parti Communiste Fran- çais - French Communist party] leadership, on the other hand, has sought to add fuel to the fire. Just a short while ago, following the meeting between Kosygin and Chou En-lai, the Political Bureau gave the editors of l'Humanité the word to extract the most anodyne phrases from the statements and wire-service reports. These were printed without commentary.
It is on the Czechoslovak question without any doubt that the Communist party leaderships feel most uncomfortable. The Italian Communist party, which has established a relative independence from Moscow (not to the point, just the same, of not participating in the international conference of CPs or failing to reaffirm a certain solidarity with the Soviet Union), has condemned in circumspect terms the "normalization" that has occurred.
But the French Communist party is becoming more and more deeply mired in its contradictions. In August, 1968, its leadership expressed "disapproval" and "disapprobation" of the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia.
These declarations echoed primarily those of the Czechoslovak party, and were made in the name of noninterference by one party in the affairs of another.
One member of the Political Bureau, Jeannette Vermeersch, who supported the Soviet position, resigned from this body and from the Central Committee.
The PCF realigned itself with the CPS U in September by approving the "accords" concluded between the Soviet party and the Czechoslovak CP.
But the recent "normalization" has confronted them with the choice of either accepting the revocation of the proceedings of the Czechoslovak Central Committee in August 1968 and then withdrawing its own declarations, or else protesting against the "normalization."
For the time being, it has solved its difficulty as follows: In his report to the Central Committee plenum in October, 1969, Waldeck Rochet went as far as September 1968 in considering the affair and ignored everything that has occurred since then in that country.
Waldeck Rochet then centered all his fire on Garaudy, formally still a member of the Political Bureau, who has not gone along with what is happening in Czechoslovakia nor with the outcome of the international conference of Communist parties.
To balance this, a few days before the Central Committee plenum, Louis Aragon, a member of this body, wrote an article in les Lettres françaises condemning a questionnaire sent out by the Czechoslovak minister of education calling on his subordinates to inform on each other. The article was reprinted in every paper except l'Humanité. In the face of a tragedy for socialism, the PCF is putting on a vulgar farce.*
Whether they take a certain distance from the Kremlin's policy or align themselves with it as closely as possible, the leaders of the Communist parties that accept "peaceful coexistence" bow to one degree or another to the doctrine of "limited sovereignty," which means the acceptance of a "guide state" and a "guide party" run by the Soviet bureaucracy.
These leaders have disavowed this or that measure of the Kremlin, not members of the Secretariat, Roland Leroy and Rene Piquet, said nothing. From this source it was also learned that the "pain" that Aragon expressed in les Lettres francaises was not mentioned in the plenum.
Document for their reactionary or antisocialist character, but because they impeded or could impede their search for bourgeois or reformist allies in pursuing a class-collaborationist policy.
At the international conference o' Communist parties held this year in Moscow, it was hoped that difficulties could be avoided by formally ignoring the problems. The official resolution of the conference mentioned neither Czechoslovakia nor China. But these questions will inevitably reappear and give fresh impetus to the international crisis of Stalinism. And we can be certain that other problems will soon arise to intensify the crisis.
October 16.
Notes
* Although the Soviets are strict formalists in diplomatic matters, they agreed to go to Peking, despite the fact that they already did so for the last Sino-Soviet meeting. The hypothesis has been suggested that this was a final Soviet maneuver before staging an escalation. This is not absolutely impossible, but it hardly seems probable.
* In its account of the Central Committee plenum, l'Humanite published only Waldeck Rochet's speech against Garaudy. It was from Le Monde that one learned that Garaudy spoke only twice, that there were no more than ten speeches on the topic, that only two "top-rank" leaders (Rochet and Marchais) spoke, while two 1024