¡We have translated the following appeal by imprisoned Greek Trotskyists from the January issue of Ergatike Pale, the clandestine organ of the KDKE (Kommounistiko Diethnistiko Komma tes Ellados - Internationalist Communist party of Greece, the Greek section of the Fourth International). These victims of the Athens military junta, held at Aegina and Korydallos prisons, describe the political gangsterism practiced by the Stalinist inmates of these institutions against fellow prisoners with whom they are in political disagreement.
(This report further confirms the information published in our February 8 issue on similar practices by Greek Communist party members on the island prison of Leros.
(The note at the end of the appeal is by the editors of Ergatike Pale.]
To the workers organizations in Europe and all other areas, to the vanguard militants, to the Internationalist Communists, and to the press of the Fourth International:
Declaring our principled condemnation of, and our moral indignation over the treatment we are being subjected to by the Stalinists, we Internationalist Communists, sentenced to long terms in the prisons of Aegina and Korydallos by the tribunals of the capitalist military dictatorship, apeal to you for solidarity.
We have had to pay a high price for our revolutionary activity. But the daily suffering imposed on us by the corrupt regime of capitalist reaction is not the only penalty we must endure. This victimization is supplemented by the methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which are similar to those of the military dictatorship.
In their turn, the Stalinists are making desperate efforts to cover up their own corruption by bringing heavy pressure to bear against revolutionary ideas and those who uphold them. In its death agony, the mortally decayed Stalinist movement has been driven to commit glaring and shameful provocations.
Our double imprisonment is one more consequence of the defeat the Greek workers movement suffered in 1967 owing chiefly to the role played by the degenerated Stalinist movement.
From the first days of our imprisonment, we have witnessed bureaucratic leaders doing all they could to domesticate and fetter the thinking of inexperienced militants unsuspectingly sucked into the orbit of the various fragments of Stalinism.
To achieve this, the Stalinist chiefs have resorted to provocative slanders against the internationalists and to shameful distortions of Marxist ideas. They have continually cultivated traditional "Hellenic Christian" idealist prejudices and servility, as well as promoting apathy. In the case of the so-called Bureau of the Interior, they have even derided working-class holidays.
As a diversion, they have offered superficial, dishonest self-criticism of the "leadership." By a systematic cultivation of obscurantist taboos, they have tried to block any contacts with Fourth Internationalists and all confrontation with revolutionary ideas. They have resorted to forms of bribery.
Against any rank-and-file militant daring to take a step out of the swamp of Stalinist decay, the bureaucratic bosses have employed every sort of inhuman threat and slimy intrigue.
At the same time, the Stalinists' own failings - their tendency to cultivate the most pessimistic moods at times and the most overoptimistic ones at others, and to promote confusion, their inability to foresee political developments- and the Internationalist Communists continually subjecting these failings to Marxist criticism, have stirred the bureaucratic leaders to a frenzy. In an effort to ward off revolutionary ideas and inhibit many of their rank-and-file militants from raising questions, they have engaged in the most unscrupulous machinations against us.
An example of this is the case of Comrade Panagiotes Doumas. At the end of November the authorities sent him to the Ephtapyrgios prison in Thessaly to isolate him. His transfer was accompanied by the spreading of false accusations and lies. It was claimed that he had been in contact with representatives of the Asphaleia [the secret police] and that they had given him a hacksaw to help him escape. This was supposed to be intended as a provocation to justify harsh measures against the rest of the prisoners and reduce the support they enjoyed because of their discipline.
The role of the Stalinists in this transfer has not yet been ascertained. However, we must point out that Comrade Panagiotes Doumas (sentenced to life, plus eight years in prison)! arrived here with a broken foot as a result of the torture he was subjected to by the Asphaleia. Furthermore, the Ephtapyrgios Thessalonikes prison where he was taken is one of the worst. Conditions there so badly undermine the health of the prisoners that they have even less chance for survival than in most of the other jails. The staff is made up of the most brutalized dregs (ex-criminals) of the "correction" service. We have had no word of our comrade's fate since he was taken away.
A few days later, the Stalinist bureaucratic plotters felt the need to undertake a new intrigue. With the help of the Korydallos prison administration, they obtained the transfer of Comrade Sophrones Papadopoulos. A group of Stalinists belonging to the "Interior" faction met December 10, 1970, with the prison administration. In the context of their collaboration and give-and-take arrangement with the authorities, they asked the officials to remove our comrade from that jail so as to isolate him from the political prisoners.
This second case of Comrade Sophrones Papadopoulos acquired special significance and a rather provocative character. The three-man Stalinist committee that called for his transfer admitted our accusations. They circulated the story of their request through the cells. We even heard them say: "Your staying in this prison hurts both your people and ours." Along with this, they circulated the slander that our comrade was an Asphaleia agent.
The episodes that followed made it possible to delay the transfer of our comrade but not to block it. The Stalinist bureaucrats in their sinister connivance with the prison administration reach a new low in violating revolutionary proletarian morality.
On December 29, 1970, Comrade Sophrones Papadopoulos (sentenced to life, plus four years) was sent to the damp, unhealthy prison of Kerkyra. He has been isolated and denied all opportunity to denounce the inhuman living conditions he has encountered there or the unscrupulous and unspeakable baseness of the Stalinist-bureaucratic plots.
We strongly condemn the bureaucratic clique of the "Esoterikoi" (members of the Bureau of the Interior of the KKE [Kommounistiko Komma tes Ellados- Communist party of Greece]).2 Specifically, we denounce the "Interior" committee composed of Thanases Grevias, Thanases Panoutsopoulos, and Giannis Spartes, who engaged in shameful haggling to get our comrade transferred.
It must be stressed, however, that although the "Dodekatikoi" (supporters of the Twelfth Plenum, i.e., of Kolipart in the giannis) have not taken campaign against the Fourth Internationalists, this does not absolve them of responsibility. 3 Their display of tolerance and their avoidance of taking a position in the concrete incidents that have occurred cannot wipe out their guilt, when these episodes are taking place in the narrow confines of this prison and when we know that their methods are no less vicious than those of the Esoterikoi.
It must be stressed also that in several ways, both direct and indirect, many rank-and-file militants, and even cadres, belonging to the various Stalinist splinter groups have made known their rejection of these foul machinations against us.
In fact, all these outrages committed by the intellectually and morally perverted dregs of Stalinism show how far this bureaucratic movement has gone in abandoning communist principles, a process which is progressing geometrically. The highest levels of the leadership are consciously throwing communism overboard and now living in exile
Rumania; and the Bureau of the Interior. - IP
transmitting this attitude to the rank and file. They tell the ranks that internationalism, Trotskyism, is the enemy, to strike it, to slander it, to intrigue against it. This requires purg ing the rank and file of communis! ideas.
Workers of the world, vanguard fighters, we appeal to your conscience, to your revolutionary spirit, and to your sense of justice. These are the only forces that can support our moral and principled outcry, the only forces that can help us defend our spiritual and physical integrity.
We appeal to you with all our strength and soul, with all our honor as revolutionary fighters, in an effort to evoke the broadest condemnation in the revolutionary vanguard of the inhuman and reactionary machinations directed against us by the Stalinist bureaucrats who are capable only of crimes and shameful betrayals.
Signed: The Fourth Internationalists in the Aegina and Korydallos prisons.
Late January 1971. * *
The above appeal clearly exposes the intent of the Stalinist bureaucracy to isolate, break, and assist in the physical annihilation of the Fourth Internationalist militants. It is natural at this time for the decayed and crumbling KKE bureaucracy to concentrate its hatred, its slanders, and its violence all the more against the Internationalist Communists.
The most thoughtful rank-and-file activists of the KKE, and even its cadres, are beginning to realize the ideological and political bankruptey of Greek and international Stalinism and are becoming disgusted by Moscow's friendly gestures toward the military dictatorship. They disapprove of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies and are dumbfounded at the antibureaucratic revolt of the Polish workers. All of us are duty bound to expose the criminal campaign of the Stalinists and to defend the Fourth Internationalist fighters.
Or Even the Possibility
According to a release from the Australian News and Information Bureau, Minister for Defense Malcolm Fraser"... told a meeting of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in Melbourne that recent events in Laos and Cambodia had demonstrated not only the inevitability but the likel hood of other countries falling shoul the attempts to preserve South Vietnam's independence fail."
Notes
1. In several cases, Greek military judges have handed down cumulative sentences against revolutionists that exceed life imprisonment. It may be that the Athens dictatorship believes that such grotesquely exaggerated penalties sound more intimidating than simple life sentences. - IP 897
2. The Greek Communist party is split into three main factions: the pro-Moscow wing headed by Kostas Koligiannis; the anti-Koligiannis faction led by Mitsos Partsalidis,
3. The conduct of the various Stalinist factions appears to have more to do with the relationship of forces than with proletarian scruples. At the Leros prison where the Koligiannis group has a strong organization- although representing minority of the inmates - it has taken the lead in persecuting other prisoners. - IP