The United Secretariat of the Fourth International energetically condemns the military occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the troops of the Warsaw Pact nations.
The pretexts are cynical, the troops have been called, they say by "statesmen" who have yet to be identified 48 hours after the event. The arrival of the troops they pretend, is approved by a majority of the Communist leaders at the time when the emergency Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which, convened under the influence of the rank and file organisations, condemned the intervention by an overwhelming majority.
The justification is no less scandalous; the "counterrevolutionary danger" which was invoked did not exist. There was without doubt the rightwing course of the Czechoslovak leaders which was fundamentally similar to that practised by the Soviet leaders themselves. Their brutal intervention is however/explained by the Czechoslovakian right-wing course but by their fear in seeing the first beginnings of a workers democracy which began to be timidly introduced in Czechoslovakia, stimulating the struggle of the young avant-guard, intellectuals and workers in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and above all in the Soviet Union itself. This intervention displays the fundamental weakness of their bureaucratic dictatorship.
In fact what the Soviet bureaucracy demonstrated by its military intervention in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia is that its dictatorship, its power, and its privileges are incompatible with any form of workers democracy. The return to the Leninist norms of internal life in the Communist Parties mortally frightens the bureaucracy. The suppression of censorship; the open political discussion; the participation of the working masses in political life; the proposed statutes of the Czechoslovak Communist Party which contained the right of minorities to present their platform to the party congress and to defend their positions inside the party, this is the number one danger for the Kremlin. It knows only too well that when the workers conquor these rights, they enter onto the road of workers council democracy, on the road to the true power of the soviet type forseen by "State and Revolution".
In intervening militarily in Czechoslovakia the Soviet bureaucracy trample on the elementary principles of Set og internationalism, the Soviet constitution confirms the right of national minorities to separate themselves even from the USSR, if they so desire, but to the Czech people is now denied the right to elect the Communist leadership of their own choice.
It is impossible to throw more oil on the fire of anti-communist agitation, to feed more effectively the propaganda machine of imperialism. The Kremlin has not even hesitated to invoke in favour of its intervention "the balance of forces:" in Europe, that is to say the Yalta agreements, confirming through this the justification invoked by American imperialism for its counter-revolutionary intervention in its own "zone of influence".
The occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the Warsaw Pact troops has delivered a blow to the cause of communism, to the socialist
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revolution in the entire world. Its first effect has been the disintegration of the international communist movement under pro-Soviet leadership. Even if this disintegration will favour in the beginning the social democratisation of several large communist parties in imperialist countries it will bring the world crisis of Stalinism to its peak, out of which develops and will continue to develop, more and more forces for the reconstruction of an authentic revolutionary Leninist vanguard in the world.
The impact of this counter-revolutionary act will thus not be what the rulers in Washington expect.
The world of 1968 is no longer the worldof 1956. The heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people against the imperialist aggression has encouraged a world revival of revolutionary struggles. While condemning the crimes of the Kremlin, the workers must not forget for one moment the bloodier crimes committed by imperialism every day in Vietnam. Let us tear away the hypocritical mask from imperialism, which sheds crocodile tears on the violation of the right of the Czechoslovak people to determine their own destiny, but which prevents through a rain of napalm and poison gas the Vietnamese people from determining the government and social regime of its choice.
The revolutionary uprising of May in France has encouraged the working class vanguard in Czechoslovakia, in favour of a true socialist democracy. The perspective which opens up following the May uprising is that of a European Socialist Federation, the Socialist United States of Europe in the framework of which the Czechoslovak workers would be able to construct their society and socialist economy under much more harmonious conditions.
The Czechoslovak masses face a military occupation in a context, and with organisations and perspectives more favourable, than that in which the Hungarian workers were obliged to conduct their isolated struggle in November 1956.
The local and regional Communist Party committees which were basically renewed during the last months; the action committees which are being formed spontaneously could constitute the backbone of mass resistance.
This resistance, beginning with a general strike and street demonstrations, could transform itself into a prolonged resistance. It could take on many different forms of action, harassing the occupation troops through constant propaganda in their respective languages, reminding them of Lenin's teachings, and the right of self-determination and socialist democracy, on freedom of discussion and the rights of minorities within these Communist parties. This resistance must ostracise all the collaborataqrs and quislings of the occupation forces. It could use the weapon of unannounced demonstrations, of surprise strikes, of constant refusal by the proletarian and working masses of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia to accept the regime of bureaucratic dictatorship which the Kremlin seeks to impose by force of foreign bayonets.
By condu cting the struggle in the spirit of proletarian internationaldsm, by creating in the course of this resistance the committees which will be the organs of the free workers and peasants power of Czechoslovak socialism, the proletariat of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia will not only secure its own liberation, it will also’ make an exceptional contri-
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bution to the struggle for Soviet democracy in the USSR, Poland and Hungary as well as trigger off the socialist revolution in capitalist Europe.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International appeals to the Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian and East German troops to immediately leave the territory of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia as the Czechoslovak working masses have asked them to do. Socialism is not endangered in Czechoslovakia, except by the crimes of the bureaucracy.
The United Secretariat demands the immediate liberation of Dubcek, of Cisar, of Smerkovsky, of the Czechoslovak Communist leaders, journalists, intellectuals and militants who have been arrested. Woe to the henchmen of the Soviet bureaucracy who put in prison communists whose only crime is to have taken into account the opinions of the workers of their country.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth Intemational recalls the treachery of the Kremlin in Hungary in 1956 in the case of Imre Nagy, who left the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest under a safe conduct guarantee of the Soviet leaders, and who nevertheless was arrested and executed by the agents of the Soviet bureaucracy. This crime must not be allowed to be repeated in the case of the Czechoslovak leaders,
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International calls upon all communists, all Czechoslovak workers, to resist; do not give the occupiers and their agents a single day of peace. It appeals to the workers, intel- f lectuals and students of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and = East Germany to support with all their strength the struggle of the Czech- ru oslovak masses for their right to socialist democracy.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International reminds the workers of all the capitalist countries that the best thing they can do to help the struggle of their Czechoslovak brothers is to redouble their efforts to overthrow the capitalist regime and to commit themselves even more to the road of socialist revolution.
WITHDRAW ALL OCCUPATION TROOPS FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA!
SOVIET TANKS TO VIETNAM!
DOWN WITH THE SOVIET BUREAUCRACY WHICH USURPED THE POWER
IN THE USSR, AND FROM WHOSE HANDS THE SOVIET PROLETARIAT
WILL RETAKE THE FLAG OF COMMUNISM.
LONG LIVE THE WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. ;
United Secretariat,
Fourth International
August 22nd, 1968. 2