THE INSTITUTE OF MARXIST-LENINIST STUDIES AT THE CC OF THE PLA

SOVIET REVISIONISM AND THE STRUGGLE OF THE PLA TO UNMASK IT

THE “8 NENTORI” PUBLISHING HOUSE

TIRANA 1981



This book comprises the reports and a number of papers read at the Scientific Session “Soviet Revisionism and the Struggle of the PLA to Unmask It”, organized by the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies at the CC of the PLA on 17-18 November 1980. The reports and papers are published in an abridged form.





CONTENTS

The Opening Address by Prof. NDRECI PLASARI, Vice-director of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies at the CC of the PLA

REPORTS

Prof. AGIM POPA – The 20th Congress of the CPSU and the evolution of modern revisionism

VANGJEL MOISIU, Senior Scientific Worker – The struggle of the PLA against the pressure and interference of the Khrushchevite revisionists against our Party and country

OMER HASHORVA, Candidate of Sciences – The present socio-economic order in the Soviet Union – a capitalist order

Prof. ARBEN PUTO – The social-imperialist character of the foreign policy of the present-day Soviet Union

PAPERS AT SESSION “A”

SEVO TARIFA – Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech at the Moscow Meeting – a work of historic importance

SPIRO DEDE – The stand of the PLA in the Bucharest Meeting – a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist stand

METO METAJ – The undermining activity of the Soviet revisionists in the military field and the struggle of the PLA to foil this activity (1956-1961)

SEL1M BEQIRI – The opportunist stands of the Chinese leadership towards Khrushchevite revisionism during the years 1960-1964

FATOS NANO – Complete integration of the Soviet economy into the world capitalist economy

GENC XHUVANI, LULEZIM HANA – Comecon – an instrument of Soviet social-imperialism for the exploitation and domination of the member countries

DERVISH DUMI – Soviet-American rivalry and collaboration – the greatest danger to peace and security of the peoples

CL1RIM MUZHA – The Warsaw Treaty – the main instrument of the Soviet policy of domination and aggression

ARSHI RUÇAJ – The sharpening of contradictions between the Soviet Union and China – the result of their imperialist policy

SHPETIM ÇAUSHI – The aggressive policy of the Soviet social-imperialists in the Mediterranean and the Balkans

AJET SIMIXHIU – The political, economic and military aims of the Soviet social-imperialists in the Middle East



MARK VUKSAJ – The process of the organizational transformation of the CPSU into a bourgeois-revisionist party

PRIAMO BOLLANO, Senior Scientific Worker – Some characteristics of state monopoly capitalism in the Soviet Union

Prof. HEKURAN MARA – The capitalist mechanism of the Soviet economic machine

THIMI NIKA – The social-chauvinist essence of the revisionist “theory” of the “unified Soviet people”

NEXHMEDIN LUARI, Senior Scientific Worker – The capitalist degeneration of the collective farms in the Soviet Union today

Prof. SHABAN BAXHAKU – Soviet science in the service of the revisionist and social-imperialist policy

VASILLAQ KURETA – Distortions by the Soviet revisionists in the field of philosophy

ISMAIL KADARE – Counter-revolutionary processes in the Soviet revisionist literature

THE OPENING ADDRESS BY PROF. Ndregi Plasari, VICE-DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF MARXIST-LENINIST STUDIES AT THE CC OF THE PLA

It is now twenty years since November 16, 1960, when Comrade Enver Hoxha, on behalf of the PLA, made his historic speech at the Meeting of the 81 communist and workers’ parties in Moscow.

This is an historic speech from every point of view.

First and foremost, this is due to its principled, revolutionary and militant content. It is an ardent defence of the Marxist-Leninist principles and a devastating attack on Khrushchevite revisionism, at a time when this revisionism had completely liquidated the revolutionary line of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin and had replaced it with the anti-Marxist counter-revolutionary course of the 20th Congress. The Khrushchevites had long been striving to impose this course on the communist and workers’ parties of various countries. And at the Moscow Meeting of November 1960 their aim was to have it formally sanctioned as the general line of the international communist movement.

In Moscow Comrade Enver Hoxha unmasked the revisionist theses and stands of the Khrushchev group on the fundamental problems of the theory and practice of the revolution and the socialist construction, and the strategy and tactics of the international communist movement, as well as the anti-Marxist methods used by that group to force the other parties to adopt those theses and stands, While expounding the revolutionary views and stands of the PLA on all these questions and defending the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

Comrade Enver Hoxha refuted the counter-revolutionary view about the change in the nature of capitalism and imperialism. He, who does not see that imperialism has not changed either its hide, its coat or its nature, that it is aggressive and will be aggressive while even a single tooth is left in its mouth, “is blind, while he, who sees this but covers it up, is a traitor in the service of imperialism.”

He defended the revolutionary view of the PLA that peace cannot be safeguarded and strengthened by flattering, cajoling and making concessions to the American imperialists, by capitulating to their pressure, as occurred with the Khrushchev group and the other revisionists, but by waging a resolute political and ideological struggle to defeat the aggressive plans of the imperialists.

He described as anti-Marxist the view of the Soviet leadership which presented peaceful coexistence and peaceful competition with the imperialists as the general line of the Soviet Union and the entire socialist camp, the main road for the triumph of socialism over capitalism! Peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems is only one of the aspects of the foreign policy of a socialist country, while the struggle against the imperialist policy and the bourgeois ideology, or the unreserved support for the revolutionary liberation struggle of the proletariat and the peoples against imperialism and the reactionary bourgeoisie, must not be renounced for the sake of it, as it was by Khrushchev and his successors.

The communist party of any capitalist country is truly Marxist-Leninist only if it raises the masses in struggle against imperialism and all its lackeys within the country in order to undermine their rule, and, in the conditions of a revolutionary situation, to destroy their political power, to establish the people’s state power, to consolidate and further develop this power as a dictatorship of the proletariat, and does not wait for socialism to come through the peaceful parliamentary road of Khrushchev and other revisionists.

In particular, Comrade Enver Hoxha criticized the Khrushchev group for its counter-revolutionary stand towards Stalin who dedicated his whole life to the defence and creative implementation of Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of the revolution and socialism. He repeated the unwavering view of the PLA on the revolutionary work of Stalin and stated the issue bluntly: “We all should defend the good and immortal work of Stalin. He who does not defend it is an opportunist and a coward.”

Stalin and the Information Bureau were completely right to denounce and condemn Yugoslav revisionism as an anti-Marxist counter-revolutionary trend, as an agency of imperialism. Time had completely vindicated this assessment, therefore the struggle against Yugoslav revisionism remained an indispensable and constant duty for the communist parties. However, it was not only in Yugoslavia that revisionism existed, Comrade Enver Hoxha has pointed out. It was spreading alarmingly in other countries and parties. For this reason the PLA insisted that the assessment, which the Moscow Meeting of 1957 had made of modern revisionism as the main danger, should not be renounced as demanded by the Khrushchevites who described it as no longer valid, but should be re-emphasized!

In order to bar the way to revisionism it was very important to put an end to the methods of pressure, interference and plots in the relations among the communist parties. In particular, the stand of Khrushchev and his group at Bucharest, where they resorted to such methods with unprecedented brutality, should be condemned. The attempts of the Khrushchevites, acting like great-state chauvinists, to compel the other parties to go to the Moscow Meeting in step with their revisionist views, should also be condemned. In particular, Comrade Enver Hoxha exposed the domineering and huckster-like activities of that group towards our Party and socialist Albania. Addressing Khrushchev he declared at the meeting: “There was a time when Albania was considered a commodity to be traded, when others thought it depended on them whether Albania should or should not exist, but that time came to an end with the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism in our country.”

No other party made such a courageous defence of Marxism-Leninism and such a penetrating principled exposure of the anti-Marxist course and activity of the Khrushchevites. They could not do so because the other parties were all infected, to a greater or lesser extent, by the disease of revisionism, whereas the heart and mind of the PLA were sound and its line crystal-clear.

The Chinese also spoke against the Khrushchev group. They spoke there not from militant, attacking positions, but from defensive, wait-and-see, opportunist positions. As it became clear later, they did not proceed from the aim of defending Marxism-Leninism and the interests of international communism, but from the aim of defending their own narrow chauvinist and hegemony-seeking interests, just as the Khrushchevites did.

Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech at the Moscow Meeting completely upset the “tranquil” situation of the first six days of the meeting. Khrushchev had deliberately created this situation because he wanted to cover up the deep principled contradictions and disagreements in the international communist movement, so as to avoid criticism and the exposure of his anti-Marxist views and activity and to put the blame on our Party and the Communist Party of China, against which the attacks in a long material, full of accusations and slanders that was distributed prior to the meeting, were aimed. But Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech foiled this diabolical tactic. It set the meeting ablaze forcing the delegations of other parties to express their stand towards the problems under discussion. The savage counter-attacks launched by the Soviet and other revisionists on our Party, in an effort to neutralize the bombshell effect of the voice of our Party, only served to strengthen this effect,, to make this voice stronger, more devastating.

This extraordinary effect of Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech at the Meeting of the 81 parties is one of its important historic aspects.

It is the period after various events which brands them as historic. And time has fully confirmed the great historic importance of Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech in Moscow. It has shown how completely right our Party was to oppose the counter-revolutionary revisionist course of the Khrushchevites and how correct were the views it put forward at that international forum of the communist movement.

At that time Comrade Enver Hoxha warned about the great danger that threatened the Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the entire international communist movement from the anti-Marxist views and stands of the Khrushchev group, if this danger was not faced bravely and measures taken to heal the open wounds. However, those views and stands were not simply mistakes and distortions. As Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out at the 7th Congress of the PLA, they constituted “a consciously chosen course” to liquidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism, to transform the Soviet Union into an imperialist state. Today we can see clearly where the “theories” and policy of Khrushchev, which have been faithfully followed and further developed by his “worthy” disciples, Brezhnev and company, have led the Soviet Union. Nothing remains there of the former socialist order but the empty shell. The bourgeois-revisionist content pervades every field of life. The internal policy of the present-day Soviet party and state is a fascist policy of oppression and exploitation of the working masses, and of the Russification of the non-Russian nations, while its foreign policy is a fascist-imperialist policy which, like that of the USA, aims at world domination.

Meanwhile the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism have been liquidated in the other former socialist countries, too, which have been turned into satellites of the revisionist Soviet Union. China has set out on the road of its transformation into a social-imperialist superpower, whereas nearly all the former communist parties have turned into bourgeois-revisionist parties.

Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech left its deep imprint upon the international communist movement, which is now on the way to its revival on Marxist-Leninist foundations, and upon the history of the entire world revolutionary and liberation movement.

It is and will remain forever an example of adherence to principle, courage and independence, factors which are indispensable in waging a revolutionary struggle against the internal and external enemies of the proletariat and the people and in achieving the final victory over these enemies.

It will always be an emblem of struggle in the hands of our Party and people, one among the fighting flags of its great victorious battles in the revolution and the socialist construction and in the struggle against imperialism and modem revisionism.

Many party documents and works of Comrade Enver Hoxha prove with scientific arguments how correct and vital the struggle of the PLA against Khrushchevite revisionism, which burst out openly and directly on November 16, 1960 in Moscow, has been and is to the defence of Marxism-Leninism and socialism in our country and to the freedom and national sovereignty of our people. This is brought out again in Comrade Enver Hoxha’s new work “The Khrushchevites”.

This work, which is pervaded by a dialectical Marxist-Leninist iron logic, based on facts and concrete historical events, convincingly demonstrates the anti-Marxist counter-revolutionary and hegemony-seeking character of the aims of the Khrushchevite revisionists and their efforts to achieve these aims, on the one hand and, on the other hand, the principled Marxist-Leninist stands of our Party and its revolutionary struggle against them. It gives a full and clear explanation of the reasons for the defeat of the plans and efforts of the Khrushchevites to force our Party and people to yield and to harness them to their revisionist chariot, and for our victory over them. In essence this was due to the loyalty of the PLA to Marxism-Leninism, its adherence to proletarian principles, its wisdom, vigilance and courage in defence of Marxism-Leninism, its correct line, our people and our socialist Homeland. The steel unity of the Party and its Central Committee with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, as well as the Party-people unity, have played a decisive role in the implementation of the principled line of our Party. In the struggle against the Khrushchevites, as well as against all other enemies, our Party has never fought alone but always together with the people. That is why it has always emerged triumphant from this struggle.

With the publication of the new work of Comrade Enver Hoxha “The Khrushchevites” the Albanian communists and people are provided with a new, powerful weapon in the fight against modem revisionism, which, as our Party has laid down, will never cease until socialism and communism triumph on a world scale.

In the context of this struggle, this scientific session has been organized by the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, with the active participation of cadres from the “V.I. Lenin” Higher Party School, the University of Tirana, the Academy of Sciences, the Foreign Ministry, people of the press, the literature and art, etc. The theme of the session is: “Soviet Revisionism and the Struggle of the PLA to Unmask It”. However, the materials to be presented in this session go somewhat beyond these bounds, because the struggle against Soviet revisionism is closely linked with the struggle against modem revisionism, in general, and against all its trends, in particular, because “Khrushchevite revisionism,” as the 7th Congress of the Party has defined, “always stands at the head of the modem revisionist front” and the exposure of that revisionism “also serves the exposure of all the other opportunists”.

On behalf of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist studies I declare the session open.

REPORTS

Prof. Agim Popa

THE 20th CONGRESS OF THE CPSU AND THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN REVISIONISM

Twenty years ago Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered his historic speech at the Meeting of 81 communist and workers’ parties in Moscow. The experience of these twenty years has completely confirmed how correct and vitally important was the position of the PLA and has proved indisputably that the line of resolute struggle against revisionism is the only correct stand to escape its destructive effects. In his new book “The Khrushchevites” Comrade Enver Hoxha stresses, “To this fight, which demanded and still demands great sacrifices, our small Homeland owes the freedom and independence it prizes so highly and its successful development on the road of socialism. Only thanks to the Marxist-Leninist line of our Party did Albania not become and never will become a protectorate of the Russians or anyone else.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites” p. 7, Alb. ed.

With dear and well substantiated arguments Comrade Enver Hoxha exposed the treacherous course of the Khrushchevite revisionists and established the dividing line between Marxism-Leninism and Khrushchevite revisionism.

He devoted special attention to criticism and exposure of the opportunist theses and counter-revolutionary standpoints of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which formulated the general line of Khrushchevite revisionism, both for the internal problems of the country and for international problems. “Time has proven,” writes Comrade Enver Hoxha, “that the theses of the 20th Congress were neither ‘simple ideological distortions’ nor erroneous assessments of situations. The ‘Khrushchevite theories’ represented a consciously chosen course for the elimination of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the restoration of capitalism, an ideological and political means specifically chosen for the transformation of the Soviet Union into an imperialist state and for the liquidation of obstacles to the implementation of the policy of great-power chauvinism.”*

*”Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA, pp. 224-225, Alb, ed.

1) The Struggle Against Modern Revisionism – A struggle for the Defence of the Fundamental Teachings of Marxism-Leninism

At the 20th Congress of the CPSU and after it, the Khrushchevite revisionists made great play with the slogan of “creative developments of Marxism-Leninism and “the struggle against dogmatisms, as all the other modem revisionists have done, using the change in the ratio of forces in the world and the appearance of certain new phenomena in the period following the Second World War as the pretext to spread their opportunist theories and justify their counter-revolutionary actions.

On this basis, they declared the major teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism to be obsolete, superceded and unsuitable for our time.

However, their “anti-dogmatism” is nothing but a pragmatic manoeuvre to justify and conceal their revisionism. It is a fact that many of the things which the present-day revisionists preach, about the “peaceful road to socialism”, about “mass workers’ party”, legal and “open” about various ideological and political currents and factions, about “democratic socialism” etc., etc., are revivals, of course with new trappings to adapt them to the new conditions and needs of the old theories of Bernstein and the Mensheviks, and of Kautsky and the Second International, which Lenin denounced in his time and which were buried by the triumph of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

The Khrushchevites’ attacks on Stalin and their discrediting of the Soviet socialist order of the time of Stalin, their rehabilitation of the Yugoslav revisionist leadership and proclaiming Titoite Yugoslavia a socialist country – all these things opened the doors to the revival of revisionist theories about “the separate national roads of transition to socialism”, “specific socialism”, etc. This was the basis on which Togliatti’s “Italian road to socialism”, Marchais’ “socialism with French colours”, Dubcek’s “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia and suchlike came into circulation. This, too, is one of the directions of the modern revisionists’ attack on Marxism-Leninism and the theory of scientific socialism. Hence, they advocate a road radically different and quite another “socialism” from that of the time of Lenin and Stalin.

At the 20th Congress of the CPSU and after it, the Khrushchevite revisionists made great play with the false slogan of returning to the teachings of Lenin, allegedly abandoned, distorted and violated by Stalin. Our Party has exposed the aim of the manoeuvre of the so-called return to Lenin. It has shown that the attacks on Stalin were, in reality, attacks on Marxism-Leninism, which Stalin consistently applied and defended in the Soviet Union and the world communist movement.

Life and later development fully confirmed this analysis of the PLA. As Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out in his book “Eurocommunism Is Anti-communism”, the revisionists who spoke with such great enthusiasm about “liberation from Stalinism” in order, allegedly, to return to Leninism, are now preaching abandonment of Leninism in order to go back to the founders of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, as the Eurocommunists, the most undisguised revisionists of the present day are doing. “However,” points out Comrade Enver Hoxha, “all revisionists, whether Khrushchevite or Eurocommunist, fight with equal ferocity and cunning both against Stalin and against Lenin and Marx.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “Eurocommunism Is Anti-communism”, p. 9. Alb. ed.

The preaching of “ideological pluralism” also constitutes one of the most fashionable directions of the modern revisionists’ attack on Marxism-Leninism. The attacks of Nikita Khrushchev and his group on Stalin and Marxism-Leninism, the rehabilitation of Titoism and the Khrushchevites’ rapprochement with social-democracy, gave the “green light” for the spreading of these preachings.

The Titoite thesis that it is allegedly possible to advance to socialism even under the leadership of parties, organizations and forces which do not consider themselves socialist gained respectability and was quickly embraced by the Togliattists and others. The point was reached that in the revisionist press, including the Soviet press, views appeared claiming that it was possible to go over to socialism “holding the Koran in one hand and ‘Capital’ in the other”, or “with the Cross in one hand and the Hammer and Sickle in the other”, etc.

This thesis of “ideological pluralism” pervades the concepts of the modem revisionists about socialist society. The renunciation of Marxism-Leninism as the leading ideology in socialist society, the opening of doors for “the free exchange of ideas and culture”, for the unrestricted inflow of bourgeois ideology, culture and the bourgeois way of life, in other words, the complete spiritual degeneration of the socialist society – this is the essence of the revisionist preachings of “ideological pluralism” in socialism.

Finally, the modem revisionists have extended this “ideological pluralism” even to the ranks of the party of the working class itself, by advocating the coexistence within it of the most widely varied philosophical trends, even including religious trends.

It is clear that without Marxism-Leninism there can be no talk of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and transition to socialism, of the construction of socialism and communism, or of the truly revolutionary party of the working class. As Comrade Enver Hoxha points out, the bourgeois theories and the Khrushchevite, Titoite, Eurocommunist and Chinese revisionist theories, are component parts of the overall strategic plan of imperialism and modern revisionism to strangle the revolution and the liberation struggle, to perpetuate the domination of the bourgeoisie and imperialism and destroy socialism. Therefore defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and its fundamental teachings from the revisionist distortions and attacks, whether disguised or open, constitutes a major revolutionary task.

2) The Modern Revisionists – Sworn Enemies of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

In particular, the 20th Congress of the CPSU, with its notorious “secret report” by Nikita Khrushchev, marked the commencement of a general campaign of modern revisionism against the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the 22nd Congress, the Khrushchevite revisionists declared the dictatorship of the proletariat a thing of the past, claimed that it is contrary to socialist democracy, and replaced it with the so-called “state of the entire people”, which is nothing but a façade for the dictatorship of the new Soviet bourgeoisie.

However, within a few years the so-called “state of the entire people” evolved into a social-fascist state. The unprecedented inflation of the police and military apparatus, the use of violence to suppress the protests of the working masses, the savage oppression and persecution, the widespread use of concentration camps and “psychiatric clinics” against revolutionary elements, the use of the Soviet army to enslave other peoples and countries, are facts which testify to the social-fascist character of the Soviet state today.

The Khrushchevite campaign against the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and its historical experience served as a major support for the propagation of the anarcho-syndicalist theories of the Yugoslav revisionists about “bureaucratic étatism”. While they advocate renunciation of the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state and the destruction of the oppressive bourgeois state machinery in the capitalist countries, the Yugoslav revisionists denigrate the socialist state and demand its earliest possible liquidation, in order to replace it with “genuine humanitarian socialism”, with their so-called “direct democracy”, etc hence with the Titoite system of “self-administration” which is nothing but a capitalist theory and practice, as Comrade Enver Hoxha has pointed out.

The 8th Congress of the CP of China proclaimed one of the main tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the securing of the alliance with the national bourgeoisie in the process of the so-called socialist construction of the country, the application of the course of “coexistence for a long time and mutual control” between the Communist Party and the so-called democratic bourgeois parties, etc. The unprincipled struggle for power between revisionist groups and factions, the throwing of the masses into anarchist actions for the destruction of the state organs, of the party itself and of the organizations of the masses, as was done during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the adoption of the course of Titoite “self-administrative” decentralization of the economy, the opening of the doors of China to the inflow of imperialist monopoly capital, the undertaking of aggression against Vietnam, as well as a series of other anti-Marxist practices and actions, likewise testify clearly that the Chinese revisionists have nothing in common with the teachings of Marxism-Leninism on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In their onslaught against the dictatorship of the proletariat the revisionists have gone so far as the Eurocommunists have compared the dictatorship of the proletariat with the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Salazar and Franco, as the renegade Marchais did from the tribune of the 22nd Congress of the French CP. This is a significant fact which indicates the extent of the degeneration of the modem revisionists and their descent to the positions of the most rabid and banal anti-communism.

But what do these revisionists put in place of the order of the dictatorship of the proletariat? What is the essence of the so-called democratic socialism” without the dictatorship of the proletariat which they advocate? It is nothing but the present-day bourgeois society, painted in pseudo-socialist colours to conceal its capitalist character, a hybrid capitalist-socialist society which the Eurocommunist revisionists offer the bourgeoisie as a way of escape in their critical situation, in order to retain their domination in the face of the proletarian revolution.

Historical experience, both the revolutionary experience of the times of Lenin and Stalin, and that of the socialist construction in Albania in our days, as well as the experience of the revisionist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, China and other countries, completely proves the correctness, vitality and the unshaken present-day value of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism on the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Defence of the teaching of Marxism-Leninism on the dictatorship of the proletariat, against which the forces of anti-communism and reaction and the modern revisionists of all hues have risen ferociously in a united front, remains one of the most important duties for the genuine Marxist-Leninists to carry forward the cause of the revolution and socialism.

3) Saboteurs of the Revolution, Defenders of the Capitalist Order

All revisionists, both those of the past and the modem ones, whether they are in power or operating in the countries of classical capitalism, are united by their hostility towards the revolution, their efforts to sabotage and undermine it and to perpetuate the domination of the bourgeoisie.

However, the theories of the denial of the revolution became widespread in the communist and workers’ movement following the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which rejected as obsolete the Marxist-Leninist theory about the revolution with violence as a universal law of the transition from capitalism to socialism and on the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, and replaced it with the Khrushchevite thesis about the “peaceful road” to socialism using the bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois state apparatus in general.

This thesis became the source and the basis for the “flowering” of all the counter-revolutionary theories of the revisionists today, and especially of the Eurocommunists, who have as their aim the preservation and perpetuation of capitalism and who are a living proof of the total social-democratic degeneration of the revisionist parties.

As Comrade Enver Hoxha points out in his book “Eurocommunism Is Anti-communism”, the present strategy of revolutionaries, according to the renegade Carrillo, is not to overthrow the state power of the bourgeoisie, because the state power no longer belongs to it, neither is it to overthrow the bourgeois relations of production, because they have already changed. Therefore the only thing which must be done is to bring about the gradual transformation of the existing political and ideological institutions through reforms, in order to bring them into conformity with the social reality and change them in favour of the people. In his time, Lenin, exposing such views which were then being spread by Kautsky, wrote: “The general conclusion = socialism without revolution! Or revolution without the destruction of the political power, of ‘the state machine’ of the bourgeoisie!! What a pearl of idiocy!!”* Here, says Lenin, we have the purest and most banal opportunism; we have rejection of the revolution in fact, while it is accepted in words.

* V. I. Lenin, “Marxism on the State”, p. 151, 1958, Alb. ed.

The bloody fascist coup in Chile in 1973, which overthrew the Allende government and brought to power the military dictatorship of Pinochet, was a crushing blow to the revisionist theories of “peaceful democratic transition to socialism”. In their efforts to rescue these theories at all costs, the Italian Eurocommunists dished up the so-called strategy of the “historic compromise”, the true name of which is historic betrayal.

The same counter-revolutionary and pragmatic standpoints characterize the Chinese revisionists’ “theory of the three worlds”. They distort and ignore the fundamental contradictions of our epoch, deny the existence of any revolutionary situation and prospect in our days and oppose any revolutionary activity, because, allegedly, the time for them has not yet come. According to the Chinese revisionists, the sole duty of the proletariat and the people of any country, whether in the “third worlds, the “second world” or in the USA, is to unite with the bourgeoisie and the leading circles of their own country, even the most fascist and reactionary ones, allegedly for the defence of the homeland and national independence against the threat which comes only from the Soviet social-imperialism.

The period in which we are living is characterized by a general upsurge of the world revolutionary process. The objective conditions are becoming ever more favourable for the revolution. Now the decisive thing is the preparation of the subjective factor for the revolution. The main obstacle to this is the influence of revisionist views among the masses and the disruptive counter-revolutionary activity of the revisionists. Anarchist, foquist, terrorist, Trotskyite and other preachings and practices in connection with the revolution and the armed struggle have also caused confusion and disillusionment. “Today when this question is put forward for solution,” writes Comrade Enver Hoxha, “it is an imperative duty for the Marxist-Leninists to dispel the fog the revisionists have spread about the revolution, to unmask their manoeuvres and deliberate misrepresentations about this problem, to expose their counter-revolutionary chauvinist hegemonic intentions and to ensure that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism on the revolution are understood and applied correctly.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “Imperialism and the Revolution*, p. 145, Alb. ed.

4) The Struggle Against Imperialism and Social-imperialism Is Inseparable from the Struggle Against Revisionism

All the trends of modem revisionism have placed themselves in the service of imperialism and social-imperialism, in order to undermine socialism, the revolution and the people’s liberation struggles. Moreover, in the present period, revisionism in the Soviet Union and in China has evolved into social-imperialism.

Following the betrayal by the Yugoslav revisionists, who became a special agency of American and world imperialism to undermine socialism, to split the socialist camp and the world communist and workers’ movement and to sabotage the revolutionary and liberation struggles, the Khrushchevite revisionists, especially at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, were those who laid the “theoretical” and practical basis for the course of conciliation, rapprochement and counter-revolutionary collaboration with imperialism to the detriment of the revolution and the freedom-loving peoples.

Using as a pretext the creation of weapons of mass extermination and the ideas that “any spark might cause a world conflagration”, “a nuclear catastrophe”, which according to him, would lead to the destruction of human civilization, Nikita Khrushchev declared that Lenin’s teachings on the stand towards just and unjust wars were obsolete and outdated. The teachings of Lenin were completely falsified and the Khrushchevite opportunist theses on peaceful coexistence as “the general line of the foreign policy of socialist countries and international communist movement”, as “4he universal course for the triumph of socialism on a world scale”, and as the most effective means “for the solution of all the vital problems that face present-day society”, etc were served up instead.

However, the Soviet revisionists use the thesis on “peaceful coexistence” not merely to justify the policy of unprincipled concessions to and compromises with American imperialism. “This line,” points out Comrade Enver Hoxha, “also served and is still serving them as a mask to hide the expansionist policy of Soviet social-imperialism in order to lower the vigilance and resistance of the peoples to the imperialist plans of the Soviet revisionist leaders for hegemony. The thesis about ‘peaceful coexistence’ was a call of the Soviet revisionists to the American imperialists to divide up the world and rule it jointly...”*

* Enver Hoxha, “Eurocommunism Is Anti-communism”, p. 61, Alb. ed.

The fascist type aggression and the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979, the unrestrained arms race, the transformation of the other countries of the “socialist community” into neo-colonies of Soviet social-imperialism according to the theory and practice of “limited sovereignty” and “socialist integration” the penetration and interference of the Soviet social-imperialists in Africa, in the zones of the Middle and Far East, in the Mediterranean, in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, etc brought to light all the falsity of the preachings and propaganda of the Soviet revisionists about peace and peaceful coexistence, disarmament, security and detente.

The 20th Congress of the CPSU with its course of rapprochement and collaboration with American and world imperialism also serves as a “theoretical basis” of justification for the present foreign policy of China. If, at one time, the Chinese revisionists criticised this course of the Khrushchevite revisionists and the Chinese propaganda attacked American imperialism as the greatest enemy of all the peoples of the world, this was done from a purely pragmatic standpoint at that juncture and was intended to prevent the formation of a Soviet-American alliance against China, or without China. The rapprochement of China with the USA has now been transformed into a typical alliance between imperialist powers, aimed against the revolution, freedom-loving peoples and other countries.

From the motives which inspire it, the aims which it pursues and the dangerous consequences with which it is fraught, China’s present-day policy of opposition to Soviet social-imperialism has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism. China’s leaders are openly inciting the USA to launch an imperialist atomic war in Europe against the Soviet Union, calculating that its two main rivals will destroy one another far from the borders of China and leave China as the omnipotent ruler of the world. Hence, not the raising of peoples in struggle to prevent imperialist war, not the transformation of imperialist war, if it should break out, into a revolutionary liberation war for the overthrow of imperialism, but the replacement of the revolution with imperialist war – such is the monstrous distortion which the Chinese revisionists have made of Marxism-Leninism.

The Khrushchevite revisionist theses at the 20th Congress of the CPSU for rapprochement, collaboration, and “peaceful competition with imperialism, fostered a series of other revisionist “theories” both of the Yugoslav revisionists and of those who are known today as Eurocommunists.

It is a fact that the Eurocommunists have become supporters of the policy of imperialist blocs, as alleged factors for the preservation of peace. They not only conceal the role of NATO for the suppression of the revolution in the West-European countries, but also ignore the major national problem of the countries and peoples in Western Europe, that of the domination of American imperialism in these countries and the need for liberation from it. At the same time, the Eurocommunists have proclaimed the EEC and United Europe as “a reality which must be accepted”. They conceal the exploiting character of this Europe of capitalist monopolies which is aimed against the West-European peoples and is an organ of the neo-colonialism of European imperialism against the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and they spread false illusions about the “democratisation” of these inter-imperialist organizations, allegedly in favour of the working masses and the peoples. “But,” as Comrade Enver Hoxha writes, “to accept this ‘reality’ means to accept the elimination of the sovereignty, the cultural and spiritual traditions of each individual country of Europe in favour of the interests of the big monopolies, to accept the elimination of the individuality of the European peoples and their transformation into a mass oppressed by the multi-national companies dominated by American big capital.”* Therefore, along with the unmasking of the poisonous propaganda of imperialism, it is essential that the deceptive theories and the dangerous preachings of the modem revisionists on the stand towards imperialism and the struggle against it must be exposed and defeated, too.

* Enver Hoxha, “Eurocommunism Is Anti-communism”, pp. 177-178, Alb. ed.

5) Rapprochement with Social-Democracy – the Liquidation of the Proletarian Party

The historical experience of the communist and workers’ parties world-wide shows that the revisionists, both old and new of all trends, in their efforts to undermine the revolutionary movement and socialism, have always aimed their first blow against the revolutionary leading staff of the working class, the proletarian party. The Khrushchevite revisionists provided the example for this by proclaiming at the 22nd Congress the liquidation of the proletarian character of their party and its transformation into a so-called “party of the entire people”, a thing which is a great absurdity in theory, while in practice it means the elimination of the leading role of the working class.

However, the Khrushchev group did not restrict itself to the Soviet Union alone. It tried to impose the course of the degeneration of the proletarian parties on the entire international communist and workers’ movement. From this point of view, it is not in the least accidental that, along with the rehabilitation of Titoism, the Khrushchevite revisionists at the 20th Congress of the CPSU launched the slogan of rapprochement with social-democracy. Moreover, at the 22nd Congress, Nikita Khrushchev declared that, “this is not a temporary tactical slogan, but a general line of the communist movement,” propagating the illusion that positive changes are taking place within the ranks of social-democracy. However, as our Party has stressed, the facts prove the opposite: they show that the social-democratic station has not moved in the direction of the revisionist train, but the revisionist train has rushed toward the social-democratic station.

The revisionists have abandoned the fundamental theoretical positions of Marxism-Leninism and the doctrine of scientific socialism, and in fact have adopted the opportunist counter-revolutionary ideological positions of social-democracy. From the viewpoint of their political strategy, the parties of Eurocommunism have completely abandoned any revolutionary activity for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and have changed into parties of social reforms within the framework of bourgeois legality and the bourgeois constitution, zealous defenders of the capitalist order and possible administrators of the affairs of the bourgeoisie, in order to gradually replace the discredited social-democrats in case difficult situations arise. From the organizational viewpoint, the Eurocommunist parties, following in the footsteps of the social-democrats have proclaimed the Leninist norms and teachings on the life of the revolutionary party of the proletariat to be incompatible with the principles of democracy and the conditions of the developed capitalist countries. The revisionists advocate the so-called “mass party” the doors of which are open to anyone who votes for that party, to all kinds of petty-bourgeois elements, from the ranks of the worker aristocracy and bureaucracy, bourgeois liberal intellectuals, etc.

The logical result of this social-democratic degeneration of the revisionist parties is the open trend towards liquidation, of which the banner-bearer has been the Italian revisionist G. Amendola, who in condemning the former division in the socialist movement and the organization of the communists as a separate party, came out with the thesis of the direct amalgamation of the (revisionist) communist party with the social-democrats and socialists, allegedly in order to find “a new road to socialism. However, everyone knows that the “new road” which the revisionists are seeking is nothing but the social-democratic road of the preservation and perpetuation of capitalism.

In our time social-democracy and the revisionists are fighting on the same side of the barricade to undermine and sabotage the cause of the liberation of the working class from bourgeois exploitation and oppression and to rescue capitalism from the revolution which is approaching. Therefore, the struggle against these agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers’ movement, the liberation of the masses from their poisonous influence are decisive conditions for the preparation of the subjective factor for the revolution.

The formation and tempering of the revolutionary party of the working class, a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, is achieved through ceaseless struggle against any revisionist influence and by drawing the necessary lessons from the social-democratic degeneration of the revisionist parties.

As the PLA has continually stressed, the setting of the Soviet Union on the anti-Marxist Khrushchevite course sanctioned at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, led, as it was bound to do, to the complete degeneration of the Soviet Union into a social-fascist capitalist state and a social-imperialist power. In this connection, it is necessary to expose and refute the clamour of the bourgeois, social-democratic, Eurocommunist and other propaganda, that the Soviet leadership after Khrushchev, especially after 1968, has allegedly abandoned the line of the 20th Congress and of Khrushchev, has taken certain steps back towards some “Stalinist methods”, has allegedly evolved into “neo-Stalinism”, etc.

Immediately after the fall of Khrushchev, the Party of Labour of Albania, opposing the vacillations and pressure exerted by the Chinese leadership, exposed the demagogic manoeuvres of the Brezhnev group and described the policy of the new Soviet leadership as a continuation of Khrushchevism without Khrushchev. The PLA stressed that it is essential to carry the struggle against Soviet revisionism, with or without Khrushchev, through to the end unwaveringly.

There is also speculation with the contradictions which exist today amidst different trends of modern revisionism, especially between Soviet revisionism and other trends. The Soviet leadership, in particular, tries to present the matter as if these are contradictions over principles and that it is defending the Marxist-Leninist positions in polemics with certain deviations of the Eurocommunists and in stem struggle with the Chinese revisionists who have betrayed Marxism-Leninism, etc. However, analysis of the facts refutes these claims and shows that these contradictions are not of a principled character, on the part of the Soviet or of the other revisionists, because all of them are enemies of Marxism-Leninism who, regardless of the contradictions which divide them, have a common, counter-revolutionary, opportunist, ideological base.

Let us take the Chinese revisionists who have sought to make political capital from the struggle waged by the CP of China against Khrushchevite revisionism. Now, however, everyone knows that this struggle by the CP of China was conducted with great zigzags and vacillations and that it was never waged from sound, principled Marxist-Leninist internationalist positions, but from pragmatic and chauvinist great-power positions.

In regard to the contradictions between the Soviet revisionists, on the one hand, and the Titoites and Eurocommunists on the other, they are based, from the one side, on the interests of Soviet social-imperialism which is trying to dominate all the revisionist parties and to use them as instruments of its expansionist foreign policy, and from the other side, on the interests of the Western bourgeoisie and Western imperialism, with which both the Eurocommunists and the Yugoslav revisionists, who are seeking to be as independent as possible from Moscow, are closely linked. They want to be independent of any kind of Soviet dictate and free to unite with the local bourgeoisie and Western imperialism, with NATO and the EEC, in order to adapt themselves better to their interests and demands and do not want to have their hands tied by any sort of “common decisions and obligations” which the Soviet social-imperialists wish to impose on them.

The bourgeois, social-democratic, Trotskyite and other propaganda is making a great noise about the “failure” of Marxism-Leninism and the crisis and disintegration of communism. In reality, it is not a crisis of Marxism-Leninism or communism, but of modern revisionism. The unprincipled struggle for power and the disturbances in the revisionist countries, from the overthrow of Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, of Rankovic and others in Yugoslavia, to the frequent ups and downs in China, the fall of Gomulka and now of Gierek in Poland etc the failures of the revisionist countries in their economies and foreign policy, the Soviet and Chinese aggressions in Czechoslovakia, Vietnam and Afghanistan, the contradictions and squabbles in the revisionist camp – all these and other facts are evidence of the deep and insoluble crisis which has gripped revisionism.

The evolution of modern revisionism with all its offshoots and “theories”, its demagogy and dangerous deceptions, show what a colossal task faces the Marxist-Leninists today to unmask it in the eyes of the working class and the peoples. It shows also that it is essential to wage an unceasing principled struggle against all trends of modem revisionism, without underestimating or creating illusions about any of them. The struggle against modern revisionism, for the liberation of the masses from the poisonous revisionist influence, and for the revolutionary tempering of the Marxist-Leninist parties themselves, is not a temporary campaign but a permanent and vital necessity in order to carry the cause of the revolution and socialism forward to total victory.

Vangjel Moisiu

Senior Scientific Worker

THE STRUGGLE OF THE PLA AGAINST THE PRESSURE AND INTERFERENCE OF THE KHRUSHCHEVITE REVISIONISTS AGAINST OUR PARTY AND COUNTRY

The struggle of the Party of Labour of Albania against the interference and pressure of the Khrushchevite revisionists is a component part of the whole great principled struggle which it has waged against Soviet revisionism.

The whole world knows that at the Meeting of the 81 communist and workers’ parties, in November 1960, the Party of Labour of Albania took a resolute, open stand against the revisionist course and chauvinist policy of Nikita Khrushchev. In his historic speech, Comrade Enver Hoxha not only exposed the Khrushchevite revisionist platform in general, not only presented the views of our Party on the fundamental questions of the theory and practice of the revolution and the construction of socialism, as well as on the problems of the strategy and tactic of the international communist movement, but at the same time, openly and resolutely exposed the pressure, blackmail and interference of the Khrushchevite revisionists against our Party and country.

The firm and principled stand of our Party at the Moscow Meeting was in no way accidental or unexpected. “Our open and principled attack on Khrushchevite modern revisionism at the Meeting of November 1960,” writes Comrade Enver Hoxha in his work “The Khrushchevites”, “...was the logical continuation of the Marxist-Leninist stand which the Party of Labour of Albania had always maintained, was the transition to a new, higher stage of the struggle which our Party had long been waging for the defence and consistent application of Marxism-Leninism.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites”, p. 3, Alb. ed.





The first clash was over question of Yugoslav revisionism. Only one year had passed since the death of Stalin when Khrushchev began to alter the accepted Marxist-Leninist course of the international communist movement of the principled struggle against Yugoslav revisionism and to make approaches to Tito. He needed this in order to realize his plans for the elimination of Marxism-Leninism and socialism. Tito was the first who attacked Stalin and rejected Marxism-Leninism. That is why Khrushchev regarded Tito as his ideological ally in his struggle against communism.

The PLA opposed the efforts of the Khrushchevite clique for their rapprochement with the Titoites from the time it received the first letter on the Yugoslav question, in June 1954, which was the first warning of this rapprochement. In particular, it protested sternly against Khrushchev’s visit to Belgrade in May 1955, to fall on his knees before Tito. This action which was undertaken without consulting other parties for their opinion about it, was a flagrant and arbitrary violation of decisions taken unanimously by the communist and workers’ parties and was clear evidence of the opportunist line which Khrushchev had begun to follow.

The Party of Labour of Albania, which knew the true face of the Yugoslav revisionists only too well and which waged a consistent irreconcilable struggle against them, immediately and unhesitatingly expressed its opposition. “The daily experience of our Party in relations with the Yugoslavs...,” the CC of the PLA wrote in its letter, “proves clearly and completely, with many vivid facts, that the principled content of all the resolutions of the Information Bureau in connection with the Yugoslav question is completely correct. The procedure which it is proposed to follow for approval of the abrogation of the resolution of the Meeting of the Information Bureau of November 1949 appears to us to be improper. . In our opinion, such a rapid and hasty decision on a major question of principle, without first making a profound analysis together with all the parties interested in this matter... would not only be premature, but would cause serious harm in the general orientation..”*

* Letter of the CC of the PLA to the CC of the CPSU, May 23, 1955, CPA.

Khrushchev went to Belgrade where he fell on his knees to Tito and admitted that “mistakes had been made” in regard to the CP of Yugoslavia and its leadership. He rehabilitated Tito as a “Marxist-Leninist”! Meanwhile time had proved, and proved even more clearly later, that Tito had not undergone any change from an anti-Marxist and Trotskyite (as Stalin and the Information Bureau had described him) to a Marxist-Leninist (as Khrushchev called him). It was Khrushchev who had embraced anti-communism and become like Tito. As Comrade Enver Hoxha says, “Anti-communism remained the foundation of their relations.”* This was the main factor which united them.

* Enver Hoxha: “The Khrushchevites”, p. 106, Alb. ed.

The PLA went on to oppose all the later actions of the Soviet revisionist leadership for rapprochement and ideological collaboration with Yugoslav revisionists and never ceased its struggle against this revisionism as Khrushchev insistently demanded. It raised its opposition and waged its struggle on the basis of principle for the defence of Marxism-Leninism and the unity of the international communist movement and the socialist camp, and not from the positions of narrow nationalism or from pig-headedness as the Khrushchevites tried to present our just stands.

The differences over principle and the clashes of our Party and the Khrushchev group increased and became deeper when the latter formulated and adopted its revisionist programme at the 20th Congress of the CPSU while at the same time undertaking the savage campaign against the so-called cult of the individual of Stalin, and when it tried in every way to impose its counterrevolutionary line on the whole world communist movement.

The Khrushchev group exerted especially great pressure on the PLA to have it accept the line of the 20th Congress and consequently to alter its own general line.

The Khrushchevites were aware of our Party’s opposition to them over the Yugoslav question and were also aware of the high assessment which it made of Stalin as a great Marxist-Leninist theoretician and leader. Therefore they doubted that it would be willing to approve the course of the 20th Congress. Nevertheless they hoped that any obstacle would be overcome and that the PLA would not become an exception from the other parties which with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accepted the revisionist course of the 20th Congress describing it, in the terms which the Soviet revisionist leadership used, as a congress “which marked a new stage in the development of the Soviet Union and the international communist and workers’ movement.”

The Khrushchevites made every effort to ensure that the theses of their congress were embodied in the 3rd Congress of the PLA, which had been set for three months later, in May 1956. They had charged their main ideologist, Suslov, with the task of convincing the leadership of our Party of the necessity for re-examination and alteration of its general line in conformity with the course of the 20th Congress. They had also given their agent, Liri Belishova, the task of exerting pressure from within. They utilized the Party Conference of the city of Tirana to attack the Marxist-Leninist line and leadership of our Party. They kept up their efforts to achieve their aim by means of a delegation which they sent to our 3rd Congress. However, our Party did not budge from its positions.

In order to mislead our Party, the revisionists employed the so-called arguments about “new situations” and consequently about “new roads and possibilities for advance”, presenting the counter-revolutionary course of the 20th Congress as a “creative development of Marxism-Leninism” in conformity with these situations and possibilities! “Many were misled by this demagogy of traitors”, writes Comrade Enver Hoxha, “however, the Party of Labour of Albania was not misled.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites”, p. 180, Alb. ed.

Contrary to the aims of the Khrushchevites, the 3rd Congress of our Party fully approved the political line and the practical activity of the Central Committee and the whole Party. Unanimously and without hesitation, it decided that the Marxist-Leninist course which our Party had pursued from the day of its foundation should be continued.

In the concrete circumstances, the 3rd Congress of the PLA could not openly denounce the anti-Marxist course of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Nevertheless, in essence the revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist content of all the decisions and conclusions of the 3rd Congress was opposed to that course.

On all the revisionist theses of the 20th Congress, on all the problems of principle which were concerning the communist international movement, the Party of Labour of Albania had its own revolutionary views and its reservations, which it had not only made known to the Soviet leadership, but which it also expressed publicly in the press and all its propaganda.

At that time, our Party did not speak openly about the differences over ideological principles which had arisen between it and the Soviet leadership, but it defended the Soviet Union, at a time when the imperialists and the various revisionists were attacking the Soviet Union in order to discredit communism. Our Party could not come out openly at that time against Khrushchevites, also, because it needed time to gain a complete knowledge of them, knowledge which was not achieved all at once. The actions of the Khrushchevites were camouflaged, they manoeuvred with Marxist-Leninist slogans, advanced in zigzags which, along with doubts, sometimes aroused hopes that the Soviet leadership might understand the catastrophe to which the course which they had adopted was leading the Communist Party and the socialist order and that they might take a course of correcting their erroneous stands.

Therefore, as Comrade Enver Hoxha explains, our Party was cautious in the stand it took, and it kept its eyes open. It followed every action and stand of Khrushchev’s with the greatest care, proceeding from the desire to preserve and strengthen the friendship with the Soviet Union but at the same time it did not leave unanswered, in one way or another, the erroneous stands and actions, the deviations of the Khrushchevites and the pressures which they exerted upon it.

The Khrushchevites exerted pressure for the rehabilitation of our traitors, demanding that our Party act in regard to Koçi Xoxe, Tuk Jakova and others as was done under the pressure of Khrushchev and Tito with Rajk, Kadar and Nagy in Hungary, with Kostov in Bulgaria, with Gomulka in Poland, etc. The terse reply of our Party in the face of this pressure was: “We have never accused and condemned anyone for nothing...” *

* Enver Hoxha. “The Khrushchevites”, p. 134, Alb. ed.

In particular, the Khrushchevites strove to liquidate the main leaders of our Party and state and to replace them with rehabilitated traitors as it succeeded in doing in many other parties and former socialist countries.

The Khrushchevites’ pressure was intended also to place our army, economy and culture under their control by means of the Soviet advisers and specialists, as well as by means of their Albanian agents. “All the parties of the socialist countries fell into this Khrushchevite trap, with the exception of the Party of Labour of Albania.”*

* Ibidem, p. 325.

The Khrushchevites also continued the pressure which they had begun to exert immediately after the death of Stalin to give the people’s economy and our country a one-sided, agricultural development, mainly growing fruit. They were opposed to the setting up and development of socialist industry in Albania and especially opposed to the creation of the processing and machine-building industry. They raised all sorts of pretexts for this and left no stone unturned to hinder the implementation of the revolutionary economic policy of our Party of the industrialization of the country, the building of the material-technical basis of socialism and achieving self-sufficiency in bread grain. Proceeding from the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the PLA regarded the construction and defence of socialism as impossible without a modem, multi-branched industry, without an advanced mechanized agriculture to ensure the economic independence, without which there could be no political independence. However, the Khrushchevites wanted Albania to be a country economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and, consequently, it would be dependent upon it politically, too.

Meanwhile, modern revisionism was spreading rapidly and gaining control of almost all the communist and workers’ parties and all the socialist countries (with the exception of our country and Party) turning into a very great danger for the international communist movement and the socialist camp. The PLA had no doubt at all that the unprecedented invigoration of the Yugoslav revisionism, its very extensive diversionist activity, the appearance of Togliatti’s theory of “poli-centrism” “the Italian road to socialism”, “unlimited democracy”, etc the liquidation of leaders of many parties, the rehabilitation of many traitors in different parties, the counter-revolutionary manifestations in Poland, the counter-revolution in Hungary, etc all had their source in the 20th Congress and that the main culprits for all these things were Khrushchev and company.

Our Party watched these developments with great concern. While maintaining its principled stand on all questions and events, its suspicions were becoming ever stronger and the opinion was crystallizing that the Khrushchevite leadership of the Soviet Union was abandoning Marxism-Leninism and the road to socialism. The crystallization of this opinion was influenced especially by the filthy role which Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Suslov, Andropov, etc played in Hungary, by removing Rakosi, supporting Nagy, bringing down the former Central Committee of the Hungarian party and forming another in the Crimea, where Khrushchev was on holiday and where he had invited Kadar for this purpose, while collaborating and striking secret bargains over these things with Tito, etc.

The Soviet leadership sent the letters exchanged between Khrushchev and Tito over the Hungarian question in November 1956 to the Central Committee of our Party for its information, with the aim of receiving its approval of the bargain struck and to show the way which our Party ought to follow, too!

Presenting these letters for discussion in the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, Comrade Enver Hoxha said: “... the question before us is whether to breach our principles, to keep silent or to march forward, not reconciling ourselves to incorrect stands?... I insist that we proceed on the basis of principles which we have defined... We should not publicize these differences of opinion, for this is to the detriment of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. On the other hand, it is my opinion that we must not make concessions of the kind that the leadership of the CPSU wants us to make, for this is a markedly opportunist stand... Nowhere will we yield the slightest concession on principles, not even a millimetre... We shall uphold the issues of principle even if we remain alone. We shall certainly not remain alone for long if we wage a just struggle in defence of principles.”*

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 14, pp. 138, 139, 143, Alb. ed.

In December 19”6, Comrade Enver Hoxha put forward our opposition over a series of wrong actions and our concern about the great danger which the spread of revisionism constituted, directly to the Soviet leaders. Two months later, in February 1957, the Plenum of the CC of the PLA, while denouncing the revisionists as the culprits for the events in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere, defended the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism about the leading role of the revolutionary party of the working class in the revolution and socialist construction, about the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat during the whole period of transition from capitalism to communism and about the class struggle in this period, principles which the Khrushchev group and its followers had trampled upon. The violation of these principles in Hungary and Poland was testimony to the catastrophe which was threatening the revolution and socialism. The Central Committee also defended Stalin and exposed the so-called “Stalin’s cult of the individual”. Thus, in fact, the plenum of the Central Committee of our Party rejected the revisionist theses of the 20th Congress.

The Khrushchevites were aware of the principled stand of the PLA and its opposition to many of their actions. However, as Comrade Enver Hoxha says, they did not want to exacerbate the contradictions with us. With their logic of counter-revolutionaries and great-state chauvinists, they thought that we, as a small Party of a small country, would have nowhere to turn to. If not today, tomorrow, we would fall on our knees to them. However, the publication in “Zeri i popullit” of Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech at the plenum of the CC in February 1957 alarmed the Khrushchevites. Therefore, they demanded that a top-level delegation of the Party of Labour of Albania should go urgently to Moscow. As Comrade Enver Hoxha writes in his work “The Khrushchevites”, the Khrushchev group used “the carrot” and “the stick” in an attempt to subjugate the leadership of our Party. “The carrot” was the promises of greater economic aid, the conversion of old credits to grants and the formal approval of some revolutionary stand of our Party. “The stick” was their insistence, backed by threats, that our Party should change its revolutionary stands towards Stalin, towards Titoism, towards internal enemies of our Party, and likewise change the policy of ensuring economic independence.

The first direct clash with the Khrushchevite revisionists occurred in April 1957, when Khrushchev, powerless to overcome the refusal of Comrade Enver Hoxha and other members of our delegation to accept these changes, said to them with uncontrolled anger: “We cannot reach agreement with you Albanians! We shall break off the talk!” However, he did not dare break them off, because he still hoped to achieve his aim.

Besides these pressures, activity was undertaken. to sabotage the construction and defence of socialism by means of their advisers, specialists and diplomats in Albania, and also to prepare their agency for this purpose within our Party, so that they could take the fortress from within.

The aim of the Khrushchevites was to break the resistance of the PLA and compel it to change its course. “But,” as Comrade Enver Hoxha writes, “they broke their heads.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites”, p. 380, Alb. ed.

The revolutionary stand of the PLA on all the questions which had given rise to differences after the 20th Congress, was also expressed at the first Meeting of communist and workers’ parties in Moscow, in November 1957, as well as on the occasion of the announcement of the counter-revolutionary program of the Communist League of Yugoslavia in 1958. A series of articles, published on this occasion in our press, unmasked not only the theses of that program, but also the theses of the 20th Congress. In vain the Soviet leadership nurtured hopes that things would change after the signing of the agreement on the granting of a new credit to Albania for the 3rd Five-year Plan, especially after Khrushchev’s visit to our country, in May 1959, As is known, he came to carry out a “recon-naissance” before commencing decisive operations for the implementation of his military and political plans in Albania. With the discovery and smashing of the counter-revolutionary plot of Teme Sejko in 1960, Khrushchev’s hopes of exploiting this for his own aims were wiped out too.

While resolutely continuing its revolutionary course, through clashes with the Khrushchevite, Titoite and other revisionists, the Party had become thoroughly aware of what they were and about the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960, it had reached the conclusion: “For us the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was finished. Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites were revisionists, traitors.”*

* Ibidem, p. 383.





In June 1960, with this conviction the delegation of the PLA, headed by Comrade Hysni Kapo, went to Bucharest where, as is known, the Khrushchev group tried to deliver a decisive stab in the back to the socialist camp and the international communist movement.

As Comrade Enver Hoxha tells us, when the CC of the PLA sent the delegation to Bucharest it knew nothing of Khrushchev’s aim, but after receiving Comrade Hysni Kapo’s radiograms, it very rapidly formed the complete conviction that Khrushchev had concocted a plot “... one of the most perfidious and savage...”* and therefore, everything possible had to be done to defeat this plot.

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites”, p. 400, Alb, ed.

In Bucharest the delegation of the PLA carried out the instructions of the CC, openly opposed the destructive activity of the Khrushchevite group and attacked Khrushchev over his anti-Marxist aim and the conspiratorial methods that he employed. In his book “The Khrushchevites” Comrade Enver Hoxha says, “Hence in Bucharest and Moscow we did not defend China, as a big country from which we might get aid, but we defended the Leninist norms, Marxism-Leninism. 3We did not defend the Communist Party of China because it was a big party, but we defended our principles, we defended Marxist-Leninist justice. At Bucharest and Moscow we would have defended any party or country, be it big or small numerically, provided only that it was with Marxism-Leninism.”* As a result of the principled stand of the PLA the Khrushchev group did not achieve its diabolical aims. This stand was a logical result of the whole revolutionary line which our Party had followed.

* Ibidem, p. 408, Alb. ed.

The Bucharest Meeting marked an immediate turn in the relations between the Party of Labour of Albania and the Soviet leadership. “The Albanian rebellion” had to be crushed with all the means of compulsion and pressure. For Albania and the Party of Labour of Albania the period of the great test began.

In the first place, the Khrushchevites strove to split and subdue the Central Committee of the Party in order to force it to condemn its own stand in Bucharest. They used their agent prepared in Moscow, Liri Belishova, to this aim. However, they ran up against the steel unity of the Central Committee.

The Khrushchev group had pinned great hopes on the cadres who had graduated from schools in the Soviet Union. However, the Khrushchevites were unable to find or to cause any breach in the ranks, either of the Party or of the people. Faced with the unity of the Party and unity of the Party with the people, their plans came to nought.

In particular, the Soviet revisionists employed pressure and sabotage in the economic field, by delaying and, in many cases, stopping the dispatch of goods and industrial equipment on the basis of agreements concluded. They went so far as to bring into action the weapon of starvation, by refusing the delivery of a quantity of grain to ensure bread supplies of which there was a shortage because of the exceptional draught of 1980. They made threats to our Government that they would cut off deliveries of any kind of armaments and military equipment for our People’s Army.

The Party of Labour of Albania did not bend the knee to them. It appealed to the heroism and patriotism of the people, to their spirit of struggle and sacrifice. Our people closed their ranks even more tightly around the Party in the struggle to cope with the difficulties, pressure and interference by the Khrushchevites.

In August, the Soviet leadership sent the CC of our Party a letter in which it demanded that they should go to the Meeting to be held in Moscow, in November 1960, “with complete unity of opinions.” This would have meant our Party’s abandoning its principled stands in Bucharest and its Marxist-Leninist line. However, our Party was determined not to make any concessions, but to defend its principles to the end. Its reply to this demand from the Khrushchev group was: “Even if we Albanians have to go without bread, we do not violate our principles, do not betray Marxism-Leninism. Everybody, friends and enemies, should be clear about this.”*

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 19, p. 338, Alb. ed.

Meanwhile the Central Committee of our Party instructed its delegation to the commission of 26 parties which was drafting the declaration of the Moscow Meeting, to fight persistently for the rejection of the revisionist theses which the Soviet leadership and others wanted to embody in it: “We are for taking the matter through to the end,” Comrade Enver Hoxha wrote to the delegation. “...A determined revisionist does not change course... Compromise with them does not serve our cause.”*

* Ibidem, pp. 329, 330, Alb. ed.

The historic speech which Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered on behalf of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania at the Meeting of the 81 parties in Moscow is known to all. This speech defeated Khrushchev’s cunning tactic to cover up the profound differences over principles, the existence of two opposing lines in the international communist movement and to avoid criticism of the revisionist line and splitting activity of the Soviet leadership. With this tactic he aimed to saddle our Party and the CP of China with the blame and. to this end, a Soviet document distributed before the meeting launched filthy attacks and slanders against them, while he himself was to emerge as the banner-bearer of Marxism-Leninism and unity!

In reply to Khrushchev’s attempts to make deals over Albania, Comrade Enver Hoxha told him at the meeting: “There was a time when Albania was considered as something to be bought and sold, while others thought that it depended on them whether Albania would exist or not, but that time came to an end with the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism in our country... The fact that Albania is advancing on the road to socialism and takes part in the socialist camp is not decided by you.... this does not depend on your wishes. The Albanian people, with the Party of Labour at the head, have decided this with their struggle and there is no force that can divert them from this course.”*

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 19, pp. 424-425, Alb. ed.

After the Moscow Meeting, at which the ideological conflict reached its culmination, the Khrushchevites’ pressures and attacks against our Party and country assumed harsher and more aggressive forms. Thinking that he had all the necessary means in his hands Khrushchev raised his fist to wreak vengeance on the Party, the people and a small socialist country, by organizing an all-round political, economic and military blockade against Albania, unprecedented in its ferocity.

They unilaterally annulled all the agreements concluded between the two countries, stopped all credits and economic aid and broke off all commercial relations, withdrew all their specialists from Albania in a threatening way and expelled all the Albanian cadres and students who were studying in Soviet educational institutions. These hostile actions were accompanied with a letter to our Government in April 1961, which said: “From now on, Albania cannot hope that the Soviet Union will assist it on the former basis,” that “from now on the Soviet Union considers it necessary to build its relations with Albania on a new basis.” Immediately after this, in May, they arbitrarily annulled the bilateral agreements about the obligations they had assumed, on the basis of the Warsaw Treaty, to supply our People’s Army with armaments and military equipment. They robbed Albania of 8 submarines, as well as the Albanian warships which were in the port of Sevastopol at that time. They demonstratively withdrew the ships from the military base of Vlora.

At no time had the history of relations between socialist countries known such pressure against a small socialist country and a small people. “Even the imperialists have not imposed such a complete blockade against a socialist country...”,* wrote Comrade Enver Hoxha.

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 22, p. 11, Alb. ed.

The Soviet revisionists were also ready to undertake military intervention in Albania, using as a pretext the question of the military base at Vlora. However, these plans failed, thanks to the heroic resistance of our Party, our army and our armed people.

Finally, in October 1961, from the tribune of the 22nd Congress Nikita Khrushchev openly launched a public attack against our Party, calling on communists and our people for counter-revolution, and followed this up with another hostile act, the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Albania.

All these things testified to the failure of every effort to subjugate our Party and force it to take a revisionist course, as the other parties did, to compel our people to abandon the road of socialism and to enter the road of capitalism, like the other former socialist countries. The Party of Labour of Albania had scored a big victory over Khrushchevite revisionism.

In these conditions it could remain silent no longer. It not only had the right, but felt it to be a duty to make publicly known the Khrushchevites’ betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and socialism and all their hostile activity and crimes against our Party of Labour and socialist Albania. The Party of Labour of Albania declared stern and irreconcilable war on Khrushchevite revisionism, being fully convinced that through this struggle it was defending the great cause of Marxism-Leninism and socialism. “The struggle which is being imposed on our Party and people,” declared the Central Committee of the Party, “will be protracted and difficult. But our Party and people have never been afraid of difficulties.”*

* “Principal Documents of the PLA”, vol. 4, p. 154, Alb. ed.

The Khrushchevites were greatly mistaken when they thought that Albania would not be able to take a single step forward without the aid of the Soviet Union and that, in the end, it would be obliged to return to the “socialist family” which would mean to become dependent on the Soviet Union like the revisionist countries of Eastern Europe, or to sell itself to imperialism for 30 pieces of silver!

As Comrade Enver Hoxha says, the PLA “... did not sell out and never will sell out to imperialism or anyone else because... a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, ...whatever the conditions and situations it is in, never allows itself to be bought or sold, but resolutely pursues its course, the course of uncompromising struggle against imperialism, revisionism and reaction.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites”, p. 108, Alb. ed.

Socialist Albania did not mark time, but advanced very rapidly without the aid of the Soviet social-imperialists, vigorously developed its economy and culture, and all fields of the life of the country on the road of socialism and strengthened its defence. With its far-sighted revolutionary policy in the political economic, cultural and military fields, the PLA had ensured all the conditions for such an advance. The achievements marked in 1961-1980 testify to the gigantic creative force of a people which is led by a revolutionary party of the working class. They refute the predictions and imperialist logic of the Soviet revisionists.

The Khrushchevite revisionist clique was gravely mistaken when it thought that it could isolate Albania. Albania was not isolated and never will be isolated, because throughout the world there are Marxist-Leninists, genuine revolutionaries and internationalists and there are friendly peoples and countries who understood and continue to understand ever more profoundly the revolutionary line and the principled struggle of the PLA in defence of freedom, independence and socialism in Albania, in defence of the interests and ideals of the proletariat and peoples of the whole world.

Although they suffered defeat in their encounter with the PLA, the Khrushchevites did not relinquish their efforts to subjugate it and the Albanian people. They had great hopes of achieving the submission of our Party after the fall of Khrushchev, when they tried to lay all the blame on him for the “quarrels and disagreements” for which, according to them, there is no objective basis or ideological reason. However, the Party of Labour of Albania had no illusions at all about the aims of Khrushchev’s successors who merely carried out “a change of horses” in the leadership while retaining Khrushchevism quite unaltered.

Our Party also rejected the “advice” of the Chinese leadership to follow their example in making approaches to and reaching conciliation with the Khrushchevites. There was a strong smell of opportunism and pragmatism about the judgements of the Chinese leadership that “we should offer our hand to the dear Soviet comrades”, “we should forget the past”, and “we should understand the difficulties of the comrades of the Soviet Union”. “The exclusion of Khrushchev from the leadership of the Soviet party and state,” wrote Comrade Enver Hoxha, “did not mean the end of Khrushchevite revisionism, or the liquidation of its ideology and policy, which were expressed in the political line of the 20th and 22nd Congress of the CPSU... We must not create and foster illusions, we must not be deceived by demagogy and disguises,... for the Marxist-Leninists, the struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism ends when its course is liquidated politically and ideologically, when the spirit, practices and stands from Khrushchevite revisionist positions have been liquidated...”*

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 23, p. 100, Alb. ed.

After the break with the Chinese, the Soviet revisionists hoped once again that we would offer them the hand of friendship, because they thought that in these conditions the “appropriate time” had come to settle matters with Albania. Even to this day the revisionist press is openly hinting that, left without Chinese aid, the Albanians will return to the “socialist family” and the allies of the Soviet revisionists are intervening to sound out our reaction to this.

However, their hopes will never be realized. Comrade Enver Hoxha has said: “Our enemies are mistaken when they think that our country is... ‘abandoned on the streets’ that ‘it will hold out its hand to somebody who will pull it out of the mire’, etc. The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania... is advancing confidently, relying on its own strength, building, creating, training and defending itself fearlessly, and with its heroic example, it is inspiring and will continue to inspire the oppressed masses of the world.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “Albania Is Forging Ahead Confidently and Unafraid”, p. 9, Alb, ed.





Looking back at the road traversed during the past twenty years or so, we can define those causes, the political-moral factors which ensured the great victory of our Party over the Khrushchevites and their ignominious defeat:

1. Our Party fought and successfully defeated the interference, pressure, blackmail and blockade of the Khrushchevites, because it has always remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism and has pursued a consistent principled line. The struggle of our Party against Soviet revisionism is a just, profoundly principled struggle. Our differences with the Khrushchevites did not have to do simply with the relations between two parties and two countries. They were of a general character before they assumed a bilateral character; they were principled ideological differences, differences between two opposing lines, before they were inter-state contradictions. The Soviet revisionist leadership carried out ugly hostile activities against our people and country, because the PLA defended Marxism-Leninism, whereas it had betrayed Marxism-Leninism. Consequently, the struggle of the PLA against Khrushchevite revisionism was not aimed simply against the hostile anti-Albanian actions of the Khrushchevite clique against our Party and country, but above all, against the revisionist betrayal, in order to defend Marxism-Leninism and the cause of revolution and socialism. Comrade Enver Hoxha has said that we condemned the Soviet revisionists’ betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, just as we condemned the betrayal of the Titoite and Chinese revisionists for “... profound ideological and political reasons and not for trifles. They were not of a national character only, because they affected not only Albania’s economic interests, no, they had and have more of an international character, because they violated the great principles for which the peoples, the world proletariat and progressive mankind are fighting.”*

* Enver Hoxha, “Proletarian Democracy is Genuine Democracy, 1978, p. 39, Alb. ed.

2. The Party of Labour of Albania successfully smashed the pressure, blackmail and hostile blockades of the Khrushchevites, because it had the support of the broad working masses of the country, the powerful backing of the people. In steel unity with the Party, the people fought together with it against the savage hostile activity with a high level of political consciousness. Precisely “In this unity,” stresses Comrade Enver Hoxha, “lies the invincible strength of the Party and our people, the sound guarantee of all the past, present and future victories of the people. This unity is the heaviest blow against all enemies of our Party and people, imperialists and revisionists of every description.”*

* Enver Hoxha, Works, vol. 22, p. 111, Alb. ed.

3. The Party of Labour of Albania overcame the Khrushchevite blockade because it has always remained loyal to the great revolutionary principle of self-reliance. No one brought us our freedom, independence and the great victories of the revolution and the socialist construction as a gift, they were achieved by shedding rivers of blood and sweat.

When the Soviet leadership cut off all the credits and economic aid, our Party and people did not capitulate, our economy did not come to a standstill, but on the contrary, developed with rapid rates on the road of socialism. The correct policy of the Party for the socialist industrialization of the country, the development and modernization of agriculture, the building of the material-technical base of socialism, and an independent economy, ensured that our socialist economy would not experience any kind of crisis or stagnation, but would go ahead vigorously.

In the West there are politicians and historians who distort and falsify the great truth about the conflict of the PLA with the Khrushchevites, motivating the victories and resistance of our Party with unreal causes and factors. Among these we can mention the “Chinese aid”, and the “geographical remoteness from the Soviet Union”. It is not difficult to refute these arguments. Our Party began and successfully waged the struggle against the Khrushchev group, not for the interests of the Chinese, or because that it had their support and aid, but for major national and international ideological and political motives, and relying on its own strength. In regard to the danger of Soviet military aggression, this existed twenty years ago, just as it does today. If the Soviet social-imperialists or any other aggressor have not dared to undertake military adventures against socialist Albania, this cannot be explained by geographical remoteness, or by the lack of the desire on their part.

They know that socialist Albania is not a mouthful that can be easily swallowed, that the traditionally patriotic and freedom-loving people of Albania, linked in steel unity with their fearless Party of Labour are prepared from every aspect and determined to fight to the end to defend the freedom and independence of their Homeland. Any aggressor who would dare to attack it, would encounter a terrain ablaze with people’s war from which he would not manage to extricate himself.

4. Another factor in the triumph over the Khrushchevites is the fact that our Party has persistently implemented the revolutionary principle that foreigners (whether allies or enemies) must not meddle in the internal affairs of our country. Remaining constantly vigilant and not permitting any external interference, it has worked out and applied its revolutionary line in a completely independent way and has fought hard to defend our independence from anybody.

5. In the struggle against the Khrushchevite revisionist betrayal the Party of Labour of Albania had the aid and the resolute support of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist forces. The resolute support which these forces gave our Party added to its strength, determination and confidence in the great battle with the enemies and betrayers of the revolution.

The struggle of the Party of Labour of Albania against Soviet revisionism is an experience of great value. It shows clearly that even a small party of a small country can successfully face up to any enemy, however big and powerful, do battle with it and emerge triumphant, provided it faithfully adheres to Marxist-Leninist principles, provided it pursues a correct line and has sound unity in its ranks, has close links with the people, and provided it proves to be resolute and courageous in the struggle and is confident of victory.

Omer Hashorva

Candidate of Sciences

THE PRESENT SOCIO-ECONOMIC ORDER IN THE SOVIET UNION – A CAPITALIST ORDER

On the basis of a penetrating all-sided analysis, which they made from the beginning of the betrayal by the Khrushchevite revisionists, the PLA and Comrade Enver Hoxha, among other things, predicted that if revisionism were not prevented from coming to the head of the Soviet party and state, this would have fatal consequences for the Bolshevik Party and for the destiny of revolution and socialism in the Soviet Union. Time has proved that the Khrushchevite betrayal caused the socialist order in the Soviet Union to degenerate into a capitalist order. At the 7th Congress of the PLA Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out: “The Soviet society has become bourgeois down to its tiniest cells, and capitalism has been re-established in all fields.”*

* Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA, p. 215, Alb. ed.

The counter-revolutionary process of the degeneration of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union began with the usurpation of the leadership of the party and the state of the Soviet Union by the Khrushchevite revisionists, who gradually brought about their degeneration into a bourgeois party and state. The alteration of the character of the party and the state, the counter-revolutionary transformation in the field of the political and ideological superstructure, could not fail to lead to the alteration of the character of the structure also, because the new Soviet bourgeoisie could not exist and rule politically and ideologically, without also creating its economic base.

While preserving the external forms of the former socialist property, the Khrushchevite revisionists changed its essence, turned it into capitalist property, both in town and countryside. The economic reforms which they applied in conformity with their capitalist anti-Marxist ideological concepts, for “the perfection of the management and planning of the economy”, for “the primary role of material stimuli”, as well as other later measures, in fact, made profit the main objective of production, and this, as Karl Marx pointed out, constitutes the absolute law of capitalist relations of production.

With the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the state socialist property was not fragmented, but degenerated into state monopoly property. This kind of property is the dominant form of property in that country today. State monopoly capitalism extends to all the branches of the economy and services, to industry, agriculture, construction, transport, trade, communications, the financial and credit system, the banks, etc.

Hiding behind Marxist terminology, the Soviet revisionists continue to speak about the planned and centralized management of the economy. However, in the economy of the Soviet Union today, there is only a bureaucratized centralism which is made possible by the specific conditions of the Soviet capitalist order in which state monopoly property is dominant. This gives the Soviet bourgeois state the possibility to centralize the production and distribution of a portion of the commodities and to set their prices, especially of those commodities which have importance for the militarization of the economy. While preserving some of the forms of organization and management of the former socialist economy, the Soviet bourgeoisie, whose aim is to secure maximum profits, has at the same time implemented new forms of organization and management, which are suitable to state monopoly capitalism. The “industrial complexes”, “agrarian-industrial complexes”, various “multi-national companies”, etc come within this heading. The Soviet bourgeoisie uses these “new” forms to increase the oppression and exploitation of the Soviet working masses and other peoples of the world, to overcome the difficulties of the crisis which has gripped the Soviet economy, and also because they are more adaptable to the integration of the Soviet economy into the world capitalist economy and the integration of the economies of other revisionist countries into the Soviet economy.

In order to secure maximum profits, the Soviet bourgeoisie, within the framework of bureaucratic centralism has granted the managers of economic enterprises and combines extensive freedoms and competences covering the volume of production, the range of products, prices, the structure of the organization and management, the establishment of links with the market and trade enterprises, engagement and dismissal of workers, etc. These managers, by misusing the competences they have been given, alter even the aim of production, change the range of commodities, direct production towards those goods which are most profitable, and raise the prices of commodities under various pretexts and masked ways, with the main aim of securing the greatest profits possible for themselves and for the entire Soviet bourgeoisie.

Having profit as their loftiest aim, the directors of these economic enterprises and combines organize production in such a manner as to increase the degree of intensification of work, to bring about the reduction of labour force, while a considerable part of the fund of wages “saved” from these “reductions” and dismissals of workers is appropriated by these managers in the form of supplementary bonuses. Thus, the economic enterprises and combines which constitute the main form of state monopoly capitalism in the Soviet economy, are the source of all those laws which operate with all their impact in the Soviet economy today, such as the law of profit, value, anarchy and competition, etc which are specific laws on which the economy of every capitalist country is based and developed.

The present-day Soviet economy is characterized by such problems of the capitalist economy as the inharmonious development of its branches, non-utilization of productive capacities, decline in the rates of production, rising prices and cost of living increases, growing inflation, shortages of mass consumer goods on the market, etc. Such phenomena are neither accidental nor temporary, or the difficulties allegedly of the growth of “socialism”, as the Soviet revisionists try to present them. They are phenomena which have their roots in the very capitalist nature of the economic order which prevails in the Soviet Union and which, like the whole world capitalist economy, is wallowing in a profound all-round crisis.

In order to disguise the exploiting character of their socio-economic order, the Soviet revisionists in recent years have been making a great demagogic clamour about the rights and competences of the so-called “workers’ collectives”. According to them the “workers’ collectives” have state and economic rights to discuss and solve problems of production and the management of enterprises and institutions, problems of the distribution of cadres, material rewards for the working people, etc.

However, the fact that on such vital problems of the workers as pay, engagement and dismissal from work, etc it is the managers of enterprises who decide, shows that the rights of the “workers’ collectives” are completely formal and they serve as