INTRODUCTION.

THE document 'An Historic Victory of Marxism-Leninism over Revisionism' was published in Tirana in 1971 and represents the heyday in the struggle against modern revisionism as represented by Nikita Khrushchev and his supporters in the international communist movement. This victory over international revisionism was short lived. But we believe that despite the later split between China and Albania there are still lessons to be learnt from this struggle for those who continue to uphold the banner of Marxism-Leninism against revisionism. Although there are differences in the communist movement regarding the date at which the revisionists completed the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, this document is still invaluable when studying the nature of revisionism and how it came to dominate many communist parties around the world.

In many respects, the father of Modern revisionism is Titoite, Yugoslav revisionism. The Titoite brand of revisionism was the first to pose its challenge to Marxism-Leninism in explicit terms. This danger to socialism was recognised by Stalin. This led to Yugoslav exclusion from the socialist block of countries. But this could not prevent the ideological contamination of the international communist movement. After the death of Stalin, new leaders of the Soviet Union made attempts at rapprochement with the Titoite leadership, which began to include ideological concessions. Albania recognised the danger posed by the Yugoslav revisionist clearer than most. The former refused to toe Khruschev's line in regard to Yugoslavia. During May 1956 Khrushchev had used M. Suslov and P. Pospelov in an attempt to put pressure on the Albania leadership to rehabilitate Koci Xoxe, who had been a Titoite agent and tried for Treason for his attempt to liquidate the Albania Party of Labour and his effort to turn Albania into a 7^th republic of Yugoslavia.

In 1957, the Titoites refused to sign the Moscow declaration, but by putting forward their own revisionist programme in 1958, Yugoslavia received a US loan and $62,500,000s worth of surplus farm products. The imperialists had welcomed the actions of the Titoites. Eisenhower on June 18 even praised the Titoites for 'creating centrifugal forces within the socialist camp'. Imperialism sought to strengthen its relations with Yugoslavia, which they came to regard as a tool in the struggle against socialism. In 1959 more aid worth $156,300,000 was given to the Titoites.

The Moscow Declaration of 1957 was the attempt to reverse the headlong rush of the Khrushchevites to embrace revisionism. This declaration was useful to the Soviet revisionists because it enabled them to pose as opponents of modern revisionism, issuing from Belgrade in the form of Titoism. In reality, the Khrushchevites did not resist the pull of revisionism.

In my own personal view the anti-revisionist movement defended Marxist-Leninist principles against the forces of Modern Revisionism, but in the process, especially in its later stages came to make some leftist mistakes. These were multiplied after the split between China and Albania. But, nevertheless the preservation of Marxism-Leninism is to be found in the anti-revisionist movement. One issue of importance is the concept of Soviet social-imperialism. Castro denied, for instance, that the Soviet Union was ever imperialist. The Soviet Union, it can be said was never imperialist in the classic sense of the term, i.e., in possessing global monopolies. However, the term social-imperialism, meaning socialist in words but imperialist in deeds certainly describes some of the actions of the revisionist Soviet leaders. Revisionism in a big State, as a bourgeois tendency, inevitably contains within it the seeds of social-imperialism. The collapse of Soviet revisionism was a big blow to revisionist circles around the world, but was no surprise to Marxist-Leninists, who argue that the collapse of socialism is inevitable if revisionism captures the leadership of any communist party in power. But the collapse of Soviet revisionism does not mean the end of revisionism. Revisionism has been weakened, the attempts of the revisionists to hijack the leadership of communist movement has be been dealt a mortal blow. However, revisionism continues because the basis of revisionism is international imperialism. One lesson of the anti-revisionist movement is not just opposition to revisionism, but the need to know how to fight revisionism. While making a sharp and explicit demarcation between themselves and the revisionists, Marxist-Leninists must avoid sectarianism and sectarian formulations which serve to isolate Marxist-Leninists from honest communists who have not yet seen through Khrushchevite revisionism which still reigns in many communist parties, including the 'Communist party of Britain' (CPB) and the 'New Communist Party' (NCP). Leaving aside any debatable points, or some leftist mistakes which I have already alluded to, the document presented below, is an important contribution to our knowledge of modern revisionism and we think is a valuable piece of anti-revisionist text.

A. Clark.

Eighty-one Communist and Workers Parties held a meeting in Moscow ten years ago. (This refers to 1971, Ed.) This meeting dealt a heavy blow to modern revisionism and marked a victory of historic significance for Marxism-Leninism. It will be recorded in history as the meeting which blocked the road and said 'halt!' to revisionism, which brought about its first major defeat, putting an end to its ascent and marking the beginning of the great polemics between the two lines and courses in the revolutionary communist movement of the world.

Instead of an international forum which, according to the Khrushchevites, should have sanctioned the course adopted by the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and further developed by them after it, the Moscow meeting was turned into an arena of stern ideological struggle between the proletarian revolutionary line represented by the Communist Party of China together with the Party of Labour of Albania, and the revisionist opportunist line represented by the Soviet leadership, which had abandoned the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and was slipping into open betrayal and great state chauvinism.

The meeting of the 81 parties took place at a very critical moment for the communist movement. After Stalin's death and, particularly, following the 20^th Congress, a retrogressive, opportunist and revisionist trend was being developed and spread which by playing on the new conditions and demagogic slogan of 'creative Marxism', was moving further and further away from the basic principles of revolutionary theory and practice. It was trampling under foot the joint stand of the Communist Parties adopted at the 1957 Moscow Meeting. This trend constituted a serious danger, for it strove to replace the class struggle with class conciliation and the revolution with bourgeois reforms, to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism.

The international communist and workers' movement was faced with a fierce counter-revolutionary attack. Its unity was in grave danger. Under those conditions no genuine, Marxist-Leninist Party, no honest communist could remain a passive onlooker. To become reconciled to this situation would have meant to fall into revisionism oneself. To have remained silent and stood aside would have meant to become an accomplice in the revisionist betrayal and sooner or later, to have fallen into opportunism oneself. Therefore it was necessary to maintain a clear-cut stand. The cup was running over and there was no alternative.

At the 1960 Moscow Conference, the Communist Party of China, the Party of Labour of Albania and many other participants, standing loyal to the teaching of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism, courageously raised their voices, exposed the revisionist splitters and defended the Marxist-Leninist unity of the international communist movement.

The principled, determined and revolutionary stand of our Party was clearly expressed in the historic speech delivered by Comrade Enver Hoxha at the Moscow Conference, which has recently been published and his now known to everyone.

In this speech Comrade Enver Hoxha raised before the representatives the problem of the differences which had risen within the ranks of the international communist movement, openly with force and with all the earnestness demanded by the occasion. In a carefully argued and convincing way he showed that the situation was extremely serious and that it was necessary to stop on the brink of disaster while it was still not too late. The urgent need to take a clear-cut and final stand was dictated especially by the fact that revisionism had infected, first and foremost, the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which was utilizing the prestige, authority and power of the Soviet Party and State to spread opportunism.

With rare communist sincerity, courage and devotion to principle, Comrade Enver Hoxha made a crushing denunciation of the revisionist line, especially of Nikita Khrushchev's opportunist viewpoints on all the most essential manifestations and on the most important problems of world developments of strategy and tactics and on the relations between the communist parties and socialist countries. On the basis of a scientific Marxist-Leninist analysis and with indisputable facts, he showed that the differences that had arisen were not the results of partial mistakes and actions of this or that person but the consequences of a whole anti-Marxist political and ideological line and orientation of the Soviet leadership. In line with Leninist teachings and tradition, he showed that, in the situation which had been created, there was no room for sentiment, that the truth should be faced no matter how bitter and painful it may be, that the general interests of the revolution and socialism should be placed above everything. 'The authority of Leninism', Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed, 'has been and continues to be decisive. It should be established in such a manner as to purge erroneous views everywhere and in a practical way. There is no other way open for us, communists. If there are things that must and should be said outright just as they are, this should be done now, at this Conference, before it is too late'.

Comrade Enver Hoxha carried his consistent and penetrating criticism through to the end, exposing the origin of the opportunist and revisionist views of the Soviet leadership. He showed that the source of the evil should be sought in the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its decisions, which the Soviet leadership tried in every way and at all costs to impose on the entire communist movement. Practice until that time had given ample proof that the line adopted by the 20^th Congress, which had been applauded by all the opportunist and reformist elements and the whole bourgeoisie and reaction as a whole, had had very harmful consequences for communism. The counter-revolution in Hungary, the bitter events in Poland, the attacks against the Soviet system, the major upsets in many communist parties and the serious differences under discussions at the Moscow meeting itself, testified to what a tortuous and endless road the communist movement was entering as a consequence of the line proclaimed by the 20^th Congress. 'We pose the question', Comrade Hoxha said, 'why have these things happened in the ranks of the international communist movement, in the ranks of our camp following the 20^th Congress? ... We should be extraordinarily concerned about such a thing', he stressed, 'and we should find the source of the disease and cure it. Certainly the disease will not be cured either by patting the renegade Tito on the back or by declaring that modern revisionism has been defeated for all time as the Soviet comrades claim'. Thus he put his finger on the sore spot.

In order to pave the way for the treacherous theses formulated at the 20^th Congress the Khrushchev group needed, in the first place, to 'shoot down', to remove from their minds Stalin and 'Stalinism' and, secondly to camouflage their own revisionist activity under the slogan of 'creative Marxism'. To do this they had proclaimed that the main danger was 'dogmatism and sectarianism' while modern revisionism was something allegedly overcome, exposed and defeated.

In order to fight Stalin and 'Stalinism', the Khrushchevites trumped up the so-called fight 'against the cult of the individual and its consequences'. Under this slogan, they launched, fact, a general attack against Marxism-Leninism, against the political and ideological foundations of the Soviet Party and State.

At the 20^th Congress, Khrushchev and his associates made most monstrous slanders against Stalin, blotted out one of the most glorious periods of the history of the Soviet Union, discredited and negated the communist party, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviet socialist order. They launched a major campaign to purge revolutionary cadres and to rehabilitate enemies and renegades from communism. Under the pretext of the struggle against 'Stalinism', they interfered in a brutal way in the internal affairs of other parties in order to change their leaderships and bring to power opportunist and revisionist elements.

The slanders of the Khrushchevites against Stalin were an unexpected gift for the imperialists and reaction, a powerful weapon to combat Marxism-Leninism, socialism and, in particular, the Soviet Union itself. Great confusion, a grave situation was created and serious difficulties arose within the ranks of the communist movement.

It is the great merit of the Party of Labour of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha that, with Marxist-Leninist devotion to principle, they exposed the counter-revolutionary essence of the anti-Stalin campaign and demonstrated with many arguments that behind this campaign lay hidden a great betrayal of the revolution and socialism. On the Stalin issue, our Party was not guided or prompted only by its feelings of love and respect for Stalin as a close collaborator of Lenin and a great leader of the first socialist state and the world proletariat, but by profound considerations of principle as well. The attitude towards Stalin and his work was the attitude towards Marxism-Leninism and the historic experience of the October Revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. By defending Stalin, the Party of Labour of Albania defended Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism, it defended the revolutionary line, it defended the Soviet Union and its socialist achievements. 'Stalin's good and immortal works' Comrade Enver Hoxha said, 'must be defended by all. Whoever fails to defend them is an opportunist and a coward'.

At the Moscow Meeting our Party and all the Marxist-Leninists showed that in the campaign against Stalin, the aim of the Khrushchevites was the abandonment of the entire revolutionary heritage from Lenin and the practice of socialist construction. They expressed their great concern about the future of the Soviet Union and sounded a warning of the danger threatening the achievements of the October Revolution and the future of socialism in the land of the Soviets. They appealed to the leaders of the Party of the Soviet Union to stop at this point and turn back to the right road.

For the Soviet Union, the decade of the 60's constitutes a period of radical changes in its internal life and in its international relations. It is characterized by two important moments which mark a major retrogressive and counter-revolutionary turning point. This is the period of the complete restoration of capitalism, of Soviet society turning into a bourgeois society and the transition of the Soviet Union to an open and aggressive imperialism. The Bolshevik Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat were destroyed and the socialist construction was undermined. They have been replaced by the party of all the people and by the state of all the people, which are forms of the dictatorship of the new revisionist bourgeoisie.

The reforms carried out by Khrushchev and his followers have consolidated the bureaucratic caste and have strengthened the dominating positions of the stratum of the new revisionist bourgeoisie in the whole life of the country. The present Soviet society has assumed the typical features of a bourgeois society in all its aspects. From a base of revolution and socialism the Soviet Union has been turned into a base of counter-revolution, a capitalist and imperialist Power.

In spite of this, the Stalin issue so consistently defended by our Party and by all genuine Marxist-Leninists, continue to harass the Khrushchevite revisionists. From time to time they feel obliged to speak of a reappraisal of Stalin. This is, of course, sheer demagogy, for a correct and full reappraisal of Stalin can be done only with the final overthrow of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union. But the fact that the revisionists feel obliged to speak of this matter shows that the masses of Soviet workers, of the revolutionaries and of people, keep Stalin's ideas fresh in their minds, that the masses are becoming more and more aware of the betrayal which has gripped them by the throat. And this discontent of the masses, will certainly grow and become more and more intense, is the best guarantee that revisionism will be crushed and that the Soviet Union will return to the glorious path of Lenin and Stalin.

Under the pretext of Stalin's alleged mistakes Khrushchev and his group strove to rehabilitate Yugoslav revisionism. It is a well-known fact that the international communist movement had unanimously condemned this bourgeois and reactionary variant of opportunism, and had proved on the basis of many facts that the Yugoslav brand of revisionism was a dangerous agency of U.S. imperialism against communism and the socialist countries. But the Soviet revisionist leaders who had embarked on the road of revisionism themselves and who had many things in common with the Yugoslav revisionists, were not interested in having the principled battle against them continue, in having their reactionary substance and activity exposed. What they were after was not the fight against revisionism but against revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, not the fight against the opportunists who were replacing Marxism-Leninism with all kinds of Trotskyite and reactionary theories and theses, but against all those who remained loyal to the Leninist teachings and whom the revisionists labelled 'dogmatic' and 'sectarian'.

The Party of Labour of Albania which more than anyone else had felt the hostile activity of the Yugoslav revisionists co-ordinated with that of the U.S. imperialists o its own back, expressed its determined opinion that, in order to safeguard the unity of the socialist camp and the international communist movement, it was essential to fight and expose modern revisionism through to the end.

In his speech at the Moscow Meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha made a profound analysis of the ideological content and political activity of the Yugoslav revisionists. Contrary to Khrushchev's trumped up charges, he emphasized that Stalin had not been mistaken but had been absolutely correct in his assessment of the Yugoslav revisionists. And citing a host of facts, he showed that they constituted a major threat to the cause of communism. Comrade Enver Hoxha severely condemned the stand of the Soviet leaders, who were systematically striving to rehabilitate Yugoslav revisionism and, backed by many facts, he demonstrated the ideological and political affinity which existed between them. He stressed that revisionism, therefore, was not a local phenomenon confined to Yugoslavia alone, but was being spread in an alarming fashion to other parties as well. This made it more than essential that the fight against revisionism should raised to a new and higher level, that revisionism should be considered as the principle danger to the international communist movement. The approval of this thesis by the Moscow Conference was a heavy blow to the revisionist line.

Using the example of Yugoslavia, Comrade Enver Hoxha gave a warning of where the modern revisionists who were adopting the course of alienating themselves from the principles of Marxism-Leninism would lead. Life has completely confirmed and continues daily to confirm, this correct conclusion of our Party. The chaotic and insecure situation which can be observed in various revisionist countries, the confusion, disintegration, and innumerable difficulties which accompany their course, are a reflection of, and often, identical with, the ever more acute situation and difficulties apparent in Yugoslavia.

II

In his speech at the Moscow Meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha refuted the theoretical formulations of the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and dealt a crushing blow at the practical stand of the Soviet leadership on the cardinal issues such as the stand toward imperialism, towards war and peace, towards peaceful coexistence, toward the peaceful road, and so on, pointing out, at the same time, what the Marxist-Leninist stand should be on these issues.

With Khrushchev's advent to power, the Soviet leadership pursued a policy advantageous to imperialism and to the detriment of peoples and socialism in international problems. The revisionists were giving up the struggle against imperialism and were making it many unprincipled concessions and compromises. They prettified imperialism, preaching that present day imperialism had allegedly changed its aggressive nature that it could disarm and give up war. On the other hand, falling victim to the atomic blackmail of the imperialists and their propaganda of the horrors of war, they began to carry out the policy of retreat and capitulation on all fronts and they demanded that all peoples turn from class and revolutionary struggle and submit to imperialist aggression.

Comrade Enver Hoxha upheld the Marxist-Leninist view that 'imperialism, and first and foremost, U.S. imperialism, had changed neither its skin, its hair nor its nature. It is aggressive and will be aggressive if even a single tooth is left on its head'. With many facts he proved that, far from giving up war, imperialism is making all-round preparations for war. 'Whoever fails to see this', Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out, 'is blind. Whoever sees it but covers it up, is a traitor in the service of imperialism'.

Comrade Enver Hoxha raised this problem in a principled Marxist-Leninist way. Naturally, war is not inevitable and unavoidable, but as long as imperialism exists, there will be the danger of war. There can be no absolute guarantee that there will be no world war, Comrade Enver Hoxha added, until socialism has triumphed throughout the world or in most of the countries of the world. The important thing is that no illusions should be entertained about imperialism and, when it threatens war the peoples should be fully prepared both economically and politically, as well as militarily, to cope with all eventualities and to fight it tooth and nail. He exposed the fear and panic that had gripped the revisionists and pointed out that the people are indomitable, no army and no weapon can change the laws of history and prevent the triumph of the revolutions. When the people are conscious about the war they are waging, when they are organised and united against imperialism and its tools, they are completely able to contain the aggressors, to defend the cause of peace and their freedom and independence, to inflict irreparable defeat on imperialism.

The ten years which have elapsed since the Moscow Meeting have demonstrated all the falsity of the revisionist views on imperialism and the correct assessment and stand of the Marxist-Leninists towards it. During this period, not only have the acts of aggression of U.S. imperialism not been reduced, but they have been further increased U.S. imperialism launched its aggressive war on the Vietnamese people, interfered in the Congo, strangled the revolution in the Dominican Republic, sparked off the war in the Middle East, extended its aggression to Laos and Cambodia, and so on and so forth. Far from disarming, its armaments have exceeded all bounds, its military bases have been further extended through the world. Everywhere it brandishes its weapons threatens the people with war in order to strangle the revolution and suppress the people's struggle for national liberation. This has confirmed what the Marxist-Leninists said at the Moscow Meeting that the capitulationist policy and stand of the revisionists which, far from leading to a 'world without war' and to 'eternal peace', encouraged the imperialists to extend and intensify their aggressiveness. But in spite of their attempts, the imperialists have been unable to suppress the revolutionary and liberation struggles of the people. They are breaking out with ever greater fury and are shaking the rotten capitalist and imperialist system to its very foundations.

One of the issues around which a sharp struggle took place at the Moscow Meeting was that of how peaceful co-existence should be interpreted and carried out. Distorting the Leninist concept of peaceful co-existence, the Khrushchevites interpreted it as a dying out of the class struggle on a national and international level. This was an anti-Marxist stand which covered up the basic contradictions of the world, negated the revolution, disarmed the people and served as a mask to justify the affinity and union of the revisionists with imperialism.

The Soviet leadership had proclaimed peaceful co-existence as the general line of its foreign policy and wanted to impose it on all, allegedly as the only way to the liberation of the peoples, to the triumph of the revolution, to the building of socialism and to securing peace. According to them, the working class and the people should establish peaceful co-existence with their oppressors and aggressors, they should give up their revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle. In practice, this constituted a reactionary and counter-revolutionary platform in favour of imperialism.

The Party of Labour of Albania defended its correct Marxist-Leninist view that the liberation of peoples and the triumph of socialism are not fruits of peaceful co-existence or of peaceful competition, as the modern revisionist preached, but of bitter class struggle, of liberation and proletarian revolutions. The pursuance of the policy of peaceful co-existence should be extended only to State relations with the capitalist countries, without interrupting for one moment the political and the ideological struggle against imperialism, while giving all aid and support to the liberation and revolutionary struggle of the peoples of the world. Peaceful co-existence is only one aspect of the foreign policy of the socialist countries and not at all the general line of this policy as N. Khrushchev claimed. The fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the socialist States is proletarian internationalism.

'Peaceful co-existence between two contradictory systems' Comrade Hoxha pointed out, 'doesn't imply that we should give up the class struggle as the modern revisionists claim. On the contrary, the class struggle should continue, the political and ideological struggle against imperialism, against bourgeois and revisionist ideology should be constantly intensified. While consistently striving to establish Leninist peaceful co-existence, making no concessions of principle whatsoever to imperialism, the class struggle in the capitalist countries, as well as the national-liberation movement in colonial and dependent countries should be further developed'.

Ever since that time, the Soviet revisionists, proceeding from their erroneous, anti-Marxist concepts about peaceful co-existence, from their narrow nationalist interests and their desire to draw nearer to the imperialists, have sacrificed the most vital interests of the people and of the socialist countries. Such, for instance, was the flagrant case of Khrushchev's bargaining with Sophocles Venizelos at the expense of Albania. Now, the revisionist leaders have made this stand their normal course. To avoid falling out with the Americans, they sacrifice the interests of the Cuban people during the Caribbean events; in order to draw closer to Bonn, they are putting the German Democratic Republic up for auction; in order to receive credits from Japan, they trample underfoot the interests of the Korean people, without mentioning their unprecedented treachery towards the Vietnamese people and Arab countries.

Behind the revisionists' slogan of peaceful co-existence is hidden their ideological and political reconciliation with the enemies of the revolution and socialism. Today, this reconciliation has reached a point where U.S. imperialism, the greatest enemy of communism and the revolution, has become the best ally and collaborator of the Soviet Union. The crowning

Achievement of Khrushchevite co-existence is the Soviet - U. S. alliance, the greatest counterrevolutionary alliance that history has ever recorded.

Another brutal distortion of Leninism and historical experience, was the so-called peaceful road, which the revisionists presented as a major discovery of the 20^th Congress and as the general strategic line for the transition to socialism.

Making great play about the change of the ratio of forces on the international arena following the Second World War, the Khrushchevite revisionists upheld the view that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the revolution by violence, the smashing of the bourgeoisie state apparatus and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have become outdated. Now, under new conditions, it has become possible, according to them, to pass to socialism through reforms, through winning the majority in the bourgeois parliament, through gradual structural changes of the capitalist State, and so on. Thus, the revisionists have revived and dressed up in a new garb the theories of the revisionist chiefs of the Second International and had taken over the slogans of present day social-democracy.

The discussions about the problems at the Moscow Meeting were not of an academic nature. Acceptance or non Acceptance of revolution by violence, of the need to smash the old State machinery and to replace the bourgeois dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat has always been the line of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and every kind of opportunism and revisionism. To have come to terms with the revisionist thesis of the peaceful road would have meant to slide headlong into reformism and complete rejection of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to Leninist principles was vital for the communist movement.

Standing firm on these principles, Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed that 'no people, no proletariat and no communist and workers' party have ever taken power without bloodshed and without violence'. It has never happened and it will never happen, that the dominating and exploiting classes have given up power or have given the workers freedom and justice of their own free will. On the contrary, history, even that of our own days, has proved that whenever they see that their privileges and power are at stake, they are the first to use violence, to kindle civil war, to oppress the working masses by the force of arms. Therefore, the general line of the transition to socialism is revolution by violence for which you must be well prepared in an all-round way. Otherwise, as Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasized: 'the bourgeoisie will allow you to sing psalms but them it deals you a fascist blow to the head and crushes you, because you have not trained the necessary cadres to attack, nor done illegal work, you have not prepared a place where you can be protected and still work, nor the means with which to fight. We must forestall this tragic eventuality'. The events, which took place later in Indonesia, proved to the letter the correctness of this warning.

Time has shown that those communist parties which succumbed to the Soviet leadership and adopted the course of the 'peaceful road' degenerated entirely into reformist parties of the social-democratic type, turning into political fractions of the bourgeoisie, into 'parties of order' for the defence of the capitalist order. By renouncing the revolution, these parties crossed over to the counter-revolutionary camp. They smother the revolutionary spirit of the working class, try to poison the consciousness of the labouring masses with bourgeois ideology and, while supporting the bourgeoisie within their own country, in the international arena they support imperialism and social imperialism, oppose the revolutionary and liberation struggle of the people.

III

Today, when one reads Comrade Enver Hoxha's speech delivered at the Moscow Meeting, one sees running through it like a red thread, the great anxiety and concern of the Party of Labour of Albania about the fate of the unity of the communist parties and socialist countries which had been gravely undermined by the divisive activity of the Khrushchevite revisionists. Our Party stressed that the departure of the revisionists from Marxism-Leninism had led them to the brutal violation of all the norms and principles which govern relations between communist parties and socialist States. The examples of interference, pressure and threats by the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union towards other parties, which Comrade Enver Hoxha cited in this speech in Moscow, were truly disturbing.

Proceeding from their national egotism and great State chauvinism, the revisionist leaders interfered unscrupulously into the internal affairs of the socialist countries, violated their national sovereignty, carried out subversive acts and sought by any means to establish their control in all fields of life. Through imposed agreements and under the slogans of 'the international division of labour' of 'specialization and co-operation', of 'economic integration', and so on, they strove to turn the socialist countries into appendages of the economy of the Soviet Union, hindering the industrialization of these countries, the creation of a developed, all-round economy, with the aim of keeping them permanently hitched to their revisionist chariot.

In their relations with the communist parties, the Soviet Khrushchevites persisted in practising patriarchal methods, took dictatorial decisions and demand that they must be carried out blindly by everyone. More and more frequently they faced the other parties with accomplished facts on many important issues of common interest and sought to turn these parties into instruments of their revisionist foreign policy and of their diplomatic gambles.

All this indicated that the Soviet leaders would stop at nothing to impose their line on other and to establish their own hegemony and domination over the socialist countries and on the international communist movement. They had become the greatest splitters of the socialist camp and of communism.

While presenting the state of relations between Albanian and the Soviet leaders, the delegations of the Party of Labour of Albania made it clear that the differences which had arisen had to do not only with two parties and countries. The behaviour of the Khrushchevites towards the Party of Labour of Albania was the expression of the general line and practice they pursued towards all those who defended Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism.

From an analysis of the events of the Bucharest Meeting and of those which took place later between the Soviet leaders and the Communist Party of China and our Party, Comrade Enver Hoxha arrived at the correct conclusion, that behind the anti-Marxist methods and deeds of the Soviet leaders lay their great state chauvinism, their attempts to subjugate and direct all the others according to their whims.

While severely criticizing the situation created, for which the Soviet leaders were to blame, Comrade Enver Hoxha defended the Marxist-Leninist principles governing relations between socialist States. He stressed that in the communist movement there should be no big and small parties, parties to direct and parties to carry out. All the vanguard detachments of the working class are equal and independent. They formulate their own political line. On the basis of the teaching of Marxism-Leninism, of the conditions under which they act their historical experience, they bear full responsibility before their own people and international communism. Far from excluding fraternal collaboration, co-ordination of activities, joint elaboration of strategy and attitudes towards the most important issues, especially, those relating to the struggle against the common enemy, this makes them more essential. It goes without saying that there may arise misunderstandings and disagreements on this or that problem among our Parties. But these cannot and should not be solved by the method of dictate, pressure, interference in internal affairs, etc., as the Soviet revisionist leaders have done. The only correct way is through constructive criticism in a comradely communist, internationalist and high communist morality by achieving unity through consultation.

These unshakeable principles are the foundation of the relations among socialist countries as well. By extending the ideological differences even to the State relations, the Soviet leadership had trampled underfoot the principle of friendship, fraternal collaboration and mutual aid. In his speech, Comrade Enver Hoxha openly condemned the great state chauvinist tendencies and practices of the group of Soviet leaders. With special emphasis he warned against the tendency of the joint international organisations of the socialist countries, like the Warsaw Treaty and the Mutual Economic Aid Committee, to deviate from their real aims and put themselves in the service of the policy of the Soviet leaders for the subjection and domination of the member countries.

The transformation of the nature of Soviet society, the re-establishment of capitalism, could not but lead to the return to the great State chauvinism and old expansionist and hegemonist policy of Russian Czarism. History has proved that no capitalism and even less that of a big State, can ever exist without attempting to exploit other, beside their own people, without attempting to dominate other countries and the whole world. It demands new places, other seas and continents to seize in its predatory grip.

It was not by chance that the theory of limited sovereignty emerged. It is a concentrated expression of the hegemonistic and expansionist bourgeois ideology, a manifestation of the juridical concepts of Empire and of the new imperialist policy from the positions of strength. The occupation of Czechoslovakia was the most brutal expression of this policy. But that was not the only one. Today in practice even the other revisionist countries bound to the Soviet Union are under Soviet military not to mention political and economic occupation.

Today, everyone can see how the Soviet foreign policy has degenerated. The Warsaw Treaty and the Council of Mutual Economic Aid have been transformed into simple instruments of the hegemonistic, aggressive and colonialist policy of the Soviet social imperialists. In the name of these agreements, they exploit other countries and hold them under tight rein and, when these countries show signs of movement, they event resort to guns and tanks.

In recent years the colonialist and neo-colonialist tendencies of the Soviet foreign policy have emerged more clearly into the light of day. The penetration of the Soviet revisionists in the Middle East, their presence in the Mediterranean and Indian waters, their emergence in Latin American market, etc., all bear the stamp of this policy. Like the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet revisionists have become the greatest dealers in arms, the instigators of counter-revolutionary plots and fomenters of conflicts between the nations.

In its struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism, the People's Republic of Albania found itself on the same barricade with the glorious Communist Party of China. Their joint struggle, the unity between them, were by no means accidental. They were founded on loyalty to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, determination to defend to the end the revolutionary cause of the working class and the peoples of the world. The Bucharest and Moscow meetings strengthened and tempered that collaboration and that militant unity between our two Parties, which later became a decisive factor in the struggle against the revisionist betrayal. Our Party has highly appraised and will always highly appraise the great historic role of the Communist Party of China, its colossal contribution to the defence of Marxism-Leninism. Through the centuries the working class, the revolutionaries and peoples of the whole world will recall and will respect the heroic and glorious struggle of the Communist Party of China, with the outstanding Marxist-Leninist, Comrade Mao Tse-Tung at the head, against modern revisionism.

Regarding the Communist Party of China as a resolute and courageous fighter in defence of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, in Moscow our Party exposed the plot of the Bucharest meeting hatched up by Nikita Khrushchev. It defended the Communist Party of China which had risen and was offering open resistance to the revisionist course.

Even today, as Comrade Enver Hoxha has declared, our Party holds the view that 'it is an important internationalist duty of all the revolutionaries of the world to stand by and support the Communist Party of China', that 'steel-like Marxist-Leninist solidarity with China is decisive for the fate of the revolution and the liberation of peoples'.

* * *

Comrade Enver Hoxha's speech at the Moscow Meeting was a brilliant example of a correct, principled and revolutionary stand, of lofty communist devotion to principle, of a genuine internationalist and patriotic stand. He defended Marxism-Leninism against revisionist betrayals; he defended proletarian internationalism against bourgeois nationalism and great State chauvinism, the unity of the socialist camp and the international communist movement against the splitting activity of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the revolution against reformism; he defended the freedom and independence of our Fatherland, and the achievements of socialism in Albania, against the brutal intervention, pressure and undermining activities of the Soviet leadership.

AT that time, there were many who accused our Party claiming that its attitude was dictated by narrow nationalist sentiments. This accusation was a testimony to the revisionists' lack of real arguments. The interference of the Soviet leaders in the internal affairs of our Party and our country was preposterous. Through their hostile activity, they hampered the normal development of our economy, they damaged the high interests of Albania in the international arena. Under these conditions, the Albanian communists, would not be called communists if they had failed to resolutely defend to the end the interests of the people and of their socialist Fatherland. We declared war on Khrushchevite revisionism with the full conviction that we were defending, not only the national interests of our country and socialism in Albania, but also the interests of revolution and international communism. This was an expression of the lofty internationalist spirit of the Party of Labour of Albania.

In order to shake us from our clear cut internationalist stand and to divert us from our revolutionary courage, the Soviet leaders became very 'generous' in offering us all kinds of aid, in declaring that they were very ready to correct some of their mistakes in our inter-state relations, etc. Our Party stood firm on its consistent Marxist-Leninist line. It was on this gigantic struggle fully aware that it was fighting in defence of a great cause of principle, against the mortal danger which threatened communism. In this struggle the great ideological clarity of our Party, which, though small and relatively young, knew how to detect the revisionist betrayal right from the start and to take a correct revolutionary stand towards it, was expressed again.

Demonstrated here with special force, was the revolutionary courage of our Party of Labour, which, regardless of the authority and power of the Soviet Union and its party at the time, despite the grave reprisals it might have to suffer from them, courageously rose and publicly exposed the treacherous line of the modern revisionists. The boldness and courage of the Party of Labour of Albania were such as to make certain persons describe its stand as adventurist. Now it has already been proved that this stand of the Party of Labour of Albania was the only correct one. Its determination to have its say openly, sprang from its sense of great responsibility for the fate of socialism in the world and in Albania and from its unshakeable confidence in the justice of the cause it was defending.

While concentrating its fire against the Khrushchevite revisionist leadership, the Party of Labour of Albania has never identified the latter with the Soviet people and the Soviet Union. The accusations of anti-Sovietism which they made against us were and are in flagrant contradiction to historical truth and reality. Our love for the Soviet Union was great and sincere. We loved the Soviet people as the first people in the world to carry out the proletarian and inaugurate the epoch of socialism, who established the dictatorship of the proletariat and built a new socialist society. We loved the Soviet Union because it was the base of the world revolution and a powerful supporter of the national-liberation movement, because it was the standard bearer of the struggle against imperialism in defence of peace, democracy and social progress. Through its heroic struggle the Soviet Union crushed Hitlerite Germany, saved the world from the nazi plague, and rendered a decisive contribution to the liberation of peoples, our people included. Our stern criticism of the line of the Soviet leadership is inseparable from these pure and sincere sentiments of friendship and love of our people for the Soviet Union which our Party had cultivated and implanted deep in the hearts of the communists and of the Albanian people as a whole. We are defending the great and glorious achievements of the Soviet people which Khrushchev and Co. were trampling underfoot, we were defending the prestige, honour and authority, which the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, founded by the great Lenin, had rightly enjoyed up to that time.

Hence, it was not we, Albanians, who were anti-Soviet, but the Soviet revisionist leaders themselves and all those who sided with them in the course of treason, in their course of undermining the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in the Soviet Union.

IV

The stand of the Party of Labour of Albania and of the Communist Party of China at the Moscow Meeting defeated the schemes of the revisionists. Enraged and terrified at having been exposed and taking their cue from Nikita Khrushchev, they flung themselves like a pack of wolves on our Party and country. They acted in the same way against China.

Now, all are acquainted with the stages of the struggle which was sparked off at the Moscow Meeting. The revisionists launched a fierce struggle on all fronts and with all means against socialist Albania. They sought to sabotage the socialist construction in our country, to isolate Albania politically in the international arena, to undermine the leadership of the Party of Labour of Albania from within, to sow discord among the ranks of our Party and our people. They uttered monstrous slanders against the Party of Labour of Albania and claimed that it would capitulate and fall into the lap of the imperialists. In this too they judged and acted as anti-Marxist. Socialist Albania not only stood like a granite rock and successfully withstood their onslaught, but it forged ahead along its revolutionary road thus showing invincible strength of its people and Party, their steel-like unity, the unconquerable force of victorious Marxist-Leninism and socialism.

In fact, socialism was undermined in the Soviet Union and in the other countries where revisionists hold sway. Not we but they have become politically isolated from their own people and the revolutionary peoples of the world; not we but they have joined hand with the imperialists. It was they not we who were smashed. Thanks to the principled and courageous struggle of the Party of the Party of Labour of Albania, the Communist Party of China and the other Marxist-Leninist parties and forces, the mask was torn from the revisionists exposing them as traitors to Marxism-Leninism and enemies of the peoples and socialism.

An inevitable consequence of the fight against revisionism was the process of differentiation in the communist movement, the creation of new Marxist-Leninist groups, organisations and parties, which represent the most conscious and revolutionary section of the proletariat. This further major success of Marxism-Leninism over modern revisionism.

The new Marxist-Leninist movement took in its hand and raised aloft the banner of Marxism-Leninism which the revisionist parties had sullied and rejected. It has overcome and is overcoming with success and difficulties of growing up and is forging ahead non-stop along the road of consolidation and is solving correctly a range of important ideological, political and organisational problems of the strategy and tactics, which life and revolutionary struggle have brought and are continually bringing to the fore. The new Marxist-Leninist parties are fighting and resolutely rooting out all sorts of revisionist influences in all fields - ideological and political - in the forms of organization of struggle, in their methods and style of work. Day in, day out, they are forging the true features of the proletarian party of the new type, they are extending and consolidating their national and international Marxist-Leninist unity.

Now, following the degeneration of a number of communist parties into revisionist parties, the working class and the masses of the people in different countries have, once again, a banner of struggle, clear objectives and correct and loyal leadership in their great class battles to overthrow capitalism and imperialism. Every passing day, the masses are becoming more and more convinced that it is not the misleading sermons of the revisionists, which are armed at quelling or smothering any genuine revolutionary movement of action, but the line of the Marxist-Leninist party which shows them the right road to social and national liberation.

Ten years after the Moscow Meeting, the situation in the revisionist camp is deplorable. Far from being able to go down in history as Marxist-Leninists and to establish their sway in the communist movement, today the Soviet revisionist are incapable of keeping their grip on the reins and subduing even their closest allies, the other revisionist cliques. The more intense the fight of Marxism-Leninism against revisionism becomes, the more the revisionist disintegrate, degenerate and the nearer they come to their final defeat.

The ever growing contradiction and splits in the revisionist ranks, on both the national and international scale, as well as within the various revisionist parties, can no longer be covered up. The so-called 'unity', about which the Soviet revisionists raise such a great hue and cry is rotten, formal and false. In the revisionist countries it is maintained only from fear of Soviet bayonets, whereas in the revisionist parties in the capitalist countries, the discords are more obvious. There, the revisionists are divided into pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet cliques. The erstwhile control of the Soviet ruling clique has suffered heavy and irreparable blows.

Right from the beginning, our Party said, and life has proved, that from opportunism in policy and ideology it is only one step to going over to the camp of armed counter-revolution. The leaders of the Soviet Union quickly took this step. 'The re-established capitalist system' Comrade Enver Hoxha has pointed out, 'can not fail to impose its barbarous laws, not only on the internal life of the country but also on the filed of foreign policy. Foreign aggression has always corresponded to internal fascistization.

The emergence of the new Soviet revisionist imperialism, which already aspires not only to exercise its hegemony over the international worker and communist movement, but also to establish its political and military domination over the whole world, has created a new situation and, consequently, has set new tasks before the forces and peoples who are fighting for national liberation and social emancipation. With the transition of the Soviet Union to social-imperialism, modern revisionism is no longer a merely an ideological trend within the communist movement, as it was at the end of the 50's, but a great capitalist and imperialist State power.

Today, the weight and influence of the Soviet Union which heads modern revisionism, is not exercised so much in the ideological field, but through its economic and, for the most party, its military State power. When some one speaks today of 'the hand of Moscow' he does not allude to its revolutionary inspiration or internationalist aid, but to imperialist intrigues, the roubles of Brezhnev and Kosygin or the gunboats of Gretchko and Jakubovski. And the contradictions among the revisionist cliques in different countries should be looked for, not so much in the field of ideology, although they are often clothed in that garb, but, first and foremost, in the field of State relations which every country or group maintains with the Soviet Union.

Under such conditions, the character of the fight against Khrushchevite revisionism cannot fail to be changed also in conformity with the changes it has made and the aspect it has assumed. The ideological struggle against it should be intensified and carried through to the end, to its complete destruction. But today this would not be enough. Now the question is to fight Khrushchevite modern revisionism not only on the ideological field but also as a capitalist and imperialist power. For the Marxist-Leninists and genuine revolutionaries there can no more be peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union than there can be with imperialism of the United States of America. 'By betraying Marxism-Leninism', Comrade Enver Hoxha has said, 'the Khrushchevite modern revisionists of the Soviet Union have set the Soviet Union, its great prestige won thanks to the heroism of the Soviet people, and its economic and military power, against the liberation of the peoples. From a base of revolution, they have turned the Soviet Union into a supporter of world capitalism. Therefore, to support these traitors is to betray the revolution and the peoples.

Today, when the Khrushchevite revisionism has gone over to social-imperialism, the struggle for true international peace and security, the struggle for the liberation of the peoples and the triumph of the revolution, the struggle for the triumph and defence of socialism, must no longer be directed only against U.S. imperialism, but also against the new Soviet imperialism as well. The source of all evils is imperialism as a whole, as a system, its aggressive policy. And an integral part of this system today is the new Soviet revisionist imperialism which has already assumed all the features of classic imperialism. The struggle on two fronts which is gradually blending into a single one, is an objective necessity imposed by reality. No revolutionary force can stand aside for, otherwise, the consequences would be catastrophic for it.

Faced with major internal and external difficulties, the Soviet revisionists are trying to manoeuvre. Just as they keep calling for 'cessation of the polemics' with the Marxist-Leninists now, they are calling for the establishment of peaceful co-existence and for relations of a State level and so on. It is not hard to understand what their manoeuvre is aimed at. If, in the first place, they wish to avoid further exposure, in the second, they want to paralyse and neutralise the principal opponents of their struggle, to extinguish the revolution and the national liberation wars.

In order to win over as many forces as possible, and, especially, to divert the attention of the world public opinion from their hegemonist schemes, the Soviet revisionists are trying to present their contradictions with the United States as a contradiction between a socialist country and an imperialist one. The 'anti-imperialist' pose of the revisionists is bluff from top to bottom. The actual contradictions between the Soviet Union and the USA are not contradictions between a socialist country and an imperialist one, but between two imperialist Powers over the sharing of the domination of the world.

Our Party has clearly expressed its stand regarding these manoeuvres of the revisionists. They hold no water with us. Just as we are not scared by armed threats, neither are we deceived by demagogy with the olive branch. We will fight revisionism through to the end, to its complete political and ideological collapse, to the ultimate triumph of socialism and communism.

* * *

Ten years after the meeting of the communist and workers' parties in Moscow the great conclusion that our Party had drawn as far back as at that Conference, that 'the modern revisionists are nothing but splitters of the communist movement and of the socialist camp, the loyal servitors of imperialism, sworn enemies of socialism and the working class' has been completely vindicated.

One important lesson we draw from our Party's fight at the Moscow Meeting is that differences of principles should not be hushed up. The only correct policy is that based on principles. The fight against revisionism is a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between socialism and capitalism and, as such, it should be carried through to the end.

Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic speech at the Moscow meeting armed the communists and the whole Albanian people with a sound theoretical basis and with a clear-cut program of struggle against revisionism. In Comrade Enver Hoxha's words they found the courage, determination and revolutionary inspiration to stand unyielding before the frenzied attacks of the Soviet revisionists and their allies. They saw embodied in them the best features of our Party forged during the whole of its glorious revolutionary course. It is because our policy was based on such correct Marxist-Leninist line that we were able to stand heroically, to fight and triumph over the revisionists.

When Khrushchevite revisionism emerged and, especially, when it usurped power in the Soviet Union and in certain other socialist countries, the bourgeoisie and world reaction as a whole rubbed their hands with joy and prophesied the end of the revolution of socialism and of Marxism-Leninism. But they were soon disillusioned.

Far from failing, Marxism-Leninism was raised to a new and higher level in battle with revisionist betrayal. It illuminates and will continue to illuminate the road of revolution for the peoples. Socialism develops and marches ahead with sure steps, being daily enriched with new historical experiences, in China, in Albania, and in other countries. The flames of the revolution are spreading furiously in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in all continents. Neither armed aggression nor revisionist deception have been or will ever be able to extinguish them. Its triumphant advance is unceasing.

TIRANA, 1971