Russia Attacks Liberalism

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 15

Russia Attacks Liberalism

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) MOSCOW, April 22. The Soviet press has been voicing sharp opposition to “liberal” and “nationalist” elements in other Communist countries seeking to minimise the absolute authority of the Communist Party or placing national above international interests, United Press International reports. Both “Pravda” and “Izvestia,” the country’s most authoritative mass circulation newspapers, this week-end strongly criticised the Chinese by name and implied similar displeasure with liberal reformist trends in Ru-

mania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Only China was named specifically. “Only the Communist Party can work out and wage the correct policies leading our people towards one goal,” “Izvestia” said in connection with the forthcoming anniversary celebrations of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. With the upheavals in Czechoslovakia obviously in mind, the Government paper said, “Lenin decisively rebuffed all sorts of demagogy seeking to undermine the leading role of the party by setting up against it the State organisations, the trade unions or other public institutions.” The article reaffirmed the unmistakable decision of the Communist Party Central Committee’s plenary session last week which resolved iron

discipline, unquestioned supremacy of the party and irreconciliable antagonism to Western liberal ideology. No sooner was the plenary session over than all the highest leaders and officials of the Communist Party took to the road to meet with party “activists” all over the country. They reported on the lessons the General Secretary, Mr L. Brezhnev, brought back from the recent Communist summits in Sofia and Dresden.

“Iron discipline is necessary not only during the struggle for establishing working class power . . . but also during the period of Communist construction,” “Izvestia” said, with Czechoslovak demands for reducing the party power in view. Cold water was poured on dissident voices of “those class enemies screaming for liberalisation of politics, for freedom and democracy.” “Those are the voices,” according to “Izvestia,” of “the anti-Socialist, counter-revolu-tionary elements counting on the liquidation of socialism.” The Soviet Union, the most powerful and erstwhile leader of the one-time monolithic Communist bloc, is equally opposed to what “Pravda” calls “revisionist attempts to distort Marxist-Leninist teachings” as to “the anti-Leninist nationalist line of the Mao Tse-tung group.” Rumania is hardly mentioned in the Soviet press these days. For many practical purposes that country has

been written off as a regular member of the Eastern Communist Bloc.

But “Pravda” was able to obtain the full support of Hungarian party leader, Mr Janos Kadar, and the Hungarian propaganada head, Mr Istvansirmai, for these points: Solidarity of t>e Warsaw Pact alliance and the Comecon, the Communist common market Rejection of the attempts to set up the intellectuals or the peasantry as leaders of the revolution rather than the working class leadership which the organisers of the 1956 Hungarian revolt sought

Repudiation of the doctrine of supremacy of national over international interests.