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p At the present time, there are sound objective and subjective conditions for many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America taking the socialist road. The national liberation struggle of peoples still exposed to colonial economic exploitation is bound to develop progressively into a struggle for a new socialist system.

p For all the welter of conditions and economic and social levels, the developing countries have many points in common and all are in varying degree subject to the influence of the same important factors.

p The law governing the correspondence of relations of production and the productive forces equally applies to all social development in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Similarly, these areas are affected by the law of uneven economic and political development, which makes it possible for them to develop in a non-capitalist way and for socialism to triumph in some, even though neighbouring countries may retain a bourgeois or even pre-bourgeois society.

p The social strife within the developing countries occurs in conditions in which the socialist world is exerting a progressive and steadily increasing influence on historical development. The impact of the ideology and experience of world socialism is particularly great in those African and Asian countries which are the battleground of transition to socialism.

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p A working class has formed in virtually all developing countries, with the exception of a few small African states. Success in the battle for socialism may be assured where the working class, mature in organisation and political awareness, can work in concord with the peasantry and gain its backing; or where, when the working class is very weak, socialist ideas gain the support of great numbers of intellectuals and exert an influence on the urban petty bourgeoisie who, in these historical conditions, play a paramount part in many areas.

p In most developing countries the working class is still small and callow. But, if one compares the proportion of industrial workers in the total population of Russia on the eve of the October Revolution with that of industrial workers in many developing countries on the three continents today, the differences do not appear to be so great.

p In many developing countries, especially in Latin America, an industrial proletariat has formed and, as was the case in Russia, is grouped around giant plants at which the labour force runs into many thousands. Today, more than one-third of all workers in the capitalist world engaged in the manufacturing, power and extractive industries are in the developing countries. In India alone, the largest developing country, the industrial working class is 20 million-strong. The rural proletariat also constitutes a sizable force in many countries. So, too, do the semi-proletarian masses of artisan poor and the lower sections of commercial and other employees. In the Russia of 1913, the peasantry and artisans together comprised 67 per cent of the population; this corresponds to the situation in many developing countries today.

p In 1913, tsarist Russia’s industry accounted for 42 per cent of total agricultural and industrial output. Similarly, industrial output makes up a substantial proportion of the total output in a number of young states. Undeniably, there are also countries with a lagging industry. In Ceylon, for example, in 1963 industry accounted for only 11 per cent of combined agro-industrial output, in Kenya 19 per cent, Pakistan 17 per cent, the Sudan and Tanzania 8 per cent, and Uganda 13 per cent.  [224•1  These figures illustrate the great disparity of economic levels.

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p It would be wrong to assume that the transition to socialism and success in building socialism depend exclusively on the ratio of industrial workers to the population. These depend primarily not on the degree of capitalisation or industrialisation; Marxist-Leninist theory and experience indicate that socialist revolution and socialist change occur chiefly where imperialism is at its weakest, where both objective and subjective factors are such as to force a breach in the imperialist defences.

p This is likely to happen today in developing countries where socialist ideas are strong among the working people, including working intellectuals, some of whom are capable not merely of perceiving and understanding scientific communism, but of helping to implement revolutionary socialist measures. Imperialism is at its weakest also where a country has a militant working class, however small.

p The outgrowth of socialist revolution from national liberation revolution, implementation of genuinely socialist change and successful advance to socialism along a non-capitalist way, all imply a number of essential internal conditions: class consciousness and political experience among industrial workers, their firm alliance with the peasant farmers, the working intellectuals and all progressives, their firm resolve to fight and win, and their revolutionary enthusiasm.

p In many emergent countries these internal conditions are either absent or are only just maturing, so restraining revolutionary struggle and preventing the liberation movement from taking its struggle a stage further. Where the workers are strong, politically and organisationally, and act in alliance with progressive sections of the population, they can weaken the hold of imperialism and pave the way for its complete defeat. In these circumstances, even a small wellorganised industrial proletariat which is able to establish an alliance with the peasants, comprising often between twothirds and three-quarters of the population, with the urban and rural intellectuals and a major part of the petty bourgeoisie, can lead the way in the revolutionary struggle and take the people to victory.

p Revolutionary Marxist Parties have an exceptional part to play as the organised vanguard of the working class. In some parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America there exist wellorganised, militant, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Parties 226 that spearhead the workers’ class battles. However, elsewhere, in the 1950s and 1960s such parties were either non-existent or still too feeble to make any effective political and ideological headway. These young parties were yet to exert a political and organisational influence on the masses. Yet, in some countries, where the Parties are forced to operate illegally, their membership is small, but their ideological influence is not at all commensurate with nominal membership. The impact of revolutionary socialist ideas that lead mankind along the road of progress, and reject all that is obsolete, decaying, the vestiges of decrepit feudalism or capitalism, is especially strong because it rests on the experience of the U.S.S.R. and the entire socialist community.

p The great power of Marxism-Leninism, and the solid achievements of the Soviet Union and the other socialist states have induced progressive leaders and political organisations of intellectuals and the petty bourgeoisie in some politicallyindependent states and inspired them to include socialism as the basic plank in their platforms. Often, they go beyond lip service to socialism, which is being variously put into effect. Far-reaching socio-economic reforms have already been implemented in Burma, the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Syria, Guinea, the Congo (Brazzaville) and, more recently, Tanzania. These radical changes bear witness that the authorities there really intend to take the socialist road ot development. Their experience largely indicates that even where the productive forces are weak or are at an extremely low level, and where production relations are backward, the political superstructure in the form of state power and political party leadership can exert a substantial influence on the economic basis of society, bringing it in line with the requirements of economic and social progress.

p These countries have been variously carrying through consistent general democratic reforms, and, in some instances, taking steps towards socialism: eradicating the survivals of feudalism in agriculture, breaking up the estates and plantations of the big and middle landowners; creating inducements for co-operation of peasant farms, including production co-operation; establishing and extending a state economic sector; forming mass political parties with platforms including many points of genuine national democracy; and enhancing the role of the masses in tackling political issues 227 and participating in politics. Most of them have nationalised key sectors of the economy, sometimes virtually all foreign firms; in some, the state has taken control of big enterprises belonging to private national capital not only in the spheres of industry, but also trade, finance and transport; it has largely expropriated the big national bourgeoisie, and the compradore bourgeoisie, and curbed private capital accumulation.

p These young states are, in effect, pursuing an anti- imperialist policy in foreign relations by adhering to a policy of positive neutrality. They seek to foster friendly economic and political relations with the socialist community, which has been giving them active and substantial assistance in their struggle for economic sovereignty and progress.

p A case in point is the United Arab Republic. In 1967, the state controlled over 50 per cent of the national wealth (by contrast with 7 per cent in 1952), while the state sector’s share in gross production was 55 per cent; the state paid out about 65 per cent of the annual wage bill. In recent years, some 90 per cent of all capital investment has been going to the state sector, whereas in 1952 it attracted only 25 per cent of investment. With Soviet aid, the U.A.R. is constructing the giant Aswan Dam and hydro-electric station on the River Nile, the first phase of which is already in commission.

p In Burma, the state controls all banks and communications and all generation of electricity, more than 90 per cent of trade, 80 per cent of building, 60 per cent of the manufacturing and extractive industries, and 40 per cent of transport. The Central Committee of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party, with its declared intention to democratise the government bodies, has adopted a decision to set up Popular Workers’ and Popular Peasants’ Councils.

p At the beginning of 1967, the Tanzanian Government nationalised all banks and then carried out a number of other far-reaching economic and social measures.

p Where radical socio-economic reforms are being promulgated, it is quite common for the big and middle national bourgeoisie (where a national bourgeoisie has had time to form) to have their members in government agencies during the initial period of reform. Their influence, coupled with that of the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie and the world capitalist economy, is still variously felt today, even where 228 the national bourgeoisie has been virtually barred from the major administrative bodies. The bulk of the big and middle national bourgeoisie and landowners, with vigorous support from imperialism, have been stubbornly and fiercely resisting any essential changes leading to socialism.

p Imperialism, spearheaded by the United States, has a special hatred not merely for the socialist states, but for all those African, Asian and Latin American countries that strive towards socialism and endeavour to pursue an independent economic and foreign policy. The imperialists keep weaving their web of intrigue, provocation and subversion against these states. In Ghana, imperialist agents succeeded, in early 1966, in staging a counter-revolutionary coup and abrogating the social reforms that had been put into effect. This temporary success of the imperialist forces was facilitated by the inability of the Nkrumah Government to create a really broad and effective base among the people. The reactionaries were also helped by the preservation of many colonial ties (army instructors from imperialist powers, particularly the officer corps, which had received its military training mostly at Sandhurst). They utilised these contacts to undermine and eventually overthrow the government. They were further aided by the lack of ideological clarity and consistency both in the government’s policies and in its actions. These and other weaknesses and blunders on the part of the Ghanaian Government were exploited by agents of imperialism as they prepared and carried through their reactionary coup d’etat.

p The reactionaries seized power in Indonesia after capitalising on the grave mistakes of the Indonesian national liberation forces. As a result, a reign of terror gripped this vast Asian country for a number of years and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Communists, revolutionary workers and intellectuals, especially teachers, students and progressive peasants. Much still remains obscure in the tangle of events that led up to the scourge of the revolutionary forces in Indonesia. But one conclusion is well warranted: although imperialism and reaction have managed to inflict a very serious defeat on the Indonesian revolution, their triumph can only be temporary, for it rests on a flimsy foundation. The more blatant the concessions the colonialist agents make to the imperialists, by restoring many of their rights 229 and privileges, the more they expose themselves in I he eyes of the people. Nor arc the reactionaries capable of solving the difficult economic problems facing Indonesia. They are not strong enough to deal successfully with the Indonesian peasant issue. They are in no state to swim for long against the tide. History has already pronounced sentence on the forces of reaction, opponents of progress in Indonesia, even though just now they may be wallowing in the blood of revolutionaries and freedom fighters.

p When one looks at the situation and prospects for social change in the former colonies and dependent countries, one is immediately aware at every turn of the terrible legacy of colonialism: not only economic but also educational backwardness of the masses, rampant prejudice and deep-rooted superstition, particularly in the countryside. Not infrequently, if villagers have at all heard of socialism, they have but the haziest notions about it and what it might bring them. In such circumstances, socialist reform inevitably runs into formidable difficulties induced by indigenous conditions, as is evident in the experience of the Asian countries that have taken the socialist path. These difficulties are, of course, not insuperable; the Soviet people proved that by sweeping all obstacles from their path as they built socialism, despite the imperialist encirclement, armed intervention, the blockade and devastating wars.

p Let us note the great importance of the peasant attitude if a country is to advance along a non-capitalist road and if the national liberation revolution is to grow into a socialist one. The peasants must be roused from their passivity and narrow self-interest and brought into the organised ranks of the revolutionary army, consciously marching beneath the banner of fundamental social reform. If this can be achieved, more than half the battle for social revolution will have been won. Prevailing conditions are certain conducive to the successful accomplishment of this task in many emergent states.

p Events have increasingly shown that in the developing countries, even those with a small working class, progressively greater sections of the population and a mounting number of progressive leaders are coming to the conclusion that socialism alone can guarantee a rapid upsurge in the economy and culture, real national sovereignty and freedom. Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere made this perfectly clear in 230 a statement on August 31, 1966, when he said that socialism, with its principle of collective ownership of the means of production, is the only system that meets Tanzania’s economic aims. Socialism, he added, is the only alternative for the developing countries in their fight for economic independence.  [230•1 

p In many developing countries power has been in the hands of the big or middle national bourgeoisie during the national liberation struggle; they have variously shared it with the feudal landowners, and sometimes even with the compradore sections of the bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie, and now and then the working class, tend to exert a certain impact on policies in such states. Depending on the degree of participation in government by the landowners and compradore bourgeoisie or, on the other hand, on the extent of the influence and organisation of the proletariat and of antiimperialist sections of the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals, the policies of such states are likely to be more or less antiimperialist. To a greater or lesser extent, there is scope here for a bourgeois democratic order and these states fight, with varying resolution, for their liberation from economic colonial exploitation and dependence.

p True, the policies pursued by these states are likely to be unstable; the position of the governments themselves is sometimes highly unstable. In trying to cope with assaults from the Left and the Right, these governments are forced to manoeuvre, adapting themselves to the circumstances. Some national-bourgeois governments and parties, well aware of the immense popularity of socialist slogans and endeavouring to enhance their prestige among the people, go so far as to proclaim socialism as their ultimate goal. In practice, however, these bourgeois or landowning bourgeois parties (and their state apparatus) bend all efforts to put obstacles in the path of socialist development. Meanwhile, even if with a marked lack of enthusiasm and consistency, they attempt to secure national political independence and take some steps towards economic sovereignty, trying to weaken imperialist colonial exploitation at home.

p One of the major instruments of struggle for these goals is the state sector of the economy, which in these conditions is 231 capitalist, despite avowals to the contrary by ruling parties, which often maintain that the state sector is an articulation of socialism. The state-capitalist sector is treated with hostility by the bulk of the big national bourgeoisie, largely because it presents a threat to big business, which tries to use it for its own ends and exploit it to boost its profits.

p The state sector in the national economies is an issue in the class struggle since it is vigorously supported by the working class and all patriots. The patriotic forces are aware that the state sector enhances the country’s position in the campaign for national independence, creates a basis for planned economic growth and a more rational utilisation of resources and, consequently, for accelerating economic progress and improving living standards.

p Where corrupt compradore elements have or gain control, the state sector may be used for reactionary ends and may even become an instrument of imperialist penetration of the economy and a means of intensifying colonial exploitation. That is the state of affairs in some Latin American states and Thailand, South Korea, South Vietnam, Taiwan and elsewhere.

p The national liberation struggle against the imperialists is closely linked with the class struggle against the reactionary exploiters. In this struggle, the national bourgeoisie normally takes an anti-imperialist and anti-reactionary stand only for as long as the imperialists continue to hold commanding political heights, as long as it cannot scale these heights so as to control capitalist development and exploit the working people. Once it has done so, the national bourgeoisie will make deals with the imperialists and the class of landowners and semi-feudalists. Meanwhile, it will work, in its own interests, for greater economic independence and oppose the policy of the imperialist powers when it is designed to restore military and political supremacy in the lost colonies and semicolonies. The national bourgeoisie strives to diminish economic colonial exploitation chiefly to increase its own share of the surplus product.

p When the working class was still weak and the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Parties either did not exist or were very small, the anti-imperialist and class struggle brought to power in some countries spokesmen of the working intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie who were often greatly 232 influenced by progressive socialist ideas or were falling under their influence.

p In the more than half a century since the world’s first socialist revolution, the national liberation revolutionary movement has won many victories and advanced to a new stage, acquiring largely new content and fresh forms. At the present time, it is possible to delineate the following major trends in the national liberation struggle connected with the world socialist revolutionary process:

p 1. The fight of the peoples in independent states where power is in the hands of revolutionaries—workers, peasants and working intellectuals. Their intention is to turn the national liberation revolution into a socialist one and to take the socialist road. In such countries—the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Syria, Guinea, the Congo (Brazzaville), Tanzania and Burma—the proponents of socialist ideas have to contend both with imperialism, and its whole armoury, and with the anarchic petty-bourgeois property-owners, peasant parochialism and attempts by reactionaries to prevent the bourgeois-democratic revolution from becoming a socialist one.

p 2. The battle of the peoples in independent sovereign states to contain the military and political expansion of the imperialist powers, especially the U.S. aggression. The imperialists attack young independent states mainly through their own agents, corrupt military cliques, compradore elements, anti-national politicians and big businessmen. On occasion imperialism resorts to direct armed intervention, as in Vietnam, the Congo (Kinshasa) during the reign of the puppet Tshombe, the Dominican Republic, Cyprus and the Middle East, where the Israeli aggression was mounted against progressive governments in the Arab world. In some instances, with the aid of reactionary military coups, the imperialists have achieved temporary success, as in Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Ghana and Indonesia. The anti-imperialist struggle in these countries is frequently intertwined with the battle of progressives for radical social reform.

p 3. The struggle of sovereign African, Asian and Latin American countries for liberation from colonial economic bondage and for economic independence and progress. This campaign is at its most extensive against the dictates of the imperialist monopolies over prices, against plunder of the 233 national wealth through the export of high profits from invested capital; it is a struggle to bolster the state sector, to extend mutually advantageous economic relations with the socialist countries, to stop foreign capitalists from taking over their national resources.

p 4. The campaigns of the peoples still languishing in colonial, semi-colonial and other political dependence for their national liberation and the establishment of independent, genuinely sovereign states. These are wars being waged in Angola, Mozambique, “Portuguese” Guinea and South Vietnam. In other forms, the same ends are being sought today in Rhodesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Puerto Rico and the remaining few colonies and protectorates. The peoples of the South African Republic, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and other countries are also fighting for genuine national liberation.

p It is often impossible to make a clear-cut division between the various trends in the anti-imperialist struggle. In one and the same country, several trends of the revolutionary liberation movement are sometimes interlinked and manifest themselves simultaneously.

p African, Asian and Latin American states take the socialist road in diverse ways, because their peoples and countries are at different stages of social development. Every people has its own specific historical background, every country has its own international position.

p Lenin castigated those who insisted upon the presence of “objective economic prerequisites for socialism" before a country could take the socialist path. He maintained that a people which found itself in a desperate position, but which was faced with a revolutionary situation, could throw itself into the fight to secure the conditions for a more civilised life.

p Undoubtedly, the profound and wide-reaching crises in social development also produce a popular revolutionary creativity that is unprecedented in normal conditions. In many developing countries, the requisite conditions must first be created before they can get on with the job of building socialism. In several countries, revolutionary working people, led by their governments, have already started to create these conditions, so that they can then proceed to implement the more profound socialist reforms.

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p During and after the last war, due to the prevailing historical circumstances, the dictatorship of the proletariat in several new socialist countries took the form of people’s democracy. Together with the Soviet Union, most of these countries formed the community of socialist states and are today successfully building socialism.

p But the influence of petty-bourgeois ideas has temporarily prevailed among the leaders of the Chinese People’s Republic. The Mao group began a policy of encouraging national parochialism, rampant chauvinism, petty- bourgeois recklessness, and the personality cult, betrayal of proletarian internationalism and unity of the world communist movement, and replacement of the working class as social vanguard by a movement of pogrom-makers—the hungweiping and the tsaofan.

p The Soviet victory in the life-and-death struggle against the anti-communist racist bloc of German, Italian and Japanese imperialists paved the way not only for the successful development in China of the national liberation revolution, but also for its development into a socialist revolution. Yet, in that vast, predominantly peasant country, the internationalist proletarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism in the revolutionary movement coexisted with a strong strain of adventurist, chauvinistic and individualistic ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. This latter ideology had its roots and replenished its forces in the nationalistic and racist traditions of the Chinese ruling classes, ever endeavouring to exert their ideological influence on the revolutionary forces, and in the adventurism, individualism and hero-worship much loved by the petty bourgeoisie.

p In 1966-67, Mao Tse-tung and his supporters, backed chiefly by a part of the army command, launched, behind a smokescreen of “cultural revolution”, an attack on the Communist Party of China, the trade unions, communist youth organisations and various other revolutionary organisations of the working people. To achieve their ends, they engaged schoolchildren and unemployed juveniles whom they herded into “red guard" organisations. Many Party and workers’ organisations were destroyed and demoralised. Having seized power in Peking, the group abandoned the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, and came out against the unity of socialist and national 235 liberation revolutionary forces. By their actions, the Maoists have isolated themselves from the entire socialist and national liberation movement.

p It must be admitted that the betrayal of the cause of socialism by some of the leaders of such a vast country as China was a serious blow to the revolutionary movement throughout the world, including the anti-imperialist national liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Imperialism took heart from these developments and intensified its counter-attacks, particularly in South-East Asia and the Middle East.

p The past and present of the “cultural revolution" has had a sinister parallel in Indonesia with the decimation of the Indonesian Communist Party. In China, the hungweiping and the tsaofan, used by the army officers backing Mao Tsetung to smash the Party leadership and all workers’ organisations, have much in common with the student and youth bands that were formed and employed by Indonesian army commanders and bourgeoisie prior to the Chinese “cultural revolution" to smash the Communist Party and other antiimperialist forces. Mao and his associates have, consequently, mastered and rehearsed the methods employed by Indonesian reactionaries to exterminate the Indonesian Communist Party.

p The Pentagon’s semi-official mouthpiece, U.S. News and World Report wrote on February 20, 1967 that the U.S. officials took Mao’s side in his efforts to exterminate the moderate elements in the country. They believed that should he succeed the Soviet Union would have experienced continuous difficulties, and it added smugly that the blood bath in Red China could take on the scale of Indonesia where hundreds of thousands had been massacred.

p In its leader of January 17, 1967, The New York Times drew more or less the same conclusions. It stated with satisfaction that it was becoming more evident since August 1966 that Mao was attempting to exterminate the leading state and Party functionaries who had run China during its first 15 years, as well as the Communist Party, the Y.C.L. and trade unions. The following day, the same newspaper reported on the mutual accord reached in the autumn of 1966 on the Vietnam issue as a result of talks between the Chinese and the American ambassadors in Warsaw.

p It all points to the temporary ascendency in China, after a 236 lengthy struggle, of petty-bourgeois, anti-Leninist ideas over Marxist-Leninist proletarian ideas; this the Americans are using to further their own aggressive policies. Yet there can be no doubt that the Chinese people, led by the Chinese workers, with their fine militant and internationalist traditions, will not succumb to the policies and practices of a group of leaders who have broken with Marxism-Leninism and have dragged China down into the swamp of chauvinism. This group is incapable of coping with the domestic and foreign issues confronting the Chinese nation. It cannot last long in swimming against the tide of world revolution. History has passed its stern verdict on the reactionaries and the motley crew of deviationists who attempted to resist historical and human progress along the path of scientific socialism. It is quite ridiculous to imagine that scientific communism can be supplanted by the chanting and reiteration of the trite and obscurantist thoughts of Chairman Mao.

p Irrespective of the zigzags and ups and downs that occur in various countries and at various turns of history, on the whole the revolutionary struggle of the African, Asian and Latin American peoples will move inexorably forward. The various streams of the national liberation revolution will merge with the streams of class action by the exploited against the bourgeoisie and the landowners. In this struggle, the anti-imperialist and agrarian-peasant revolution, on the one hand, and the proletarian socialist revolution, on the other, will storm the battlements of the old world until they crumble in one country after another.

p U.S. monopoly capital is the chief enemy of the African, Asian and Latin American peoples, both those who are still fighting for their economic independence and national sovereignty, and those who are already on the way to socialism. The U.S. bourgeois oligarchy is desperately trying to prevent more nations from opting for socialism, while seeking to maintain colonial economic exploitation, depriving nations of political independence, turning them into semi-colonies, inveigling them into unequal military and political alliances designed to put a halt to the revolutionary national liberation movement.

p The Soviet Union, however, with its vast material, moral and military strength, is an insuperable obstacle in the way of the U.S. imperialism. But for the strength of the U.S.S.R., 237 but for the might ol the socialist community, the imperialists would not have hesitated about employing armed force on a wide scale and again subjecting the liberated peoples to cruel colonial bondage.

p U.S. imperialism regards the enmeshment of the developing countries in the capitalist world economy, the preservation of the capitalist mode of production and, wherever possible, even the survivals of feudalism, as a preliminary stage to the formation of a sprawling colonial system under the aegis of U.S. monopoly capital. The U.S. imperialists have, by their own actions, nailed their own propaganda myth that the capitalist world has been reformed and that the U.S.A. champions the cause of national sovereignty and democracy against colonialism. The actions of the U.S. monopoly bourgeoisie are vivid evidence of its colonialist designs. Since the end of the last war, it has several times resorted to armed force to further its aims. It has entrenched its colonial domination of South Korea and to this day maintains that domination with the aid of a 50,000-strong occupation army. In Latin America, U.S. monopoly capital is being abetted by puppet cliques, militarists and corrupt politicians who help to perpetuate the U.S. supremacy in most states. And as if to demonstrate to the whole world, especially Latin America, that U.S. imperialism has a lawful right to regard Latin America as its own preserve, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1965 passed a resolution declaring the’U.S. right to armed intervention in Latin America’s internal affairs.

p The U.S. imperialists have been maintaining their domination and launching new acts oi armed aggression by recourse to the perverse methods of setting Asians against Asians, Africans against Africans, and Latin Americans against their own countrymen.

p No matter how U.S. imperialism has tried to mask its colonial aggression in South-East Asia by pietistic assertions that it is trying to contain communism and avowals of readiness to start peace negotiations, the U.S. aggression is there for the whole world to see in all its repulsive nakedness. The invasion of Vietnam and Cambodia and the subsequent policy of genocide and atrocities perpetrated by the U.S. military during the colonial war in Vietnam, have stirred up a fresh wave of hatred against the U.S. colonialists all over the world, especially Asia, Africa and Latin America.

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p Present-day colonialism has also employed other methods in a desperate attempt to preserve and bolster its domination, to prevent or at least to curb national liberation revolutions and to stop them from becoming socialist revolutions. Thousands of experts, teachers, “Peace Corps" envoys, “missions for progress" and propagandists of every kind are being despatched to Asia, Africa and Latin America. The major capitalist states, with the U.S.A. to the fore, have opened the doors of their educational institutions to young people— chiefly with privileged backgrounds—from the developing countries. Their aim is to indoctrinate them with bourgeois ideology and to use them as tools of imperialism in their own countries.

p The U.S.A. annually admits 20,000 students to its military academies alone.  [238•1  On returning home, many of these graduates of U.S. militarism join military juntas, which ruthlessly repress their own people and barter away their national resources wholesale to the U.S. monopolies.

p U.S. imperialism is equally interested in overseas students of the natural sciences and the humanities. Spokesmen for the American National Students Association have admitted that the Central Intelligence Agency has been providing grants for students from Angola, Mozambique, the countries of South-West Africa, Rhodesia and elsewhere whose young people are studying both in the U.S.A. and Western Europe. Even the U.S. press has had to admit that the C.I.A. has been trying to turn foreign students into spies operating against their own countries.  [238•2 

p Moreover, C.I.A.-controlled government agencies in the U.S.A. have, with White House approbation, used corrupt American labour union officials to undermine the labour movement elsewhere, particularly Latin America. The C.I.A. was behind the strikes against the progressive administration of Dr. Cheddi Jagan in Guyana. After a series of subversions and at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in “welfare funds" and graft to union officials, with occasional resort to cloak-and-dagger tactics, the C.I.A. 239 succeeded in replacing Guyana’s progressive government with its own agents.  [239•1 

p U.S. imperialism has been manipulating its paid agents within student organisations and trade unions, newspapermen’s associations and academic bodies, and any other channel at its disposal, in order to shore up resistance to the national liberation movement and restore colonial dependence in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The colonialists have been trying to strengthen their positions also by means of military, economic and technical “assistance”.

p Yet, at the same time, the U.S. monopolies have been staging an extensive “man hunt" in the developing countries for every type of specialist—engineers, doctors, sociologists, geologists and architects—enticing them to the U.S.A. with the prospect of higher salaries than they receive at home. As a result, the developing countries, already suffering from a dearth of specialists, are being deprived annually of thousands of qualified men. According to official U.S. estimates, the brain drain in fiscal 1965-66 involved some 30,000 specialists who went to the U.S.A., including 9,000 from Asia, South America and Africa.  [239•2  This brain drain from the developing countries has been growing.

p In this situation, Soviet assistance to Asia, Africa and Latin America becomes even more vital. Besides affording moral support to the national liberation revolutions in their fight against imperialism, the Soviet Union has been collaborating with the young states to establish a sound national economy, to break their dependence on capitalist markets and to promote equal and mutually advantageous economic ties with the world socialist market. It has been further helping them to put through radical socio-economic changes, to take the socialist path, and to defend themselves against imperialist aggression.

p The Soviet working people have extended the hand of friendship to the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America because they consider it their internationalist duty to give them all possible assistance. The Soviet Union has concluded agreements on economic and technical collaboration with as many as 35 developing countries. The total amount 240 of Soviet credits granted to the developing countries has now topped 5,000 million rubles, of which 3,000 million rubles has gone to Asia.

p The volume of trade between the Soviet Union and the developing countries is evidence of the rapidly growing deliveries of Soviet machinery, equipment and other commodities that are badly needed by the developing countries, and of the Soviet purchase of goods on mutually advantageous terms. Between 1955 and 1965, Soviet trade with the developing countries increased more than 6-fold,  [240•1  while their share in total Soviet foreign trade with non-socialist countries improved from 25 to 38 per cent. The proportion of plant and equipment in Soviet exports to the developing countries in 1964 amounted to 48 per cent; this included 77 per cent of exports to India, 69 per cent to the United Arab Republic, 67 per cent to Guinea and 66 per cent to Afghanistan.

p With Soviet assistance, some 32 developing countries have already commissioned more than 260 enterprises and installations, while another 400 are now under construction, including 120 higher and specialised educational institutions and medical establishments. In the Arab states, in particular, 140 industrial and other installations had been commissioned by the end of 1968, and another 140 are being built. Among the projects constructed or under construction with Soviet financial and technical aid are such giants as the Bhilai Iron and Steel Works in India, the Euphrates hydropower complex in Syria, and the Aswan Dam and hydroelectric power station on the Nile. Today tens of thousands of Soviet specialists are rendering technical and other assistance abroad.

p But figures will not gauge the moral and political support given by the Soviet Union to the national liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples, and the ideological impact of the U.S.S.R. on social development in the liberated areas. The successful construction of socialism and the progress made in building a communist society have evoked the admiration of progressives everywhere. Lenin’s maxim that the Soviet Union exerts its greatest influence on the international revolution by its economic policy is gaining more evidence every year.

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p At a time when the major contradiction in the world is that between dying reactionary imperialism and the growing world of socialism, the growth of national liberation revolutions into socialist revolutions is an objective necessity. For that reason, despite imperialism’s frantic resistance, the switch to socialism of more and more countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America is inevitable.

p For all progressive humanity, the Soviet Union—the pioneer of communist construction—represents the New World; the peoples lighting for emancipation from all and every form of colonialism and exploitation strive towards that New World. The U.S.S.R. is the revolutionary vanguard of the whole world.

p Undoubtedly, the final decades of this century are sure to witness fresh triumphs of socialism throughout the world, especially Asia, Africa and Latin America. The activities of socialist forces will continue to determine the main line of historical development in the countries of these three continents, as in the rest of the world.

p The community of socialist states, the workers of the world and all truly democratic forces, are deeply interested in the early triumph of socialism in the developing countries. The more countries there are contributing to the promotion of a world economy, culture, science and technology, the faster human progress will be. At the same time, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans can more quickly overcome their backwardness and attain a high economic and cultural level, and a flourishing and happy life, if they adopt the socialist mode of production and the socialist social order. When this happens, human progress will be even more spectacular than we can imagine.

The Report given at the 24th Congress by General Secretary of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev emphasised: “The main thing is that the struggle for national liberation in many countries has in practical terms begun to grow into a struggle against exploitative relations, both feudal and capitalist."