p Not having a positive programme that could arouse the enthusiasm of the youth, the Trotskyites have been forced to keep changing the ways 88 and means of ideologically befuddling the youth. In this sphere, Trotskyism has shown itself to be highly ingenious, acting on the principle that the "aim justifies the means.”

p The emissaries of the "Fourth International" have tried every means to recruit and to involve young people for no matter how brief a time. They have used the policy of "entryism," that is, secret infiltration of various youth organizations. They have tried the tactic of setting up Trotskyite youth groups as the main means of splitting the youth movement. They have sung the praises of those who rise to the Trotskyite ideological bait. They have resorted to gross falsification of planks in the programmes of youth organizations close to the Communist parties. They have also used half-truths to justify their slanders of the Communists and members of Communist Youth Leagues, whenever they feel that a half-truth is more effective than an outright lie.

p The Trotskyites are becoming more diversified as well as more brazen and aggressive in their attempts to undermine the youth.

p At one time Trotskyites operated among the youth chiefly by pursuing their policy of " entryism." Trotskyite emissaries infiltrated various mass and other organizations, pretending to support the programmes of these organizations and saying nothing for the time being about their views. “Entryism” was said to be the only means of bolstering the positions of the "Fourth International." A decision of their 1963 International Congress said that they "have no choice but to practice ‘entryism’; that is, to participate as an integrated component in the 89 international life of the mass movement.”   [89•1  In 1969, this was expressed in clearer terms: "The sections of the ’Fourth International’ are as yet too small to lead the masses in their own name and under their own banner in a decisive struggle for power.”   [89•2 

p In their efforts to justify such underhanded tactics the Trotskyites insist that revolutionaries have always resorted to illegal methods. It is easy to disprove these statements. After all, the "Fourth International" is employing such underhanded, conspiratorial methods not to eliminate the exploiting system, but to undermine and destroy from inside mass organizations which, in the main, take an anti-imperialist stand. Nor do the Trotskyites keep changing their names to evade government or police persecution. Their reasons have nothing in common with revolutionary struggle.

p In accordance with their tactic of "entryism," the Trotskyites seek to infiltrate all kinds of organizations, ranging from political bodies to athletic clubs. A speaker at a congress of the British Trotskyite "Socialist Labour League" declared: "We must work always along the line of mass activities, dances, sports and big public demonstrations,"   [89•3 

p The Trotskyites have been especially active in political youth organizations, acting in whatever fashion is needed to engage in splitting tactics, so as to induce some members to turn to the Trotskyites, the "true revolutionaries.”

p Thus, for a long time, the Trotskyites worked in the National Students’ Union of France. Having gradually surrounded themselves with followers and "sympathizers," they tried in April 1970 to get into the leadership with a barrage of ultra-Leftist slogans. However, they were given a fitting rebuff by the Union’s Congress held at the time.

p The Trotskyites’ subversive activity in the Canadian Union of Students, to which the students of most large university towns belong, had more unpleasant consequences. Allied with other ultra-Leftist groups, notably, the Maoists and the anarchists, the Trotskyites tried to foist an adventurist policy on the Union which gave the reactionary forces a pretext to hit out at it.

p Intrigues by the Trotskyites and other “ Leftists” were one of the reasons why the West German "Socialist Students’ Union" broke up in 1971. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Paris Secretariat of the "Fourth International" tried hard to put across adventurist propositions in the FRG student movement. Secretariat representatives were smuggled into the Union, messages of greetings were sent to student conferences and Trotskyite propaganda material was widely circulated. The Union was rent by contradictions and eventually broke up. At the same time, the Trotskyites tried to get together their own "sponsoring committee to set up a revolutionary organization" in West Berlin, which also included the Maoists and various other anarchist-minded "Leftists.”   [90•1 

p The Trotskyites have also been trying to step up their activity in the anti-war youth movement, under the pretext of ultra-Leftist slogans and “concern” for “radicalizing” the struggle for peace and bringing about a "turn towards a revolutionary alternative.”

p The "Fourth International" insists that there is need to bring to the fore the task of "seizing power" and "immediately overthrowing capitalism." Such calls are objectively designed to break up the peace movement and to discourage its numerous supporters who, while fighting to avert nuclear war, do not believe there is any need to overthrow capitalism. Here and there, the Trotskyites have tried to confine the peace movement to demands for a policy of confrontation with governments and the police.

p The Trotskyites have used every channel to impose their views on young people, infiltrating international meetings of young peace supporters, student forums held in various capitalist countries and anti-war youth organizations.

p At the 1962 Youth Festival in Helsinki, the Trotskyites circulated handbills and pamphlets among the young people that were mainly, as they put it, "to explain that there can be no peace in the world except in the event of final victory of socialism in the leading capitalist countries—the USA and Great Britain"—which makes it necessary "to fight for world revolution as the only solution for the peace problem." Many delegates tore up the material without reading it. However, while admitting this was so, the leaders of the "Fourth International" oriented 92 their sections to circulating such handbills and pamphlets in the future as well.  [92•1 

p The Trotskyites also spread capitulationist views (behind their traditional "all or nothing" formula) at the 1968 Youth Festival in Sofia, but they were given a fitting a rebuff by the young people who saw through the Trotskyite statements and slogans.

p The "Fourth International" adherents have also been weaving their web of intrigue in some national anti-war youth associations.

p In the USA they managed to infiltrate the Student Mobilization Committee, one of the biggest youth organizations fighting against the US aggression in Vietnam and the recruitment of students for the "dirty war." Together with other “Leftists”—the Maoists and the anarchists— the Trotskyites have been trying to split this organization into a number of differently oriented groupings. As a result for some time now this organization has been less active since much time and effort is spent on settling internal dissention.

p The Trotskyites have made it a principle to pursue splitting activities. In the USA, for instance, they demand that special black, Mexican and other “strike” forces be set up to operate as independent groups within the peace movement.

p In Japan, the Trotskyites have tried to get the “Zengakuren” student organization to accept its insidious attitude to the questions of war and peace. Playing on the fact that many students were disposed towards the use of "violent mass 93 action" in the movement against US domination of Japan, the Trotskyites accused the leadership of the student organization of pacifism, reformism and of abandoning revolutionary methods in the struggle. As a result, they managed to get a section of the young people to break away and set up a separate Trotskyite group, thereby weakening "Zengakuren.”

p One of the main trends in Trotskyite subversive activity is the attempts to split up Communist youth organizations. The "Fourth International" is infuriated because more and more young people have been won over by Communist ideas. An all-out effort has been made to impede the growing influence of the Communist parties.

p The Trotskyites’ main aim is to win over as many young men and women as they can from these organizations and to involve them in Trotskyite activity. For many years they have sought to do so in France and Britain. And their ultrarevolutionary catchwords have induced a few score of students to withdraw from some progressive youth organizations. But, of course, the harm was done not to the organizations but to the young people themselves.

p The Trotskyites are never idle during the congresses, conferences and meetings held by Communist youth organizations. It is a busy time for them standing near entrances to the premises trying to hand out anti-Communist leaflets and other propaganda material. They call out various slogans trying to get the young people to question the way of political struggle they have chosen. They will go to any lengths to establish personal contacts with individual members of 94 youth organizations, brief though they may be.

p “Fourth International" groups try their best to prevent the establishment of new Communist youth organizations. In February 1970, the Trotskyite Young Socialist Alliance tried to break up the Congress of the Young Workers’ Liberation League in the USA. At the time the Trotskyites put out an "open letter" attacking the Communist parties and the socialist countries.

p The Trotskyite Young Socialist Guard also sought to alienate young Communists from the Party at the national conference of young Communists in Belgium in March 1970. The propaganda circulated among young people falsely asserted that revolutions are won and progress made in socialist construction without direct Communist party guidance.

p Anyone following Trotskyite activity in the youth movement is bound to feel their main purpose is to spread mistrust and hatred for the Communist parties and the youth organizations associated with them. A Trotskyite paper published in France, following a few platitudes about the need to fight imperialism, calls for action above all against the Communist party, which it claims is the main obstacle to this struggle.   [94•1  In some instances, the Trotskyites have even organized the beating up of young Communists. In the course of election campaigns the Trotskyites invariably attack progressive candidates in many countries on the ground that these men "do not reject the entire capitalist system.”

p The Trotskyites intolerance and an almost pathological hatred for everyone who does not 95 share their views goes hand in hand with demagogic and provocative assertions about their readiness to work with various Left-radical organizations. In the late 1960s, and early 1970s, the Trotskyites have assiduously been trying to play the part of “well-wishers” of these organizations.

p Exposing the true meaning of the Trotskyite statements, the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of the USA correctly stressed: "when they speak of ’unity,’ with such organizations, what they have in mind is to penetrate, disrupt and destroy them.”   [95•1 

p Indeed, the same thing happens in any Leftradical organizations where the Trotskyites rear their heads. In large, mass-scale organizations, emissaries from the "Fourth International" get small groups of their followers to initially operate as “factions” and "opposition." Then the “opposition” either withdraws from these organizations or is expelled for splitting and subversive activity.

p In small organizations the Trotskyites seek to win over a majority of the members and impose their own programme. When these moves succeed, they set themselves the aim of ousting all the young people who do not agree with them and are indignant over their behaviour. In such instances, the Trotskyites attempt to get exclusive control over such organizations. What usually happens is that such organizations, which were weak in the first place, finally fold up.

p In their subversive activity within the Left- 96 radical youth movement, the Trotskyites frequently come out with slogans borrowed from others. On several occasions (in France and the USA) they suddenly declared they favoured a political settlement of the Vietnam problem, although this runs counter to their platform. The Trotskyites did so to avoid scaring off the young people with their unbridled, adventurist maximalism, and to gradually prepare them to switch over to positions close to those of the Trotskyites.

In short, the Trotskyites use various tricks and dodges to split the ranks of the youth in order to create favourable conditions for bolstering their own positions. Their narrowly egoistical, self-seeking interests are quite apparent in the propaganda campaign they have launched to establish a Trotskyite youth international.