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p Although many imperialist leaders are now trying to prove that their real adversary is not the ideology of communism but only its political organisation—the socialist states and the Communist parties—these assertions are in themselves an attempt to discredit the ideals of communism and make out that these ideals are used as an instrument, as a cover for sinister political designs.

Actually, one of the cardinal directions of anti-communist propaganda has been and remains the campaign attacking the ideals of communism, the scientific teaching of MarxismLeninism. This campaign was started long ago. But its methods change in accordance with the times and the public frame of mind. In our day they are no longer accentuating the “godlessness” of the communist teaching, its incompatibility with the way of thinking of “respectable” citizens. Present-day critics prefer to speak of the “obsolescence” of Marxism-Leninism, of its incompatibility with the modern epoch and modern scientific progress.  [135•* 

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p The authors of scores of books and hundreds of papers devoted to a criticism of dialectical materialism go to all lengths in an effort to prove that this teaching is merely one of many speculative philosophical theories and, moreover, that it is based on 19th-century science which does not take the latest scientific achievements into account. The “obsolescence” of Marxism is also the theme of the critics of Marxist political economy who are trying to turn to account some new phenomena of capitalism. Similar criticism is levelled at historical materialism, which is depicted as an abstract theory far removed from life and unable to provide the key to understanding and solving complex contemporary problems.

p This line of attack is clearly pronounced in compressed form in The New Frontier of War, a book written by two acknowledged experts on anti-communism—Professor William K. Kintuer and the renegade Joseph Z. Kornfeder (who quitted the Communist Party of the USA in 1930). "The more deeply man explores matter,” they write, "the more probabilistic and less predetermined does the basic substance of the universe appear to be. Hence a system which asserts that the process of history unfolds according to determinate forces inherent in the very structure of matter rests on a precarious foundation. Likewise the communist concept that the human personality is solely the product of external environment is, in the light of modern investigation, more questionable than it has ever been.... The science of biochemistry has unveiled the structure of the nucleus of the living cell. It now appears that each individual human being’s cell plasm is coded differently so that each person is a unique creature and is inherently beyond the reach of even the most drastic application of external manipulation."  [136•* 

p Here mention is made of only a few of the discoveries bourgeois ideologists are trying to use for their ends, but they give an idea of the method itself. It is, properly speaking, not new. Lenin exposed it in Materialism and EmpirioCriticism as an attempt to parasitise on every breakdown of customary concepts and ideas that inevitably follows major 137 scientific discoveries. With science and technology accomplishing spectacular breakthroughs into hitherto unknown spheres of nature such breakdowns are becoming more frequent and far-reaching. This is precisely what the adversaries of Marxism-Leninism seek to turn to account.  [137•* 

p Similarly, they are trying to make capital out of the momentous socio-political changes taking place in the world, of the new developments in social life, which, naturally, could not have been mirrored in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin.

p For their attacks on Marxism-Leninism from the position of "modern science" and the latest knowledge, the bourgeois ideologists are trying to use, as they have always done, every manifestation of dogmatism, bigotry and diehard adherence to obsolete formulas on the part of some champions of Marxism. Small wonder that in the works of many bourgeois “refuters” of Marxist theory one can find references to the most unsuccessful, dogmatic and vulgar writings. In particular, this concerns works which from allegedly Marxist positions reject modern genetics, the theory of relativity, cybernetics and some other major discoveries,  [137•**  138 and also the vulgar works of some economists and sociologists who interpreted problems of the economy, sociopolitical relationships and culture of the modern world superficially, without a knowledge of life.

p In recent years the upswing of creative Marxism together with the surmounting of subjectivist side-stepping and the struggle against revisionist distortions of Marxist theory have seriously undermined these areas of anti-communist propaganda. The enhanced prestige enjoyed by world socialism and the communist movement is evoking a heightened interest in Marxism-Leninism among broad circles of people in the capitalist countries as well.  [138•* 

p A study of this theory from primary sources, major party documents and Marxist theoretical works utterly demolishes the lies and slander spread by the ideologists of imperialism. Moreover, such a study brings many honourable people, including leading scientists, round to repudiating bourgeois ideology. Under the impact of MarxismLeninism there is taking place a stratification in some 139 bourgeois ideological schools and trends, in which Left-wing groups frequently emerge.

p The architects of anti-communism are, evidently, themselves aware of the limited possibility of a “theoretical” criticism of Marxism-Leninism, especially in an epoch when communism is developing not only in works on philosophy and economics, but chiefly in the practice of building the new society. This explains the accent imperialist propaganda is putting on the efforts to give a denigratory interpretation of the practice and policies of world communism.

p One of the principal areas for this slander is the foreign policy of the socialist countries, which it tries to portray as “aggressive” and prove that this policy is the main source of the threat of war to the world. The attention given to this sort of propaganda is easily explained. Its purpose is not only to conceal the real reasons" for the threat of war and whitewash the foreign policy of imperialism but also to justify all its foreign policy and many internal policy actions— the arms race, the formation of aggressive military blocs, the swollen military budgets, and the reactionary attacks on democratic rights and freedoms.

p The relations in the socialist community are also grossly misrepresented. It will be recalled that the imperialist press went on a propaganda rampage in connection with the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968. It sought to present these events as evidence that the foreign policy of the USSR and other socialist countries was “violating” the principle of sovereignty and national independence. This subversive bourgeois propaganda was exposed at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties by L. I. Brezhnev, who said:

p "Bourgeois propaganda goes out of its way to malign the principle of proletarian internationalism and to oppose it artificially to the principles of independence, sovereignty and equality of the national contingents of the workingclass and communist movement. That is the purpose for which imperialist propagandists have fabricated and put into circulation the notorious theory of ’limited sovereignty’.

p "As for us, Soviet Communists, we hold that the present world situation again forcefully bears out the validity and 140 viability of Lenin’s concept of proletarian internationalism."  [140•* 

p Imperialist propaganda directs all its efforts to discredit socialist reality and slander tbe practices and institutions in the socialist countries. There is hardly a sphere of life which this propaganda has not tried to smear and picture in a false light. The economy and the state system, culture and morals, the system of administration and every current action of the socialist countries are made the targets of the most virulent distortion, lie and slander. Being unable to disrupt the advancement of the peoples building the new society, the imperialists seek to belittle their achievements and play down the impression that these achievements make on the working people of all countries. Here special emphasis is laid on a “criticism” of socialism and Marxist, theory from the standpoint of ethics and "human values”. The social system and the scientific philosophy of the working class are accused of disregarding these values, ignoring the problem of the freedom of the individual and absolutising economic factors.

p Still another major area of anti-communist propaganda is its slander against the Communist parties and the international communist movement. The recipes for this propaganda were concocted long ago and they are used to this day. First and foremost, they are attempts to portray the Communist parties as “anti-national” forces, as a kind of "fifth column" operating on orders from without and serving the interests of a foreign power, namely, the Soviet Union. Further, it is alleged that instead of showing a desire to improve the condition of the working people and solve the problems confronting the nation the Communists use the sufferings of the working people and unresolved social problems for their own mercenary aims—to whip up mass indignation that would bring them to power.

p Moreover, imperialist propaganda vainly tries to prove that the Communist parties even desire a worsening of the condition of the people in order to embitter them, that the principle of the Communists is "the worse (for the working people) the better (for the cause of communism)”, and that 141 all their actions in defence of the people’s interests are nothing but demagogy. Lastly, the advocates of anticommunism slanderously distort the tactical principles of the communist movement, depicting the Communist parties as groups of conspirators prepared to use any means and stopping at nothing in the drive towards their ends. The aim of all fabrications of this kind is not only to alienate the masses from the Communists but also to justify repressions against the Communist parties. Small wonder that these fabrications invariably figure in the debates on anticommunist laws and in the trials of Communists organised by the reactionaries.

p Such are the main directions of anti-communist propaganda, which has reached huge proportions in the imperialisl countries. It is served by an enormous state apparatus and numerous organisations set up by the monopolies and the imperialist intelligence agencies, and involves the Church and the Right-wing leadership of the Social-Democratic parties and the reformist trade unions.

p Besides, the imperialist bourgeoisie, which only recently scoffed at the communist movement and the socialist countries and considered it ban ton to show ignorance in questions of communism, has set up a large machinery for the study of the communist ideology and of the history, economy and social relations of the socialist countries. In the USA, the Federal Republic of Germany, Britain and other countries there are today many scores of institutes and research centres engaged in this study and training " specialists".

p Summing up the results of the training of “Sovietologists” in the USA, Walter Z. Laqueur, editor of the journal Survey, an international anti-communist organ, wrote in 1967: "Between 1850 and 1950 some 250 doctoral dissertations on Russia and the Soviet Union were approved in American universities. The number accepted since 1950 is estimated at 1,000 and probably already exceeded this figure."  [141•* 

p A new drive to set up anti-communist centres was started in the 1960s. Harvard University, which already had a Russian Research Centre (founded in 1948), established the 142 new Centre for International Affairs specialising in tjhe study of socialist foreign policy. Columbia University, which founded the first Russian Institute in 1946, set up a new Research Institute on Communist Affairs in 1961 and an Institute of East and Central Europe in 1965. The University of California in Berkeley established its Centre for Slavic and East European Studies. The University of Southern California in Los Angeles followed the establishment of its Centre for Soviet-Asian Research in 1958 with the formation of the Research Institute on Communist Strategy and Propaganda in 1961.

p In the ramified network of institutions of this kind in the USA there are some which are regarded as “outstanding”. These are the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Pennsylvania State University, the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace of Stanford University, the Hodge Institute (until recently known as the Centre for Strategic Studies) of Georgetown University, and the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University.

p Sited in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania University’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, as its name implies, studies problems of foreign policy and international relations. Its executives, notably its director Robert Strausz-Hupe, are associated with extremely influential ultra-Right groups in banking, industrial and military circles, which, in their turn, use the institute as a mouthpiece for bellicose reactionaries. Declaring that communism had to be destroyed at all costs, the Pennsylvanians began their activities in the mid-1950s by urging a "preventive war" and to this day they advocate the use of the USA’s nuclear arsenal in local wars and also the employment of chemical and bacteriological weapons.

The views of this group coincide with the basic activities of the Hoover Institute and the Hodge Institute. The Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace was founded in 1919 in order, to use the words of the late US President Herbert Hoover, to lay bare the “evil” of the teaching of Karl Marx. Although the basic function of the Hoover Institute is to collect and systematise material on problems of war, revolution and peace, the Foreign Policy Research Institute has been in operation within its framework since

143 1961. The latter is headed by Stefan Possony, a co-author of Strausz-Hupe in many works and a rabid advocate of adventurism in foreign policy.

_p Georgetown University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, now known as the Hodge Institute, was founded at the close of 1962. It is headed by Arleigh A. Burke, a retired admiral and an odious figure, who is a member of the board of a number of war-industrial concerns and is known to have close ties with the John Birch Society.

p ,

p Some effort is made to camouflage the reactionary character of Columbia University’s Research Institute on Communist Affairs. Its director, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is an advocate of a more “subtle” policy of ideological subversion against the forces of socialism and progress. This is the institution that propagates the theories of "bridge building" and of the “erosion” of communism, which at first glance differ radically from the bellicose declarations of people like Strausz-Hupe and Possony but which, in fact, pursue the same objective, that of destroying socialism.

p Similarly intensive “research” of this kind is conducted in the Federal Republic of Germany, where, it is estimated, there are nearly 30 centres, including the institutes of East Europe and Southeast Europe (both are in Munich), the Federal Institute for the Study of Marxism-Leninism (in Cologne), the East Europe Institute (in Mainz), the East Europe Institute of the Free University in West Berlin, and the German Society for Eastern European Studies (in Stuttgart).

p Even small Denmark has two institutes of this kind, one at Copenhagen University and the other at Aarhus University.  [143•* 

Never before has there been such a spate of anti-communist literature in the capitalist countries as there is today. These are not simply agitational publications but voluminous works generalising vast material and designed not only for propaganda purposes but also for the propagandists themselves. But there is yet another objective of this research and it is to find vulnerable areas and vantage points for an ideological offensive.

144

p As was noted by Professor A. R. Miller, unless ihe Americans had a perfect knowledge of communism, l^neir prospects of defeat were just fine.  [144•* 

p As far as can be judged, the material compiled by experts is indeed used on a growing scale in day-to-day propaganda. These experts frequently take a direct hand in the most important propaganda operations.

p For instance, in 1962 the Research Institute on Communist Strategy and Propaganda at the University of Southern California co-operated with Hollywood studios in the production of a series of 39 faked “documentaries” about communism. In the course of 39 weeks the films, divided into seven sections “(Background and Ideology”, "The Soviet System”, "Life in the Soviet Union”, "Communism in China”, "Eastern Europe Under Communism”, " MoscowPeking Foreign Policies" and "Communism in the Americas”) were broadcast by four major television centres owned by the Columbia Broadcasting System on a nation-wide network, and also by 32 stations abroad. Moreover, copies were made for telecasts in other countries.  [144•** 

p As regards the anti-communist propaganda apparatus, it is hardly worth singling out from the apparatus disseminating imperialist propaganda inasmuch as the latter is largely preoccupied with spreading anti-communist calumny.

Modern anti-communism is thus a mammoth ideological and political “enterprise” and constitutes one of the foundations of the policies and ideology of imperialism. For its personnel, resources, capital investments and scale of activity it is the largest ideological “enterprise” in the history of capitalism. Notwithstanding its impressive facade it is hollow ideologically.