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Programme of Communist Construction

p “The only scientific distinction between socialism and communism,” wrote Lenin, "is that the first term implies the first stage of the new society arising out of capitalism, while the second implies the next and higher stage."  [297•1  Having its origin in socialism, communism represents a continuation and a development of socialism. Taking into account the actual possibilities of the Soviet society, the Twenty-First Congress of the CPSU, held in 1959, adopted a seven-year plan of economic development covering the years 1959-65, which would initiate a period of communist construction. During this period the Congress proposed to complete the building of the material and technical basis of communism, to achieve the development of communist social relations, and to accomplish the moral education of the Soviet people in accordance with communist principles.

p A new, third Party Programme was worked out by a special commission, approved by a plenary meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, and submitted in 1961 for public discussion with the participation of some 73,000,000 men and women, after which it was finally adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress. The new Party Programme examines the ways and means of building communism and gives a detailed description of the communist society that is to be.

p The Congress opened on October 17, 1961, in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, only recently built. Five thousand delegates attended, representing a CPSU membership nearly ten million strong. Delegations from the Communist and Workers’ Parties of eighty countries were present. Its agenda included important problems bearing on the further development of the world’s first socialist country and the adoption of the programme of communist construction in the USSR.

p The new Party Programme is an outstanding document reflecting a creative Marxist-Leninist approach, summarising the vast 298 experience accumulated in the building of socialism in the USSR and other socialist countries, and outlining the road to communism.

p The Programme sets as the main aim the creation of the material and technical basis of communism, which implies complete electrification of the country and all-out improvement on this basis of production organisation and plant; complex mechanisation of production processes and increasing automation of such processes; increased utilisation of chemistry in the national economy; and the organic wedding of science and industry. This should raise the country’s productive forces to a level that will assure an abundance of goods and services.

p A gradual merging of the two present forms of socialist ownership will do away with the differences between classes, and workers and peasants will belong to a classless society. The essential differences currently existing between town and country, as well as between manual and mental work, will be eradicated in the main, and economic and spiritual oneness of the various nations of the Soviet Union will increase. As Soviet democracy is developed and perfected and more and more Soviet citizens take part in government, .social activities and production, the organs of state power will be gradually replaced by organs of public self-government.

The noble aims of the CPSU Programme are in line with the vital interests of all Soviet citizens, who have accepted it as a realistic programme of action to achieve a happy future or, to put it differently, to achieve communism, which stands for peace, endeavour, freedom, equality, brotherhood and happiness for all the peoples on earth.

Communist Labour Movement

p The Soviet people took up the challenge of the seven-year plan with great enthusiasm. The workers of the Moscow railway marshalling yard, the very same yard that had initiated the communist week-end volunteer work movement called Subbotnik in the spring of 1919, launched, in October 1958, an emulation movement among the workers, perhaps the most impressive example of this enthusiasm, to win the title of a shock worker of communist labour or a communist labour team.

p This initiative of the Moscow railwaymen was widely supported, and the communist labour movement spread rapidly all over the country. Numerous industrial plants, shops, farms and teams had earned the honorary title of collectives of communist labour.

p There was yet another remarkable manifestation of a genuinely communist attitude towards work. This was a movement for 299 leading industrial workers to help those teams, shops or plants that lagged behind. Here the initiative belonged to Valentina Gaganova, team leader at the Vyshny Volochok spinning factory. Hers was an expert team, earning very high wages, yet she deliberately had herself transferred to a less efficient team, at a sacrifice of wages, and in a short time helped it catch up and come to the fore. Gaganova’s example was followed by tens of thousands of leading workers in industry, transport and agriculture.

Engineers and technicians also joined in the communist labour movement. This enthusiastic approach to their work on the part of workers, engineers and technicians made it possible to fulfil successfully the basic targets of the seven-year plan in respect of industry and transport.

National Economy in the Seven-Year
Plan Period

p This seven-year period witnessed a tremendous development of capital construction, primarily in the industrial field. The number of large industrial plants built and commissioned between 300 1959 and 1965 totalled more than 5,500. Total government investments in industry, transport, agriculture, housing, culture and services amounted to more than 200,000 million rubles or approximately as much as had been invested over the entire period of socialist construction.

p Total industrial output showed an 84 per cent increase over the seven years instead of 80 per cent as planned, with heavy industry in the lead, as usual, showing a 96 per cent increase, while the output of consumer goods increased by 60 per cent.

p Universal electrification also made giant strides. New power stations were commissioned one after another, each of greater capacity than the one before, such as the Votkinsk power station on the Kama (1,000,000 kw), the Volzhsky power station on the Volga (2,300,000 kw), and the Bratsk station on the Angara, the world’s biggest (4,100,000 kw), not to speak of numerous others. The aggregate capacity of Soviet power stations amounted to 110,000,000 kw in 1965 and the total amount of electric energy generated to 507,000 million kwh. Substantial progress was made in the construction of atomic power stations, whose aggregate capacity reached 1,000,000 kw. Equally good headway was made in linking existing power stations into a single power grid.

p In the metallurgical industry the seven-year plan was also fulfilled. The plan had called for 86-91 million tons of steel in 301 1965, and the actual output was 91,000,000 tons. An outstanding feat was performed by the builders of metallurgical works, in particular in building the works for the supply of large-diameter pipes for the construction of natural gas pipelines.

p Construction of chemical plants was on a particularly large scale. In this a prominent role was played by members of the Komsomol, 160,000 of whom had volunteered to help in sweeping development of the chemical industry. Result—a 150 per cent increase of the annual output of chemicals at the end of the seven-year period.

p There were important changes in the structure of the country’s fuel budget. While the output of coal increased on the whole, the petroleum and especially the gas extracting industries developed at a more rapid rate. Large deposits of fuels with a high calory content were discovered in the Northern Urals and Central Asia. The oilfields of Siberia were opened up when, in March 1962, the first well at the backwoods village of Markovo on the Lena began to spout oil; 243,000,000 tons of oil were extracted in 1965, as compared with the 230,000,000-240,000,000 ton target set for the seven-year plan. And although the overall coal and gas output fell somewhat short of the targets, the country’s fuel balance was substantially improved, for the share of petroleum and gas therein had risen from 32 per cent in 1958 to 52 per cent in 1965.

p Electric and diesel traction were definitely in the lead on the country’s railways by 1965. 71,000 kilometres of railway track were serviced by diesel and electric locomotives by the end of 1965, as against 20,600 in 1958.

p All these various achievements helped the country attain the main objective of the seven-year plan, which was to forge ahead as far as possible in the economic competition with the leading capitalist countries. Average annual industrial growth rates were: in the USSR (1959-65)—9.1 per cent; the USA (1958-64) —3.9 per cent; Great Britain—3.5 per cent; France—5.6 per cent; and the ERG—6.3 per cent. In 1957, Soviet industrial production equalled 47 per cent of that of the USA, but in 1963, only six years later, it had risen to about 65 per cent thereof. Meanwhile the Soviet Union had outstripped the United States in the production of iron ore, coke, coal, metal-cutting machine tools, diesel and electric locomotives, tractors, grain combine-harvesters, cement, reinforced concrete elements, woollen and flaxen textiles, etc.

p There were, nevertheless, some serious shortcomings in the operation of Soviet industry. There was considerable loss of time in putting into operation the capacities of new industrial plants, which resulted in serious underproduction of manufactured goods. 302 As for the quality of many kinds of goods, this was still below that of foreign makes.

There were serious miscalculations in industrial planning and management. Thus, a system of management based on the territorial principle had been introduced in 1957, that is to say, the functions of management were transferred to the Economic Councils put in charge of the various economic regions. These Economic Councils made a certain contribution by promoting specialisation and co-operation in production, amalgamation of minor plants, etc. On balance, however, the reform did not prove worth-while. The time had come to effect a radical improvement in the planning and management of the national economy and to introduce greater economic stimuli in the sphere of socialised production.

Agriculture Marks Time

In industry as a whole the targets of the seven-year plan had been achieved; but things had worked out very differently in the field of agriculture. Thus, while the seven-year plan envisaged high growth rates in agriculture, capital investments therein were inadequate. As a matter of fact they were even below those of the past few years. The material and technological infrastructure of agriculture had been strengthened to some extent under the seven-year plan, but collective and state farms were nevertheless inadequately provided with farm machinery and implements and what they did have was not efficiently used. This was particularly true of animal husbandry. There were serious shortcomings in planning the distribution of crops and in the regulations governing state purchases of farm produce. Weather conditions were another unfavourable factor. They were bad in 1959 and 1960, but the greatest damage to crops was suffered in 1963 when a severe winter was followed by an everlong spring and then by a parching summer drought. Government grain purchases in 1963 amounted to no more than 44,800,000 tons, or 12,000,000 tons less than in 1962, which made it necessary to buy a considerable quantity of grain abroad.

October 1964
Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee

p A Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee convened in October 1964 played an important role in solving a number of political and economic issues of prime importance. The meeting 303 condemned subjectivism and voluntarism in making decisions on economic issues and excessive use of administrative methods in management. It relieved N. S. Khrushchev of his duties as First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and elected L. I. Brezhnev to that office, while A. N. Kosygin was appointed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

p This Plenary Meeting was a signal milepost in the country’s development and exercised a beneficial influence on all aspects of the activities of both the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Its decisions served to accelerate construction of the material and technical basis of communism. Of no less moment were the decisions of the Plenary Meeting of September 1965, regarding improvements in industrial management and planning and increasing economic incentives to stimulate production. In industry, the territorial principle of administration was abandoned in favour of administering each branch of industry through a special ministry fully responsible for the development of all aspects of that particular branch on the basis of the most modern achievements of science and technology. In addition, the decisions provided for greater functional and economic independence for enterprises, abolition of superfluous regimentation, adequate appropriations for developing and improving production, and extensive use of such important economic levers as profits, prices, bonuses and credit.

p The main purpose of these measures is to emphasise economic methods as all-important in industrial management.

p The questions of further developing agriculture were discussed by the March 1965 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, which adopted a programme of economic measures designed to accelerate the development of this important branch of the national economy. This programme provided for bigger investments, a substantially greater output of machinery, wide electrification of rural areas, increased use of chemicals in agriculture, and continued development of irrigation and land improvement. Improvements were introduced in the system of planning state purchases of farm produce and conditions of the sale of farm produce to the state were made more advantageous for the collective farmers. Important decisions were also taken to improve state- and collective-farm management and to strengthen collective-farm democracy. Much greater independence was granted state and collective farms in the field of economics, production planning, distribution of revenues, etc.

These decisions were received with deep satisfaction by the farmers.

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Living Standards Grow

p Before 1960 was over a seven- and six-hour working day had been introduced for all workers and employees, while wages, rather than decrease, markedly increased, as, for instance, by 12 and 11 per cent, respectively, in the chemical and steel industries. Minimum wage rates were raised once more, which meant a further narrowing of the gap between the high and low income brackets. The government consistently reduced tax rates; as of October 1, 1961, tax-exempt minimum wages were set at 60 rubles. In the summer of 1964 a decision was taken to introduce a scheme of pensions and allowances for collective farmers, as well as wage increases in respect of personnel working in the sphere of education, health, municipal services and utilities, trade, catering and certain other service branches of the national economy. One-fourth of all workers and employees received an average wage increase of 21 per cent.

p Of paramount importance was the continuing growth of the social consumption funds, which assured a concurrent expansion of free schooling, medical care, pensions and allowances schemes, paid vacations, etc. Thus, in 1963, some 26 million men and women drew pensions from the state and, partially, from collective farms. Over 5 million students of various special educational institutions received scholarship grants and were provided with living quarters. Some 10 million children were cared for in creches and kindergartens. Over 9 million working people, and their children, vacationed or received treatment in rest homes or sanatoria or Young Pioneer camps, the relative expenses being covered either entirely or partially out of the social insurance or collective-farm funds. In 1963, significantly, private savings bank accounts totalled nearly 14,000 million rubles, as against only 3,800 million in 1953.

p As real wages grew, so did the purchasing power of the population, which meant an increasing volume of sales of high-quality consumption goods.

p Housing construction expanded as never before: over the period 1959-65 roughly as much housing was built as over all the preceding years since the October Revolution.

Generally healthier working and living conditions were bringing down the death rate. The average life span in the USSR was somewhat over 70 years. The birth rate continued to be high, and there was thus a substantial population increase. In 1965 the country’s population topped 230,000,000 which meant an increment of somewhat more than 20,000,000 over the past seven-year period.

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Outer Space Exploration

p Among the outstanding achievements of Soviet science and technology over the period 1959-65, its exploits in the exploration of outer space were the most remarkable.

p Following the launching by the Soviet Union of the world’s first Sputnik in 1957, the space exploration programme continued to expand from year to year. In September 1959, a Soviet space rocket delivered a metal plaque bearing the national emblem of the USSR to the surface of the Moon. And a month later a Soviet automatic space station photographed the far side of the Moon, which it televised to the Earth.

A culminating achievement in this space exploration programme was the history-making flight of a man in space. On April 12, 1961, the spaceship Vostok carried Yuri Gagarin, pilotcosmonaut, member of the Communist Party, on the world’s first Earth-orbiting flight, lasting 108 minutes, and made a safe landing in the designated area. News of this first venture of a human being into outer space caused a world-wide sensation. On August 6, 1961, Gagarin’s exploit was repeated by Herman Titov, in the spaceship Vostok-2. After circling the Earth 17 times in 25 hours

306 and 18 minutes, the Vostok-2 made a safe landing at a predetermined spot. Between August 11 and 15, 1962, Andrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich, in spaceships Vostok-3 and Vostok-4, respectively, made the world’s first group space flight. An even more ambitious group space flight was next made by Valery Bykovsky and Valentina Tereshkova, the world’s first womancosmonaut, who remained aloft, respectively, 119 and 71 hours. In October 1964, the Voskhod, a piloted spaceship, was put in 307 orbit around the Earth, carrying on board Vladimir Komarov, the commander, Konstantin Feoktistov, a researcher, and Boris Yegorov, a physician.

On March 18, 1965, the spaceship Voskhod-2, piloted by Pavel Belyaev, the commander, and pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, was put in orbit. During this flight Alexei Leonov, wearing a special space-suit, became the first man in the world to step out of the ship into outer space.

Higher Efficiency of Socialised
Production Envisaged

p The Twenty-Third Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in Moscow in late March and early April 1966, drew up a programme embodying the tasks facing the Soviet people in the ensuing period. The resolutions adopted by the Congress contained a penetrating analysis of the current stage of development of the Soviet society as well as of the processes and phenomena of the international scene. The Congress further approved the proposals of the Party Central Committee on improving the forms and methods of national economic management and the new system of planning and economic stimuli; and ratified the directives on the new (eighth) Five-Year Economic Development Plan for 1966-70 envisaging continued rapid growth for all branches of the national economy.

p Tangible successes were recorded in 1966, the first year of the new five-year plan, the industrial production plan as a whole being achieved and even exceeded. Notably high rates of development were shown by those industries which, in current conditions, determine the level of technological progress, namely, engineering, chemistry, metallurgy, electric power production, etc. Many industrial enterprises were commissioned, such as the Bratsk aluminium works, the Aragatsk perlite plant (the country’s largest), the Primorsk mining and chemical complex, the Novolipetsk metallurgical works, the Izhevsk automobile plant, the Dneprodzerzhinsk hydro-electric power station, to name but a few. Steps were concurrently taken to speed up production in the food industry and light industry generally and bring into greater equilibrium the rates of growth of production of the means of production and of consumer goods, in line with the policy of raising the standards of living.

p That was also the purpose of the various measures implementing the resolutions of the March 1965 Plenary Meeting of the CC CPSU relating to agriculture. During 1966 the great majority of collective farms changed to the system of fixed monthly wages, 308 with a resulting increase of efficiency in agricultural production. Other important measures were the introduction of higher state purchase prices, additional bonuses for deliveries of produce to the state in excess of the plan, etc. A record crop was harvested in 1966, greater than any since the birth of the Soviet state. All this went far to put an end to the perennial lag in agriculture and to ensure the success of the economic reform initiated in 1966, which was designed to raise socialist production to a new and higher level in line with the demands made upon it by the current scientific and technological revolution.

Soviet achievements in the field of science and technology have received universal recognition. One such achievement relates to selenology. In February 1966, Luna-9, a Soviet automatic cosmic station, made a soft landing on the surface of the Moon—the first in the history of mankind—and made a series of radio and television broadcasts of exceptional scientific interest from the Earth’s natural satellite. In April 1966, the station Luna-IO was placed—again for the first time in history—in a satellite orbit around the Moon, and steady radio communication was maintained with it. Still another automatic station, Luna-13, made another soft landing on the Moon in December of the same year and collected new scientific data of the kind necessary to prepare manned planetary flights.

Soviet Union Marks
50th Anniversary of the October Revolution

p Magnificent achievements in all fields of human endeavour marked the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution, filling the Soviet people with a feeling of legitimate pride in the historic feat of the Soviet state, which had transformed pre-revolutionary Russia, a backward agrarian country, into an economically and socially advanced modern state. Despite its limitless resources, tsarist Russia’s share in the world’s industrial production amounted in 1913 to slightly over 4 per cent and to a bare 3 per cent in 1917. During the 50 years of Soviet rule that share jumped to 20 per cent. To put it differently, the output of the Soviet Union’s socialist industry in 1967 was 73 times that of the tsarist Russia of 50 years ago. Such a rate of growth—both rapid and sustained —was made possible by the application of socialist methods in the national economy. If we take the period from 1929 to 1967, for example, we shall see that the average annual increment of industrial output in the USSR amounted to 11.1 per cent as against only 4 per cent in the USA and 2.5 per cent in Great Britain and France. In the USSR the 1967 output equalled that of the entire first post-war five-year period, i.e., 1946-50.

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p These figures will be seen in a truer perspective when we recall the conditions in which the Soviet people fought to build a socialist economy. Of the 50 years that elapsed since the October Revolution over 20 were either wasted on wars waged against the Soviet Union by the imperialist powers, which brought incalculable destruction in their wake, or else devoted to the work of rehabilitation. What the Soviet people actually did, however, was to build what was essentially a new industry, second only to that of the United States, with which, incidentally, it had been catching up year by year. Besides fully meeting the needs of the national economy, Soviet industry produced a large volume of commodities destined, within the framework of economic assistance, for other countries, notably the socialist states and the developing countries of Asia and Africa.

p Some 400 large industrial plants were commissioned during the jubilee year, including the Bratsk hydro-electric power station with a capacity of 4.1 million kw, currently the world’s biggest. The first two power units of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station with a designed capacity of 6 million kw were put into operation. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution the world’s biggest blast-furnace was commissioned at the Krivoi Rog iron and steel mill. And a gas pipeline connecting Central Asia with the central areas of the Soviet Union, 2,750 kilometres long, with an annual capacity of 10,500 million cubic metres, was put into operation, bringing gas from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the Urals and on to Moscow and Leningrad. Other gas and oil pipelines were under construction to contribute to the improvement of the country’s fuel balance in line with the requirements of technological development. In 1967 the importance of oil and gas in this balance reached 55 per cent, as against 38.4 per cent in 1960.

p Impressive gains were made in the metallurgical industry where, in 1967, the output of steel surpassed 100 million tons—for the first time in the country’s history. Coal output reached 600 million tons in 1967; and the target quotas of the most important kinds of fuel were reached before the year was out. High rates of growth were characteristic also of the instrument-building, chemical, food and consumer goods industries. During 1967 the effects of the economic reform began to make themselves felt, with planning now on a strictly scientific basis, ensuring greater efficiency in the introduction of scientific and technological discoveries and inventions. Some 7,000 enterprises, accounting for 40 per cent of aggregate industrial production, had changed over to the new system by the end of the year. All of the indices of their activities were higher than those of the enterprises working under the old system. Many new lines of high-grade goods were put 310 into mass production. Comprehensive mechanisation and automation of production processes were speeded up.

p No less successful was the year 1967 in the field of agriculture. Despite some adverse weather conditions the grain crop was even better than the record crop of 1966. The gross grain crop was 13 per cent bigger than the annual average for the preceding five years. Production of the basic industrial crops was also greatly increased. Taking agriculture as a whole, farm production may be said to have tripled over the past 50 years of Soviet rule.

p Let us take a closer look at the achievements in the field of science and technology during the jubilee year 1967. June saw the launching of a space rocket bearing the automatic interplanetary station Venus-4. In October, after covering a distance of 350 million kilometres, Venus-4 reached the surface of that planet. Even more important for space science was the linkup and subsequent separation, in orbit, of the two terrestrial satellites Cosmos-186 and Cosmos-188, achieved—once again for the first time in history—toward the end of October. Of importance for nuclear research was the commissioning of the world’s biggest proton accelerator at the Institute of High-Energy Physics, which has produced a 70,000 million electron-volt proton beam. The achievements of Soviet scientists in the respective fields of rocketry, aviation, electronics, energetics, instrument-making and so on have received wide publicity.

p It must be emphasised, however, that these efforts to advance industry, agriculture and science have never been an end in itself: they were always directed towards meeting more fully the material and spiritual needs of the people. The September 1967 Plenary Meeting of the CC CPSU drew up a programme of action in this respect, and minimum wage rates were raised and paid vacations extended for certain categories of workers, and pension regulations improved. Over 50 million were affected by these measures. Much, also, was done in the housing field. Housing construction during the 1950s and 1960s grew at a higher pace than in any other country. Nearly half the country’s population either moved into new flats or otherwise improved their housing conditions between 1957 and 1967. It should be pointed out, incidentally, that a family’s rent was no higher than 4-5 per cent of its income. Over those 50 years of Soviet rule the real income of Soviet workers increased by a factor of 6.5, that of the peasantry by a factor of 8.5. A five-day working week with two days off was introduced in 1967.

p Such, in brief, were the achievements the Soviet people could point to with pride on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. Many foreign guests representing 95 countries gathered in Moscow to attend the celebration.

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p As a prologue to the celebration came the unveiling of a monument to Lenin, founder of the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet stale, in the Kremlin, where he had lived and worked during the last years of his life. On November 3, 1967, a solemn joint meeting of the CC CPSU, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation opened at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses in honour of the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution. Assembled at this meeting were those whose heroism and dedicated endeavour had brought signal victories in battle and peaceful construction. L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CC CPSU, read the report "Fifty Years of Socialist Achievement”, in which he reviewed at length the road of struggle and victory the Soviet people had travelled in those past fifty years and gave a penetrating analysis of the motive forces back of the historic achievements of the Soviet Union. The speaker outlined the tasks that had to be fulfilled in order to make fuller use of the tremendous opportunities opened up by the socialist system.

p The heads of foreign delegations spoke of the admiration evoked by the successes of the Soviet people, which inspired revolutionaries the world over to wage war on oppression and exploitation. All of the speakers wished the Soviet people further success in their work of socialist and communist construction.

On November 5, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers published a declaration addressed to the people of the Soviet Union, which reviewed the road that had been travelled and expressed the firm conviction that new impressive advances would be made along that road to communism. A new order was established to honour the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution, to be known as the Order of the October Revolution. First to be awarded the new order were Leningrad, cradle of the Revolution, and Moscow, the nation’s capital. Other orders and medals were awarded in honour of the anniversary to a large number of those who had taken an active part in the Revolution and the civil war. Over 128,000 men and women were thus honoured, including several foreign veterans of the Revolution. The celebrations were a manifestation of the international unity of the revolutionaries throughout the world.

The Struggle for Peace and Security

p True to the Leninist principles of foreign policy, confirmed in the resolutions adopted by the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU, the Soviet Union continued a consistent struggle for peace 312 among nations and in support of all peoples fighting against oppression at the hands of imperialism and reaction. There were definite successes in the Soviet Union’s efforts to secure peaceful co-existence among nations. Nevertheless, in the course of 1967 the subversive activities of the imperialist powers once again increased international tension. Contributing factors were the obstinate refusal of the US ruling circles to end their war of aggression in Vietnam and withdraw their troops from that country; and the Israeli aggression against the Arab states, coupled with the continued occupation of the Arab lands seized in June 1967.

p The Soviet Union consistently stood by the principle that every nation should be entitled to freedom and independence. It insisted that the savage US aggression in Vietnam should be stopped, and, in line with this policy, it was giving the Vietnamese people free massive aid in the shape of modern arms, supplies, equipment, food, etc.

p Full support was given by the Soviet Union to the United Arab Republic, Syria and the other Arab countries that have been the targets of Israeli aggression. The USSR, together with other socialist countries, took steps, in June 1967, to force Israel to halt military operations: they broke off diplomatic relations with that state and called for a sharp denunciation of its actions first by the Security Council and, later, by the UN General Assembly, convened at the request of the Soviet Union. In November, the Security Council adopted a resolution requiring Israel to withdraw from the UAR, Syrian and Jordanian territories occupied in contravention of international law. That resolution was largely the result of the efforts of Soviet diplomacy. The Soviet Union supplied the UAR with the necessary weapons to withstand the possible Israeli acts of aggression.

p Soviet policy won the approval of progressive forces throughout Europe and had the support of sober-minded business circles. The Soviet Union and France drew nearer together on a number of controversial international problems; relations between the two countries were now an example of peaceful co-existence between states with differing social systems.

The Soviet Union built its policy on the necessity of facing the actual situation prevailing in post-war Europe, on the necessity, above all, of recognising the inviolability of state frontiers and the existence of two sovereign and equal German states. In 1966 the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Treaty countries proposed that an All-European Conference be convened to discuss questions of European security and peaceful coexistence with a view to consolidating peace on the continent.