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p CARLOS RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ

p MEMBER OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU AND CC SECRETARIAT
OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA AND DEPUTY CHAIRMAN
OF THE STATE COUNCIL AND COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA

p Sixty years ago the gunshot fired from the cruiser Aurora was heard in all parts of the world. Rising like a tidal wave this shot and the triumphant battle cries of the Petrograd workers and sailors. storming the Winter Palace reached all the then oppressed peoples. Though the forms of oppression were different, the consequences of unbridled capitalist and imperialist exploitation were the same-misery, hunger, and bloodshed.

p Almost half a century earlier, Marx pointed out in the Charter of the International Working Men’s Association that a socialist revolution would inevitably be international: "The emancipation of labour,” he said, "is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists... .”  [88•* 

p That is why in his recent speech Leonid Brezhnev said on behalf of all Soviet people that although the problems the October Revolution resolved were primarily those posed by history and the concrete conditions of the country today celebrating its 60th anniversary, "basically, however, these were not local but general problems posed before the whole of mankind by social development. The 89 epochal significance of the October Revolution lies precisely in the fact that it opened the road to the solution of these problems and thereby to the creation of a new type of civilisation on earth”.  [89•* 

p The record of these 60 years; the emergence of powerful socialist states on different continents; the existence of the socialist community in which many millions of men and women looking to the future place their hopes and which is an example for these millions; the fact that the Soviet Union is the vanguard of this community, and the spread of socialist trends among the working class and technical intelligentsia-all this, in contrast to the econo-. mic, political, and moral crisis bringing the capitalist system nearer to its downfall each day, is at this historic junction the most impressive proof of the international influence of the October Revolution.

p We Cuban Communists, modest builders of socialism in a country where socialism emerged for the first time in conditions of modern neo-colonialism, would like to express our views on the influence which the Red October of 1917 has exercised on the development of the peoples’ struggle for the abolition of the colonial oppression that held down hundreds of millions of men and women sixty years aqo.

p Lenin, who together with the Bolshevik Party he had created, led the October Revolution and founded the first socialist state, showed great political insight when, long before 1917, he described the policies of European SocialDemocrats as opportunist, and stressed that as a result of extensive colonial policy, part of the European proletariat found itself in a position when it was not its labour, but the labour of the practically enslaved natives in the colonies, that maintained the whole of society.

p Lenin regarded as “monstrous” the political creed of right-wing Social-Democrats, whom he opposed, and saw in the rising protest in Turkey, India, and China, though it 90 was not yet free from bourgeois-democratic class sentiments, signs pointing to future revolutionary upheavals. "The class-conscious European worker,” Lenin said, "now has comrades in Asia, and their number will grow by leaps and bounds.”  [90•* 

p Lenin’s thought was greatly influenced by Marx’s idea of preconditions for revolution, set out in his study of the British colonisation of India. According to Ho Chi Minh, Lenin was the first revolutionary in modern Europe who understood the significance of the struggle of Asian peoples on the eve of the October Revolution. When the imperialists were preparing for the First World War and rejecting the economic and political protests of the then weak working class of Europe, and when Asia was considered backward and politically dormant, Lenin said: "The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world history that began early this century.”  [90•** 

p Today, 60 years later, we see the beginning of this new historical phase, the importance of which was only vaguely visible in November 1917, as a crucial point separating our epoch from the past centuries which Engels called the prehistory of mankind.

p To the peoples of the colonial and neo-colonial countries the October Revolution was a momentous event which demonstrated for the first time in history that despite numerous defeats, the oppressed were capable of "storming the sky”. To the millions of people on the Asian continent and in the countries of Africa and Latin America the October Revolution was a living example of how an old autocratic empire built on national oppression was turned into a free community of equal nations, and how these nations were helped develop their resources to 91 the extent where they were transformed into sovereign and autonomous republics working for progress, economic growth and cultural advance.

p I do not speak now of Finland, which also won the right to self-determination as a result of the victory of the Great October Revolution. What was important was the attitude of the victorious proletariat to the outlying areas in the Asian part of the country. Lenin noted this in his address, "To the Communists of Turkestan”, in November 1919, saying: "The establishment of proper relations with the peoples of Turkestan is now of immense, epochal importance for the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.

p “The attitude of the Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic to the weak and hitherto oppressed nations is of very practical significance for the whole of Asia and for all the colonies of the world, for thousands and millions of people.”  [91•* 

p Today, 60 years later, we see the triumph of the national policy Lenin had carefully guarded against any deviations. Over these six decades it has inspired the oppressed peoples with hope that their revolutionary struggle, too, can win.

p The fact that the unwise behaviour and erroneous political stand of the Chinese leadership has led revolutionary China to the road of betrayal and collusion with the most reactionary imperialist powers, thereby jeopardising the country’s socialist gains, cannot detract from the profound historical significance of the Chinese revolution, the second of the great revolutions of its time that undermined the foundations of the power of capitalists and imperialists.

p No one can question the great impact and influence of the October Revolution on the emergence of revolutionary China and on the growth of the political awareness of Chinese workers and peasants who made the 1949-50 92 victory possible. Li Ta Chao, one of the founders and leaders of the Communist Party of China, welcomed the October Revolution with these words: "From this moment on, the victorious banners of the Bolsheviks will be seen in all parts of the world and their victorious songs will be heard everywhere.... The dawn of freedom has come. The world of tomorrow will be a world of the red banner.”

p No matter how hard the deserters of the revolutionary process may try to ignore these words, the books in which these words are recorded are preserved in libraries of many countries. No matter how hard these traitors may try to make people forget these words, there will remain books with Mao Tse-tung’s own statements acknowledging that "the salvoes of the October Revolution" brought Marxism to China-

p The influence of the October Revolution can be seen not only in the shaping of the Chinese revolutionary ideology, not only in the efforts to create the Chinese Communist Party and to build solidarity in face of the brutal persecutions of Chiang Kai-shek. The impact of the October Revolution on revolutionary China is also evident from Sun Yat-sen’s testament, whose significance is becoming increasingly clear. The founder of the Chinese Republic advised his comrades and successors always to remain close to and friends of the Soviet Union and Lenin’s Party.

p History cannot be remade. That the declaration of war on Japan by the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the revolutionary process in China was recognised by all at the time. It was not for nothing that the telegram to the Soviet Government on behalf of the Chinese people signed by Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh, read in part: "Warmly welcome declaration of war on Japan by the Soviet Union.” In his last period, one of degeneration and egocentrism, Mao Tse-tung was wrong when he attacked the glorious country of Lenin. He was right when, twenty years earlier, he declared before the Party and the Chinese people that "with the help of our great ally, the Soviet 93 Union, and other fraternal countries and thanks to the support of all fraternal countries in the world and all those who are in sympathy with us, we do not in the least feel isolated”.

p Comrades and friends, the Great October and its revolutionary charge fired men and women throughout the world. The foremost detachments in the remotest parts of the world have borrowed the important experience of Marxism-Leninism. As Comrade Fidel Castro said addressing the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, "No revolutionary has ever stopped feeling the inspiring support of Soviet Communists. It may be said that since the October Revolution ever new generations of revolutionaries were educated on its ideas, spirit, and principles. No other event has so influenced the minds of people, the destiny of nations, and world progress”.

p In 1935, people all over the world rose against the atrocities perpetrated by fascism. The working class in capitalist countries fought in difficult conditions; the absence of unity between the Communists and Social-Democrats enabled the fascists to come to power. Though the historical seeds of the great explosion that came ten years later were already present, imperialism was still imposing its iron will on the colonial countries.

p But the Communists gathered in Moscow for their 7th Comintern Congress. They came from all parts of the world. The mood at the Congress was not one of defeatism, but of militancy and confidence. In the discussion of the conditions and prospects of struggle in those vast areas of the globe that would, it seemed, remain under imperialist oppression forever, and during the drafting of the strategy and tactics of that struggle, Wang Ming spoke on behalf of the Communist parties of colonial and semi-colonial peoples, and said he believed it was necessary "to emphasise in all earnest that the growth of revolutionary forces in the colonial and semi-colonial countries was directly linked with the tremendous influence of the Great October 94 Revolution in general and with its successive historical victories in the first two five-year plan periods in particular.

p “The complete and final victory of socialism in the USSR is for the colonial and economically backward peoples a practical example of how their countries can be transformed.”

p The Communists of Indochina led by the great Ho Chi Minh and by the Communist Party they founded in 1930 never forgot the experience of the Soviet Union and always felt the presence at their side of the successors to those who had carried out the October Revolution. The record of their epic struggle is well known, while their feat of crushing the huge concentration of US imperialism’s armed forces will forever go down in history and become part of the common heritage of nations.

p It is the leaders of the Vietnamese Communists-Ho Chi Minh in the past and Le Duan at present-who showed most clearly that from its inception and development through its main stages up to the most recent battles the revolution in Indochina has always been supported and encouraged by Lenin’s Party and the Soviet people.

p Allow me, comrades, to refer to the Cuban revolution as one more convincing proof of what 7 November 1917 means for the peoples fighting against imperialism.

p In 1959, when the Cuban revolution was carried out, winning the sympathy and support of all progressive people and when the statements and practical work of Fidel Castro and his associates left no doubt that the revolution was developing along socialist lines, professional antiSoviet theorists and “leftist” spokesmen appeared on the scene in great numbers. They prattled about a non-existent third road of development and the peculiarity of the Cuban revolution (which, indeed, no one has ever denied) in an attempt to counterpose this "third road" to the historic road begun by the October Revolution and the triumph of which we celebrate today on its 60th anniversary.

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p Jean-Paul Sartre, whose political vacillations are well known, said that the Cuban revolution was a "revolution devoid of ideology”. Sweezy and Hubermann, two progressively-minded Americans who at that time were under the influence of Chinese views and who were later compelled by history itself to renounce these views, expressed similar ideas.

p There was nothing new in this. For when socialist trends had just begun to develop in the revolutionary process in Cuba, attempts were made to steer the struggle of the Cuban proletariat in a direction leading away from Marxism. Back in 1905, Carlos Balino who had fought in the war against Spain for Cuba’s independence together with Jose Marti, and who later became one of the founders of the Communist Party of Cuba, criticised those who, he said, sought a "special type of socialism" for Cuba. "This special type ot socialism,” Balino said, "would have a lot of the special, but nothing socialist about it.” Later, another founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, Julio Antonio Mella, speaking against Aprism shortly before he was assassinated by the Machado tyranny subservient to imperialism, declared: "To say that Marxism and hence a Communist Party or an organisation that fights for Marxism are an exotic thing for America, one would have to prove that there is no proletariat whatsoever in America, that there is no imperialism with its characteristic features as noted by all Marxists, and that the productive forces in America are different from the productive forces in Asia and Europe, and so on.. . .”

p Fidel Castro put an end to all these speculations by stating on 26 July 1965: "They were unaware how well the ideas that are called Marxist-Leninist thrive in this climate.. . .”

p The sources of socialism in Cuba are to be found precisely in the influence which the October Revolution exercised among the working class and part of the intelligentsia in our country.

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p It is true that already in the second half of the nineteenth century there appeared Socialists in Cuba and a number of prominent people advocating Marxist ideas. However, the Socialist parties which existed prior to 7 November 1917 had many reformist and Utopian ideas. It was the gunshot from the Aurora that for the first time made the voice of Marxism-Leninism ring clear and loud. It opened real revolutionary perspectives.

p The working class, which had demonstrated its political awareness in numerous strike actions, embarked on the correct road.

p In 1921, the Workers’ Federation of Havana sent a message of greetings to Lenin welcoming the Soviet revolution. In a reply to Lenin’s appeal to help the workers of besieged socialist Russia overcome hunger, Carlos Balino declared that "the workers of Cuba wish wholeheartedly to make a contribution of their own to the strengthening of the Soviet Republic, the most important revolutionary gain which the peoples have ever secured. The Cuban workers prompted by their political consciousness and sense of duty will share their last crust of bread with their Russian comrades. For it is a question of rescuing the heroic proletarian republic...”.

p In July 1922, the Socialist Group of Havana decided to break with the Second International and declared its full support for the Communist International.

p In January 1924, after the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the municipal council of Regla, a town across the bay from Havana decided to commemorate Lenin’s name by planting a tree in the town square at the very moment when the coffin bearing the body of the great leader of the international proletariat would be placed in the Mausoleum on January 27.

p In August 1925, Havana workers prepared to give a warm welcome to the seamen of the Soviet merchant vessel Waclaw Worowski, and when the authorities banned this, Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the student 97 federation of Havana University, who later became a Communist leader, went to the ship in a boat and handed a Cuban flag to the Soviet seamen.

p And it was in August 1925 that Mella, Balino, and other comrades founded the first Communist Party of Cuba.

p No one has described the significance of the first Marxist-Leninist movement in Cuba better than Fidel Castro. In his speech at the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the first Marxist-Leninist Party in Cuba and in his report at the 1st Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba he noted the staunchness, heroism, and devotion of the Cuban Communists throughout a long and difficult period. He particularly praised their persistent propagation of Marxism-Leninism.

p Defence of the first socialist state and propaganda of the achievements of Soviet power as an example for the Cuban Communists have always held a central place in their work. In the 40s, before our revolution, Marxist publishers put out Lenin’s works and many books and pamphlets about the USSR. One book. The Soviet Power, written by Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, was the most popular book ever to appear in Cuba before 1959. More than 75,000 copies of it were sold in a few days.

p This propaganda work, and the feat of the Soviet people, who under the leadership of the CPSU defeated Hitler and his generals, and the nazi tank divisions that had swept across Europe, won the USSR great prestige, and its influence on the majority of Cuban workers, students, and intellectuals increased visibly.

p And though the Creole oligarchy that ran Cuba according to instruction it received from Washington was able politically to isolate the Cuban Communists, many of whom were murdered or persecuted, it was unable to prevent the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and the influence of the Soviet Union from reaching the comrades who later carried out revolutionary changes in Cuba.

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p When Jean-Paul Sartre said that a "revolution devoid of ideology" was developing in Cuba in 1959, he had not taken the trouble to ask what Fidel Castro thought about it. In December 1961, speaking on Cuban television, Fidel Castro said for the first time that when preparations for the assault of the Moncada barracks were under way in 1953, he already considered himself a Marxist-Leninist. On 26 July 1973, during the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the assault, he elaborated on his earlier statement: "The nucleus of the leadership of our movement who, apart from doing our regular work, found time to study Marx, Engels, and Lenin considered Marxism the only rational and scientific concept of revolution.”

p The revolutions in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, if one is to judge by the number of people of these countries liberated from colonial and imperialist oppression, are historically the three most important revolutions that had taken place under the influence of the glorious October, whose anniversary we are celebrating today. The light of the ideas of the October Revolution has reached to all corners of the world. We can see it in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau; it illuminates the path of fighters in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, it is reaching the vast Arab world, and its radiance instils hope in people tormented by torturers in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

p Dear comrades, I would like to conclude my speech with the following impressive episode: in 1957 a member of the Communist Youth of Cuba lying on the ground, his head fractured, raised himself a little and told his butchers: "Look at the sky!" and, upon seeing surprise on the faces of his torturers, he said: "You blind fools, look, there is a sputnik above! Even if you kill me, you have lost! We shall win!”

The first sputnik then revolving round the Earth also embodied 7 November 1917; it also embodied the Great October Socialist Revolution.