18

p Lexically, the word “terror” has come from Latin and, having struck root in the languages of the Roman group, subsequently migrated into other European languages. The derivatives—“terrorism” and “act of terrorism" are now in wide use.

p In this context, the meaning of these terms should be neatly defined.

p The term “terror” has gone down in history with the Great French Bourgeois Revolution,  [18•1  in the opinion of bourgeois historians, although action by the State, classes or individuals aimed at intimidating sections, groups or classes of the population, was known in a distant past. One object of public execution of common and political criminals was terrorising those who watched it. It is for that reason that secular and ecclesiastical authorities 19 required all local population to be present at the execution of political criminals or heretics on pain of death or persecution.

p It is common for the terror of the Fiench Revolution to be undeistood as the domestic policy of the Jacobin dictatorship which was installed upon the expulsion of the Girondists from the Convent on May 31-July 2, 1793, and defeated by the counter-revolutionary coup of 27th July (9thThermidor), 1794.

p Bourgeois historians have been trying to prove that the terror of the Jacobin dictatorship was nothing short of bloodshed from start to finish, stating that 17,000 were guillotined under court sentences and a further 25,000 without any, but forgetting all about the wave of “White terror"  [19•1  which followed the coup of the 9th Thermidor, and overlooking other activities of the Jacobin dictatorship and the conditions the Great French Bourgeois Revolution had to develop in.

p The policy of terror was the reply of the French Revolution to arson and explosions, treachery within the Republic, assassination of the commissars of the Convent, the murder of the leaders of the French Revolution,  [19•2  sabotage, the ’hoarding of foodstuffs and prime necessities, blackrnarketeering, and spying of agents from the Coalition countries. One should add to this that it was only the United States of America and the Confederation of 20 Switzerland that maintained neutrality in respect of the French state. The Republic was faced by an ever-present threat of foreign intervention, indeed, the Coalition powers had more than once tried to strangle the French Republic by loice of arms. ’J’lic domestic and external front, and economic difficulties expressed the gravity of the contradictions which the French Revolution was to resolve. Maximiilien Robespierre believed that terror was to be applied only when a failure to apply it would mean disrupting the “public liberty”, that is, prejudicing the interests of the revolution.  [20•1 

p Speaking of the terror of the French bourgeois revolution as a method of struggle, Karl Marx wrote: “All French terrorism was nothing but a plebeian way of dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie, absolutism, feudalism and philistinism."  [20•2 

p By considering the experience of 19th-century revolutions, Marx predicted that revolutions of the new times would be less and less “improvised” and spontaneous; they will take the form of organised action of the masses and the parties. “The time of surprise attacks, or revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past,” Engels wrote. “Where it is a question of complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, 21 must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for, body and soul."  [21•1 

p Lenin, characterising the Jacobin dictatorship, wrote: “The Jacobins of 1793 have gone down in history for their great example of a truly revolutionary struggle against the class of the exploiters by the class of the working people and the oppressed who had taken all state power into their own hands."  [21•2 

p In the context of the political struggle of the proletariat, Lenin recognised the necessity of the “plebeian manner" to dispose of the Russian autocracy,  [21•3  but he emphasised that ”. . .this, of course, does not mean that we necessarily propose to imitate the Jacobins of 1793, and borrow their views, programme, slogans, and methods of action. Nothing of the kind. Our programme is not an old one, but a new—the minimum programme of the Russian SocialDemocratic Labour Party."  [21•4 

p In this connection, one should note an essential feature of the policy of the Jacobin dictatorship which has assumed international legal importance: The French Jacobin government systematically turned down all proposals for methods of individual terrorism to be applied against hostile kings and military commanders (projects of tyrantkillers), while the royalists did not miss a chance to 22 commit an act of terrorism against leaders of the Jacobin dictatorship.

p By its place in history, the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, just like the bourgeois revolutions that had preceded it in the Netherlands and in England in the 17th century, but by its determination and methods of violence, it surpassed those revolutions because of the intensity of class contradictions in France. The French Revolution fought the forces of reaction by establishing a dictatorship which consisted of a Convent; a Committee of Public Salvation which acted as a revolutionary government vested with unlimited powers; a Committee of Public Security, the repressive organ of the Jacobin dictatorship; a Revolutionary Army created by decree of September 5, 1793, to deal with those responsible for the hoarding of goods and black-marketing of primary necessities. The units of the revolutionary army usually comprised a revolutionary tribunal which had a guillotine at its disposal; revolutionary committees operating as local bodies of the dictatorship; a system of revolutionary tribunals which had a simplified pattern of proceedings to follow so as not to last more than 24 hours. The procedure was based on the principle of revolutionary expediency, taking into account the defendant’s social origin.

p Consequently, the action of the revolution in France during that period differed from individual terrorism just as mass struggle differs from sporadic acts.

p Bourgeois students have more than once attempted to define terror as well as to classify its individual types, bringing up the matter in order to suppress the political struggle of the subject people. That tendency showed itself most in the deliberations of the international 23 conferences for the unification of penal law. Terrorism was interpreted in the resolution adopted by the Third Conference  [23•1  as action capable of breeding social danger.

p Official speaker on terrorism at the Fourth Conference,  [23•2  Professor Radulescu of Romania declared that terrorism showed itself primitively in the explosions of bombs and similar devices capable of causing a great loss of life and property. Professor Radulescu, explaining his view of the substance of terrorism, said that it implied encroachments undertaken with a view to violent destruction of all political and legal organisations of society.

p Academician A. N. Trainin of the USSR, criticising that viewpoint, rightfully pointed out that, to follow it, it was the encroachments on the dominant social system and the capitalist order that were to be declared acts of terrorism in the sense of unification conferences and acts vindicating international intervention under the rules of criminal law.  [23•3  We share the view of L. N. Galenskaya of the USSR that “international measures taken in capitalist society are not directed at eradicating the basic causes of crime and, for that reason alone, are of limited vallue and little productive".  [23•4 

p One article of interest has been that of Georg Schwar/enberger of Great Britain, “Terrorists, Hijackers, 24 Guerrilleros and Mercenaries".  [24•1  Reviewing a wealth of factual material, he analysed the substance of these notions. The article laid particular stress on the status of guerrillas in the event of an international or domestic armed conflict as well as the existing standards of international law in respect of unlawful interference in the operations of air services. The author of the article analysed the Resolution 2548 adopted by the Twenty-Fourth Session of the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1969, which qualified the use of mercenaries against national liberation movements as punishable criminal offences and declared the mercenaries themselves outlawed. In our opinion, it was unjustified for such a study to treat terrorists as a separate group since an act of terrorism can be committed by a combatant in the context of an international or internal conflict, by a mercenary or by any civilian for that matter, etc. Unlawful interference in the operation of air services may also contain some elements of an act of terrorism.

p It is quite obvious that the combatants or mercenaries are what they are in virtue of their status whereas terrorists are the doers of an act of terrorism.

p During UN discussions of “international terrorism" in 1972-1973, bourgeois jurists again attempted to exploit this problem in furtherance of their own class interests so as to declare the national liberation struggle to be unlawful and to extend the notion of an “act of terrorism" to cover up action taken in the course of the national liberation struggle.

p In present-day bourgeois studies, terrorism is defined as 25 “the product of fanatical violence perpetrated generally in order to realise some political end to which all humanitarian or ethical beliefs are sacrificed”,  [25•1  as “a faulty weapon that often misfires”,  [25•2  and as “an instrument for accomplishing different objectives”,  [25•3  etc.

p The definitions just quoted do not show up the substance of terrorism and its objective. The classification of terrorism by bourgeois writers makes their stand on the issue clearer.

p The Fifth Conference  [25•4  for the Unification of Penal Law heard it argued that it was not political terrorism that must be the object for the conference to consider, but social terrorism since the latter was directed against the economic organisation of contemporary society.

p A modern author, Paul Wilkinson of Great Britain has pioducecl the following classification:

p 1) war terror (various ways of terrorising the population by all kinds of weapons as bows, firearms, bombs, etc.;

p 2) repressive terror (action of the machinery of suppression) ;

p 3) revolutionary terror;

p 4) sub-revolutionary terror (acts committed, in Wilkinson’s opinion, out of political and ideological 26 considerations, not part of a campaign to seize control of a state).  [26•1 

p Felix Gross, USA, has found it necessary to make a clear distinction between:

p 1) struggle and violence against domestic autocracy;

p 2) violence against foreign conquerors who exterminate nations or enslave peoples, and

p 3) violence waged against democratic institutions, as was done by the fascists, Nazis, and their satellites.  [26•2 

p In his general characterisation of terror, Gross divides it into “five major strategic types":

p 1) tactical (punishment, retribution, damage of government),

p 2) random,

p 3) random-focussed,

p 4) mass terror,

p 5) dynastic assassination.  [26•3 

p The classifications just given are so eclectic as to cover terrorist acts as well as guerrilla activity and political assassination, and the terrorism of the machinery of the state to suppress the opposition, and psychological aspects of the action of this or that kind of weapon. These classifications lack any system approach, although in some cases they objectively reflect the existing distinctions between acts of terrorism by the doer and by the object they are committed against, and exhibit their political substance. For instance, revolutionary terror, mass terror, repressive terror, etc. This circumstance is due to the absence of uniform methodology at the root of this investigation and 27 a theory of violence in history in general and that of terror in particular.

p Belgian author, Pierre Mertens writes, analysing a number of international legal documents, that although they refer to terrorism, this notion is, nevertheless, left undefined. Moreover, acts of terrorism have a different meaning in time of peace and of war. In the latter case “they come within the framework of jus in hello and denote the practices which appear to be uselessly cruel or odious, and are eventually interpreted as war crimes, crimes against humanity, or infringements of humanitarian law”. In peacetime, however, there have been acts of terrorism directed against the terror of States (as in Spain under Franco, or under the military dictatorship in Greece) and therefore “if one condemns terrorism, one should condemn all types of terrorism".  [27•1 

p A series of articles and books dealing with the problem of terrorism have appeared in capitalist countries in recent times, notably, Terrorism: Theory and Practice (edited by Jonah Alexander, David Garlton, and Paul Wilkinson, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1979). It has been prepared by the Institute for Studies in International Terrorism at New York State University. In the first part of the book, “Overview”, Leon J. Banker Jr., Bownan H. Miller and Charles A. Russell define terrorism as “the threatened or actual use of force or violence to attain a political goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation".  [27•2  The roots of modern terrorism, as they see it, reside in the 28 student and radical movement of the 60s, which was directed against the establishment. It is interesting to note that the authors list precisely those countries of heightened terrorist activity which had capitalist contradictions at their sharpest in the 60s and 70s: Italy, Spain, Iran, the countries of Latin America, Greece, Turkey, the countries of South Asia, and the US. The danger of terrorism in the future, the authors believe, can rise on account of the extreme complexity of the problem of defence against terrorists who use the advantage of surprise action and also because all modern technical facilities, including missiles, are coming within the terrorists’ reach.

p This study offers :i classification of terrorist groups: nationalistical’ly separatist; ideological (the authors “ amalgamate" Marxist, leftist and fascist ideologies under one heading), and nihilistic, which include criminal elements and are prone to destruction.

p In the chapter “Terrorist Movements”, Paul Wilkinson defines terrorism as a poilicy or process consisting of three basic elements: “1) the decision to use terrorism as a systematic weapon; 2) the threats or acts of extranormal violence themselves; 3) the effects of this violence upon the immediate victims ... and the wider national and international opinion..."  [28•1 

p The scientific estimates of the study are crowned by the chapter “The Legalisation of Terrorism" which puts the blame for the impunity of terrorists on ... the UN, since “there is no accepted definition of self-determination and national liberation, although a number of rebel organisations have described themselves as national liberation 29 movements”. The author considers the official recognition of the Palestine Liboratioii Organisation (PLO) by the UN and 115 nations of the would (at that time) and the UN attitude to liberation organisations in action against racist icgitnes to be an example of the “legalisation” of terrorism, lie holds that “international law has granted legal status to terrorists and legalised their terrorist activities".  [29•1 

p Obviously, one cannot accept such an approach. First of all because it is contrary to fact and because such a classification and the assessment of UN activities are not objective but politically coloured condemning as they do the national liberation movement and whitewashing the terrorist actions of reaction against the left forces and against the national liberation movement itself. This was stated quite clearly by Fidel Castro, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, when he addressed the 26th Congress of the CPSU: “At present the Yankee imperialists are also trying to equate with terrorism the national liberation movement and the struggle of the peoples for social change. For them to be a revolutionary, to be simply a progressive or to struggle for democracy, is to be a terrorist. With these fallacies and lies they abandon totally the fig leaf of defending human rights and proclaim themselves once again, without any shame whatever, as the world’s policeman."  [29•2 

p Speaking of the relation of terror and violence and of the Bolshevik Party’s stand on the matter, Lenin wrote: 30 “... At all events, we are convinced that the experience of revolution and counter-revolution in Russia has proved the correctness of our Party’s more than twenty-year struggle against terrorism as tactics. We must not forget, howevei, that this struggle was closely (ounce ted with a i nthless struggle against opportunism, which was inclined to repudiate the use of all violence by the oppressed classes against their oppressors. . . We have regarded the armed uprising not only as the best means by which the proletariat can retaliate to the government’s policy, but also as the inevitable result of the development of the class struggle for socialism and democracy."  [30•1 

p Here is one fact of common knowledge: in October 1916, an Austrian Social-Democrat Friedrich Adler killed the Prime Minister of Austria, Karl Stiirgkh. Commenting on this, Lenin pointed out in one of his letters to Vienna that “we stand, naturally, by our old conviction, confirmed by experience over decades, that individual terrorist acts are inexpedient methods of political struggle. . . Only the mass movement can be considered genuine political struggle."  [30•2 

p The objective character of violence is due to the antagonism of the contending classes while the subjective character (the forms, timing and victims) is determined by the prevailing conditions of a particular country, above all, the resistance of the class against which the social struggle is conducted, r.e , violence destroys the structure 31 of outgoing societies in history and in that way undermines the foundations for the existence of the classes and groups clinging to the outgoing order.

p So, one should distinguish individual tenor; the tenor of the class struggling lor powei; the terror ot the class in power; revolutionary terror and counter-revolutionary terror.

p The policy of individual terror is peculiar to the pettybourgeois groups and those sections of intellectuals who do not have the support of a particular class to rely on. The feeling of despair caused by the political doom of the petty-bourgeois sections of the community, either conscious or unconscious, always induced representatives of those groups to commit such acts.

p These sections were petty-bourgeois not because of the origin of the exponents of these ideas, since they couild come from the bourgeoisie as well as the working class, but because of the aims of their movement and their subjective analysis of historical events.

p Revolutionary thinkers, who stood by historical materialism, rejected terror as a motor of the social process. Georgi Plekhanov gave the following assessment of Herzen’s position in his work A. I. Herzen and Serfdom:

p “The young revolutionaries also did not like Herzen’s disapproval of the tactics of assassination or terror, as it was called later. . It will be more appropriate to note that, in rebelling against Herzen, the young revolutionaries merely magnified an error that had crept into his own philosophy of Russian history".  [31•1 

32

p Describing the social roots of terrorism, Plekhanov pointed out that “so-called terrorism is not a proletarian method of struggle. The true terrorist is an individualist by nature or by ’circumstances beyond his control’."  [32•1 

p However, it was Lenin who produced the fullest ever assessment of individual! terror and its social roots as well as the character of “circumstances beyond one’s control" in his work “Some Features of the Present Collapse":

p “.. .And it is extremely important to grasp the truth, confirmed by the experience of all countries which have undergone the defeat of a revolution, that one and the same psychology, one and the same class peculiarity (that of the petty bourgeoisie, for example) is displayed both in the dejection of the opportunist and in the desperation of the terrorist."  [32•2 

p Consequently in assessing individual terror, one must emphasise two aspects of this phenomenon:

p —first, that this method of political struggle is foredoomed because it is subjective;

p —second, its partisans, because of this circumstance, are inclined to be maximalistic in their judgement and action.

p It is precisely this idea that Lenin stressed when he said that "terrorism was the result—and also the symptom and concomitant—of lack of faith in insurrection, of the absence of conditions for insurrection."  [32•3 

p Consequently, terror tactics as the essential means 33 chosen by a particular movement attests, first and foremost, to its spontaneous character and its divorce from the masses.

p “The economists and present-day terrorists have one common root; namely subservience to spontaneity with which we dealt in the preceding chapter. . . the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole."  [33•1 

p Individual terror appears as intellectuals see the necessity of political struggle against the existing system. However, the absence of a Marxist understanding of this struggle makes it impossible for them to see the rising class of the proletariat or appeal to it, and, so have it as their historical base of support. Political terrorism, as Georgi Plekhanov put it, opened up an “epoch of conscious political struggle against the government”,  [33•2  however, the positive character of this struggle quickly develops into negative since “outside the workers there is no section that could at the decisive minute knock down and kill off the political monster already wounded by the terrorists."  [33•3 

p Subjectivism in theory, political assassination in practice, the role of the individual seen as an absolute value, these are the features that have always distinguished 34 individual terror as a method of struggle and, naturally, ideas of this kind have earned support in petty-bourgeois quarters and among intellectuals expressing their interests.

p The story of Narodnaya Volya and, subsequently, the activities of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries provide cogent evidence to bear that out. In the twilight of Narodnaya Volya, one of its theorists, Stepniak-Kravchinsky had to admit that a victory, immediate, splendid, and decisive, such as that obtained by an insurrection, was utterly impossible by means of Terrorism.  [34•1 

p Consequently, it is upon the realisation of their impotence in front of their class enemy and because they have no real mass base of support and set themselves reckless aims prompted by these two factors that both the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements began to count on individual terrorism.

p It is necessary to stress that the Bolshevik Party always stood by positions of principle in its approach to individual terror. The Second Congress of the Party (1903) passed the following resolution:

p “The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and 35 the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy."  [35•1 

p There can be situations in the context of the struggle of the masses led by the class that expresses their interests where class terror becomes one of the forms of organised violence but what distinguishes this terror, above all, is its enforced character as a reply to terrorist forms of violence by the resistant class.

p It is because it had to suppress the class of exploiters and, above all, the terror unleashed by counter-revolution and to react to it that the working class resorted to the formidable deterrent of terror. For instance, Red terror was declared in reply to White terror during the Civil War, following the 1917 October Socialist Revolution.

p These terms underlined the intensity of the class struggle for power. In this connection, Lenin wrote in his “ Letter to the British Workers": “Our Red terror is a defence of the working class against the exploiters, the crushing of resistance from the exploiters."  [35•2 

p The proletariat used Red terror not only owing to the bitter political struggle, but because it had to suppress the economic resistance of the exploiter classes of town and country. For instance, selling bread at blackmarket prices at the time of War Communism was occasionally punished by death penalty while the White Army soldiers and officers, taken prisoner, were not subject to execution if they had not participated in executions and punitive operations.

36

p Whenever terror is put forward as an independent type of action divorced from the class political struggle and an end in itself, Marxism categorically rejects such terror which degenerates into individual terror, a break-up of revolutionary forces and unjustified victims. Marxism rejects that terror because “... only the mass movement can be considered genuine political struggle".  [36•1 

p Following the assassination of the Portuguese king in 1908, Lenin, expressing his sympathy for the brave men who had removed the “king who mocked the Constitution”, wrote: “We regret that in the happening to the king of Portugal there is still clearly visible the element of conspiratorial, i.e., impotent, terror, one that essentially fails to achieve its purpose..."  [36•2 

p Never in the history of the Marxist working-class movement in Russia, not even in the context of ruthless terror of the tsarist secret police (particularly after the defeat of the first Russian revolution of 1905) has any act of terrorism been planned or committed against any member of the tsarist government or the tsarist household, or against any official of the Russian Empire for that matter on the territory of a foreign state. The history of the SocialistRevolutionary Party, notably its left wing, has one act of terrorism on record which had far-reaching international consequences—the assassination of the German Ambassador, Wilhelm Mirbach, on the Embassy’s territory, in July 1918 with the aim of provoking war between Germany and Soviet Russia.

37

p The entire history of the world communist movement demonstrates its consistent and emphatic rejection of terror as a method of struggle, and all the more so the terror that has international implications, which is directly connected with the concept of condemning the export of revolution and the export of counter-revolution.

p The terror of the extreme “left”, an Argentine political journalist, Fernando Nadra, believes, is an expression of their petty-bourgeois ideology and adventurism. World and national experience goes to show that terror does damage to the cause it is claimed to defend, engenders the people’s disaffection; splits the revolutionary ranks, divides the masses and separates itself from the masses, teams up with right-wing forces in spite of internal distinctions of trend and shade; leaves the reactionary elements free to justify intensified reprisals against the working class and the people, against all democratic and anti-imperialist forces.

p Fernando Nadra rightfully notes that, for example, in Argentina it is the extreme right groups, pro-fascists or flunkeys of imperialism, militarised bands of mercenaries ransacking the republic that are principally responsible for the vast majority of crimes rocking the nation. And they direct their crimes and threats, above all, against left activists, peronistas, Communists, radicals, socialists and representatives of other trends, against the fighting workers, against the military, against the teachers, scientists, creative artists, young people and students who are engaged in some useful occupation, defend the nation or fight against imperialism and oligarchy.

p The history of terrorism has been closely bound up with the history of violence. The institution of violence 38 appeared on the historical stage along with the appearance of contradictions which essentially meant that it was impossible to resolve any of them without some exponents of these contradictions being suppressed by others. Economic, political, and even ideological contradictions can be taken as so many excuses for the exercise of violence.

p Violence can find expression in:

p 1) direct action aimed at the physical destruction or suppression of the object of violence (military operations, reprisals, penalties provided for by the legal system of the state, and individual acts of the use of force);

p 2) political or economic coercion which does not express itself in every single case in the particular standards and provisions of administrative, civil or criminal law, but may also be incorporated in the very system of the state, or social-economic formation (apartheid, fascism).

p The necessity of violence in history is determined by the existence of contradictions which are impossible to resolve through a compromise arrangement between the exponents of these contradictions: states, classes, or individuals. Besides, the combinations of these contradictions by the subject principle can be entirely different: the state—individual; the state—class or ruling class-oppressed classes and sections of the community; individual—class; class—class, provided neither is the ruling one; and individual—-individual.

p It is not the concern of this book to consider the question of violence in general and that of the role of violence in history and, notably, at the present juncture, since this subject requires a special investigation. We shall limit ourselves to stressing the point that the forms and methods 39 of using violence change depending on the intensity of contradictions.

p Terror is used as a method of violence while terrorism is the application of this method through individual terrorist acts.

p By its character, terror differs from the revolutionary movement of the mass of the people, which is aimed straight at fundamentally changing society. An act of terrorism, even if its long-term objective is to draw attention to a particular political cause or situation, has something relatively limited, if important, as its immediate target, as raising money to meet the needs of the political struggle, obtaining the release of political prisoners, spreading general terror, removing a "strong personality”, showing up the impotence of government authorities, or provoking reprisals which can have the effect of dividing public opinion.

p Consequently, a terrorist usually cannot directly achieve the ultimate objective he has announced.

p As shown earlier on, typical features of an act of terrorism are: violent action in any of its diverse forms capable of attracting the attention of the general public; a political motive underlying the commission of a terrorist act; the fact that the act itself is directed against a group of persons, classes or a state, as well as individuals representing their interests; as a rule, the absence of an opportunity to achieve the declared ultimate objective of a terrorist act.

p So, a terrorist act should be seen as violent action against an individual!, a group of individuals, a class or representatives of the authorities of a state, designed to intimidate or compel the latter to fulfil the demands and objectives underlying the commission of a terrorist act.

40

p Professor I. I. Karpets writes: “Terrorism is international or internationally intended national organising or other activity aimed at creating special organisations and groups to commit murder, use violence and take people hostage for a ransom or other demands; forcible deprivation of freedom, often involving torture, blackmail, etc.; terrorism can also mean the destruction of buildings, their ransacking and similar acts."  [40•1 

p The particular feature of the present time is direct and active use of terrorist action by imperialism and, notably, by its secret services, as the CIA of the US. The Italian Panorama magazine wrote back in 1978 that the US had quite openly warned the Christian Democratic Party against the inclusion of the Communist Party in the government majority. But the GDP did not heed the warning, and it was Moro who was responsible for its action in this sense. Moro is known to have been killed. The magazine wrote that the CIA was the only intelligence service whose outright intervention in Italian politics had been proved by the US Congress and its murderous and violent acts with a view to changing the domestic political situation had been widely demonstrated in other countries, from Greece to Chile. Disclosures of US intervention in the internal affairs of Chile have produced a lot of examples of terror politics organised and pursued by the CIA in that country.

p Chilean anti-fascist General Carlos Prats, former President of Bolivia General Juan Jose Torres, an Uruguayan 41 attaché in Paris, former Uruguayan MP Michelini, and a number of Paraguayan democrats have been killed by fascist bands.

p Emma Obleas de Torres, the widow of the ex-President of Bolivia assassinated in 1976, has pointed out that disclosures coming daily from the police of certain Latin American countries confirm the existence of a supranational organisation aiming to wipe out the democrats of the Western Hemisphere.

p Recurrent assassination attempts on President Samora Machel of Mozambique and Fidel Castro are also quite typical. US secret services have been reported to be giving much of their attention to Afghanistan, Angola and Kampuchea where the CIA has been building up its support for the invading bands which are terrorising the civilian population.

p Internationalisation of the terrorist activities of imperialism is based on the concept which has been set out quite clearly in the so-called Confidential Manual of the US Armed Forces and served as a guide to action for Chilean fascists in 1973. This manual says, in particular, that extreme violence against popular forces, mass round-ups, raids, any of the most cruel means to intimidate the people and give a shock to them in one way or another are an earnest of success of a coup or removal of an unwelcome government.  [41•1  A member of the military fascist junta, General Gustavo Leigh declared in public that it 42 would be necessary: “To massacre one-third of the ten million Chileans to eliminate Marxism."  [42•1 

p A secret document, FM 30-31, compiled by US General Westmoreland, as the Italian Panorama magazine revealed in July 1981, said, in particular, that to control the political situation in a country, above all, in the countries which had American military bases in them, it was necessary to maintain secret contact with terrorist organisations so as to create a situation of political instability in any of those countries whenever necessary. That implied the participation of armed stooges in demonstrations to stir up trouble and provoke clashes with police, actions aimed at discrediting the authorities and the police, penetrating government offices, organising explosions, and killing policemen. In July 1981, the Minister of Defence of the Philippines, Juan P. Enrile declared that there was a training centre in operation in California for terrorists to be smuggled into the Philippines to conduct subversive activity. Another centre of this kind is situated outside Phoenix, Arizona. The Philippine press has unequivocally indicated that the extreme right organisation, the Movement for the Free Philippines, responsible for terrorist actions, is financed by the CIA.

p There were 31 bomb explosions in that country in August through October of 1980, with the victims of terrorism exceeding 60. An explosion was staged at a ceremony attended by President Ferdinand Marcos on October 19.

p The Washington Quarterly published some confessions by former CIA chiefs, Richard Helms, George Bush, and 43 William Colby in early 1981 where they admitted unequivocally that the CIA had carried out large-scale operations back in the 50s to wipe out the left forces in the Philippines.

p These are the facts and, whatever the representatives of bourgeois science and politics may write and say, they will never succeed in discrediting the profoundly humanistic position of the Communists consistently acting against terror and consistently pressing for a policy of cooperation of nations in action against international terrorism, guiding themselves by the universally recognised principles and standards of international law.

p The wave of terrorism which has swept across the world in recent years has generated a multitude of opinions, assumptions and prescriptions for suppressing it as well as universal condemnation. One thing is obvious: the threat of destabilisation, the threat to the normal development of international relations and the acts of terrorism which mean destroying hundreds of innocent people and damaging property cannot but arouse serious concern and prompt the urgent need to work out the ways and means of effective action against this grave criminal offense of an international character.

p It should be noted that an analysis of particular terrorist acts brings one to the conclusion about the close connection of terrorism with extreme reactionary forces striving to prevent the implementation of the policy of easing international tensions, exacerbate the armed conflict and strike at the democratic development of a number of countries.

p In recent times, the issue of “international terrorism" has come to be used by the US Administration as an 44 ideological excuse for anti-Sovietism and for action directed against the national liberation movement in Africa, Latin America and Asia, as well as for intervention in the internal affairs of independent states. For example, the then US Secretary of State Alexander Haig declared at a press conference on January 28, 1981, that the Soviet Union was preparing, financing and equipping international terrorism. A State Department spokesman described as “ international terrorism" what “the Russians call wars of national liberation”. That was yet another act of provocation designed to dominate an anti-Soviet campaign with several objectives before it: first, to try and defame the peace policy of the Soviet Union and charge it with what it has never done, since the USSR has been always and consistently speaking up against terror in every shape or form; second, misrepresent the sum and substance of the national liberation movement, label it as “international terrorism" and, consequently, qualify the offer of assistance to it by progressive states as support for “international terrorism”, and third, to gain a free hand, on the grounds of having to combat “international terrorism”, for intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, above all. those where reactionary and fascist regimes are crumbling under the pressure of the just struggle of the masses.

p The US Administration has found allies in Europe as well. President Alessandro Pertini of Italy, speaking over French television, went as far as to claim that the Red Brigades in Italy were under control from the Soviet Union. And although this lie had been laid bare in Italian parliament, which discussed the possible connections of Italian terrorists “with foreign elements”, although neither the Ministry of the Interior, nor the Ministry of Foreign 45 Affairs had produced any evidence of those “connections” and, moreover, when the discussion revolved around specific evidence of the connections of Italian terrorists with a right-wing French organisation, Action Directe, newspapers kept on repeating the lie. And that was not the first attempt of reactionary elements to accuse the Soviet Union of “connections with international terrorism".

p Regardless of all the attempts of anti-socialist forces to exploit the issue of “international terrorism" for an offensive against the forces of democracy and progress, the problem of “international terrorism" is, by itself, a real problem of international relations.

p It is possible to specify, in relative terms, the following trends of terrorism—right-wing, fascist-like and leftist; terrorism organised by the State and its agencies, and terrorism practised by private individuals or organisations, nominally and in a wide range of instances actually unconnected with any State whatsoever. It must be noted that the attitude to these trends of terrorism, outwardly in any case, is unidentical, although they are all paying for imperialism and reactionary forces. Right-wing terrorism is using as its theoretical foundation the notorious racist and fascist theories and rabid anti-communism. Right-wing terrorism is, in all cases, directly aimed against democracy and social progress. It has always been used, and is being used today more than at any time before, by the reactionary forces of imperialist states, both inside and outside these countries, against democracy and progressive regimes of other countries, against the national liberation movement. Fighting against socialist countries, the international communist and working-class movement is one of the top priorities of right-wing terrorism.

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p One may well state that right-wing terrorism is operating with virtual impunity and, as the facts quoted in the Western press indicate, it has the support of monopoly quarters and official authorities of a number of capitalist states. What strikes the eye is generous financial support for right-wing terrorist organisations and just as generous arms supplies for them.

p In the United States, for example, there are terrorist organisations in action with impunity, such as the Omega-7 or the Jewish Defence League which are well known to have committed terrorist acts against Cuba, Chilean patriots, Arab and socialist countries. Since the tragic events in El Salvador in 1980, where bloody repression and terror as well as violations of human rights and freedoms have become widespread, it has come to light that a number of terrorist groups, like Union Guerrero Blanco (The Union of White Warriors), Escuadron de la Muerte (Death Squadron), Mano Blanco (White Arm) and the Salvadoran Anti-Communist Army have joined in an alliance subsidised by certain US quarters and transnational monopolies entrenched in that country and by local industrialists, latifundists and clericals connected with them.

p One point to note at this juncture is the establishment of contact and creation of a kind of international alliance of right-wing factions. An international fascist conference in Barcelona in 1978 debated the issues of subversive action against the left forces in Western Europe. There are close on 200 old and new neo-Nazi organisations in operation in West Germany, for instance, which openly proclaim the resurgence of the fascist system to be their objective. The West German Minister of the Interior reaffirmed that the neo-Nazis maintained close relations with 47 kindred organisations in Italy, Belgium, France, Britain, the US and a number of Latin American countries, seeking to make their movement one of international importance. The Durand Affair  [47•1  exposed some facts shedding light on the character of the so-called World Union of National Socialists spreading out -through a number of countries of Western Europe. On the eve of the bomb-blast tragedy in Bologna, Paul Durand travelled free throughout Italy and had a series of meetings with local neofascists. The Italian Panorama magazine wrote that bloodthirsty Nazi and fascist murderers from Rome to Paris and from Madrid to Lisbon are linked together by an invisible rope, as it were. The neo-Nazis have been straining every nerve for years to put themselves in charge of the notorious World Anti-Communist League. A branch office of the League, established in Western Europe, brings together neo-Nazis from Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, West Germany, Sweden, Britain and France which constitute a kind of subsidiary of the fascist World Union of National Socialists. At the present time, the neo-Nazis are trying to lay hold on the League’s branch offices in southern Africa and Southeast Asia.

p Links between European right-wingers and their American counterparts have increased in recent times. The members of the British National Front, West German neoNazis and French right-wing extremists have been training in Alabama. They have Army units billeted in Europe as their connecting link, the Neue Revue of Hamburg has reported.

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As to leftist terrorism, it is not a black-and-white entity by its political complexion. The theoretical base of leftist terrorism is an eclectic mixture of anarchism, Trotskyism and fascism. One of the theorists of leftist terrorism, Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian, has defined its object as one of democratising public life. Although leftist terrorists do talk of righting against the capitalist scheme of things, they are objectively, and often subjectively helping reactionary forces strike out against the revolutionary movement and democracy. One has to bear in mind, besides, that leftist terrorism is widespread in the world today and practised through inherently cruel and variously designed and devised acts of encroachment evoking strong public protest. The world had borne witness to many such acts, such as blowing up airliners, killing politicians of most diverse orientations, planting bombs in government and public buildings, attacking the embassies of capitalist, and socialist countries and kidnapping diplomats. On the one hand, there is the terrorism that is strongly opposed by capitalist countries and which the developing nations and socialist countries are up against as well. On the other hand, there is leftist terrorism which quite often turns out to be a specific manifestation of protest against racism, colonialism, foreign occupation, poverty and despair. The Western press has been exploiting this in an attempt to discredit revolutionary ideas, the revolutionary movement, the theory and practice of social progress and of left forces in general, Marxism, first and foremost. Since it is chance persons that often fall victim to terrorism, imperialism, while declaring these offences to be common crimes, qualifies in exactly the same way any action by the working people in defence of their rights and interests.