MosCOW CoVer's

EADERS of the Soviet Communist Party are coming to the assistance of President Nixon, whose administration is being shaken from top to bottom by the Watergate bugging scandal. ixon is fighting for his political survival against a barrage of charges involving eavesdropping, theft, bribery and official lies. To fight his way out of the revelations of corruption he needs every friend he can get. : a time when some members even of his own Republican Party are questioning Nixon's fitness to be in the White House, the Soviet Stalinist chiefs have no doubts at all.

the 'Sunday Times' (April 22) Ed Stevens reported from Moscow: 'Russia's Press has undergone a radical transformation in its attitude towards the United States. Newspapers and weekly magazines are filled with glowing accounts of the positive results achieved since President Nixon's visit to Moscow last May, and optimistic forecasts of further improvements in relations between the two countries. here are kind words for the President, and for Mr Rogers, Secretary of State. And the most laudatory articles are reserved for Occidental Petroleum's President, Dr Armand Hammer, and his CP makes pleas to Messmer Renault: Govt seeks clash MANAGEMENT at Renault, the state-owned French motor giant, is still refusing to negotiate with unions representing 40,000 lockedout workers.

After over a month of strikes and labour conflicts at the company's factories the government seems set on breaking the back of the present upsurge of struggle in the French motor industry:

It is relying, as always, on the treachery and cowardice of the Communist Party chieftains who dominate the most powerful union in the Renault combine, the CGT.

At the main Renault factory, Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, there are 7,000 workers on strike or locked out over a demand that they be paid in full for the • lay-ofts resulting from last month's press-shop strike.

At Flins, a new Renault factory, 2,000 workers are on strike and up to 18,000 others have been laid off without pay.

At Sandouville, site of another important Renault plant, 9,500 men were locked out when a group of workers occupied part of the works last week.

Work has still to resume in full at the factory, though the occupation was ended by the Stalinist union representatives within hours of its taking place. The strikers were threatened by management thugs.

Everywhere ihe Communist Party is striving hard to restore order. On Friday, Party general secretary Georges Marchais sent an extremely servile letter to the Gaullist premier asking him to intervene and get negotiations started.

'The government's persistent refusal to intervene on the side of the workers of the Renault combine shows that it is in solidarity • with the CNPF (National Confederation of French Employers), Marchais wrote, somewhat unnecessarily.

There has been no attempt to spread the struggle to the rest of the factories in the group, let alone to link it with that of other workers in the industry.

Yet at St Etienne, near Lyons, the management used two groups of armed ex-Legionnaires to clear sit-in strikers out of the Peugeot plant.

They had been recruited into the factory as shop-floor workers to spy on their workmates and act as an internal police force.

At Renault, the management sponsors a company union to organize the extreme right and the fascist-backed CFT is active in certain plants.

The Stalinists make cringing declarations about driving. these thugs from the factory and take no further action.

recently-signed chemical deal. ven criticism of American aid to Israel and the Cambodian government has been muted, while the burgeoning Watergate scandal—which in times gone by would have provided a wealth of material for exposing and denouncing capitalist political corruption-has been totally ignored by the Soviet Press in order not to embarrass or discredit president Nixon.' le Stalinist leaders, both in Moscow and Peking, are determined to save the American President's political future. Not only do they tear any changes which might jeopardize their economic ties with the US, they also know Nixon to be a reliable bastion against the working class in the US and Europe. st week the Soviet leaders suspended their exit tax on Jews who want to leave the USSR as a means of coming to final agreement with the Americans on giving most favoured-nation treatUS US CAPITALISM is in the grip of a runaway ir ¡flation which has carried cor sumer. prices upwards at a faster. rate than for over 22 according to the March Food prices jumped by 2.5 per cent compared with 2.2 per cent in January and 1.9 per cent in February. On a seasonally-adjusted basis this would mean an annual rise of close on 30 per cent.

Other items have not risen so fast, but the overall official index of consumer prices rose by 0.8 per cent in March, still the biggest leap since the Korean war.

This would give an increase for the year of 8.8 per c int, assuming inflation cuts wage packets MCOURT FSH Renault workers meeting inside the Boulogne-Billancourt.

ment to Soviet United States. plant no increase in the present rate of inflation.

This compares with President Nixon's aim of limiting price increases to 21 per cent per annum by the end of the year. This aim has now been pushed into the realm of the impossible.

The price rises are being fuelled by what Time' magazine calls the 'Scary Spending Avalanche'. Consumers are spending their dollars as soon as they get them in the belief that prices will rise still further and their money will lose value in their pockets or bank accounts.

This reluctance to hold depre•ciating money has caused a consumer boom which has pushed retail sales and corporate profits to new heights and produced an products It over and above the immediate trading advantages they desperately need to deal with the most pressing problems created by their economic crisis, the Soviet bureaucrats want a grand alliance with the United States against the threat from the world working class. st November, following Nixon's election victory Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev welcomed the result as showing support for 'a peace-loving, realistic foreign policy'. Before the election, President Podgorny has practically endorsed Nixon for President by telling the 'Los Angeles Times' that he looked forward to working with Nixon for several more years. le corruption of Nixon's regime is no deterrent to Stalinist support. People who live in glass houses are in no position to throw stones. After all, by Moscow's standards the Watergate conspirators are mere bungling amateurs.

PRESIDENT NIXON is facing another week of crisis with more allegations of lies and corruption at the White House over the Watergate The accusing finger is now pointing directly at the President himself. Three questions Such operations are done far ar more frequently-and with far more efficiency —in Moscow! le Soviet bureaucracy have no rivals at this kind of activity. They usurped power from the working class by force and maintain it by the most rigorous police-state methods. While their Press is silent about Watergate, the KGB secret police are hounding the courageous oppositionists who produce the 'Chronicle of Current Events'. le 'Morning Star' on Saturday denounced Nixon as a 'man who has set new world records for cynical opportunism and the turning of political somersaults'. Coming from CP secretary John Gollan and his cronies this is indeed an accolade. ley describe the US President as 'the leader of a gangster regime' who "behaves like a gangster everywhere'. True enough, as far as it goes. But they don't say anything about Moscow's enthusiasm for the President and the Kremlin's silence about his corruption. le Stalinists are propping up the Nixon regime at its time of greatest, crisis. Never before has there been such an opportunity to force the President's resignation. It is at this crucial time that Stalinism stands revealed as an open agency of counter-revolution and the staunchest defender of the gangster in the White House.