Fierce anti- film by Opposition

IN FILMED interviews Soviet Union, leaders opposition have made thr the bureaucracy by the The film shown on American TV on Tuesday consists of speeches made by three leaders of the main opposition groups: Andrei Amalrik, who speaks the most pessimistic sections of the opposition who think the Soviet Union is heading for an inevitable war with China.

Vladimir Bukovsky, from the literary opposition.

Peter Yakir, son of the Red Army leader murdered bj Stalin in 1937, who heads the pro-Leninist wing of the anti-Stalinist movement.

For this reason, Yakir's contribution the • most mportant and the most owerful:

'We are all being arrested, all those who have taken part in the democratic movement. But that's not the point. We are apparently being arrested because it doesn't suit the authorities to have people about who criticize them.

'But there's no going back. If we're not here there'll be others, and there are many of us, many young people, and no independent-thinking people in the Soviet Union will go back to what used to "They will beat us, they will kill us, but all the same people will go on thinking differently?

Defiant

On the surface the opposition seems small. But it draws its strength and courage to make this defiant attack from the growing movement amongst Soviet youth against the entire Stalinist system and ideology:

'In Stalin's day, millions of people were destroyed and nobody knew about it. Now Read Oppositionist documents in the latest 'FOURTH INTERNATIONAL' see advert inside we're trying to publicize every arrest and every dismissal.' Bukovsky, who was recently Stalinist 'mental home, in a for taking part in anti-Stalinist demonstrations and protests, described how he met a French Communist Party member who had gone to the BY A FOREIGN REPORTER smuggled out of the : fiercest attack yet on Soviet 'underground' The breakdown in vital communications, essential to the agricultural and industrial development, are just one aspect of the Soviet bureaucrats face THE SOVIET bureaucrac severe economic crisis wh ingly difficult to disguise.

The intense activity of official bodies to assist agriculture, the 'economic reforms' in industry debate and the new labour code indicate the seriousness of the situaSymptoms of the crisis can be seen in official industrial output figures for the first half of 1970.

These show consumer goods industries failing to fulfil output and marketing In 1969, despite the allocation of increased funds for agricultural investment, production fell by per cent.

A significant characteristic of the Soviet economic scene is the lack of industrial workers' co-operation.

Many Soviet factories remain over-manned and the relaxation of labour controls has resulted in a high labour turnover, especially in the newly established Siberian Go-slow Absenteeism, 'indiscipline' and a positive go-slow attitude indicate workers' opposition to bureaucratic privileges.

Chronic shortages of consumer goods and, above all, the poor quality anc lack of variety stitten thei resistance.

If Khrushchev's promises of outstripping the USA in the 1970s are recalled it can only increase their scepticism.

The much-lauded economic reform intended to speed up industrial growth by giving increased powers to factory managers and incentives to raise the profitability of the enterprise has failed.

La result, the 'centralizers' in the leadership, who want a return to the type of planning customary in Stalin's day, are making a comeback.

Tense in-fighting is going on behind closed doors in the committees which are preparing the new five-year the same time, the bureaucracy is seeking, as it has done in the past, to win over the richer peasantry with concessionshigher prices are to be paid for livestock, fruit and vegetables. Consumer coof the anti-Stalinist is in the grip of a in the grip of a h it finds increas- it finds increaseconomic crisis operatives will be allowed to deal directly with the producers.

Concessions

Whether these concessions will encourage peasants to work harder for the collective farm and spend less time on their private plots remains to be seen. After 40 years the effects of forced collectivization still hang heavy over Soviet agriculture.

Efforts made in the course of the eighth plan to make good the Soviet Union's deficiencies in technologically advanced and modern industries have not yielded the desired results.

Dependence on capitalist enterprises to supply whole factories and assist in establishing new industries have re-iterated the Soviet economy's continued backwardness.

Unable to return openly to Stalin's methods bureaucracy nevertheless seeks to overcome its problems administratively.

The 1971 labour code is a prime example of this — a code drawn up to deal with the workers' scarcely veiled opposition to creased labour productivity at their expense.

Stiff measures

teeing the workers rights While nominally to employment, to leisure and SO • on, the code aims specifically at increasing labour productivity by stiffer measures against indiscipline and absenteeism.

Speaking on the code to the Supreme Soviet, Vasily Prokhorov said:

•Among the mass of honest workers, who constitute overwhelming majority, there are persons who are careless and undisciplined, who do not realize their responsibility to society, and who do harm to their collective, to industry, to the national economy and to society. The legislation on labour is called upon to play an important Sydney, July 23—Readers of this column may remember (June 30) the chairman of the Shell group of companies being reported as saysatisfied with the group's profit for 1969.

This had climbed from $18.5 million about £8.6 million) to $26.5 million (£12.5 million)—an increase of almost 43 per cent.

The gentleman was not joking, as hundreds of workers throughout Australia discovered less than two weeks after the profits were announced.

A claim for a $12-a-week increase for maintenance workers at a Shell refinery in Sydney was rejected.

The strike which resulted rapidly spread to other refineries in other states and by the beginning of this week the joint action by workers this key industry was threatening to bring the country to a standstill as petrol supplies dried up and fuel supplies for aeroplanes were threatened.

Obviously with only $26.5 million in the bank you cannot afford to be paying 1,000 maintenance men all that extra money a week, so they were offered increases ranging from $6.20 (£2 17s) to $8.70 ($4) spaced over two years.

Mr Jack Faichney, chairman of the National Oil Industrial Committee is reported to have said:

'Their demands are wayout. They would have a snowballing effect in other, areas Xml ... crisis.

severe role in further strengthening conscious labour discipline.' In a genuinely socialist society the public opinion of workers themselves would be sufficient to bring slack and careless workers into line.

The Soviet bureaucracy's present crisis is the continuation and sharpening of all the contradictions which flow inevitably from the policy of 'socialism in one country.

Contrary to Stalin's presumptions, the Soviet Union not and does not have everything which is necessary and sufficient for the building of socialism.

Degeneration

The onsequence of orced industrialization in backward country separated from the world market are to be found in the whole bureaucratic degeneration of the workers' state.

The dismantling of some of the repressive measures of Stalin's day— taken from fear of a political revolution - and attempts reform the economic administration and and to open up economic contests with the capitalist countries have by no means been able to overcome the contradictions.

Unable to safeguard the gains of October, the bureaucracy is only interested in the maintenance of its own powers and privileges.

If it leads the economy into an impasse, that raises the alternative future in the sharpest way:

either a return back to capitalism or the political revolution and the overthrow of the bureaucracy.

There is no technical or administrative solution to the Soviet economy problems.

They lead necessarily to a trial of strength between the bureaucracy and the working class.

The new Soviet opposition, although mainly confined to intellectuals as yet, the same old inflationary leapfrogging business all over again.' At least some of what he said was correct!

Australian I workers are not going to sit back while profits for the oil industry go up and their standard of living goes down (the cost of living has increased over the last quarter by almost one dollar a week).

The unprecedented number of struggles taking place throughout the country at present are proof of this.

Oil maintenance workers have gone back today (July 23) pending a full inquiry into their claim by the Commonwealth Arbitration Commission, a decision favoured by president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (equivalent to the British TUC) Mr R. J. Hawke, but closely fought among local union men, and only agreed to by 271 votes to 258.

Over 600 petrol tanker drivers who struck because Shell suspended a number of raises for the bureaucracy the gigantic spectre of working-class eruption with all the strength of the October Revolution behind it and the solidarity and support of the world working class.

Turning this way and that in search of a way out, a powerful section of the Soviet leadership attempts a rehabilitation of Stalin and his methods.

Leadership, divisions are bound to deepen as the crisis intensifies.

At the same time, confronted with the potential of the working class, the bureaucracy seeks more and more desperately, in Europe (Germany), the Middle East and Far East, to do a deal with imperialism. Brazil massacre by right wing BRAZIL'S notorious right- forced to promise counterthe Death Squad claimed a further eight victims over the weekend, immediately after the regime had declared its intention to clamp down on it.

Last week a Sao Paulo judge, Nelson Fonseca, declared in a letter to the federal authorities that the organization was staffed largely by ex-policemen and even by those still serving. Since 1968 they are estimated to have murdered over thousand people, mainly left-wingers, as well as common criminals.

For a long time the government turned a blind eye to them and, needless to say, they were not seriously troubled by the police.

Now, however, the Medici regime, already branded in the eyes of the world for its routine use of torture against political prisoners, has been SYONEY 10 iM 1970 NS W. 20001 belonging to the Tolia tribe of the island of New Britain who have formed themselves into a political group. known as the Mataungan AssociaMembers of the tribe were 'squatting' in an area of land they claimed was theirs by right, but which the administration said they had bought and was going to be redistributed among some of the local people.

The Tolias were warned it they did not leave the lanc they would be evicted by force. Hundreds of police were mustered in the area and preparations were made to move measures.

Last weekend's massacre, however, indicates that this may prove no more than a verbal gesture.

In line with the reactionary plans laid at the recent Washington conference of the Organization of American States, repression in America was intensified last In La Paz, capital of Bolivia, police arrested a large number of trade union leaders, including Juan Lechin Oquendo, leader of the powerful Miners' Federation, and Raul Gonzales, secretary of the pro-Chinese Communist And in Uruguay the Areco regime has declared severe measures against all those 'who disturb public order'.

'El Popular' , paper of the Uruguayan Communist Party, has been suspended for "breaking security regulations'. EV!

in troops of the Pacific • Islands Regiment (mostly natives of the area.

So far the expected violent clashes have not occurred, mainly because the Tolias backed down at the last minute.

But a growing political awareness among the islandmeans that a . head-on collision is inevitable.

Both the action of the islanders, and that of the administration and the Australian government (which is responsible for the territory and said to be using exRhodesian and S African police) point to this.