SUDAN: STALINISM IN ACTION

'Marxism Today', the Party's monthly magazine, has published lengthy extracts from a statement issued last November by the Central Committee of the Sudan CP.

The British Stalinists' action in publishing this document is an attempt to cover their own tracks and conceal their complicity in the Sudan betrayal. The statement analyses the events which led up to and followed the bloody massacre of Sudanese militants by the right-wing Numeiry military dictatorship.

It describes the ruthless anticommunist repression carried out against the Sudanese Communist Party by Numeiry atter the failure of the left-wing coup attempt on July 19, 1971.

nowhere mention the •treacherous role of Soviet and Chinese Stalinism which have continued their close relations with Numeiry despite the massacres.

Nor, for that matter, does it mention the eulogies of Numeiry which appeared in the British Stalinist press prior to the bloody repression in which the leaders of the Sudan CP were murdered.

The statement described the Numeiry regime in the following terms: "The recent period has been marked by active efforts to liquidate the revolutionary movement and at the same time to legitimize fascist methods in government and in political activity: '• Executions, tortures, life sentences, Sham tribunals, unlimited detentions, dismissals and expulsions. '• The sham plebiscite which misrepresents the people's will.

'• The imposition of the presidential system and personal rule.

• The president's decisions and laws and Republican '• Anti-communism as a policy and method.

'• The open door to all neoBank and the monopolies to which it opens the way.

• The closing down ot all democratic organizations, the impositior of the single political party, the liquidation of the trade union movement and the suppression of the working-class movement to remove the obstacle to capitalist development and to the return of foreign capital ..• As far as it goes, this is an accurate enough description of the Numeiry dictatorship, which answers directly to the requirements of imperialism in a period of acute economic crisis.

Yet the Numeiry regime has consistently enjoyed-and still enjoys-the support of the Soviet leaders. And until the July coup attempt of 1971 there were three Communist Party representatives in Numeiry's government — who irined at the insistence of the Kremlin!

On May 25, in a message to mark the third anniversary of the military coup which brought Numeiry to power, Moscow Radio broadcast a cynical statement wishing the 'Sudanese people' further successes in 'the stubborn struggle against imperialism and reaction and in achieving the hopes and aims reflected in the documents of the programme "May 25 1969"?

The Numeiry programme provided, among other things, the death penalty for strikers and the abolition of all polltical parties - including, especially, the Communist Numeiry took at least five CP members into his original Cabinet and there was soon friction between these ministers and the Muslim rightwing. By October, Numeiry had denounced Prime Minister Abu Bakr Awadallah for advocating communist participation in the government adding that the Stalinists must give up 'the rule of parties' and accept 'the philosophy of the revolution'.

At the time, Workers Press stated: 'Stalinism, through its policy of uncritical and unprincipled support for the nationalist regime in the Sudan, prepares another bloodbath of communists, workers and peasants on the lines of the Indonesian massacre of 1965: (October 15, 1969.)

And on October 31, 1969, we again warned: "The military leaders are sharpening their knives for a boodbath of workers and communists.' A fortnight later, Moscow announced that Leonid Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny had accepted an invitation to visit the Sudan. Soviet policy in the Sudan subordinated the working class to the national bourgeoisie—a relationship symbolized by the presence of CP members in Numeiry's cabinet.

The July 19 coup attempt to overthrow Numeiry and install a mainly CP-dominated government 'revealed an essential ment saos. This is that state. is an alternative (potential and objective with live revolutionary cadres) to the dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie or one of its sections.

It thus dealt a strong blow at the theories which consider this dictatorship a historical necessity with the working class and the revolutionary movement living or co-existing in its shadow, in submission and humility An exact description of Soviet policy! In fact, the statement adds 'the military regimes of the petty. bourgecisie-and more precisely of the Arab ntionalists-follow a path which leads to the liauidation of the revolution? Yet since the Sudan bloodbath, the Kremlin has encouraged the Communist Parties of Iraq and Syria to join exactly this type of regime. Sudan CP says 'only leads to that section the petty bourgeoisie which has monopolized power itself becoming counter-revolutionary, either by oppressing the revolution and liquidating it, or by its political and economic policies and its submissiveness to the influence of counter-revoluton • tinn' The Sudan CP should know —its leaders are dead and its best militants rotting in jail as a result of this Stalinist policy. And Moscow and Peking continue their relations with Numeiry as if nothing had While belatedly asserting its right to organize independently of the regime (it now has no choice) the Sudan CP, however, remains firmly tied to the Stalinist perspective for the colonial revolution.

Its objective is not socialism but democracy as the following extract makes clear: 'The experience of the Sudan has demonstrated—at least for us -that anti-colonialism (and more especially anti-neocolonialism) and social advance our being silked itsed with.

linked inside the country with the democratic revolution, on the basis of the rule of a democratic alliance and the application of democracy in all aspects of life...' This is nothing more than a formula for another popular front under the signpost of the 'democratic alliance'. In a situation where the bourgeoisie, under pressure movement, there is no basis for bourgeois democracy. In fact in a speech delivered to a secret session of Czech Communist Party Central Committee on October 21 last year, Stalinist hard-liner Vasil Bilak attacked the murdered Sudanese leader Abdel Mahgoub for 'moving towards sectarian positions'.

He accused • Mahgoub of attacking 'Numeiry's democratic revolutionary regime of progressive officers' and pointed out that Numeiry had 'overthrown a government representing the feudalists and the big bourgeoisie'.

So according to Bilak, who was installed in office by the Kremlin and is a servile mouthpiece of its policy, the Numeiry regime was 'democratic' and 'revolutionary' anyway!

On this basis Bilak claimed it was right to resume relations with Numeiry despite the murder of Mahgoub and his comrades. Revulsion against the killings was a 'noble reaction' but based on a misunderstanding, he said.

'It would not have been wise for us to abandon our hard-won positions in the Sudan or elsewhere: We would only have been playing the game of imperialism, which would be delighted to see us lose the possibility of influencing events by breaking our contacts with the. just struggle of progressive forces.' The Kremlin's support for here blatantly expressed by Bilak-is not confined to the Sudan.

One of Moscow's chief preoccupations in the Middle Éast has been support for the federation of Egypt, Libya, Syria... and the Sudan. Only three weeks before the July 19 coup of 1971, Moscow Radio extolled 'the formation of a strong united Arab state' which would have 'a positive influence on the current situation in the Middle East'. The unification of the efforts and resources of the three Arab republics would have a profound and positive effect upon the consolidation of their positions in the struggle against imperialism, the broadcast added.

Yet the Sudan CP states categorically that 'there was not within the country any force capable of changing this early course (i.e. overthrowing the July 19 coup) had it not been for the outside manoeuvres and instigation on the part of the Tripartite States, and in particular on the part of Libya and Egypt and the co-operation of British intelligence with them.' So much for the 'positive effect' of the Arab Federation! The Sudan CP statement adds that The Egyptian leaders knew that the [Numeiry] regime was relying on the communists and the democratic movement . . . When they realized that the forces cf change were becoming stronger, and they wanted to opening the door to the rightwing forces' The Sudanese CP leaders believed that the Numeily government could be made to adopt a Sudanese Road to Socialism: as the statement puts it: ' ... whether to follow the non-capitalist road or the road of capitalist development. This was the question that remained open [sic] after May 25, 1969. "The struggle around this question continued until the right-wing orientation on November 16, 1970, towards freezing the revolution, the abolition of democracy, towards the single-party dictatorship in order to open the way to the right wing and counterrevolution ...

This date, the statement adds 'marked, in fact, the end of any co-operation between the Communist Party and the regime, and the people of our country saw for themselves the emnity of the regime towards the party's existence in the weeks which followed... the warnings against the wreckers and the imprisonment of Abdel Khalek Mahgoub' the party's general secretary.

The statement adds: "The regime was following its own line, from May 25, aiming at destruction of the Communist Party. (Our emphasis). In other words, from May 1969 to November 1970, the Sudan CP collaborated with and strengthened a regime Mahgoub being led to his execution by soldiers of Numeiry. which was all along preparing their destruction!

The British CP lavished praise on the Numeiry regime right up to November 1970. Three weeks before the events which revealed 'the enmity of the regime towards the party's existence' leading British Stalinist Idris Cox wrote a series of three articles in the 'Morning Star' describing his tour of Sudan.

The last article appeared under the heading: This government backs the trade unions' (!) and the series contained the assertion that 'the present trend (in Sudan) is overwhelmingly in favour of a strong and independent CP' Three weeks later, Abdel Khalek Mahgoub was behind bars, charged with treason, and 13 army officers suspected of CP connections were sacked and three CP members in the Revolutionary Command Council were thrown out.

The repressions following the abrupt right-turn on November 16, 1970, prepared the way for the coup attempt of July 19, 1971. The Sudan CP blames 'carelessness and negligence' for the failure of this attempt to seize power.

Far more crucial than any 'carelessness' in ensuring the crushing of the Sudanese Communist Party was the policy imposed from the Kremlinand enthusiastically supported by the British Stalinists.

PAGE Workers Press,