BEHIND THIS

THE ARREST in Moscow of leading oppositionist Pyotr Yakir is the first fruits of President Nixon's visit to Moscow last month.

Yakir, the son of General lon Yakir who was shot in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, is to face trial for his consistent struggle against Stalinism in the USSR.

Yakir once declared: 'My father, like many other innocent Soviet citizens, was destroyed by Stalinism. And it is Stalinism I am fighting against. Unfortunately there is a tendency nowadays to confuse anti-Stalinism with anti-Sovietism?

The frame-up charge against him is 'systematically submitting information to western propaganda agencies' and the indictment names Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the emigré organization NTS in attempt to smear the nipposition as anti-Soviet.

on Monday, June 19: "The establishment of closer relations with the Union cannot United States through excluded. President Nixon's visit, and the possibility that this will be followed by a European security conference, makes the position of the opposition not less but more precarious. ticularly to the peolution- 'And this ary communists who represent as much a menace to the bourgeoisie in the West as to the bureaucracy.

"The way may be being prepared for a clampdown on the opposition and the capitalist press, which has suddently embraced the opposition may, wittingly or not, have lent itself to a provocation.' Yakir's arrest is powerful confirmation of this warning.

He himself was wrong in his reported statement before Nixon's arrival. He said: 'One would like to think that after the visit of Nixon, the reaction will not be intensified, that [political] arrests will be stopped and nobody • will be taken to insane asylums. silence It is time to put an end to the Middle "Ages.' The reverse is the case.

And the reason for this counter - revolutionary deMOu be True to its past of lies and betrayals, the British Communist Party draws a cowardly veil of siience over the counter-revolutionary turn of Brezhnev and Mao.

Yakir's arrest was reported in four noncommital paragraphs tucked away on the bottom of p. 5 in yesterday's 'Morning Star'.

IT remains silent while the KGB terror machine goes into operation against antiStalinists in the USSR. IT has no comment on the secret talks about Vietnam. IT keeps its mouth shut when Moscow Radio declares support for Nixon's re-election, just as it tries to cover the American Communist Party's tracks and conceal their support for the other big business candidate George McGovern.

British Stalinists' is undoubtedly BREZHNEV BREZHNEV NIXON linked with the recent visit of a top-level delegation from the Soviet CP which held lengthy talks with John Gollan and other leading Communist Party functionaries.

The revisionists of the International Marxist Group and the 'state-capitalist' International Socialists have tor years maintained that Stalinism is a thing of the past.

Masquerading behind Trots rough consist ehiy against the building of alternative revolutionary leadership and glorified the Communist Party's policy of mass pressure on the Tories.

They have tried to separate the struggle against the Industrial Relations Act from the fight to bring down the Tories and install a Labour government pledged to socialist policies.

Their activities can now be clearly seen for what they really are: a cover for massive betrayals and the direct preparation of counter-revolution.

SCOTTISH TSE-TUNG Provos make their 'peace'ready to sit with Tories See page 12