Читать онлайн "Maoism in the Developed World" - Alexander Robert Jackson - RuLit

In September 1978, the SKP joined its Norwegian counterpart in issuing a communique declaring that “The Soviet Union is the latecomer superpower, the primary source of war, and the most dangerous enemy of the world’s people. … Therefore the front against the superpowers should first of all direct its spearhead at Soviet social-imperialism. … The Soviet Union is using Cuban mercenaries to serve its social-imperialist expansion and backs Vietnam against Kampuchea.”[430]

In September 1979 the SKP tried its luck at the polls in parliamentary elections. However, it only received 10,862 votes throughout the country.[431]

By 1980, the SKP, in conformity with its pro-Chinese and anti-Soviet position, had become a supporter of “a strong Swedish defense,” arguing the possibility of attack on the country by the USSR. The SKP also supported the appearance of Solidarity in Poland, and a journalist of the SKP’s newspaper visited Poland and was received by Lech Walesa.[432]

Other Swedish Maoist Groups

The KFML-SKP was frequently the scene of internal controversies. One of the earliest of these took place in 1970, when a faction broke away in October of that year to form the Communist League (Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary), or KFML (r). It began to publish a periodical Proletaren (The Proletarian).[433] Like the group from which it broke, the KFML (r) was very active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, centering most its attention on that activity in the early 1970s.[434]

In late December 1977, the KFML (r) held a Congress at which it changed its name to Communist Party of Marxist-Leninist Revolutionaries KPLM (r). Its chairman was Frank Raude. It was reported at this time that “The main strength of the party is in Sweden’s second largest city, Goteborg. The party is active in almost 90 localities. … Membership is believed to be around 1,500, and the party does not seem to lack financial support (It owns a large administrative building in the center of Goteborg).”[435]

By 1990, the KFML (r) had taken Albania’s side in their split with the Chinese.[436]

There were other subsequent schisms within the original Maoist party after the one that gave rise to the KFML (r). Thus, in 1978, a former chairman of the party, Gunnar Vylin, and another leader, Ulf Martensson, were suspended, and in May 1977, the KFML’s first chairman, Bo Gustafssen, as well as Skold Peter Matthis, were expelled from the organization.[437]

We do not know whether any of these people sought to establish a dissident Maoist party. However, in December 1976 the Peking Review carried a report that Thomas Lindh, General Secretary of the Marxist-Leninist Union of Struggle of Sweden, had sent a letter to the Chinese Central Committee (CC), congratulating it on appointing Hua Kuo-feng as Chairman of the CC and of the Military Commission of the Party. It also applauded the purge of the Gang of Four.[438]

By 1987, the Swedish Maoists were not considered significant enough to be mentioned in the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs.

Finnish Maoism

From its defeat by the Soviet Army in 1944 until the end of the Soviet Union, Finland enjoyed a somewhat precarious independence, based on the understanding that it would do nothing in internal policy or international affairs that ‘would seem to be open defiance of the USSR. After 1945, the Communist Party was a relatively minor party, but was in and out of successive Finnish governments. After the Czech invasion by the Warsaw Pact in 1968, which the Finnish Communists mildly rebuked, they were torn by internal conflicts.

The general circumstances of Finland in these decades were certainly not propitious for the development of a Maoist party of any consequence. However, on September 2, 1968 a small Finnish Association of Marxist-Leninists was established, which claimed affiliates in Helsinki, Tampere and Truku. According to Valerie Blum, writing a bit more than a year later, “Its main activities are education and propaganda through its study circles on Marxism-Leninism and Maoist theory. It sent the Chinese Communist Party a message of congratulations in 1969, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Republic, in which it called the Cultural Revolution an “invincible pillar to the world’s peoples in their struggle against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction.” This message was published by the New China News Agency. The Association also sent greetings to the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Party, in which it declared that it was “decisively important to the revolutionary workers movement that China remain red and hold high the victorious banner of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s Thought.”

The Association issued a bulletin Punakaarti (Red Guard), edited by Tauno Olai Huotari.[439]

In 1971, Valeri Blum noted that the Association “has the endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party, whose media have carried statements of the Finnish group.”[440]

By the later 1970s, the Maoist organization had taken the name of Marxist-Leninist Group of Finland. In August 1977, the Chinese news agency Hsinhua announced that the Executive Committee of that organization had sent a message to the Central Committee of the Chinese Party, congratulating it on the convocation of its 11th National Congress.[441]

Eric S. Einhorn wrote of the Marxist-Leninist Group of Finland in 1979 that “Despite visits to Peking and occasional demonstrations against Soviet ‘social imperialism,’ the group remains without political significance.” However, he also noted that the Finnish Communist Party “is quite critical of the propaganda activities of the Chinese embassy in Helsinki and its Finnish contacts.”[442]

Several years later, Eric S. Einhorn concluded that “Maoism faded quite quickly. The Finns could be pretty tough on political movements that annoyed the Soviets, and by the 1970s that tended to be radical leftists more than non-socialist conservatives.”[443]

Maoism in Iceland

Maoism was quite late in coming to Iceland. It never developed any possibility of rivaling the traditional Communists, who for many years functioned within the so-called People’s Alliance Party, originally a coalition of the Communists and left-wing Socialists, an atypical kind of Communist organization which in the mid-1980s even agreed to admit a Trotskyist group into its ranks.[444] In the 1960s the Communists and People’s Alliance avoided taking a position on the Sino-Soviet dispute.[445]

The first Maoist organization to be established in Iceland was the Communist Organization of Marxist-Leninists, established in August 1973. According to a U.S. State Department source, it specialized in “stressing the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao.”[446]

That group apparently did not persist. In April 1976 another Maoist party was established, the Icelandic Communist Party-Marxist Leninist (ICP-ML). That group emerged from what had been the youth group of the Socialist Party, the Fylkingin (Youth League), which refused to be part of the People’s Alliance, and continued its own separate existence. In 1970, under the name Fylkingin-barattusamtol socialista (Militant Socialist Organization) it constituted itself as a separate political party.