TV program slanders Castro

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"The Last Communist," a public television documentary presented on "Frontline," Feb. 11, 1992.

"Frontline" recently ran a slanderous TV program about Fidel Castro titled "The Last Communist." It appeared to be a hastily stitched together propaganda piece—a direct response to two rallies of historic proportions that recently took place in New York and San Francisco, which defended Cuba and its leadership.

The program opened with the narrator saying, "Last month, the passions that have split the United states and Cuba for 30 years spilled into the streets of New York City as anti-Castro protesters confronted a Peace for Cuba rally."

The narrator set the theme in "The Last Communist" by asking: "How was this revolutionary hero [Castro] transformed into the isolated dictator who has brought his country to the edge of ruin?" In order to bolster their point of view, the film makers interviewed several opponents of the Cuban government.

The program likened Fidel Castro to an old-line dictator of the Stalinist variety. And then it went even further, attempting to draw an equals-sign between Castro and Mussolini and Hitler.

Georgie Anne Geyer, author of "Guerrilla Prince," said about Castro: "His heroes in those teenage years were Hitler, Mussolini, and the Spanish falangist Prima de Rivera. They were not any of the democrats of the world. He used to walk around the high school at Belen with a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Later, Ms. Geyer said: "1 think he was much more affected by Mussolini than by Hitler. Mussolini was, after all, a Latin leader. Fidel loved his speeches." Here the viewer saw first a shot of Mussolini ranting and raving, then one of Joseph Hansen answered these kinds of charges long ago in 1978 in his book "Dynamics of the Cuban RevoluOn page 121 of this book, Hansen said: "Whoever patiently listened to or read Castro's speeches and studied their role in the Cuban revolution will find anything in them but megalomania (or "ranting and raving" as the bourgeois commentators put it). Each speech serves a definite political purpose connected always with mobilizing support for the defense or deepening of the revolution. Each point in each speech is logically placed. Every explanation and every illustration is admirably chosen to drive the points home. The appeal is to the best emotions, not the worst, and the predominant relation between the speaker and audience is intellectual."

It is not logical nor permissible to equate means and ends, i.e. Castro gave speeches that move masses, Mussolini gave speeches, that moved masses, therefore Castro and Mussolini are the same thing. Mussolini served ends that kept capitalism alive in Italy by crushing the working class, whereas Castro serves ends that overturned capitalism and erected a workers' state in Cuba, which is anathema to U.S. imperialism.

SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1992 15 Castro giving a speech.

tion— the Trotskyist View" (Pathfinder Press). finances. The government obviously had to do something.

Curiously enough, it seems that both major factions of the bureaucracy, the Yeltsinites and the neo-Stalinists, are now accusing each other of backing bureaucrats seizing state property. On Feb. 28, Yeltsin's government promised a crackdown on this practice.

However, there are really only two candidates for running a capitalist economy, foreign capitalists or reconverted bureaucrats, both of which are becoming the focus of popular hatred and therefore demagogy by the contending bureaucratic factions.

One of Smirnov's principal complaints was that the policies of the Yeltsin government—in particular, the breakup of the USSR-are making it impossible for Russian businessmen to compete with foreigners. In this connection, his chauvinist appeals and association with the neo-Stalinist assault on the Yeltsin government take on a particularly sinister cast.

Anti-semitism surfaces

Anti-semitic slogans appeared in both the neo-Stalinist demonstrations. Moreover, representatives of the anti-semitic, neofascist Pamyat organization and other such groups participated in the Congress of Patriotic Forces held over the weekend of Feb.8-9 in Moscow.

Aleksander Rutskoi, Yeltsin's vice president, also attended. He has taken a line similar to that of the neo-Stalinists, although he claims to still support the Russian president. The major forces at this congress seemed to be the self-proclaimed rightist parties of the Narodnoye Soglasie bloc that broke from Democratic Russia, the former opposition coalition on which Yeltsin bases himself, because of the latter's refusal to defend the "indivisibility of Russia."

The Yeltsinites have called the neo-Stalinist campaign a "red-brown plague" ("brown" for fascist). The most reactionary forces and personalities have been associated with the "red," "patriotic" mobilizations. Thus, the Feb. 23 neo-Stalinist demonstration was organized by the military officers association, ostensibly to honor the Soviet armed forces.

Pravda reported in its Feb. 25 issue: "Mayakovski Square and the adjacent streets were decorated with the flags of the Soviet Union, the army and the navy, as well with those of the patriotic movements (ROS, NASHI and others)."

The speakers called for "beginning preparations for an all-people's vecha [the name given to assemblies of burgers and princes in the East Slavic city states of the Middle Ages]. Popular discontent with the government's course is so strong that even a defender of nonviolence as Father Lazar called on people to seek new Minins and Pozharskiis (the heroes of Russian state revival in the 17th century)." Orthodox priests and Russian aristocrats have been featured in these "patriotic" demonstrations.

Both the main factions of the bureaucracy have been tugging at the beards of the notoriously venal Russian Orthodox clergy. Yeltsin embraced Alexei II, Patriarch of all the Russias, in the post-coup period. Before that, the moth-eaten cleric had supported the calls for emergency rule.

Both the Feb. 9 and Feb. 23 demonstrations involved confrontations with the Moscow police, which is under the authority of the reformer, Mayor Popov. The police had to keep the neo-Stalinist demonstration separated from one in support of Yeltsin.

On Feb. 23, there were clashes between the police and demonstrators. This gave the neo-Stalinists the opportunity to accuse the reformers of Stalinist methods, as well as national blasphemy, i.e., assaulting patriots and veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

It would be natural enough for the Yeltsinites to resort to the tactics of the Stalinist bureaucracy, from which they come, even if it is a bit thick to see the pot calling the kettle black. But the Yeltsinites do not yet have the sort of structured repressive forces that the Communist Party regime had, or the worked-out ideological justification for using them.

The neo-Stalinists thus still seem to represent the most immediate threat of repression. And the "brown" undertone of their demonstrations underlines the dangers of the process of capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union, which is supported by all factions of the decaying Stalinist bureaucracy.

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realities, thanks to his tireless leadership