Stop the slanders against
Petr Uhl
ON JUNE 17 the
Czechoslovak news agency Orbis Press distributed an article in several languages to all the embassies that had been published on the first pages of Rude Pravo [the journal of the
Czechoslovak CP] and
Pravda Journal of the
Central Committee of the
CP in Slovakial.
ALAIN KRIVINE &
ERNEST MANDEL
HE ARTICLE was entitled "An
T adventurer of the so-called
Fourth International." It was devoted to the activities of our comrade Petr Uhl, a co-founder of Charter 77 and one of the best known and most respected opposition communists in Czechoslovakia and abroad. The piece contains particularly odious personal attacks against
Petr Uhl, who has spent several years in
16 prison for crimes of opinion. Because of this, he was adopted as a political prisoner by Amnesty International. Let us leave aside the question of the morality of highly privileged bureaucrats denouncing ordinary workers — Petr Uhl is a heating repairman - for benefiting from such advantages as social security. Under the pretext of criticizing the writings and activities of Petr Uhl, Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International (we were cited by name in this respect), this article drags out the filth, lies and falsifications of old Stal-
Petr Uhl has filed a suit for defamation against the authors of these slanders. This affair will also have legal consequences elsewhere, since we are cited by name. We are determined to fight to get these falsifications and lies finally banished from the workers' and democratic movement.
What throws a peculiar light on this affair is that Rude Pravo's article was reprinted in the USSR by the newspaper Sovietskaya
Rossiia, which distinguished itself by publishing the notorious pro-Stalinist article by
Nina Andreyeva [see /V 143].
Is this part of a campaign against glasnost?
Moreover, the various publications of this article came shortly before the decision of the Nineteenth Congress of the CPSU to erect a monument in honor of the political victims of Stalin, who were murdered on the basis of the slanders reprinted by these three newspapers. They came shortly before the ruling of the USSR Supreme Court overturning the verdicts of the first and second Moscow trials, which were based on the same slanders (the verdict of the third
Moscow trial had been overturned earlier).
On August 5, 1988, the Soviet Pravda published at the top of its first page a report of the commission of the Political Bureau of the CPSU on the rehabilitation of Stalin's victims. This explicitly said that all the charges of murder, attempted murder, counter-revolutionary activity, spying, terrorism and collaboration with foreign powers, including the Nazis, that was supposed to have been perpetrated on the orders of "the enemy of the people Leon Trotsky," were made totally invented.
In the August 19 issue of the Soviet Pravda, Mikhail Solomentsev, likewise a member of the CPSU Political Bureau and chair of this commission, devoted an interview of more than a page (a rare event for this paper) to the question of the rehabilitations. After denouncing Stalin's responsibility for "crimes against humanity" and pointing out that the confessions were often obtained by torture, he specified:
"These trials are, if you like, the key to a correct evaluation of the events of the second half of the 1930s." He concluded: "It would obviously be more comfortable to simply ignore this past. But Mikhail Gorbachev has said that such an attitude is an obstacle to the development of revolutionary consciousness, of civic behavior, of courage and a strong sense of responsibility, that is, qualities that are so important for the success of perestroika. It is precisely for this reason that the party has summoned the courage to undertake this process of a critical review of the past, of reestablishing the historical truth, of rehabilitating the victims of unfounded political accusations and illegal actions."
The question can legitimately be asked whether the neo-Stalinists in Prague and
Bratislava [the capital of Slovakia], as well as their counterparts in the USSR, have engaged in a desperate last-minute maneuver to defend Stalin and his torturers and hang men, to block the rehabilitation of the
Leninist Central Committee, including
Trotsky? Is there an international factional struggle in the "socialist camp," or the "international communist movement"?
Is there a struggle in which Gorbachev's adversaries, or at least the radical wing of the "renewers" in the USSR, are using Stalinist anti-Trotskyist slanders as a weapon in fact against a deepening of glasnost in the
USSR? *
"He is living among us"
DOCUMENTS CZECHOSLOVAKIA be formed on the ruins as well. In a short time...a preventive war would enable us to be the first to deliver a crushing blow, and not to allow the attack to be prepared by imperialism. At a certain period Trotsky was also betting on war as an aid to revolution. The provocative character of such an approach is evident.
AN OFFICIAL English translation of the June 18 Rude Pravo article by Jaroslav Kojzar attacking Petr Uhl was issued by the Czechoslovak central news agency Orbis and distributed through Czechoslovakia's embassies. Major extracts appear below. DOCUMENT joys the benefits of our social security. He goes to the same shops as everybody else, perhaps, he uses the same tram, bus or train on the metro. He differs by having enough tuzex vouchers [for use in hard currency shops] all the time, and by the fact that he is often spoken about by some Western radio transmitters and that his name often appears in the bourgeois press. The talk is about Petr Uhl. He is one of a group of the so-called dissidents who call themselves Chartists, and he is given a hearing as though he were a spokesman of our public by some people from the West who come to our country.
If it were not for this artificially created and unmerited publicity, Uhl's name would become covered in dead leaves and he could ponder in privacy how to turn the world upside down, which is what he was dealing with particularly in 1968, when the emissaries of the so-called Fourth Paris International came to Prague to visit him, an unknown 27-year-old teacher at a secondary school. He was dreaming about a world revolution in the spirit of the "specific" programme of this International.
"What is the 'Fourth International'?"
Allegedly, capitalism is a better basis for launching such a revolution. Thus, the first step must be the overthrowing of our political system, and the political system in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe — the socialist states, including Yugoslavia.
What is the "Fourth International'? Now and then, the name of Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) is recalled from the history of the Soviet Union of the 1920s. He has been known for his opinion that it is impossible to build socialism in only one country and the so-called theory of permanent revolution.
In his book Permanent revolution published in 1930, he asserted that the full implementation of a socialist revolution was unthinkable within a national framework.
Therefore, he was for the elimination of socialist power at the place where such power had prevailed. Together with a handful of his advocates, he formed the so-called International Communist League, which he united into the so-called "Fourth International", the "world party of the socialist revolution", together with several other groups in September 1938....
"Trotskyist absurdities during and after the war"
The advocates of Leon Trotsky adopted a plan called The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International. They literally outlined, as one of their first and foremost tasks, the struggle against anti-fascist forces in conformity with the transparently provocative idea that fascism has to prevail because, allegedly, its later downfall will enable a world-wide revolution. This adventurous platform constituted the basis for another, already absurd step: The Trotskyites declared all governments which established contacts with the Soviet Union, this most consistent fighter against fascism, to be their enemy. They also opposed the French Communists - "pseudointernationalists", as Trotsky himself called them - because of their appeal to the people of Paris to make an impregnable fortress of the city as a barrier against the Nazis at the time of the advance of Nazi troops. The Trotskyites even presupposed the formation of internal fronts that were to be targeted against individual left-wing orientated sections of the French Liberation movement. Perhaps this was the reason why the Trotskyites could legally convene their conferences in France, at the time of the occupation of that country.
After the war, Trotsky's posthumous followers performed similarly. They welcomed the war preparations of advocates of the so-called cultural revolution in China and their course of an atomic reckoning with their enemies. At the beginning of the 1960s English Trotskyites even wrote in their paper that a communist society could
At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the advocates of the "Fourth International" became active again. Their emissaries went all over the place to establish new contacts....They burnished old slogans as is attested to by the "appeal" of the Secretariat of the "Fourth International" to the world public. The appeal said that broad masses throughout the world had to continue the struggle and prepare themselves to take power, prepare themselves for an atomic war and respond to it by proletarian revolution. Therefore, the peace efforts of the Soviet Union and other socialist coun tries were called class collaboration and a betrayal of the internationalist interests of the proletariat.
In Czechoslovakia, too, the "Fourth International" had its advocates. One of them was, for instance, Sonneschein, who even took the way of open collaboration with the Nazis. Zavis Kalandra and others were also in their ranks. After the February revolution in 1948, some Trotskyites formed antinational organizations dealing with subversive activities and gathering political, economic and military information about Czechoslovakia.
There was a certain activation of Trotskyites after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from February 14-24, 1956 and, of course, in the pre-crisis and crisis period (the 1960s in Czechoslovakia). At the time, the ranks of the Trotskyites included particularly the historian Bartosek, and teachers at the faculty of law in Prague, Pithart and
However, the said secondary school teacher Petr Uhl also pushed himself forward into the head of Trotskyism in our
"The day-dream of Mr. Uhl"
The day-dream of Mr Uhl...is expressed in the book The programme of social self-management that was published in Cologne in 1982, in the fortnightly publication of the "Fourth International" called Inprecor (issues 6 and 7 of 1987), and in some written works elaborated by him personally.
In all the said materials, he strongly opposes the socialist system and presents methods of struggle against it. However, in his programme, he also writes about his idea of a future society after "the victory".
the slogan administrating society" in a demagogic 1. There is evidently a confusion here between Czech Inprekorr and French Inprecor, both of which have refer to Czech Inprekorr, published quarterly.
International Viewpoint #148 • October 3, 1988
CZECHOSLOVAKIA DOCUMENTS After a meeting with one of the leaders of the Fourth International, Alain Krivine, Uhl started to organize Trotskyite cells. In September 1968, their first act appeared — a policy statement/manifesto of a revolutionary youth movement - claiming that "we understand the revolutionary path as a permanent revolutionary process" and that the fight against the social order in Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries "can liberate all nations and begin a new epoch — a construction of socialism," which taken together with the fight of the proletariat of the West will provoke a flare-up world revolution. In one word
Soon after that new-fangled Trotskyites began to prepare concrete actions. In February 1969, they considered a variant of an armed coup. In September of the same year after several other meetings they organized into the so-called Revolutionary Socialist Party and then decided to use code names. Petr Uhl was the main organizer. He even government document - the so-called Charter, and founded the so-called Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted, the aim of which is to turn out information for the bourgeois mass media, and discredit judicial and other decisions.
He established contacts with the Polish illegal groups, and later on even with the leaders of "Solidarity" so that he could take advantage of their experience in Czechoslovak conditions. It resulted in the rise of the so-called Initiative of Social Defence, which was said to become the Czechoslovak "Solidarity." He tried to get in where the "Charter" would not succeed, i.e., into the factories. He tried to extend the base of these dissenters, for the "Chartists" had not fulfilled the expectations of their foreign friends and had became a small enclosed group without any influence on the public.
However, Uhl does not stop at such intentions. He prepares thoroughly. "It is necessary...to get access to the power apparatus, to have a part of the army on one's side or to neutralize it by a suitable
Petr Uhl's letter to
Sovietskaia
Rossiia
The following letter was sent on July 10 by Petr Uhl to the editor of the Soviet newspaper, Sovietskaia
Rossila, one of the principal mouthpieces of the neo-Stalinist current in the
Soviet Communist Party.
"Groups with various code names issued leaflets, proclamations and established contact with foreign agents....The aim is to try to destabilize our society, and anyone will do to serve this purpose, even an adventurer like Petr Uh!"
knew about the preparation of some members for terrorist actions. He took part in discussion on plans for taking over Czechoslovak radio and broadcasting an anti- government statement. Even the date of the
Groups with various code names issued leaflets and proclamations, they established contacts with foreign agents and were connected with the Trotskyite headquarters in Paris. Selected members were gaining experience abroad — Basta, Olsa,
Stasa and others were in Paris negotiating with the representatives at headquarters. In
West Berlin Uhl and Frolik met one of the top Trotskyite leaders, "secretary of the
Fourth International," Mandel. An indoctrination of selected members was planned
At the end of 1969 the organization had apparently 111 cells, each of them sent its representative into four legitimate associations and those four coordinators together with other chosen leaders arranged for the activity of the headquarters from there.
In 1970 the leaders of the organization, including Petr Uhl, were sentenced to several months' imprisonment for their sub-
After his release, Petr Uhl continued in these activities. For example he welcomed the organization secretary of the "Fourth
International" who was visiting Czechoslovakia in the guise of a tourist. Uhl intro-
18 duced him to other dissenters from our social order, and signed an antipolitical climate. To paralyze the centres of resistance — the People's Militia (armed corps of the working class and other workers established to defend the achievements of socialism and the interests of working people. The general secretary of the Central Committee of the Czech CP is the commander-in-chief and the People's Militia represents a part of the Czechoslovak armed force), national security corps, and commissariats," he writes in the article from 1982.
He wants to be a leader. He does not have any army though, he only has his imagination, but why should his friends from the other side of the border not make use of his ambitions? He seems to want something other than just those with whom he corresponds through the mediation of Pavel Tigrid and other post-February (of 1948) or post-August (1968) emigres, or with the help of his friends from the "Fourth International." But does he really want some-
And here is the core of the problem. Under the pseudo-revolutionary phrases there are the same hidden aims as those pursued by other political castaways: The overthrow of the present socialist order at any cost. Their plans, however - and they know it - have no chance of success. Thus the aim is, at least, to try to destabilize our society, to hamper its development. And anyone will do to serve its purpose, even an adventurer like Petr Uhl with his "permanent revolution." *
N JUNE 28, 1988, the Czechoslovak newspaper Rude Pravo reported that on June 25 your paper had "published Jaroslav Kojzar's article from Rude Pravo on the anti-Communist activity of Petr Uhl, a signatory of Charter 77." The article in question was published in Rude Pravo on June 18. I have already sent a request for a correction to the editor of Rude Pravo. I am forwarding the complete version to you, with some small changes.
The article defames me in such a crude way that it is extraordinary even in Czechoslovak conditions. It contains many false statements about me and other people, as well as about the Fourth International and the political line of revolutionary Marxism (Trotskyism) to which I adhere.
Above all, the introductory part of the article creates a peculiar atmosphere. The author seems horrified that such a repugnant creature as myself rides in trams and goes shopping along with other people. The question seems to be posed, should not this monster be clearly marked and banned from ordinary trams and stores? As regards clear marking, Mr. Kojzar would take care of that sort of thing. He stresses Leon Trotsky's Jewish origins by citing his family name, "Bronstein." None of this is new. Anti-semitism has always been a distinctive feature of Stalinism.
I have no intention of arguing with Mr. Kojzar. Considering that your newspaper expresses a rather conservative and neo-Stalinist view of the contemporary history of the international working-class movement and the perspectives of the bureaucratically degenerated and deformed workers' states, I am not asking for a complete correction. I would consider it suffi-
October 3, 1988 • #148 International Viewpoint cient if your newspaper published the following statement by way of a correction:
"Under the mask of pseudo-revolutionary phraseology." This headline on the article by Jaroslav Kojzar about Petr Uhl in Rude Pravo on June 18,1988, was republished in Sovietskaya Rossia on June 25, 1988. The article contains a series of factual errors. At the request of Petr Uhl, we inform our readers that it was quite incorrect, for example, to say that Zavis Kalandra collaborated with the Nazis and was involved in the founding of an anti-government organization after February 1948. Zavis Kalandra, as is well known, was sentenced to death in 1949 and executed (he was tried together with Milada Gorakova). The sentence was overturned by a decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of July 30, 1968.
Positions of the Fl are incorrectly presented
Likewise, the entire program and political positions of the Fourth International are incorrectly presented in J. Kojzar's article As regards Petr Uhl himself, we point out some incorrect statements in the article. It is not true that he, along with other people, in February 1969, planned a sort of armed seizure of the Czechoslovak radio and a broadcast that would contain an anti-government statement, and that he was sentenced for this activity. In 1971, Petr Uhl was sentenced to four years deprivation of liberty (and not a few months, as J. Kojzar writes) simply for political activity of a non-violent character (discussion, writing and distributing political documents and leaflets, organizing an opposition group, the Revolutionary Youth Movement) carried out in 1968-69.
Later, in 1979, he was sentenced for activity on behalf of human rights carried out in Czechoslovakia in the framework of the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted, in which he has continued to be active up to the present, as well as in Charter
Petr Uhl has not been been accused of, or tried for, terrorist actions or acts of violence or preparation for such acts. As a supporter of revolutionary Marxism (Trotskyism), he was and is a principled opponent of terrorism, and therefore his outrage at J. Kojzar's article is well founded. The editors apologize to their readers and to Petr Uhl for publishing Jaroslav Kojzar's letter.
Mr. Chief Editor, I am prepared to discuss with you you specific formulations in this correction, if details are unacceptable to you. If you do not publish this statement, however, I will demand a correction in another form.
Petr Uhl, Prague [Copies to the editors of Ogonek, Znamya, Novoe Vremya, Moskovskie Novosti, with a request for publication if Sovietskaya Rossiia does not publish my request for a correction within two weeks.) *
### CHARTA
IVAN THIGER
Charter 77
statement
THE FOLLOWING letter was sent to the editor of Rude Pravo from signatories to Charter 77. The translation has been provided by Palach Press Limited. ON SATURDAY June 18 your newspaper published an article by Jaroslav Kojzar entitled "Hiding under the mask of the pseudo-revolutionary cliche". The article was yet another instalment in the series of lessons of hate to which the Czechoslovak newspapers recurrently resort in an attempt to intimidate the independent-thinking citizens of this country....
Several times in the past 50 years, history has shown quite brutally to those of us who live in the area called Central or Eastern Europe that it is dangerous to stand idly by while anonymous forces are preparing for a pogrom against their ideological adversaries. Even the crimes of the so-called "cult of the personality", which are now being revealed and discussed in the Soviet Union with such passion, came only on the tails of demagogical and defamatory newspaper articles similar to the one by Jaroslav
This time, the target of the attack was Petr Uhl, father of three children, Charter 77 signatory and activist of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS), a man who has spent nine of the past 18 years in prison as a prisoner of con-
DOCUMENTS CZECHOSLOVAKIA science. Just as in 1970, when he received his first prison sentence, four years (Kojzar says euphemistically "several months"), now as then Petr Uhl's "crime" is simply his incredibly consistent attitude, his high personal integrity, his civic responsibility, his willingness to help others and his human courage. Even those of us who disagree with Petr Uhl's ideological beliefs -with incomparably more qualified arguments than Mr Kojzar - have no doubts about Petr Uhl's moral qualities and intellectual honesty....
A rhetoric that has led to too many gallows
Petr Uhl is directly and indirectly accused of terrorism, of conspiring to overthrow the government by a coup detat, of links with foreign "headquarters". In our post-war history, this kind of rhetoric has served as a justification for far too many gallows, for far too many instances of life imprisonment and for the destruction of far too many
The victims were subsequently rehabilitated. Their cases were totally re-assessed. "Mistakes" were uncovered. Unfortunately, the dead could not be brought back to life, nor could the unjustly imprisoned be given back those parts of their lives which they spent under inhuman conditions. It is evidently one of the ironies of current perestroika Czechoslovak-style that while in the Soviet Union such practices are being publicly discussed and condemned, Czech journalists such as Kojzar unashamedly return to them, continuing unchallenged to an atmosphere of fear
Until the selfless work and constructive civil stance of people like Petr Uhl cease to meet with cynical and violent responses like that of Kojzar, there is no point even pretending that a seriously meant restruc turing and democratization of our society is under way. We emphatically protest against this type of policy and we wish to express our full solidarity with Petr Uhl.
Signed by: Petr Bartos, Ludek Bednar, Jan Bucharova, Josef Danisz, Bozena Devata, Stanislav Devaty, Pavel Dudr, Premsyl Fialka, Ladislav Grebik, Jiri Gruntorad, Vladimir Hajny, Vaclav Havel, Marek Hlupy, Ludvik Hradilek, Anna Hradilkova, Ladislav Kaspar, Jan Kiss, Anna Kissova, Bedrich Koutny, Ivan Lamper, Jan Machacek, Eliska Meissnerova, Robert Nebren. sky, Kveta Markova, Dana Nemcova David Nemec, Jaromir Nemec, Miroslav Odlozil, Petr Placak, Judita Prochazkova, Jan Ruml, Jan Schneider, Dusan Skala, Joska Skalnik, Jaroslav Spurny, Frantisek Starek, Jaroslav Sabata, Ruth Sormova, Petruska Sustrova, Jachym Topol, Vladimir Trida, Jan Urban, Lucie Vachova, Robert Valik, Sasa Vondra, Martina Vondrova, Lubos Vydra. (The authenticy of the signasures is guaranteed by: Ivan Lamper, Ry 19 balkova 27, Prague 10).