Afghanistan today is not entirely new. A similar situation arose in the late 30s when the Kremlin 'invaded' Finland.
Outrage at this invasion was not contined to western covernments but also infiltrated the socialist movement wno called tor the withdrawal of the Red Army.
trotsky, who analysed the situation in some detail, drew dirier ent concusons wich would De worth the study by those on the leit today who call (in nowever muted a form) for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Warning of a tendency to 'abstentionism under the cover of ultra-radical slogans, he wrote:
"In order to punish the Stalinist:
for their questionable crimes, the resolution.. does not mention by so much as a word that the Red Army in Finland expropriates large landowners and introduces workers' control while preparing for the expropriation of the capitalists.
Tomorrow the Stalinists will strangel the Finnish workers. But now they are giving - they are compelled to give - a tremendous impetus to the class struggle in its sharpest lorm. ne leaders or une opposition construct their policy not upon the 'concrete' process that is taking place in Finland, but upon democratic abstractions and noble The Soviet-Finnish war is apparantly beginning to be supplemented by a civil war in which the Red Army finds itself at the given stage in the same camp as the Finnish petty bourgeois and the workers.
while the Finnish army enjoys the support of the owning classes, the conservative labour aristocrac! and the Angio-saxon imperialists.
The hopes which the Red Army awakens among te tinnish pool will, unless international revolution intervenes. prove to be an illusion the collaboration of the Red Army wat the poor aill ar...He know all this now and we openly say it as a warning.
Shut in anis concrete cvn wal that is taking place on Finnish territory, what concrete position must the concrete partisans of the Fourth International take? If they fought in Spain in the Republican camp, in spite or the lact that the Stalinists were strangling the socialist revolution. al the more must they participate in Finland where the Stalinists are compelled to support the expropriation of the capitalists".
(In Defence of Marxism. Pathfinder Press. p. 57-58) ist movement which could have overturned all the progressive measures introduced to date.
To continue the defence of the revolution - and to definitively destroy the US-backed reactionaries - much more needs to be done. Above all, the workers and peasants will have to be mobilised and organised to advance their class interests against those of imperialism (and the local exploiters).
Any effort by the new Karmal regime or Moscow to hold back the revolutionary process will enly further endanger the gains already made.
----- pull-quotes -----
S S