peoples who are struggling against imperialist intervention, they are defending the principles of peaceful coexistence. Aid to the national liberation movements which struggle against foreign military intervention and against their domestic exploiting classes allied with imperialism, is, according to the resolution approved by the
Tricontinental Conference, a contribution to peaceful coexistence. Let the so-called "League of Yugoslav Communists" know this very clearly, in the event that it has not. read this resolution care- —_. fully. Peaceful coexistence, in our opinion, is not a. dogma before ~~ which we must prostrate ourselves. We do not accept peaceful coexistence as a policy applicable only to powerful states, with imperialism having the right to make war on small nations as it chooses; much less do we understand as peaceful coexistence the Yugoslav. practice of acting as an instrument of the imperialist policy: of the United States. It is inexplicable, almost cynical, that a. ‘spokesman of Yugoslav politics invokes nothing less than an agreement of the Tricontinental Conference.
Aid to Peoples Who Are Struggling Is a Duty of Frogressive States. and Governments
The Yugoslav newspapers have echoed since the beginning the imperialist thesis that the Tricontinental Conference had approved tactics of subversion and intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. This imperialist line was exhaustively refuted in the GRANMA editorial entitled "The cynicism of the imperialists and §_ their lackeys," of January 28, 1966; in Fidel Castro's letter to the United Nations, of February 11, 1966; and in our first reply to the Yugoslav press on February 13, 1966. The affirmation that the Tricontinental Conference approved interventionist tactics is” the worst type of canard. When the imperialists insist that this is so, they are only defending their own interventionist positions. When the Yugoslav leaders affirm it, they spread the additional poison of saying that certain delegations to the Conference left unhappy with this "Cuban position."
The Yugoslav spokesmen are doubly vicious Since they support an imperialist line, and they attempt, though futilely, to rupture the revolutionary unity achieved in the Conference.
The line approved by the Conference, and we have repeated it many times, is that the right and duty of the progressive states is to aid the peoples who struggle against imperialist intervention. ~ It means cooperation with the peoples who suffer intervention;. that is, it opposes intervention. It also means cooperation with the liberation movements which struggle against the reactionary classes allied with imperialism. If the Yugoslav spokesmen feel that this is an interventionist thesis, we challenge the Yugoslav press to answer the following questions:
Can the aid given by progressive and socialist states to the people of Viet Nam be considered interventionist?
Can the international cooperation with Cuba in her struggle against- imperialism be characterized as interventionist?
Can the aid of Socialist states and governments to peoples confronting imperialist intervention and in struggle against domestic reactionary classes. serving imperialist interests be classified as interventionism?
If the replies to these questions are negative, then they will be in agreement with the resolutions approved ty the Tri-~ =~ continental Conference. If they are affirmative, they will’ be in ~. agreement with imperialism. We answer these questions negatively, a and say,.as did the Conference, that when the progressive govern- _ ments and States provide such aid, they are combating ‘intervention, — they are defending the principle of self-determination and of . national law.
But, moreover, to accuse the aid given by the socialist states to peoples struggling against imperialism as interventionist, is tantamount to brushing aside, or ignoring, the fundamental principles of proletarian internationalisn.
The cynicism and shamelessness of the argument that such aid, in solidarity with the peoples who struggle for their liberation, constitutes an act of intervention can only emanate from bourgeois, imperialist, or lackey positions. No true Marxist-Leninist can deny that it is the duty of the. socialist states to cooperate in every way possible with the peoples engaged in combat against the chief enemy of the working classes: imperialism. Those who deny this can never be considered Marxist-Leninists.
2.
NO