this is a history assignment on ussr
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV Note: Aware that direct military conflict with the United States could be catastrophic, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev opted instead for indirect conflict by helping nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America emerge from Western domination. Early in 1961, he spelled out his approach. Professing that his goal of “peaceful coexistence” meant avoiding wars between the superpowers, he nonetheless promised to support wars of national liberation. These wars, he claimed, were revolutionary struggles by oppressed peoples against imperialist regimes like the U.S. As a result, he supported such struggles in Vietnam, Cuba, Egypt, and elsewhere. Assignment: Please answer the following questions after reading this speech by Nikita Khrushchev. Your answers must be typed, spell-checked, and in complete sentences and must be at least 2-3 pages. 1) Why and how did Khrushchev think Communists should support national liberation wars? Why did he think such wars were inevitable? And what did he think were the potential benefits and risks for the Soviet Union in supporting such wars? 2) Why did he identify capitalism with imperialism? Why did he see socialists and national liberation movements as allies in a global struggle against capitalist imperialism? Why do you think was he so interested in these nations? Report by Soviet Premier Khrushchev on the Moscow Conference of Communist Parties, January 6, 1961 Our epoch is the epoch of the triumph of Marxism-Leninism: The analysis of the world situation at the beginning of the sixties can only evoke in every fighter in the great communist movement feelings of profound satisfaction and legitimate pride. Indeed, comrades, life has greatly surpassed even the boldest and most optimistic predictions and expectations. Today, it is possible to assert that socialism is working for history, for the basic content of the contemporary historical process constitutes the establishment and consolidation of socialism on an international scale. There are a number of reasons which make the march of socialism invincible. In the first place, Marxism-Leninism today dominates the minds of literally hundreds of millions of people and thereby constitutes, if one is to apply Marx’s words, a mighty material force. Furthermore, Marxism-Leninism now appears before mankind not only as a theory but as a living reality. The socialist society which is being created in the boundless expanses of Europe and Asia today represents this teaching. Now a force does not exist in the world, nor can one exist, that can hold back the increasing tendency by which the masses see with their own eyes and, so to speak, feel with their own hands, what socialism is like—no, not in books and manifestoes, but in life, in practice. Another circumstance is of prime importance. If yesterday hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were suppressed by the yoke of the imperialist civilizers, today the picture is radically changing. The revolutionary emergence of more and more peoples into the world arena creates exceptionally favorable conditions for an unprecedented broadening of the sphere of influence of Marxism-Leninism. The time is not far away when Marxism-Leninism will possess the minds of the majority of the world’s population. What has been going on in the world in the 43 years since the triumph of the October Revolution completely confirms the scientific accuracy and vitality of the Leninist theory of the world socialist revolution. Socialist revolution has achieved victory in a large number of countries, socialism has become a powerful world system, the colonial system of imperialism verges on complete disintegration, and imperialism is in a state of decline and crisis. The definition of our epoch must reflect these decisive events. The statement of the conference provides the following definition of our era : Our era, whose essence is the transition from capitalism to socialism begun by the great October Socialist Revolution, is an era of the struggle of two diametrically opposed social systems, an era of socialist revolutions and national liberation revolutions, an era of the collapse of capitalism and of liquidation of the colonial system, an era of the change to the road of socialism by more and more nations, and of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world scale. It is perfectly obvious that the establishment of the world system of socialism, the quick progress of the disintegration of the colonial system, the unprecedented upsurge of the struggle of the working class for its rights and interests—that all this undermines the support for capitalism, intensifies its general crisis. The losses of capitalism as a result of these blows are irreparable. This refers both to the entire system of capitalism and to its main power, the United States. The mightiest power of capitalism has found itself most affected by the general crisis. In the postwar years the blows of economic shocks have fallen with particular frequency. In the postwar period, the United States has experienced three critical production slumps: 1948-1949, 1953-1954, and particularly 1957- 1958. During the past year, according to estimates of the American press, U.S. industrial production increased by only 2 percent. For 1961, American economists predict not an increase but a decline of about 3.7 percent in production, and maybe even more. In the U SSR production increased about 10 percent in 1960. The development of the common crisis of capitalism has reached a new stage. The peculiarity of this stage is that it emerged not in connection with the world war, but in conditions of competition and struggle between the two systems; in the ever-increasing change in the correlation of forces to the advantage of socialism; in the acute aggravation of all the contradictions of imperialism; under conditions when the successful struggle of the peace-loving forces for estab- lishment and stabilization of world coexistence has prevented the imperialists from undermining world peace with their aggressive actions; and under conditions of an increasing struggle by the masses for democracy, national liberation, and socialism. In modern conditions the following categories of wars should be distinguished: World wars, local wars, liberation wars, and popular uprisings. This is necessary to work out the correct tactics with regard to these wars. Let us begin with the question of world wars. Communists are the most determined opponents of world wars, just as they are generally opponents of wars among states. These wars are needed only by imperialists to seize the territories of others, and to enslave and plunder other peoples. Before the formation of the world socialist camp the working class had no opportunity to make a determining impact on the solution of the question of whether there should or should not be world wars. In these conditions the best representatives of the working class raised the slogan of turning imperialist wars into civil wars, or to exploit the situation that had arisen to seize power. Wars are chiefly prepared by imperialists against socialist countries, and in the first place against the Soviet Union as the most powerful of the socialist states. Imperialists would wish to undermine our might and thus reestablish the former domination of monopolistic capital. The task is to create impassable obstacles against the unleashing of wars by imperialists. We possess increasing possibilities for placing obstacles in the path of the warmongers. Consequently, we can forestall the outbreak of a world war. Of course, as yet we are unable to completely exclude the possibility of wars, for the imperialist states exist. However, the unleashing of wars has become a much more complicated business for the imperialists than it was before the emergence of the mighty socialist camp. Imperialists can unleash a war, but they must think hard about the consequences. A word or two about local wars. A lot is being said nowadays in the imperialist camp about local wars, and they are even making small- caliber atomic weapons for use in such wars; a special theory of local wars has been concocted. Is this fortuitous? Of course not. Certain imperialist circles, fearing that world war might end in the complete collapse of capitalism, are putting their money on unleashing local wars. There have been local wars and they may occur again in the future, but opportunities for imperialists to unleash these wars too are becoming fewer and fewer. A small imperialist war, regardless of which imperialist begins it, may grow into a world thermonuclear rocket war. We must therefore combat both world wars and local wars. As an example of a local war unleashed by the imperialists, we may take the Anglo-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt. They wanted to strangle Egypt and thus intimidate the Arab countries struggling for independence, and also to frighten the other peoples of Asia and Africa. British statesmen, including Eden, spoke quite openly of their desire to deal summarily with Egypt when we were in London. We told them frankly: I f you start a war, you will lose it; we will not remain neutral. When that war started, the United Nations formally condemned it, but this did not worry the aggressors and they went on with their dirty deed and even thought they had almost achieved their ends. The Soviet Union and the whole socialist camp came to the defense of Egypt. The Soviet Government’s stark warning to Eden and Guy Mollet stopped the war. The local war, the venture in Egypt, failed miserably. Now a word about national liberation wars. The armed struggle by the Vietnamese people or the war of the Algerian people, which is already in its seventh year, serve as the latest examples of such wars. These wars began as an uprising by the colonial peoples against their oppressors and changed into guerrilla warfare. Liberation wars will continue to exist as long as imperialism exists, as long as colonialism exists. These are revolutionary wars. Such wars are not only admissible but inevitable, since the colonialists do not g ran t independence voluntarily. Therefore, the peoples can attain their freedom and independence only by struggle, including armed struggle. How is it that the U.S. imperialists, while desirous of helping the French colonialists in every way, decided against direct intervention in the war in Vietnam? They did not intervene because they knew that if they did help France with armed forces, Vietnam would get relevant aid from China, the Soviet