The Brezhnev era

At the time of the Czech invasion Soviet apologists were quick to spring to the defence of the Warsaw Pact action. Some like the SUP, ignored the fact that they had wholeheartedly supported, only weeks before, the ill-fated "Czech road to socialism". They claimed that the Soviet Union was "defending peace".

Since then, under Brezhnev's leadership, the Soviet Union has decided to "defend peace" on a worldwide basis. They have launched provocations against China, fomented the war which separated Pakistan, masterminded, supplied and payrolled the Cuban takeover of Angola, supplied and payrolled the Cuban mercenaries again in Ethiopia to suppress liberation movements in the Ogaden, Tigre and Eritrea, incited and aided Vietnamese expansionism in Indochina and occupied and conducted nilitary manoevres in sovereign terrirories of both Japan and Norway.

In order to "defend peace" on such a vast scale the Soviet Union has maintained a non-stop pace in expanding its armed forces. In reality the Soviets are no peace-bringers but out and out imperialists, a characterisation that has been proven by the bloody realities of Soviet expansionism in the Brezhnev era.

The anniversary of the subjugation of Czechoslovakia ten years ago this month is a timely reminder of the aggressive ch character of Soviet imperialism and of the fact that its current offensives in Africa and South East Asia are not new in content but merely the latest manifestations of a policy that has been pursued for well over ten years. The difference is that during those ten years the Indochinese liberation movements have dealt a death blow' to US imperialism while Soviet imperialism has grown stronger and more ambitious. The Soviet Union now threatens not just the vassal states of Eastern Europe with its fascist domination, but the peoples of the whole world.

James Morgan