AROUND THE WORLD taken by the Soviet Union in the early days of World War II. However, at the heart of the controversy was the famous question of the class nature of the Soviet Union. Shachtman would later on embrace the position, advocated by his ally James Burnham, a New York University Professor of Philosophy, that a new bureaucratic class had come to power.
Cannon held to Trotsky's view that the Petr Uhl is free Soviet Union, due to hostile encirclement and a totalitarian political superstructure, was a "degenerated workers' state" (that is, despite the lack of democracy, a post-capitalist society in transition, not yet on the threshold of socialism), and that its nationalized economy should be defended against capitalist nations.
Shachtman's faction split in the spring of 1940, forming the Workers Party. Cannon recorded his version of the dispute in The Struggle for a Proletarian Party (New York: Pioneer, 1942).
In 1941, Cannon and seventeen other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Union were convicted under the Smith Act for their opposition to United States government policy during World War II. Cannon's courtroom testimony is contained in Socialism on Trial (New York: Pioneer, 1942); other writings from the early war period are available in The Socialist Workers Party in World War II (New York: Pathfinder, 1975).
Cannon served thirteen months of a sixteen-month sentence at Sandstone penitentiary in 1944-45, as described in Letters from Prison (New York: Merit, 1968). Following his release, Cannon participated in a factional struggle against two of his long-time associates, Albert Goldman and Felix Morrow. Writings of the late 1940s are collected in The Struggle for Socialism in the "American Century " (New York: Pathfinder 1977).
During the post-war labor upsurge the Trotskyists grew once more to over a thousand, but fell upon hard times during the McCarthy era. In 1953 there was a fierce faction fight, recorded in Speeches to the Party (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), resulting in a split in both the party and in the Fourth International. This was Cannon's last major intervention as the leader of the party. In 1952 he had moved to Los Angeles, and in 1953 Farrell Dobbs took over as national secretary. Cannon became National Chair and then National Chair Emeritus until his death in 1974. His first wife, Lista Makimson, had died in 1929; his second. Rose Karsner, died in 1968. 26
On May 28, Petr Uhl was released from prison, five years exactly after his arrest alongside several other dissidents who had just set up the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Accused (VONS). At the VONS trial on October 23, 1979, Petr Uhl received the heaviest sentence of five years in a maximum security prison. On the eve of his release he was the only one, out of the five convicted in 1979, still
The four others were Vaclav Havel, Jiri Dienstbier, Vaclav Benda and Otta Bednarova.
It was Uhl's ninth year of imprisonment since the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. He paid dearly for his committment to workers self-management and democratic socialism, argued during the Prague spring of 1968.
In the mid-1960s, Petr Uhl lived in France where he met the group of Communist student activists around Alain Krivine, who were soon to form the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR). In their bitter opposition to capitalism as well as Stalinism, Uhl found an echo of his own preoccupations.
On returning to his own country he began to advance the struggle against the cancer of bureaucracy. done in the name of a return to bourgeois 'democracy' delegation of order to present a more 'human face', as socialist self-management and democratic workers power. In the aftermath of August 1968, he was very active amongst students and took part in the organisation of the students' general strike in Prague when it was occupied by Soviet tanks. It was then that, along with other comrades, he helped to set up the Revolutionary Youth Movement (HRM). The programme of this movement expresses clearly the anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic beliefs of its founders: a system', they stated, where capitalist relations of production and the capitalist mode of production have been abolished but where the construction of a democratic, socialist society has not even begun. Spurred on by the aim of opposing any abuse of communist ideals and by the belief that it is our duty and our right to fight effectively for these ideals against all those who ridicule. and abuse foundation) of the Revolutionary Youth Movement.
•We are convinced that the way forward for the Czechoslovak people and for the population of the USSR - and all the so-called peoples' democracies — will be the destruction of the bureaucratic machine, the abolition of bureaucracy at all levels in society and the introduction of a system of self-management. system of self-management would have to be expressed in all areas of life. In the workplaces, it would be reflected in the political and economic power of the workers councils. A system of self-management will make it possible to exploit the creativity and initiative of each individual; it will create the conditions necessary for the scientific and technical revolution which will put an end to the problems of supply and distribution and the social inequalities that flow from them and will lead, ultimately, to the abolition of the state and its institutions on an international level.'
Petr Uhl has always remained faithful to the ideas expressed in this programme as is shown in the Programme for workers management and socialism', which he compiled at the end of the 1970s (published jointly by Stock/La Breche under the title Socialisme Emprisonne, Paris 1980).
Because of their activity in occupied Czechoslovakia, • 18 ro activists of the HRM were arrested in December 1969 Their trial, supposedly against the Trotskyist conspiracy' was the first under normalisation. Petr Uhl received the heaviest sentence - four years imprisonment.
International Viewpoint 16 July 1984
On completion of this first spell of became seriously ill and was released beimprisonment Petr Uhl again took up dissident activity. He participated actively in discussions preparatory to the setting up of Charter 77 and in the elaboration of a tactic of open work to demand the implementation of laws in force in the Czechoslovak republic. Charter group Petr Uhl was the leader of the left socialist current. spring of 1979 he played a key role in the creation of VONS, defending the notion that the opposition should not content itself simply with exposing injustice and repression but must organise to defend the victims. This initiative earned him his second arrest and conviction, once again with the heaviest sentence, which he served to the end and under such harsh conditions that on many occasions people
The repression of which he was a victim stimulated the development of a huge international defence campaign. This included appeals, petitions, delegations of various personalities to the trial, demonstrations and the production in the winter of 1979 of a play - "Trial in Prague' - by the Soleil theatre in Paris. Amnesty International adopted Petr Uhl, including him in their list of the 15 most representative victims of fore serving her full term as the result of the intervention of various international personalities), it did at least mean that the conditions of his detention were improved and that the authorities did not attempt to prolong his sentence by a new trial as was feared at one time.
fact, a year ago, Petr Uhl was transferred to a more modern prison near Prague and once again had access to a library and to foreign books. paign was also able to support his wife, Anna Sabatova, previously a political prisoner herself, and their two children throughout this painful ordeal.
The Czechoslovak bureaucracy is determined to break the will of the dissidents or force them into exile. more than ever, international support is needed to enable the dissidents to operate inside the country. very recently, in fact, authorities have absolutely no intention of moderating their policy of repression.
first prisoner to be conditionally released (he had to present himself everyday to the Prague police) has just been rearrested and sentenced to three months in prison for having left Prague for the weekend without notifying continued from page 28 Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN). All of them were subjected to illtreatment in the following way: They were put in solitary confinement - in what were known as 'hunger bunkers, which were five metres square. were handcuffed behind their backs and sometimes gagged with tape. They were put in straitjackets. Teargas was used were constantly threatened with having their bones broken.
These acts of violence aim to prevent one in Barcewo which ended in for the prisoners (see IV, No 50, April 9, 1984). The example had begun to spread and since then the author ities have refused to budge an inch.
In the case of the hunger strike in Strzelin prison, which lasted six weeks end of December 1983 to January 1984, eight of the 13 prisoners finally gave up their action after the other five had been taken to hospital in a
Some carry on resisting, but at what a
On April 13, Andrzej Slowik, leader of Solidarnosc in Lodz, wrote: 'On April 11 they began to force feed us. Jurek is being fed intravenously (he is too weak to resist). I did resist. So, for political repression in the world
Even if this campaign did not produce an early release (as it did in the case of his co-defendent, Otta Bednarova, who to a further sentence of 18 months.
the police. Similarly, the young worker,
Jiri Gruntorad, who served a four-year prison sentence has just been condemned three days now, they have strapped me down, put handcuffs on me and by means of torture and with a pair of tongs they have been forcing my mouth open.
This is torture imthe fall sense they. cause after putting me in a chair stamp on my toes and twist my arms and
One of my torturers sits on my legs
Against frame up of Armenian militants A committee has been formed in Toronto to defend four Armenian activists charged with attempting to assassinate a Turkish
Irresponsible terrorist attacks in recent years have created a public prejudice against militant Armenian nationalism. But most Armenian militants reject such tactics. And there has been a radicalization in the Armenian diaspora communities in the last decade, leading many activists to form alliances with Palestinian and Kurdish national liberation groups.
The Committee in Defense of Armenian Political Prisoners [CIDAPP] argues that the four activists charged with attempted murder - Melkon Gharakhanian, Haig Gharakhanian, Harout Kevork, and Raffic Ballan - have nothing to do with terrorism. The Canadian police are simply trying to pin the charge on them because they are under pressure International Viewpoint 16 July 1984 to get someone, and the four accused hold political views the Canadian author-
The Committee stresses that the only evidence so far produced in the case is the testimony of a secret police informer.
One of the four, Harout Kevork, is the former editor of the journal Azad Hay ("Free Armenia"), which advocated a united socialist Armenia and never supported terrorism.
The list of endorsers for a petition to drop the charges against the four Armenian activists includes Ralph Schoen man, director of the Committee in Defense of Patestinian and Lebanese Peoples; former director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and trade unionists, civil libertarians and broad movement personalities. Further information can be obtained from the CIDAPP, P. O. Box 456, Station Z, Toronto, Canada.
and twists my knees round the other way or presses my shins against the edge of
According to the latest inforSlowik is still continuing his fight for dignity, for political prisoner status and for the release of all those in prison demands our active sup must not come just other detention centres or from other women and men suffering the same
It must come from all those who have their freedom. As an open letter, written by ex-internees, pointed out a few months ago, the authorities are consciously trying to eliminate those who resist and continue to uphold the objectives of their struggle. And 'nobody can say that they did not know about this', the letter, addressed to the president of the Council of State, added.
The support of the workers movement in the West can also play a role, as the victory of the hunger strike at Barczewo showed. It is particularly incumbent on the trade unions to send fact-finding missions and to adopt political prisoners. But it is up to each and every one of us to ensure that the international workers movement takes up this struggle.
Free Jacek Kuron and the comrades
Free the leaders of Solidarnosc, imprisoned without trial!
Freedom for all political prisoners in
the teeth. And all the self-satisfied declarations by the bureaucracy cannot cover up their silence about the specific election figures.
Although the figures show a favourable balance of forces for the underground movement, we cannot under-
The