Chapter 3 continues…

This doctrine was based on Marx’s other writings, and in the works of Lenin. Writing in 1906, Lenin had stated “no Marxist should consider partisan warfare (including political assassination) ... as abnormal and demoralizing.” On the contrary, “terrorist partisan acts against representatives of the violent regime, are recommended.” That is, terrorism was regarded by Lenin as a part of the “proletarian revolution,” although he wanted it to be employed only under the direction of “the Party.” On the other hand, Lenin condemned individual acts of terror i.e., outside Soviet control, as “infantile,” or “isolated” political violence.

Leon Trotsky unequivocally justified the resort to terrorism as a tactical tool of partisan warfare. While Trotsky had been disowned by Stalin, his endorsement of terror as an instrument of revolution remained embedded in Communist Party doctrine. The 2012- 2015 happenings in Nandigram, in West Bengal, confirmed that terror is an integral part of Communist mindset anywhere and everywhere, reformist or doctrinaire.

From the first Marxist-Leninist revolution against Czarism— when more than a thousand terrorist acts were perpetrated in Transcaucasia alone—to August 1991, when the USSR pathetically unraveled, Moscow had controlled Soviet-assisted terrorist groups, and made them to follow a strict party-line. Even terrorist movements with less party discipline and control, including the New Left, and Trotskyists (working for the furtherance of inter- national Communism but generally hostile to the Soviet Union) received support when it destabilized Soviet-targeted societies.

It was the folly of the Soviet Union in capturing Afghanistan in 1979, and its forced retreat in 1989, that this terrorism was turned on its head, and it took on a fanatic religious colour of Islamic Fundamentalism. To borrow Marx’s terminology, Soviet inspired “revolutionary terror” gave birth to Islamic terror with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan acting as midwife.

To be continued…