Chapter 3 continues…

On 8 September 1972, on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly: “Measures to Prevent Terrorism and other forms of Violence” which endanger or take innocent lives or jeopardize fundamental freedoms was included for discussions of the Sixth Committee of the United Nations. The Soviet representative surprised everyone when he stated: “Marxism-Leninism rejected international terrorism as a method of revolutionary action because it weakened the revolutionary movement and deflected the workers from the mass revolutionary struggle.”
The Soviet spokesman at the UN further held that “experience of revolutionary and national liberation movements showed that the recognition of terrorism as the principal method of combat led to a division of forces and diverted active militants from their real task.” Obviously, this change of tone and stance came because in early 1972, the Soviet Union suffered two hijacking and hostage taking incidents.

The USSR, however, reiterated during the discussions that it supported “the legitimate struggle” of the Arab people of Palestine “for the restoration of their inalienable rights,” and that their terrorist acts were “acceptable and beneficial to the cause,” because they made the people of Israel pay “with their blood for the criminal policy of their rulers.”

The Soviet Union thus had used the terminology “terrorist” mostly to describe acts by Western states, in repeated attempts to identify the West with oppression and terror and itself with “liberation.”

The Pravda (meaning “The Truth”!), the Soviet Communist newspaper, reiterated that position, while reporting on the 1972 United Nations Session on Hostage-Taking, as follows:
“The people’s right to oppose colonial domination, foreign occupation and racist regimes ... has been recognized for some time and is enshrined in the UN charter and several other documents of international law.... It is necessary to make a distinction ... between the people’s sacred struggle for liberation and criminal terrorist acts by individuals, groups and organizations which have nothing in common with this struggle.”

To be continued…