Joseph Hansen

New Robber Deals Mark
Secret Moscow Meeting

(5 January 1946)

Source: The Militant, Vol. X No. 1, 5 January 1946, pp. 1 & 7.
Transcription/Editing/HTML Markup: 2018 by Einde O’Callaghan.
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The Moscow Conference of three foreign ministers has been hailed by the capitalist press as a big step toward peace. Actually nothing fundamental has been changed by the horse trades there. The basic antagonism between the Soviet Union and Anglo-American imperialism remains as profound as ever. Rampant Imperialist militarism drives unchecked toward the atomic destruction of civilization. The despotic rulers of old colonial empires continue to bathe the colonial lands in blood. And throughout the world the great masses of working people still face growing insecurity and the perspective of a Third World War.

The Big Three, in the traditional style of reactionary diplomats, met like thieves in the night. Iron censorship blanketed their parleys. What they discussed has not been fully revealed. What secret commitments they made remain unknown. All that is available is their carefully worded joint declaration of December 27, the comments of their controlled press, and their own subsequent praise of the conference.

But that is sufficient. Byrnes and Bevin, representing profit-bloated, market-hungry British and American imperialism, and Molotov, representing the assassin-minded, counter-revolutionary Kremlin bureaucracy, did everything but work for a stable and enduring peace.

Joint Declaration

The joint declaration announced decisions on the following subjects.

The communique seeks to create the misleading impression that the Security Council of theUnited Nations Organization will possess the power to prevent atom destruction of mankind in the Third World War. In reality, the USA [1] (Wall Street) retains veto power on its use. On top of this, the American imperialists are not obligated to reveal the decisive secrets of its manufacture. In brief the situation remains as before. The American militarists did not pause a moment in their plans for further experiments with the bombs, particularly in naval warfare. Meanwhile, the atomic plants continue to manufacture the terrible bombs at the rate of approximately 500 a year.
A far Eastern Commission was set up to act as an advisory body on military rule of Japan. This body is another instrument of repression against the Japanese masses. Moreover, the real power remains as before in the hands of the brass hats who are carrying out Wall Street’s aims. Washington’s representative can veto decisions he may not like. In case of disagreement the brass hats continue to make “interim” decisions and retain power of appointment and dismissal of officials.

Bolster Dictator

The three diplomats at Moscow agreed to further bolster up the hated reactionary dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. In return, the butcher of the Chinese masses will agree to include a couple of Stalin’s agents in his government. U.S. imperialism will withdraw its troops, but not until the Japanese are disarmed and transported to Japan. This will take a long time, since right now the USA is utilizing Japanese troops as part of its own forces in China. The real situation is sharply revealed by Gen. Wedemeyer’s announcement, two days after the Moscow declaration, that 4,000 more U.S. troops will be sent to China.
Korea will be placed in “trusteeship.” This is the same formula of enslavement used by the Japanese imperialists in 1910 when they conquered the country. The Koreans reacted vigorously to the three diplomats’ carving up their country, denouncing it as a “lethal blow” to their hopes for independence. Crowds gathered in the streets of Seoul and posters appeared calling on the people to resist “trusteeship” and “be prepared to shed their blood in the cause of freedom.”
In Rumania and Bulgaria, Stalin agreed to have his puppet governments add a couple of representatives of the “opposition,” i.e., agents of Anglo-American imperialism, to make the regimes look more democratic. But here too nothing essential is changed. The Stalinist bureaucracy continues its totalitarian stranglehold on the people.

Complicated Formula

Finally the Big Three agreed on a complicated formula, for drawing up some of the treaties to establish the first stages of the robber “peace” between wars. The essence of this agreement was to give the “small” nations (satellites of the big powers) a voice in the process without changing by an iota Big Three dictation of these treaties. The Big Three and their spokesmen proclaim this a great step forward – at the London Conference they couldn’t even agree on this rubber-stamping procedure.

Far more significant than this perfidious horse-trading were the omissions from the declaration.

Ominous Omissions

First of all, these three diplomats sitting around a table cutting up the map of the world, did not in any respect represent the two billion people whose fate is at stake. They represented only the interests of tiny ruling cliques. The peoples of the earth were not consulted. They will never consent to the decisions of the three. The declaration represents only passing stage of relationships in the power politics of the Big Three.

The declaration did not mention Indonesia. Not long ago the officials of the Indonesian Republic addressed appeals to Washington and Moscow for help against the brutal assault of the British and Dutch imperialist armies. Stalin and Truman gave the heroic fighters of Java their answer at Moscow. The answer was dead silence, a silence signifying assent to their subjugation.

The declaration did not mention Indo-China. The Viet Namh [sic] Republic, likewise battling American-armed British and French imperialism, appealed to Moscow for aid. They got the same vicious response handed the Indonesians – silence.

The declaration did not mention Iran and Turkey, how being threatened and torn in the struggle for spheres of influence between the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Anglo-American powers.

In fact the declaration failed to breathe a word about the aspirations for independence and freedom of the majority of humanity in the colonial and semi-colonial lands.

Silent on Germany

The declaration likewise overlooked the most burning problem of the day – the question of Germany. It was undoubtedly discussed by these robbers, but whatever they decided could not stand the light of day. Nor was anything proposed to alleviate the terrific sufferings of the survivors among the Jews in Europe. And so Europe – so far as Stalin and Anglo-American imperialism is concerned – will remain as before, devastated, ruined, a widening morass of hunger, disease, death and desolation, held in a straitjacket by the occupying armies.

The Moscow Conference with its miserable horse-trading reveals the mockery of the United Nations Organization. All the real decisions are made behind thick veils of censorship. They are made before this paper organization even meets. The secret conferences reveal that all the glowing baptismal speeches made at the christening of the UNO at San Francisco were so much lying demagogy. On December 31, the old League of Nations spoke a few hollow words from its mausoleum at Geneva. But its successor, the UNO. proves to be a corpse even before a city has been selected for its site.

Capitalism has reached such a stage of decay it has no hope whatever of any perspective but continued unending war, with only brief interludes in which to recuperate and rebuild its military machine.

That is the reality which the Moscow declaration tries to hide and cover up. The deals made there will prove no more effective in paving the way to enduring peace than were the Teheran and Yalta conference decisions.

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Footnote by MIA

1. “USO” in the printed version.

Last updated on: 19 September 2018