Western movements led by revisionists unearthed

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the so-called Communist Party-USA 
(CP-USA) had to cut its newspaper back from daily to weekly. The 
reason is that most of its money came from the USSR. This is 
something that any street activist can observe, but is now also 
documented in both Soviet and U.$. government archives.

The persyn in the CP-USA in charge of getting money from the USSR 
was an FBI infiltrator and embezzler in the CP-USA. At one point, 
it appears that both the U.$. and Soviet sides knew it, but Gus 
Hall failed to act. MIM cannot rule out that all concerned knew 
what was going on and kept it quiet for reasons of U.$.-Soviet 
collaboration and the peace. Gus Hall managed to get $3 million 
from the USSR in 1988.(p. 293)

The situation was the same in Canada, with two-thirds of the 
Communist Party's budget coming from the USSR. France and Italy 
also had their parties receiving subsidies -- something of no 
surprise to Maoists. The IRA in Ireland and the Palestinian PFLP 
also received aid. (p. 378, 380) The total of subsidies was about 
$200 million to parties outside the Soviet bloc in the 1980s.(p. 
287) Of course, this sum was significant but nothing compared with 
U.$. aid to its lackeys in the Third World alone, not to mention 
CIA money finding its way into political campaigns in European 
countries, that even Andrew admitted.(e.g., p. 277)

In the past, the CP-USA and its circles denied such Soviet 
involvement in their activities. An example would be the Soviet 
participation in the World Peace Council, with 90% of its money 
coming from the USSR.(p. 485) In the 1980s, MIM tried to explain 
to some anti-militarist activists that this organization was 
revisionist, to no avail because of the simplicity of its 
propaganda and its ability to offer a concrete organization with 
wide reach.

MIM has already exposed revisionist involvement in such 
organizations and finds nothing spectacular about the Soviet 
social-imperialists' deceptions of the naive in this regard in the 
early and mid-1980s. Numerous duped and naive people attacked MIM 
on this score in the 1980s. They are mostly gone from politics 
now.

Somewhat more surprising is the extent to which the revisionist 
Soviet Union deceived others not exactly in their camp. For 
example, the revisionists continued to attack the European 
Trotskyists with special operations right into the Brezhnev 
era.(p. 438) We find this of interest considering Khruschev's 
denunciation of Stalin.

Perhaps more important is the deception of Kwame Nkrumah's 
comrade-in-arms Sekou Toure in Guinea. (p. 244) Although the 
Soviets incited him against U.$. imperialism, we cannot know if 
there were more deception of African revolutionaries, as Andrew is 
not the best of filters for the Mitrokhin archive.

There is nothing inherently wrong with taking aid from any source. 
More importantly, taking aid from a source, no matter what source, 
is no proof that the line of an organization is incorrect.

However, in many cases an organization was well-organized not 
because of any effort of its own. The leaders could be barely 
competent and know nothing of issues and still plug along with 
outside money to back them. Pragmatists would then conclude that 
the organization was "successful."

Such aid stymied theoretical discussion of Soviet revisionism and 
today a similar situation arises when activists are funded by 
labor unions and do not honestly confront the truth about the 
labor aristocracy. We cannot expect that honest struggle will 
convert all and bring about unity.

Source: All references from Christopher Andrew and Vasili 
Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the 
Secret History of the KGB, by (NY: Basic Books, 1999).