““‘We want to make maximum

contribution to the democratiza- -

tion process in Turkey. We want
all the parties participating in the
elections to express their opinions
on the unobstructed work of the
Communist Party in the run-up to
the general elections and to dis-
cuss these with the people.”

With these words, Haydar
Kutlu and Nihat Sargin, leaders
of the Communist Party of Tur-
key and the Workers’ Party of
Turkey respectively, announced
their intention to return home in
time to participate in the coun-
try’s debates preceding the
November 29 election.

As their parties are illegal, both
leaders acknowledged they will
probably be arrested on arrival.
But they believe that the time is
ripe for the resumption of legal
communist political activity. Pub-
lic opinion supports the legaliza-
tion of all parties, they observed,
including the Communist Party.
In addition, the Turkish govern-
ment has signed an international
convention obliging it to restore

and maintain parliamentary
democracy.

Despite this, the Turkish gov-
ernment will not make the party
legal on its own accord. The par-
ty’s right to participate in elec-
tions must be fought for. If the
two leaders are arrested then it
will show that the government is
not really interested in restoring
genuine democracy. It would also
unleash widespread public indig-
nation which will eventually force
the government to allow commun-
ists to participate in Turkey’ s poli-
tical process.

If they are not arrested, Kutlu
and Sargin intend to follow
through on the decision of their
two parties to merge and set up
the United Communist Party of
Turkey.

“The UCPT will be a party
which will make as its principle

reaching all its short and long--

term political goals by democratic
means. In the interests of social
development, we are for a plu-
ralist regime. All parties, no mat-

vanHouten

ter what their views or ideologies,
ought to be able to participate in
the Turkish political process.”’

On the Kurdish national ques-
tion, Kutlu and Sargin em-
phasized that the existence of the
Kurdish people and their unfet-
tered right to self-determination
must be recognized.

However, the biggest danger
facing the world today is still the
threat of nuclear war. Criticizing
the Turkish government for its
support of NATO war hawks they
noted that NATO membership
brought nothing to Turkey and
expresses its dependence on the

From

Berlin | «

Gerry

U.S. Nevertheless, the two lead-
ers do not propose to withdraw
Turkey from NATO although
their long-term aim is to see the
dissolution of both NATO and the
Warsaw Pact alliances. Turkey,
they believe, ought to fight for
peace within the NATO alliance
as long as it exists. Much smaller
countries have succeeded in tak-
ing more independent positions
so there is no reason why a coun-
try as important as Turkey cannot
also take more independent
positions, positions which will
strengthen world peace and pro-
mote nuclear disarmament.

The Communist Party of Tur-
key was founded in 1921 but has
been illegal for almost its entire
history. Kutlu, 43, became
General-Secretary in 1983. The
Workers’ Party of Turkey was
founded in 1961 and elected 15
members to the Turkish parlia-
ment in 1965. It was banned in
1971 and again in 1980, five years
after regaining its legal status.
Sargin, 61, has been General-
Secretary for only a month. He
succeeded Behice Boran who
died at the age of 77 only two days
after the press conference
announcing the decision that the
two parties are to merge. She had
been general-secretary since 1975
and was a member of parliament
when the party was still legal.

Whether or not the Turkish

‘government will allow the UCPT

to establish itself as a legal party,

observers expect the new party

and its allies in the United Left

Alliance to make a big impact on
political developments in a coun-

try which has suffered military
rule for a long time.

By FRED WEIR
Moscow Correspondent

MOSCOW — Beyond doubt the most
interesting person I have met in my life is
Xenia Pavlovna Chudinova.

At 94, Chudinova is the oldest surviv-
ing Bolshevik — a leading member of the
Soviet Communist Party for almost 74
years. It seems as though the entire
drama of Soviet history is etched upon
her face. War, revolution, famine, poli-
tical struggle and economic upheaval
have not simply marched through her

life; she has been an active shaper of -

events.

She has been an organizer of under-
ground insurrection, and she has also
served in positions of high authority. She
was jailed by the Czar, sentenced to
death by White Guards, and spent time in
the cellars of the Lubyanka prison. She
has known every Soviet leader, and
worked closely with Lenin, Stalin —

who had her imprisoned for 17 years — ~

and Krushchev. In her old age she has
developed a special affection for Mikhail
Gorbachev, whom she describes with
that peculiarly Russian expression of ap-
proval, molodyets, roughly meaning ‘‘ex-
cellent fellow.”’

Indeed, when Alexei — a journalist
with the Novosti Press Agency — and
myself entered her small apartment on
Moscow’s Frunze embankment, the
very first words she said to us were: ‘*Did
you see our Mikhail Sergeivich on televi-
sion today? Didn’t he look fine? What a
speech he gave! Molodyets.””’

Chudinova was born in Siberia in 1894,
and she ascribes her political develop-
ment to early contacts with left-wing
exiles. At the age of 16 she was par-
ticipating in Marxist study groups. When
she was 20 — the year World War One
broke out — she travelled to Moscow
and joined the Bolshevik party.

LIVING
HISTORY

During the turbulent years she lived in 5
Moscow and earned an economics de-
gree from Shanyavski University. She
led a double life: student by day, Bol-
shevik activist and agitator by night. She
corresponded with Lenin and distributed
his articles and publications from abroad
to the Moscow underground.

‘“*Once the party sent me with another
comrade into a leather goods factory to
organize the workers there,”’ she recalls.
“*We worked in the paint shop, with toxic
chemicals that made my hair fall out. We
only had a few minutes a day in which we
could communicate with the workers.
But after two weeks we succeeded in

-organizing a strike.”’

In 1916 Chudinova was arrested along
with 43 members of the Moscow party
committee, after she had been seen
agitating among railroad workers in the
Alexandrovsky (now Byeloruskaya) sta-
tion. The police who searched her flat at
the last moment discovered copies of a
Bolshevik newspaper secreted in a bas-
ket.

‘I was taken to prison and interro-
gated by an officer — I still remember his
name — Voltanovsky,”’ she says.

‘“‘That night I heard knocking on the
wall of my cell. It asked, in the prison
code we all knew, ‘Are you from the
Shanyavski group?’ Fearing entrapment,
I replied: ‘I’m from Shanyavski Univer-
sity, yes, but don’t know of any groups.”’
The knocking returned: ‘Good answer.
Molodyets’.”’

Exiled to Nizhni Novgorod (now Gor-
ky) she soon escaped, and resumed her
political activities in the city of Bo-
gorodsk, near Moscow.

Following the October Revolution —
which in Bogorodsk succeeded without a

Chudinova to Weir: “The main thing that drove me was the terrible conditions for thé
people which | saw all around me. | saw the future in Marxism.”

shot being fired — she was made Bolshe-
vik food commissar for the: region.

“‘T must say, that was the most difficult
job I’ve had to do in my entire life,’’ she
remembers. ‘‘Because there was no
food, but everyone expected me to pro-
vide it.”

The job brought her into contact with
Lenin — who at one time severely criti-
cized her for trying to obtain bread
through illicit barters instead of taking
into account the larger picture. She de-
scribes the meeting where Lenin con-
vinced her she was wrong: ‘‘What about
the miners of Donbas? What about the
revolutionary workers of Petrograd?
What will they eat?’’, Lenin asked her.
“You will have bread, but not this way.
Go home and explain the situation. The
conscious workers will support you,”’ he
told her.

She seems to have succeeded in this
and, at the height of the civil war, the

party sent her back to her native Siberia

to serve as food commissar with broad
powers. In Nicolaevsk (now Novosi-
birsk) she was seized by White Guards,
who sentenced her to death. She escaped
— with her one year-old son in her arms
—and hid for months, witha price on her
head, while the counter-revolutionaries
searched for her.

Chudinova’s memories of the 1920s
and 1930s are vivid. She could un-

doubtedly fill several important volumes
of memoirs. During those years she
worked for the Central Committee of the
Communist Party and as a District Secre-
tary of the Moscow region party or-
ganization. She took part in the turbulent"
debates of the 1920s, and in the agonizing
efforts to ‘‘lift Russia up by its boot-
straps,” to develop modern agriculture
and industry where none had been
before. ;

“You can’t imagine what our revolu-—
tion was,”’ she says. ‘‘We had illiterate —
women coming with their children to -
makeshift schools, leaving their babies
sitting on the ground while they learned
to read from someone only a little better
educated than themselves. But Lenin
said many times — and he was right —
that no revolution is possible without 4
cultural revolution.”

During the collectivization drive in
1929, Chudinova begged the Central
Committee to send her into the country-
side to work with the peasants, but was
refused on the grounds that she was too
badly needed in Moscow.

‘‘T was very enthusiastic about collec-
tivization,”’ she says. ‘‘ But in retrospect
I can’t tell you only positive things about
it. Lenin had said that it should be a
step-by-step process, that the peasants
should be convinced to join cooperatives
by example. What we saw were pease

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 25, 1987