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# Western HemisphereSOVIET ANALYST, Lomica15 August 1974# Kremlin's Hand in Allende's Chileby JAMES THEBERGEWhy did Salvador Allende's revolutionary gov- ernment end in a bloodbath despite Soviet sup- port and the plaudits of the world's lol:-wing extremists, who saw in Chile a new path for Socialism's merch to power?James Theberge, who is Director of the Latin American Department of the Georgetown Uni- versity Center for Strategic ard International Studies, shows how Moscow, the "big brother". though eager to exploit this opening in Latin America to the full, disagreed with Allende's headlong methods, and while warning him of the growing economic chaos denied him enough financial eid.In 1935, Moscow dispatched Eudocio Ravines, a brilliant Peruvian Communist organiser, to Chile to implement the "united from:" and "anti-fascist popular front" strategy that had replaced, the ultra-loft strategy of the Comincern. Since that time the Chilean Coinmunist pary generally has followed a strategy of broad alliance and limited aims, although the Cuban revctation led to a radicalisation of party straThe Chilean Communist party, ome of the most loyal pro-Soviet partias in Latin America, gave unqualified support to the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1963. Vinile its fortunes have shifted through the years as a result of dormestic and international developments, it un- stintingly supported the rivists and turns of Soviat foreign policy and repeated accow's themes of anti-imperialism and class warfare.The party, at least prior to the military Inter- vertion of September, 1973. was the best organ- Ised and strongest in Latin America. Estwaen 1956 and 1969 it formad an uneesy alliance for electoral purposes with the Socialist Party, its more militant Marxist rival on the Left. But in 1969 the Communists deciced at a much more broadly based ailiance of left-wing forces was necessary for the transformation of the country Into a socialist state and they played a key rola in the founding of the Popular Unity Front (a coalition of six leftist partins) at the end of that year. After the 1970 electoral victory of the Popular Unity Fron: under Salvador Allende the Communists became the singla most influential force within the coalition. It was a for cattar organised and disciplined participant than its closest rival, the more ideologically unstable and militant Socialist Party.The ultimate aim of the party did nct waver throughout the Allanda period. The Commur.ists hoped to be able to take advantage of the weak: ness of the democratic institutions to install a "dictatorship of the proletariat" under their direction. Their Secretary-General, Eduardo Labarca, made this clear in ris Corvalin 27 Hores (Santiago, Editorial Cantu, 1972), in which he declared: "Form for from capital-Isın to Socialism necessarily requires that the proletariat be converted into the leading class, into the determining social force"..The Communist strategy, shared by Salvador Allcride and the "moderate" wing of the Socialist Party, was 10 "certhrow" the bourgeois state and constitutina, using the legal device of the plebiscito, an interview with. Régis Debray in 1971 Allende said: "As for the bourgeois state at the present morient, we are seeking to overcome il. To ovenbrow ill" (Regis Debray, The Chilean Revolution, Conversations with Allende, New York, Randern House, 1971 ρ.82).Mass mobilisation, infiltration of Chilean in- stitutions and tactical alliances with the opposi tion were in be employed to generate sufficient popular support. Congress was to to replaced by a "popular assembly" and the existing legal system by "populer tribunals." President Allende's piedge to uphold the "Statute of Guaranices" (designed to commit his government to preserve Chile's democratic freedoms and institutions in exchange for Congressional support) was simply a "tactical necessity" to gain power, as he ex- plained later.The Chilean Conimunists and their allies. in Moscow were uneasy about the ideological im- plications of the via Chilena as advocated by Salvador Allende (Debray, p.119). The Com- munis: party refused to endorse the via, Chilena as a uniquely Chilean path to socialism, which in:plied that it might not necessarily assume the leading role after complete power was gained by the Popular Unity coalition. The Chilean party supported Moscow's doctrine of the via pecifica, which accepted frce eluctions and popular plural. ism as a short-term tactical device under Chilean conditions but aimed in the long run at installing a Soviet-style Communist dictatorship. The via pacifica was not as "pacific" as the slogan in. plied: it embraced all forms of class conflict and violence short of armed insurrection and civil war in the process of establishing the "dictator- ship of the proletariat."Misleading ImageThe via Chilena proclaimed by Allende scon aiter his election was widely misunderstood in the West. The image that was officially propa- gated was that of a uniquely Chilean path to a new type of Marxist humanist socialism, where Basic liberties, economic pluralism and frea elections were respected by all. Western liberals were led to believe that the Allende government was constructing a new Western-European type of democratic socialism in Chite. This image clashed with the reality of Salvador Allende's revolutionary ambition to use Ching's pluralist democracy to destroy it. He seemed to have abandoned the via Chilena formula during the last year c' his government. Not only cid he rarely31