What's Left in Portugal

...He and his cadres are the only Spaniards prepared for such an eventuality, and he does not want any precipitate adventure in Portugal to interfere with his plans for Spain...

...The Minister of Social Affairs, Jorge Sa Carvalho Borges, was probably chosen because he belongs to the farthest left segment of that misnamed party—the Popular Democrats, who are neither popular nor democratic...

...In this vital post Zenha will be able to coordinate the forces of state repression with the military security forces controlled by Carvalho...

...Pointing to the Popular The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 13 Democrats, he said: "We accept parties that defend social democracy and with which we consider it necessary and useful to cooperate, without permitting them, however, to take over the political direction of the revolutionary process...

...It seems Portugal today is merely repeating, as if in a recurring dream, the experiences of 1917-18 in Russia some sixty years earlier...

...I have just returned from a real socialist country and I can tell you it was worth the sacrifice...

...Will he listen to the Social Democrat 56-Carneiro and keep the coalition from becoming the Communist stepping-stone to absolute power...

...The big question for the future of the coalition is what Soares will do...

...On August 31, Soares repeated his plea for a coalition, a coalition in which Carvalho would retain his post as Chief of Security, in charge of all military organs of suppression...

...The Russians want this for their reasons, Kissinger and Ford for theirs, and Europe waits on the sidelines, hoping for the best...

...President Francisco da Costa Gomes defended his regime from accusations of arbitrary, dictatorial rule by telling a gathering of journalists in Paris June 1 that the seizure 12 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 of Republica was "deplorable," but he added that it would "soon be rectified...

...The "real" admiral of the revolutionary Armed Forces Movement is the "red" admiral Antonio Rosa Coutinho, to whom Azevedo is fiercely loyal...

...Joining them as Foreign Minister is Ernesto Melo Antunes, an early and fiery leader of the revolutionary forces, now estranged from the Communists, and a major force in the "ouster" of Goncalves...

...Good...

...There are more people in prison than we intended...

...Carrillo therefore preached a coalition politics that would exclude only the "anti-workers" parties and would welcome Mario Soares' Socialists...

...This shows how much Soares can learn from history, for it was not long before that Carvalho declared—again according to the Daily Telegraph of July 31— " that he regretted that all counter-revolutionaries had not been shot or put in the Lisbon bull-ring after the April 1974 coup...

...Goncalves is still around, although he may accompany President Francisco da Costa Gomes to Moscow, where they are due to arrive in late September or early October...

...General Vasco Goncalves is out (as Premier...

...that a new law (passed by whom...

...Marx was wrong...

...It was at this point that Comrade Carrillo decided to shed his underground cover...

...These remarks, reported July 31 in the (London) Daily Telegraph, are especially frightening, because Carvalho is Chief of Security for the Armed Forces Movement, and his control of military police forces gives him more power than the President or Premier...

...Each such move is hailed in the press as a setback for the Communists...

...Recent events have in no way changed the central fact of Portuguese life: the military forces committed to a revolutionary-left regime, if not quite a Communist takeover, are firmly in charge, and no matter what happens they will probably remain in charge...

...would "give workers' committees equal rights with management in formulating editorial policy," meaning that the Socialists would have nominal control, but that the Communists would write all the editorials...

...This Carrillo is a smooth, soft-spoken spokesman for "moderate" international Communism...

...September 22, 1975...

...Not once—in all the months that have expired since the Communists seized his party newspaper—has he demanded that a return of press, radio, and television be a pre-condition for his accepting any part in any government...

...But the departure of General Vasco Goncalves from high office should not obscure his continuing presence behind the scenes...

...Both superpowers see in his appointment assurance that Portugal will remain in NATO...

...As the New York Times correspondent observed (September 21), "This seemed like a warning to the [Soares] Socialists also, for that party is often accused of reneging on its self-proclaimed Marxian principles...

...When Goncalves' nomination for Chief of Staff was withdrawn in early September, the Western press exuded a euphoria that may have been more a result of wishful thinking than a realistic appraisal of probabilities...

...They follow Soares as the least of all evils: there just is no other prominent personality whom they trust...

...For his part, Soares had long made known his attitudetoward such a coalition...

...On May 20, 1975, the Portuguese Socialist Party organ, Republica, was seized by the minority Communists and has not yet been returned...

...On September 20, Premier Azevedo made clear the road he expects the new government to take—or else...

...This was highlighted by the reaction to an article in Pravda in mid-September by a hard-line Stalinist, Professor Konstantin Zaradov, who called for the immediate establishment of a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat in a revolutionary situation...

...After that even Comrade Cunhal got the message, and the way for a Portuguese coalition government—long the goal of Socialist leader Soares, and the "moderate" Communists of Spain, France, and Italy—was cleared...

...History never repeats itself as farce, always as tragedy...

...Moreover, the coalition politics which the Communists are now playing fits directly into the strategy suggested by Santiago Carrillo, the suave Secretary-General of the Spanish Communist Party who has recently surfaced, after a clandestine existence when he was known to the French and Spanish police as "Giscard...

...In April 1975, almost one year to the day after the rightist Caetano regime was overthrown and the new revolutionary government was sworn in, elections were held which showed that the Communists (and their allies) controlled about twenty-five percent of the vote, while all the socialist and anti-Communist forces were supported by seventy-five percent of the electorate...

...It isn't...

...In Lisbon last August, he counseled Cunhal and the ideological leaders of the Armed Forces Movement —the members of its so-called Sociology Center—to be patient, not to push too hard on the Goncalves matter, and to protect the revolutionary gains by "compromise...

...The outlook looks bleak: it is sad to record, that as late as August 31 this year, Soares repeated his desire to serve in any government set up jointly (he thinks...

...he waits in the wings for Franco to pass peaceably from the scene...

...Actually, what happened was the triumph within the Communist world of Carrillo's ideas over the forces advocating outright seizure of power...

...by Comrade Cunhal and himself...

...Which brings to mind how history tends to repeat itself...

...Meanwhile, it is best not to pay much attention to the game of musical chairs being played in Portugal...

...Asked in 1918 whether the Bolsheviks believed in multiple parties, Bukharin, the author of the Soviet Constitution, replied: "Sure we do, one party in power, all the others in jail...

...These rumors have not been confirmed, but we can infer his sympathies from his remarks upon returning from Cuba in late July: "We are going to see now what we can use here of what we learned in Cuba...

...He is afraid of power, as most Socialists are when confronted with the equation Either/Or...

...It was a trial balloon wafted toward Portugal, but it brought instant and angry rejoinders from the Communist leaders of Italy and France, who are trying to gain for themselves a place in coalition governments in their own countries...

...The formation of a coalition government on September 19 should be seen not as a roadblock to Communist objectives, but rather as the victory of one school of Communist tacticians over another...

...In 1917, when the Bolsheviks polled only about the same percentage of the vote as did their Portuguese disciples, did Lenin ask for a recount...

...And the head of security, General Carvalho, is certainly not...

...The chances that it will ever be returned to its prior sponsorship are negligible, although it may be allowed to resume publication under "workers' control...

...The Armed Forces Movement, for its part, makes no bones about what it intends to do with the coalition...

...14 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975...

...Max Gelman What's Left in Portugal AA Whatever happens in Portugal, no matter which way the wind blows in the beleaguered nation, only the Left can come out on top...

...And the most important figure behind the government is General Otelo de Carvalho, a Mozambique-born rebel who, rumors tell, has long been a secret member of the Communist Party, perhaps its most important member...

...Admiral Jose Batista Pinheiro Azevedo is in...

...Instead he has lent support to the illusion that President Gomes is a "moderate...

...Finally, on September 19, the new coalition of Soares Socialists, Popular Democrats, and Communists was sworn in—with the far-left military junta and the militant Sociology Center in command of all the prerogatives of revolutionary direction...

...Or will he listen to the blandishments of Comrade Jorge J esuino who told a gathering of academics in New York May 15, that one need not worry about the question of "multiple parties in Portugal," for "the Communists were pioneers in pluralism" ? (Yes, Jesuino actually said it, and he was roundly applauded for saying it...

...Anyone who disagreed with him andhis party was a traitor to socialism, and would be shot—and shot he was—and the shooting has never stopped...

...The new cabinet (as of September 19) includes four Soares Socialists, two Popular Democratic socialists, and one Communist...

...Speaking just after Republica was seized, he said (May 24): "Cooperation with the Communist Party is not only necessary, it is desirable...

...Well, as Khrushchev said when he was voted down on the Soviet Presidium seven to four, "Seven to four is arithmetic, not politics...

...No, he seized power, declaring that by his political arithmetic his party had really won the election and, besides, this business of electoral majorities was nothing but a bourgeois-democratic trap...

...But Soares doesn't trust himself to rule on his own...

...Asked why there were so many political prisoners in "revolutionary Portugal," the President responded: "We have made mistakes...

...The people, of course, want no such solution...

...I also learned from this attorney that S6.-Carneiro, head of Portugal's Social Democrats, is the only viable "conservative" on the scene—but, my informant added sadly, "except for a sense of democratic moral outrage, he has no real power base...

...The other cabinet ministers hew more or less to a leftist, socialist line...

...Washington is pleased by Antunes' appointment, but so is Moscow—and it should be remembered that the latter reason is probably why he was chosen...

...Gomes is not...

...Three days after the seizure of power by the minority Bolsheviks, Pravda declared: "We have closed some newspapers calling themselves socialist...

...and we are going to reorganize the police system," which prompted a self-exiled Portuguese attorney whom I interviewed in Paris July 9, to say: "He means that they will exchange prisons for concentration camps...

...He supports Carvalho, more than President Gomes, even more than Cunhal and Goncalves...

...the modern way to seize power, he said, is the way of th' "refined" Enrico Berlinguer, head of the Italian CP...

...Carillo warned the impatient Alvaro Cunhal, Communist boss of Portugal, not to sing the Lenin refrain note for note...

...Whether it will be the totalitarian Left that will ultimately triumph or the more moderate Left is not yet clear, and may not be known for some time...

...Nor is the new Premier, Admiral Azevedo...

...therefore, he has been chiding the Portuguese Communists for their lack of sophistication, for putting too many of their eggs in the military basket...

...Two decades later Stalin had Bukharin shot...

...The most dangerous minister will be Francisco Zenha, the militant naval officer whom Premier Azevedo selected as Minister of Interior...

...Premier Azevedo is also Carrillo's man, for although the Spaniard would prefer the "red" admiral for the post, he is satisfied to go along with any powerful man from the navy, that branch of the armed forces which is most militant and most dedicated to the revolution...