Second Part THE SEVERED HANDS
(French Newsreel, May 1945) In Europe, Prague was one of the first victims of nazi rapacity.
These images give testimony of the last days of occupation...
...when the Czech capital liberated itself, like Paris, on early May.
In every country of the world, except in Germany,...
...the paving stones were converted in the barricades of freedom.
In Prague, the archives of the Gestapo were thrown into the sewers...
...and the hook-cross was thrown into the fire.
(Soviet Newsreel, May 1945) Our tanks...
...are pushing South; it is the last campaign in the war.
They approach the enemy, who still fights.
The salvation of Prague depends on their speed.
One hour more supposes 100.000 lives.
The first Soviet tank that entered free Prague carried the number 23.
It was the same tank, now a monument,...
...that was surround by other Russian tanks in August 1968.
FROM THE PRAGUE SPRING TO THE COMMON PROGRAMME
In a wall in Bratislava one can read:
"Lenin, wake up. Brezhnev has gone mad".
Everywhere clandestine radio stations transmit non-stop.
But the most significant message of August 21...
...was the one summoning all delegates...
...of the XIV Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
The delegates are taken by car to a factory...
...in a working-class quarter were the congress is held.
The most recognisable are taken in trucks or ambulances.
A clandestine camera has preserved the images of this clandestine congress.
Let me emphasise what we see here:
This is not an improvised manifestation, however numerous.
This is the legal expression of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
A congress called by the Central Committee from June 1st.
With delegates elected according to the rules during the months of June and July.
And, despite the change of date, accelerated by the Russian invasion,...
...1182 delegates are present.
That is, 3/4 of the entire organisation.
So, according to the statutes, the congress...
...is, for the moment, the only organism with legitimacy to lead the Party.
First orator: Vaculik. The main reality...
...is that of the occupation of the Republic by allied troops.
A occupation decided without the consent of our president,...
...our government, Assembly, or Central Committee.
Next question: the unanimous reaction of our peoples against the occupation.
This unanimous reaction is, to my eyes, the only decisive sign...
...that the Party should take into account regarding what attitude it should assume.
If we want to be loyal to the compromise of our people we cannot express ourselves otherwise.
We'll never be friends of the USSR again!
It's 'autumn leaves'. Wet paper.
We've waited...
We've had faith for 20 years,...
...100 years. It's too much.
Brezhnev arrives on July 29 to Cierna nad Tisou, Slovakia, in his special train...
...having spent the night crossing Soviet territory.
There were many embraces, but the final communiqué was still vague.
Brezhnev and Dubcek no longer gave words the same meaning.
Dubcek goes to Moscow and finds another Brezhnev who threatens with military invasion and 'normalization'.
We could ask ourselves why Dubcek and those with him...
...were given the relative honour of sitting at a negotiation table...
...without the presence of the President of the Republic, Svoboda,...
...who goes to Moscow of his own initiative in search of the abducted members of the Central Committee.
Brezhnev welcomes him as though it all was a show of Czech-Soviet friendship...
...and they parade through the streets of Moscow...
...three days before the troops of the Warsaw Pact invade Czechoslovakia.
BROTHERS!
What are you doing in Prague?
And you call yourself a communist?
(Havana, August 23, 1968) Some things we'll say, in some cases...
...will be in contradiction...
...with the emotions of many.
In other cases, they will be in contradiction...
...with our own interests.
And in others...
...will constitute grave perils...
...to our country.
We believe that...
...the decision taken in Czechoslovakia,...
...can only be explained,...
...from a political point of view,...
...not a legal point of view,...
...because as far as legality is concerned,...
...it has frankly none!
What circumstance have led to...
...a remedy of such nature?
A remedy that places the international...
...revolutionary movement in a difficult situation.
A remedy which creates a truly traumatic situation...
...for a people, such as the situation of the Czechoslovak people.
Which forces an entire people...
...to go through the thankless...
...situation of seeing...
...its country occupied by the armies of other countries,...
...though they may be socialist.
This situation that makes millions of citizens of a country...
...in the tragic dilemma of choosing to be...
...either passive in this situation,...
...which reminds them of previous events,...
...or to opt for the fight, side by side,...
...with pro-American agents,...
...with enemies of socialism,...
...with West-German spies,...
...and all this fascist and reactionary rabble...
...which under these circumstances...
...will try to present themselves as...
...patriots and freedom-fighters for Czechoslovak liberty.
But the essential thing, which may be accepted or not,...
...is this: Could the socialist bloc allow...
...the development of a political situation...
...which led to the split...
...of a socialist country...
...and its fall in the arms of imperialism?
Our view is: it couldn't have allowed it.
And the socialist bloc has the right...
...to prevent it, one way or another.
(Georges Marchais, Secretary General of the French Communist Party)
(Lille, 1970) The French Communist Party...
...has declared its opposition to the invasion...
...and that position has not changed.
It was reaffirmed in our XIXth Congress.
I can resume the reasons of this position in three phrases:
In January 1968, when the Czechoslovak Communist Party...
...pronounced itself for the economical changes in the country...
...for the application of a real socialist democracy...
...while it would affect in no way its internal affairs,...
...we found that perspective to be fair and we supported it.
However, it is evident that in a country like Czechoslovakia...
...which has been socialist for only 25 years,...
...it is necessary to fight against forces hostile to socialism.
But we, as we always believed...
...thought that the Czech Communist Party and the democratic Czech workers...
...were strong enough to solve this problem themselves.
It was the first time that a list of candidates...
...for a conference hadn't been prepared beforehand.
Anyone present could take part in the proceeding.
Any delegate was free to challenge the orator.
You've just said 'we'. I can say 'we', too.
We are all delegates here, and it's up to us to reach an agreement.
(Etienne Fajon) Roger Garaudy does his utmost to deform these realities. In his most recent writings...
In his more recent writings, the prodigious work...
...of the Soviet Union is reduced to a series of mistakes,...
Only the October Revolution is valid to his eyes,...
...and the solidarity with the CPSU is replaced by the denunciation of the Party...
...and the systematic and often injurious critique of its leaders.
He undertakes against the USSR and the socialist countries, it must be said,...
...the reaction's calumny.
(Jorge Semprún) It isn't a Party disciplined in a military way that takes power...
...in October 1917. It's a Party where there was freedom of expression...
...freedom of association, of discussion between fractions.
All of it while it took the power.
It was much later, after the victory,...
that this clash of opinions was...
...codified as impossible inside the Party.
But the Party that took the power...
...was not the model of Party imposed in the entire world.
Such Party, today, would be expelled...
...from the Communist workers' movement...
...for the very same reasons why the members...
...of the Czech Communist Party who tried...
...to retake this fight were expelled....
All members of the Central Committee...
...elected during the congress will be expelled from the Party.
The XIVth Congress itself will be declared null and void.
Dubcek in Moscow will have to finish the operation of exorcism.
So, look well at these images.
They show something which, apparently, never happened.
A Communist Party, which, moving away from Stalinism,...
...transforms and reinvents itself in socialist democracy...
...something the reactionaries would say is impossible.
An opinion shared by the Soviets.
This must be what they call Peaceful Coexistence.
(Emil Zatopek)
Recording of Zatopek in 1952, in Helsinki,...
A small island of peace in the Cold War,...
...that one day will be seen by historians as...
...the first attempt to cross the abyss between East and West,...
...before the turns of ping-pong and basketball diplomacy started,...
At a moment when the War in Korea seemed to predict a very different future.
There was a team from South Korea in Helsinki,...
...and its cook was the man Leni Riefenstahl had filmed,...
...as winner of the marathon...
...In the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
Just that, by then, he was Japanese.
You never know what you are filming.
Leni Riefenstahl thought that she was filming a Japanese, and it was a Korean.
In '52 I thought I was filming the winning rider of the Chilean team.
I was filming a putschist.
Turns out it was Lieutenant Mendoza,...
...later General Mendoza,...
...member of Pinochet's Junta.
You never know what you are filming.
What did they say the cameras thought...
...they were showing at the Stadium in Munich 1972?
Astonishment to see the games...
...carry on despite the death of 8 Israelis?
But in Mexico City in 1968 I'd seen 200 people massacred...
...so that the Games could begin.
Student demonstration, May '68, quickly repressed the Mexican way.
Two hundred dead, and the Games opened in a pacified capital.
Not a single country turned down the invitation.
Was it because of this, this nightmare of History, as someone called it,...
...that in the Munich Stadium in 1972...
...Emil Zatopek cried?
Or was it, more precisely, was he back at the Helsinki stadium in 1952...
...which, for the Czechs, was more than anything, the year of the Slánsky trials?
Defendant Slánsky, after 30 years in the Czech Party,...
...what made you put yourself at the service of the imperialists...
...and direct the conspiracy against the Popular Republic?
(Rudolf Slánsky. 14 months earlier Secretary General of the Czechoslovak Communist Party)
To explain myself,...
...I must say a few things about my past.
I did take part...
...in the workers' movement,...
...but I come from a bourgeois background.
Eleven death sentences.
The first, Slánsky's.
Three life sentences minus the time spent in jail during trial...
...to Vavro Hajdu, Eugen Löbl and Arthur London.
The questions they asked astonished me.
(Arthur London) And the answers they tried to obtain by force...
The questions were identical to the ones in the Rajk process...
...and, some time after, on the Kostov process.
Afterwards, I remembered the Moscow trials...
...when we had felt so annoyed seeing...
...Lenin's comrades on the benches of infamy.
We couldn't understand it then, and we felt ill.
These things coma back...
And I realised that the process, the whole drama...
...in which I had taken part...
...was the repetition of these trials that had taken place in Moscow.
That it was all a show.
Something inherent to the Stalinist...
...system of the '30s.
By using the term 'Stalinist', doesn't one risk...
...sealing it historically...
...and restrict it to a series...
...of historical, geographical and social circumstances...
...of a given country at a given age?
Or is it a permanent danger...
...which has to be fought at all times?
It is a permanent danger, which is all the more dangerous...
...because it hasn't been examined in depth.
Stalinism...
...has been a grave deformity...
...of socialism.
Deformity which has had extremely...
...painful consequences...
...for the Soviet people... and for communists around the world.
It's an ambiguous term...
...because, it supposes, that, to start with,...
...that evolution is connected...
...to a man, or a group of men,...
...and maybe, perhaps, a social situation of isolation and regression.
In such a way that, once a certain kind...
...of leader has left the scene of History,...
...and a certain kind of isolation...
...and regression have left the scene of History,...
...these phenomena won't happen again.
But experience shows that that is not exactly right.
Let's look at Czechoslovakia:
A developed country,...
...a country with a working class, with a long democratic tradition,...
...with a long tradition of struggles of all kinds,...
...with an authentic Communist Party,...
...which doesn't depend on foreign intervention or foreign orders.
Even there it was possible to impose a certain model...
...which we'll call, to keep it simple, Stalinist.
Thus, apart from historical,...
...geographical and economic reasons,...
...we must find a supplementary reason, to use a fashionable word,...
...which overdetermines the others.
I think that we must look for this phenomenon ...
...of overdetermination in the very working mechanism of the institutions of power
...and the Party institutions.
(Jean Eillenstein, Historian, member of the French Communist Party)
The French CP, from 1944 to 1953 was undoubtedly Stalinist...
We must recognise that we were all Stalinists.
Thousands of French Communists were Stalinists at the time.
But, what is this we call 'Stalinism'?
Stalinism, first of all,...
...supposes that the USSR is the first socialist State.
And that it defended and built socialism...
...under historically horrendous conditions.
I think that, in moments of crisis and action,...
...everything easilly turns black and white.
In those times, a critical thinking can delay necessary action.
But I believe that it is vital no to let it become a norm.
Because the lack and destruction of critical thinking...
...always ends up turning against the cause...
...which is defended with abnegation.
I believe there is, in the tradition of the workers and communist movements,...
...a long-term deformity...
...which equals political and military comparisons.
What I mean is, in a military structure, the orders...
(April, 1975) ...go from the Staff to the troops.
Rankless soldiers are mere executors...
(24th Congress of the CPSU) ...of the received orders, the given plans,...
They never take part in the joint discussion...
...of strategical plans.
It's hard to imagine an army assembled to democratically voted...
...the decisions taken by the commanders or the HQ.
It's unthinkable, for good or for evil, unthinkable.
And as far as political action is concerned,...
...all attempts of reproducing this model is ill-fated ...
...for political action.
Thus, the radical difference is that a mass political action...
...cannot be conceived without a constant dialectic...
...which destroys constantly the understanding between the base and the head...
...and that creates a new understanding at every moment.
Or: the base's, the masses' initiative in politics...
...must act as a impulsive force at all levels:
...union, political, committee,at a workers' democracy level,...
...in a way that it constitutes itself in a new impulse...
...and that this impulse goes back to the masses.
(IX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, April 1st, 1969)
Chairman Mao...
...and his close comrade-at-arms, Lin Piao, leave the stage.
The crowd cheers.
LETTER TO SOME COMRADES
You've dreamt your China.
Apparently, you have to wash the dishes of this revolution,...
...so that it looks immaculate, explainable.
Everything else will be done without you.
You found your use there: explain, explain everything.
Wasn't it enough for you that human history, as it is,...
...with its horrors and dark patches,...
...took away 700 million people...
...from misery and slavery,...
...even though it may be through new servitudes,...
...against which a new wave of History stirs and fights?
No, it all has to be satisfied at once.
Political theory, democracy, philosophy,...
...even art and literature.
Good. Even if you skip the contradictions...
...you don't do much in the perpetual struggle between the two lines.
But it is always deciphered in retrospective,...
...and from the victor's point of view.
You practice an inverse form of dialectics, which start at the end,...
...or what's the same, the position of the dominating faction,...
...and return to a, until now, imperceptible origin.
Each crisis gave birth not only to a new future,...
...but to a new past...
...perfectly clear, though a bit tedious.
Humble and naive people resisted their own way:
Naively... humbly.
Not you.
Your intelligence was reaffirmed by liars.
You feel the vertigo of stupidity and leave...
...the real climbers to face the real vertigo...
...with a feeling of pride and victory.
By explaining it all, by justifying it all,...
...you side with the more traditional role that tyranny has assigned intellectuals.
Your sole originality...
...consists in that you did while you proclaimed the end of tyranny...
...and while you persuaded yourself you had worked to destroy it.
Georges Pompidou, President of France who'd soon be dead,...
...meets Jian Qing, wife of Mao Tse-Tung, who'd soon be a widow.
On the doorstep of the Great Helmsman, Pompidou is welcomed by Wang Hong-Wen,...
...promoted by the Cultural Revolution to the heights of the Central Committee...
...to represent it symbolically.
At this time, Mao is the last of this special kind of men...
...who reign no so much because they impose their will,
...even if they do impose a lot,...
...but because they incarnate something.
This has to do with a need to believe,...
...of having faith, the fear of the void, of the paternal figure.
All this does not represent the most comforting possibility of man...
...but is the stuff with which dreams are made.
The right thing here is to think there's a slight miscasting.
It was De Gaulle who should have met Mao. At least, that's what History wanted.
But History gets old...
...and loses sight, and can be tricked easily.
Specially if one is a child of the elites and moreover stimulated by ingratitude.
I don't think I have what is called a 'political future'.
(Georges Pompidou, February 1969) I have a political past.
I may have, God willing, a national destiny.
Thus begins the war of sucession, in China as in France.
With the complicity, bitter or ironic, or so it seems, of those that were to be succeeded.
(Maurice Grimaud) I saw him at the end of June...
...and he was a different man.
He seemed exhausted and obviously insecure about his future...
...even though he'd won the match after the 30th of May,...
...and had managed to revert the situation.
But General De Gaulle had been clearly...
...touched by the events.
And many of his most loyal men were...
...thinking of abandoning him.
They thought that he had become a...
...bothersome figure and abandoned him.
(Alain Touraine) The left had...
...joined De Gaulle during the events of May and June...
...and it was the right that got rid of him in April.
An analysis of the results of the referendum is quite clear on this.
(André Malraux) Today, April 23, it is no longer legal reasons...
...those who will determine the results of 10000 votes.
As in many other circumstances,...
'Yes' is a vote of trust in De Gaulle...
...and 'No' the expression of the wish that he leaves.
(Giscard D'Estaing) In response to the only question asked...
...and which seeks my approval for the entire law,...
...as far as I'm concerned, unfortunately, but certainly,...
I'll vote no.
We must try to understand why this progressive substitution of De Gaulle for a liberal bourgeois party.
I think it can be explained in two ways:...
One of the reasons that justified De Gaulle's rise to power,...
...the institutional disorder, the political impotence in the War in Algeria,...
...and the big obstacles to economical modernisation in France.
One can argue that those problems are largely solved.
That De Gaulle, a restorer, has remodelled the system and that we no longer need him.
On the other hand, economically, it's been a time when France has developed itself in a technocratic way,...
...with a leading role of the State without an apparatus of incorporation of the French economy,...
...as it is, to the Common Market and a larger Atlantic space,...
...essential for the large business that want the power to develop a multinational base...
...and which are 'sinners' according to the Gaullist conception.
I think the majority answer will be 'no'.
Judging by what people say...
People are tired of his way...
...of acting. "If the 'yes' doesn't win I'll leave".
Well, leave then!
Life will go on without him.
Anyway, he could die tomorrow morning...
...and we'd have to replace him. We are only human.
My husband nearly died a while ago,...
I wasn't thinking of dying with him or committing suicide.
We have to go on living.
(April 1969, RTL, Paris) Mr. Miterrand, I'd like to ask you this: Until the end of...
...the May crisis your public image was that of...
...the man who would put an end to the Gaullist regime.
How would present yourself before public opinion now?
What is your position before the referendum campaign?
(François Miterrand) Allow me to underline firstly that I'm here...
...as a guest of Radio Luxemburg.
But I'll answer your question.
You haven't put in the same wording as Broussine.
All that you were asked was if you are candidate to the presidency of the Republic.
Aren't you hurrying a bit?
Do you think a goverment of a united left is possible?
It should be possible, if everybody has the will.
Please, gentleman. Mr. Miterrand has the word to conclude.
It's getting late.
I must ask you not to interrupt.
I have already said, recently and publicly,...
...so this is no improvised answer,...
...that it seems absurd to me to think that in our French country,...
...where we can have a French model of socialism,...
...to push for collective appropriation...
...of the means of production and exchange.
Or to reduce French agriculture to the category of 'kolkhozes',...
Or that we think of nationalising and collectivising...
...the whole of French enterprises.
I've always said that we must...
...combine our programme with the laws of the market,...
...which means, in economical terms, to take into account the laws of profit.
Even with the best conscience, in the collective appropriation...
...it's not possible to ignore the laws of profit.
So don't put words in my mouth which I haven't said.
After 50 years of socialist experiences...
...we won't take the same path of mistakes...
...that perhaps were indispensable or inevitable in the past.
We'll only take what is good from it.
Napoleon wrote: "I've made my plans with the dreams of my sleeping soldiers".
Often General De Gaulle made plans with the dreams of a sleeping France.
Because he found at his side, Frenchmen who didn't want to sleep.
Your yes so that he know he may count on you.
And also, to send a message to those who prepare something...
...for the night of the referendum, thing that would be very grave.
And also, so that these adversaries know that if they want to recommence May,...
...we are ready to recommence the Champs Elysees March!
No: 53%. Yes: 47%.
(Senate, April 27) Little after midnight, General De Gaulle...
...announces his departure in a three line declaration.
Goodbye, goodbye De Gaulle!
And the next government? What has it got in store for us?
What now? There can be no Gaullists without De Gaulle.
We are constantly in this vicious circle.
We ask for small improvements in our lives.
But we give power to those who...
...prevent us from living in a decent manner.
A man once told me: "Vote as red as you want,...
...it will pale down with time".
If we assume that the CP is the strongest party,...
...the best structured and organised,...
...the one the workers trust the most,...
...then, if it looks for an alliance to its right,...
...first the Socialist Party, then the middle-class, then, who knows?
There's no other path to real change but the path of unity.
I don't believe it possible to make a union of organisations of the left.
And, in fact, I think we must make a critique of this idea.
Which is, how many of these organisation really want a change in the regime?
I agree with you and what you are saying, but I don't believe in Guy Mollet.
There are people who still remember...
Anyhow, I remember...
Two years in Algeria with Guy Mollet count for something.
For me it's over!
So I told him:
The problem is not Guy Mollet.
The problem is winning the common struggle...
...of communist and socialist workers,
...and that of all democrats.
And I told him: "If you know an easier way, propose it to me, I'm simple man,...
I'm willing to follow it". But there is no other way.
(Party of L'Humanité, 1972) Buy the T-shirts of Popular Unity!
Contribute to the triumph of Popular Unity!
Buy the common programme!
The programme of the Communist and Socialist parties and of the Left Radicals...
Our objective is the transformation of society.
It is indispensable that we have a majority of the people on our side...
...in our democratic and revolutionary struggle.
The question of democracy...
...is fundamental for the development of socialism.
I've explained in "History of the Stalinist phenomenon"...
...that Lenin himself underestimated the importance of democracy.
Do you renounce the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?
Let's say not to the concept, for its mainly theoretical.
It hasn't a, let's say, operative value.
Would Lenin agree?
Maybe Lenin yes, but Marx surely wouldn't.
For Marx it was a concept opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
For Lenin it was different because precisely he...
...led a Party that had taken power...
...through a violent revolution, and had kept it by force.
So he had assimilated the theoretical concept of Dictatorship of the Proletariat...
...together with the practical concept of directing a State in a dictatorial manner.
Because of this, in the Soviet Constitution of 1918,...
...the voice of one worker was worth 25,000 peasant voices.
That's why other parties were forbidden,...
...that's why there was no freedom of press, nor assembly, nor information, etc.
So there was a theoretical slide that was harmful...
...because it hindered the democratic development...
...that socialism needed in countries such as ours.
(In 1979, Eillenstein would be 'self-expelled' from the Party)
What counts and what is essential...
(United Left rally for the presidential election, La Courneuve, 1974)
...is our concept of freedom and our capability of accepting difference without sectarianism.
Encouraged only by the need of liberating man from exploitation.
The Communist Party has moved..
...from orthodoxy to the monopoly of heterodoxy.
In a way that the only good critique of Stalinism...
...comes from inside the Communist Party itself.
It's inevitable that we clash, though not in the sense of fighting.
We find other works...
Debate is inevitable given that we work in the same terrain...
...and we part from similar set of principles.
Nothing can put obstacles to these confrontations...
...becoming more profound and rich...
Another question is that of the political line.
I think the confusion arises, caused specially by the communists.
Some of them still don't get things right.
There's confusion outside and, sometimes, inside the CP...
...insofar as political line is concerned...
...and in the areas of debate...
...and Marxist discussion and investigation.
I believe they have to take place in two different levels.
Sometimes it happened that these differences were felt quite rudely,...
...outside of the factories.
For us there is no way of fighting other than the workers' front.
Unity over internal divergences.
Unity of all workers and their organizations, to achieve our demands.
To overthrow the bourgeois and police State.
They are protected by the police, comrades. Don't fall in their traps.
We've seen many times how this happened outside of the company's doors.
We deplore it, but we must speak clearly to show...
...that we won't put down our flag before Stalinism...
We'll defend our political line...
...and the workers' victories.
We defend the victories of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917...
...that Stalinism and the bureaucracy are wasting.
Down with fascism!
Fascism shall fail!
Workers' democracy!
Stop the provocation!
(Prague, January 25, 1969. Funeral of Jan Palach)
I don't think it was a suicide, because a suicide means...
It's a solution for an individual...
I don't see any way out so I kill myself.
But that he had killed himself is completely different...
...because he did it for everybody, not for himself.
He's shown a courage that none of us have.
He's done something truly extraordinary...
...because he has made us feel guilty... For nor acting before.
We could have negotiated with someone, or...
I think this whole cortège expresses guilt.
FROM CHILE TO... WHAT? THAT'S IT?
One day, we were successful; A Super-8 camera got inside the Lecumberrí jail, Mexico.
The next occasion was the magnetic tape with the voice of Solzhenitsyn
Ill water...
Ill woods...
A cruel prince, with slanted eyes,...
...has stolen this lake...
The footprints.
Someone has lit a fire.
The fire has gone out.
The man is gone.
The lake is desert,...
...beloved lake,...
...motherland.
Greetings to all French audience from Persepolis.
(Persepolis, 1979. Commemoration of the 25.000th anniversary of the Persian kingdom)
The first image showed the Shah of Persia and the Shahbanou,...
...welcoming the illustrious and august guests of all lands:
Kings, princes, heads of state...
Are united in Persepolis, the Versailles of yore.
What an image!
The Shahbanou of Iran with Mr. Podgorny, president of the USSR.
There's Marshall Tito and Lady Tito...
...and many heads of state that represent almost every nation in the world.
I don't think I have ever seen so many crowned heads...
...and some many heads of state together.
Meanwhile two heralds...
...come to announce the beginning of the ceremony.
The heralds come to inform his Imperial Majesty,...
...the Shah-in-shah Arya Mehr, which means, "King of kings, light of the aryans",...
...that the feasts are ready.
"King of kings, light of the Aryans."
Thus also begin the loyalty declarations that Iranian police...
...make the families of condemned men sign, in exchange for the mercy of the sovereign,...
...whom we see here protected by his bullet-proof vest.
...combed by a French hairdresser...
...and every important lady who takes part in the ceremony...
...has had her hair done by a famous parisian hairdresser, and they make up done...
(Wanted: Ulrike Meinhoff, from the Baader group)
(Larry Bensky)
If you engage in revolutionary activity in any country...
...you risk no only repression but death.
If you are thinking about becoming a revolutionary...
...you should know, though it may not be a happy thought,...
...that any day you can find yourself...
(Arrest of Margrit Schiller)
Ulrike. Tania.
Sarita.
Nguyen Van Troi.
Javier Héraud.
Malcolm X.
Camilo Torres.
Txiki.
Víctor Jara.
Julian Grimau.
George Jackson.
Carlos Marighella.
Roque Dalton.
Pierre Overnay.
Pierre Overnay was killed without being, by any instance, a threat to the officer in charge,...
...whom, apparently, shot him without having been attacked. Paralel to the investigation,...
...has naturally aroused many comments; For the CGT it was a provocation,...
...such acts are made to deviate the workers from their true demands.
Let's see.
An action never judged by its support among the workers...
...receives tags from whoever wants to put them.
For the left of the regime: Provocation.
For the CFDT: An adventure.
For the CGT: Capitulation.
There was a whole repertoire of stupid words: 'Lefty', 'revisio',...
...so as not to look for the complexity of the conflict in a sort of...
...binary system, where each defined himself not by the class struggle,...
...but by the struggle between the organisations.
It is that from the moment you give...
...an organization the monopoly of the representation of the class,...
...it evidently no longer matters.
As though we had to wait until the day we had our backs against the walls...
...of a stadium surrounded by the military to realise that we had something to talk about.
As though the frontiers of the organizations and the grupuscules,...
...separated foreign towns instinctively hostile.
So we played at opposing each other; Grand against Joint Français, LIP against Rateau.
...You send us against the cops, put us out in the street,...
...and now you want to negotiate? You're ridiculous!
It wasn't so clear at the bases.
Well, the negotiations are broken up, the strike fund is zeroed,...
...what do we do? Can we produce?
Produce what? Doesn't matter what.
I don't know, you could give your opinion, if you think we have done...
...enough for two months' strike or not.
I'd like to know what you think.
Anyway, we have a wonderful oportunity of showing ourselves,...
...at next week's demo.
If we put 500 or 600 men on the street...
It's us who have to fight so that the comrades come!
They won't just come. But why do they come to get their pay...
...at the end of the month and don't defend their interests?
Because we don't fight enough with ideas.
It's a sad thing, but it's true.
If we struggled a bit more to win over these comrades,...
...then perhaps we will not be a hundred fools having fun made out of.
Maybe we can get 500 steelworkers working, that's how it is.
That's why the commissions don't work as planned.
There are only a handful who work, that's the problem.
We've talked to them, we've been calling them for months.
We've been sucking up to them for months.
We've been asking them to give us a hand for months,...
They aren't coming. And you are not going to get a rifle to shoot them, leave it...
But we must convince ourselves.
We can win the battle, we can have a left-wing government,...
...but we must convince ourselves, and to do it...
...we have to convince the others.
Because, for fuck's sake, we are in a new situation,...
...a situation created out of Pompidou's death.
On April 6, 1974 Georges Pompidou dies.
It is then that Jacques Chirac has the idea...
...that in order to make the gaullism of the future triumph,...
...the best way was to get Giscard D'Estaing elected at once.
And for the papacies, two chapels, to the left and to the right.
Advance without precipitation, towards meditation.
Nixon looks uncomfortable in the stairways of Nôtre-Dame, tribulated.
In fact, this entire collection of heads of state looks ill.
Power must be bad for your health. Just look at them.
Compare their expressions with the clear look of a cat. It's the definitive proof.
A cat is never on the side of power.
To prove it, consider the ceremony that the good...
...king Baldwin of Belgium held every year in Ypres.
In the Middle-Ages, the people of Ypres was accused of adoring cats.
He's gone mad.
I can't do nothing but...
...look at him growl and struggle.
He bangs against everything.
He didn't want to let me...
...change his dressings.
Until a while ago, those who held the power oppressed and killed directly.
Today, death and madness can be a simple by-product of their activities.
In Japan, the Chisso company has poisoned the water of Minamata with mercury residues.
The fishermen and their families suffer from what they call simply, 'the illness'.
Deformed babies are born.
(Osaka, November 28, 1970)
(Chisso shareholders meeting)
Let the victims speak!
Let them speak!
Let your rage burst!
Resuscitate the dead!
CHANT OF THE VICTIMS OF MINAMATA
(The President of Chisso)
You are a parent, too.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
We are both parents.
Can you understand that?
Can you imagine what I'm feeling?
Stop smiling!
Parents have...
...their children,
And the children have their parents,...
Can you understand that?
To us, old people, without children,...
...everything is over!
(Watergate trials, 1973)
When it is the highest authority of the world's greatest power
sitting in the bench...
...things are quite different.
Not a single demonstration in all of the United States.
Not a single popular intervention,...
...spontaneous or organised.
The most gigantic crack in the Power...
...permanently contested during the '60s wasn't exploited by anyone.
(Larry Bensky) The same people that had united to...
...protest against the war in Vietnam...
...now say we have to do something different at the same time.
Sometimes you have to look inside yourself.
You have to feel good vibrations, live in harmony with others...
...to be at peace with the world,...
I mean, with the environment, with the interpersonal world.
In the terrain of current affairs, maybe there aren't any demonstrations in the streets.
You no longer see political gestures like raising your fist all the time.
But the struggle continues...
...and I believe people participate even more, each his own way.
They know how to work together.
And that doesn't mean great assemblies from dawn to dusk...
...talking about Marx, Lenin, Mao without actually doing anything.
Now they know how to work together better than before.
It's something. Before it was terrible.
The famous and referenced movement of the '60s...
...could have done something.
But it didn't have any knowledge of work methods...
...which, for me, would have allowed for a much more effective work.
(October 1967. The Pentagon)
(Admiral Mohr)
Looking at these images, in retrospective,...
You can identify the tricks the authorities played on us.
In practice, no unarmed demonstrator could pass the lines of the soldiers.
In front of us were the buildings of the Pentagon,...
...objectives of the 'direct action' to which the organisers called.
Then, when it was about to start,...
...surprise, surprise. No soldiers, no bayonets.
No steely looks. Just a few policemen...
...that are pushed aside by some demonstrators that shout joyfully...
...when they trespass a frontier no-one seemed willing to defend.
And everything stops here, at the stairs...
...after a symbolic attempt of getting inside.
The police were clearly scared.
I filmed it...
...and I showed it as a victory for the movement.
But, when I look back at these scenes again,...
...and I unite them with the stories the police told us...
...about how it was they who lived the fire of the police stations in their 1968,...
I ask myself: weren't some of our victories in the '60s...
...made out of the same stuff?
By then all we knew was that it was only a way of beginning...
...and, if we had in any moment the sensation of...
...euphoria of the revolution that began,...
...it was false, it was tragic, but it was a great moment.
They say '68/'69 in the United States were like '05 in Russia.
That's good, because we still have 12 years to know if they were right.
The situation of the guerrilla today,...
...can be defined as of some recovery...
...in comparison to the long and hard process...
...of crisis, of hardships...
...that it went through in these last years.
In 1970, after 8 years, Douglas Bravo is still giving interviews in the mountains.
He has no support.
Cuban or otherwise.
We could say that this crisis...
...has its origins mainly in that...
...in the first years of the struggle...
...the movement used a tactic,...
...that we can call 'insurrectionalist'.
We wanted to make the revolution in Venezuela...
...in the manner...
...of the Russian revolution;
Storming the major cities in a few days.
Later, the Venezuelan revolutionary movement committed another mistake,...
...we could say that less so...
...than in others countries in Latin America,...
...but nonetheless committed it;
Which was to apply...
...the concept of 'Foquism'...
...exposed by the philosopher and journalist Régis Debray...
...in his book: Revolution in the Revolution.
(1970. Régis Debray in his Bolivian jail) There's no doubt the struggle is hard.
Do you think it will go on? Of course!
Maybe in different forms,...
but it will always be the same struggle, at least in Latin America.
Don't you think that the coming decade will be different from the previous one?
Of course, because it will be another decade.
But the revolutionary struggle will continue...
...in the way that each country, each nation, defines it...
...specifically according to their tradition and national reality.
They will be as dramatic and hard...
...as the ones from the past.
My action has no particular character.
I'd like it if it were part of a more general action.
For the moment I'm inactive, so the question doesn't make any sense.
Freed during a democratic interlude in Bolivia,...
Debray goes to Chile to observe a process...
...that seems to be the antithesis of "Revolution in the revolution".
Thus his need to ask Salvador Allende...
...about his relationship with the Cuban revolution.
I arrived in Cuba on January 20, 1959,
I arrived at a very curious moment.
That afternoon there was a parade that was led by...
...two hundred policemen from Miami, and in an open car,...
...went the mayor of Miami...
...and I think that the mayor of Havana was also there
So the next morning I was considering taking a plane back to Chile,
When I met Carlos Rafael Rodriguez.
He asked me, "What are you doing here?", I said "I came to see this revolution"...
but given that it doesn't really exist...
Then he said, "You're mistaken, Salvador"...
...stay here, talk with the leaders".
And he got me in touch with Raul Castro...
...and then, immediately, I went to see Fidel.
We were in a big hall, and there were guajiros...
...playing checkers, guns everywhere....
...I have a photo somewhere.
I was close to a chimney, which was the only clear place
...and there were the two of us talking.
From the start I was impressed...
...by his overflowing intelligence, this incredible...
...overwhelming thing which is like a human waterfall.
Here, Fidel is revealing the secrets...
...of Italian cuisine to the Italian editor Feltrinelli.
Bechamel sauce, with meat. 5 stacks
Half an hour in the oven at an adequate temperature.
Wait, I forgot; On top of the bechamel, cheese!
Fidel had the ability of great actors to transform the accidental in legendary.
This gesture, for example, of moving the microphones,...
...born out of the need of keeping his hands busy...
...when he was still an inexperienced speaker.
It has become a ritual gesture, which Cubans anticipate delighted before his speeches.
Only once did he find microphones which couldn't be moved.
In Moscow.
Long live...
...proletarian Internationalism!
Long live...
...the friendship...
...between the Soviet and Cuban peoples!
Long live...
...the Soviet Union!
The time will come when the revolution,...
...which is today a dynamic process,...
...that destroys the old and builds the new...
...will institutionalise itself!
Neither we are eternal...
...nor is this time of Revolution eternal.
The day will come when...
...this new order the revolution is creating...
...will acquire an institutional character.
And this essential and real democracy...
...will acquire new forms.
Meanwhile, we have elections here every month...
...but at the public square.
Here we could ask...
...is anyone against?
Does anyone abstain?
Then, the resolutions of the congress...
...are approved by unanimity!
(1975, Year of the institutionalisation)
(I Congress of the Cuban Communist Party)
Among the speakers: Mikhail Suslov.
Janos Kadar.
General Giap.
Everything is resumed in the Party.
It synthesises the dreams of the revolutionaries...
...of all our history.
It specifies the ideas, the principles...
...and the strength of the Revolution.
It absorbs our individualisms...
...and teaches us to think in terms of collectivity.
It is our educator,...
...our teacher, our guide,...
...our vigilant conscience.
When aren't ourselves able...
...to see our mistakes, our faults...
...and our limitations.
(Mújica, Venezuelan Communist Party) The Cuban case won't be repeated!
Marx said it, History doesn't repeat itself...
...and when it does...
...it is as a farce!
(Volodia Teitelboim, Chilean Communist Party) We believe that after the Cuban Revolution
North-American imperialism was put into alert...
...and it has set up in our countries...
...an anti-guerrilla apparatus...
...that cannot be easily overcome.
(Wallender, The Pentagon)
That's why the Chilean way...
...which is the way of an entire people...
...willing to do the Revolution...
...is much better protected...
...against an imperialist attack...
...and more effective, as far as results go,...
...than the heroics of a few young men...
...in a mountain or in a city to overthrow a government.
The government of Popular Unity that will take place in Chile,...
...that should take place in Chile,...
...with the designation of Allende as President of the Republic,...
...is not necessarily a government of Marxist ideology.
It is a government of unity...
...that will include communists, socialists and radicals.
In our view, we consider...
(Lille, 1970. Georges Marchais)
...the Chilean experience...
...confirms the thesis of the French Communist Party.
This thesis is that the union of the parties of the left...
...with a clear programme, with a clear perspective,...
...will allow for the formation of a Popular Unity...
...strong enough to defeat the bourgeoisie.
I must underline that, after the triumph of Salvador Allende,...
...a few democrats...
...some Christian-democrats included,...
(First image taken of Allende as President)
...at first hesitant towards the Popular Unity,...
...now offer their support.
This is the plain confirmation of the thesis of the Communists.
The union of the parties and forces of the left...
...is capable of setting off, in a given country,...
...and I think it is our case, too,...
...a majority movement capable of defeating the bourgeoisie.
We salute this Chilean experience.
And what's more, let me say this.
Given that this is a very dangerous experience for the capitalists...
...there's risk of pressure, even intervention,...
...specially of American imperialism.
I'm sure that if such intervention ever took place in Chile,...
The French Communist Party and, I'm sure, the rest of the parties of the left,...
...will know how to take initiatives that lead to the full support of the French democrats...
...to our Chilean comrades.
(Santiago, 1972. Allende meets with workers from a nationalised factory)
The good things and the bad things!
And now it'll be the same. For there are some journalists here; And I'm glad for that.
Chileans and foreign...
Let them stay...
...specially the foreign ones.
So that they inform their countries,...
...and say that in this country there is a real democracy.
Which doesn't exist in countries which talk about it so much.
I've been here for two days.
I've seen positive things.
And I've seen negative things.
Negative things such as:
There's no direct participation of workers here.
Grave error!
You must correct that.
The production committees...
...have as essential base...
...to let any comrade know,...
...wherever may he work,...
...what is the task...
...he and all those who work at his section have to fulfil...
...in the context of the plan that has to be discussed, analysed, criticised...
...in partial meetings...
...and then at the General Assemblies.
On Sunday...
...or Saturday afternoons.
Do you understand?
It's very sad to hear that when...
...assemblies are called to study the Plans...
...not many comrades come.
That shows a lack of political conscience!
And where does all this process of change...
...to see a different society rest on?
The workers!
On the production, the productivity!
The worker who takes part...
...understands that before he was just another machine...
...or even less than that.
Today, he's a human being...
...who realises that this business belongs to him...
...because it belongs to the people...
...and he is part of the people.
And its awful to think...
that there are workers...
...capable of stealing from their own industry,...
...from a factory that is his!
As I realised...
...that there was a rejection...
...of those who don't work well...
...and are paid as though they did...
...and it's very good that it was said!
The lazy cannot live at the expense of those who work...
...nor can they be rewarded.
There can be no political tag...
...for he who defends someone unwilling to work in a State enterprise.
The Party's card...
...gives neither capacity nor honesty:
Each has to earn the right of being respected!
Would it be acceptable if you said:
"Levelling out, or otherwise, strike"?
Would it be fair? No!
Would it be effective? No!
Will I send in the police...
...to send you back to work? No!
Will I promote confrontations that mean workers getting shot?
No!
I have to speak to you, I have to explain things to you...
...to make you understand,...
...and if reason is not enough...
...nor is moral strength,...
I'll have nothing else to do but leave.
What am I going to do? Stay calm while I see that in this country,...
...unless drastic measures are taken,...
...we'll loose ourselves in an inflationist spiral?
No, I can't do that.
So,...
...we have all the disadvantages...
...of the capitalist regime, without any advantage of socialism.
We are in the middle, comrades, sandwiched.
Yesterday I was saying:
What a drama it is for me...
...that when I drive by with three cars,...
...because of security.
Because there are those who'd like I didn't have such a good health..
September 11, 1973
(Last image taken of Allende as President)
(Beatriz "Tati" Allende Havana, September, 1973.)
I'm not here to read a speech. I come simply...
...to say to this fraternal people...
...how were the hours we lived at the Moneda Palace...
...the morning of September 11.
In this act of solidarity with Chile,...
...I would like to tell you,...
...what my father asked me to transmit to you,...
...those words he confided me under fire:
"Tell Fidel I'll carry out my duty."
On October 13, 1977 Beatriz Allende will commit suicide in Havana,...
...like her father had done four years earlier.
Today, from this free territory in America,...
...we can say to our comrade-president:
"Your people will not give in!
Your people will not fold the flag of Revolution
The struggle to the death with fascism has began...
...and will end the day we have a free Chile,...
...sovereign, socialist...
...for which you fought and gave your life.
Dear comrade-president,
We shall win!
Two people impressed me...
with something I couldn't find in others: Their gaze.
Chou-En-Lai...
...and Che Guevara.
In both there was an inner strength.
In both there was resolve.
In both there was irony.
Imagine now that the person who did this film in 1977...
(Paris, May 1st, 1977) ...had the opportunity to see this images after a long interval.
It could be, for example, 1993, 15 years later; What youth lasts.
He could meditate about how time passes and look at what has changed in a very simple way:
Listing words that had no meaning for the people of the '60s.
Words like: boat-people, AIDS, thatcherism,...
...ayatollah, occupied territories, Perestroika, cohabitation.
And this acronym, that replaced USSR, that no-one would recognise:...
...C.I.S.
The communist dream is over.
Capitalism won the battle, if not the war.
But in a paradoxical logic,...
...some of the staunchest opponents of Soviet totalitarianism,...
...these men of the New Left to whom this film is largely devoted,...
...fell into the same whirlwind.
(Portugal, 1974) The left opposition died with Stalinism. They were dialectically linked,...
...like the scorpion and the frog in Orson Welles' film.
It was their character.
For the fourth time, the terrestrial arms exposition...
...has taken place in Satory...
...to promote the exportation of...
...the most modern arms available.
One hundred fifty expositors present seven hundred pieces of...
...military equipment to forty foreign delegations.
Thus, our author marvels at the ingenuity...
...of History, which always seems to have more imagination than ourselves.
He thinks of the ending of the film he finished in 1977,...
...where he compared the arms trade of the great powers...
...with the plans carried out...
...to try to keep the population of wolves at an acceptable figure.
Guess who are they arm today...
However, there's one comforting thought;...
...Fifteen years later, there are still some wolves left.
The real authors of this film, though they haven't been consulted...
...about the use given here to their documents,
...are the countless cameras, sound engineers,...
...witnesses and militants whose work relentlessly...
...opposes that of the Powers That Be,...
...and who will not leave our memory.