The Soviet Union and the Philippine Communist Movement

Communist and Post-Communist Studies 1994 27( 1) 77-93

The Soviet Union and the Philippine Communist Movement

Stephen J Morris Harvard University, John M Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Russian Research Center, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Soviet policy towards the Philippine communist movement has passed through three distinct phases, each of which reflected its different triangular set of relations with the United States and China. During the first era of Soviet and Chinese unity against “US imperialism,” the Soviets aided the formation and growth of Philippine communism and its insurrection against the Philippine government. During the second era of Soviet-Chinese-American triangular enmity the Philippine communist movement split and the Soviets supported one party’s non-violent, legal activity while defending the Marcos government politically against the other party’s armed insurrection. During the third era of Soviet-Chinese-American detente the Soviets continued to support the Philippine government politically, rejected overtures from the armed communist revolutionaries for its support, but simulaneously promoted a non-violent united political front of all Filipinos, including communists, against the American presence in their country.

Introduction

Soviet relations with the Philippine communist movement provide an important case study of the evolution of Soviet foreign policy priorities in the Third World after World War II. In the first place, the Philippines is a former American colony, now independent, which for decades had hosted important American military base facilities. Second, there have been two separate communist-led insurgencies in the Philippines: the first was defeated in the mid-1950s while the second is still underway. Third, Philippine communism has been a matter of concern to the Soviet Union’s main rivals, the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), both of whom had been deeply involved politically and militarily for four decades. For all these reasons, it might be assumed that the Soviet Union would have some interest in the fate of the Philippine communist movement.

In this paper, the approach to the subject of Soviet relations with the Philippines is historical and aims to determine in what ways the Soviet relationship with the communist movement in that nation was structured by the Soviet Union’s changing global strategic priorities, by its ideological prejudices, and by its understanding, or misunderstanding, of local conditions. More specifically it is intended to examine

0967-067X/94/01/0077-17 0 1994 The Regents of the University of California

The Soviet Union and the Philippine Communist Movement: S.J. Morris

how Soviet policy towards the Philippine communist movement might have been affected by changing Soviet attitudes towards China and the United States.

In order to approach this particular relationship in the context of the historical changes in the Soviet global outlook, the analysis has been divided into three historical periods. The first, and simplest, is the period of international communist unity, during which time the Soviet Union and other communist parties, including the Chinese party, presented a unified military and political front against the United States and its allies. This period lasted from the 1920s until the early 1960s. The second is the period of triangular enmity, when the Soviet Union was engaged in a “two front” set of primarily adversarial relationships with both the United States and the People’s Republic of China, which sometimes involved armed conflict through client states or movements. This period lasted from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s. The third period, which began in the mid-1980s and ended with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in August, 1991, is the period of triangular detente, when the Soviet Union’s adversarial relationship with first China and later the United States became less acrimonious, and became more dependent upon political and diplomatic maneuvering than upon the use of military force in areas of contention.

Of course these periods do not represent neat and precise breaks in the struc- tural context of Soviet foreign policy attitudes and behavior. For example, “internationalist unity” had suffered from the blemish of the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc in 1948 and the basic conflict between the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist party had begun to emerge in 1956, following the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, although open and direct polemics did not begin until 1963. Furthermore, the concept of a period of triangular enmity must be qualified, since Chinese relations with the United States began to improve rapidly during the 1970s such that one could speak of rapprochement between the two nations by the early part of that decade. The thaw between the Soviet Union and China began during the brief reign of Yuri Andropov in late 1982.

However the real detente between the two communist powers did not fully emerge until Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the Soviet party leadership in 1985. And the real improvements in Soviet relations with the United States had to wait until 1986. Thus, it is argued that, from the Soviet perspective, a third period in the international relations of the Soviet Union could be conceived as beginning with the changes brought about by the Gorbachev ascendency.

In the Era of “Internationalist Unity Against Imperialism”

The Origins of the Philippine Communist Movement

During the Cornintern era, the general pattern of Soviet relations with communist movements in the colonial countries of Asia was to delegate authority through first the communist party of the colonial power, and second the major regional communist party. Each was assigned a tutelary role over the movement in the colony. In the case of the Philippines this meant that the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would be expected to provide support and guidance to their Filipino comrades.

The communist party of the Philippines emerged out of radical elements in the leadership of the Philippines labor movement, the Congreso des Obreros de

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Filipinus (COF). The key figure in the early years of Philippine communism was the labor leader Crisanto Evangelista who had been introduced to Marxism during a visit to the United States with the Philippine Independence Mission in 1919. But the influence of the Soviet Union was first apparent in the visits to the Philippines by agents of the Communist International. In 1924 the American communist, Harrison George, established contact between Filipino labor leaders and the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS), an organization of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern. In 1927, the COF was formally affiliated with the PPTUS. That same year the American communist Earl Browder visited the Philippines, and arranged for a delegation of three COF leaders to attend the Profintern Congress in Moscow in March 1928. Following his return from Moscow, Evangelista arranged for the first batch of Filipino worker-pensionados to study at the Kommunisticheskii universitet trudyashchiksya vostoka (KUTV) or Stalin School, which was a kind of secondary school for training foreign communists (for a Soviet account of the KUTV see Timofeyeva, 1979). Although the 1928 group were to play no subsequent political role of any significance, the next four groups of Filipinos, who left for Moscow in 1929, 1930, 1934, and 1935, included men who were to play a central leadership role during the first two decades of Philippine communism (Saulo, 1969, ~~6-17).

At the 7th Party Convention of the CPUSA, held in New York City on June 20, 1930, the American party openly demonstrated its tutelary role when it approved the “adoption” of the communist movement in the Philippines (Hoeksma, 1956, p.85). The Communist Party of the Philippine Islands (CPPI) was organised on August 26, 1930. However, in order to confirm its attachment to the Soviet Union, its founding was not proclaimed until November 7, 1930-the 13th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution (Saulo, 1969, p.3). The party-better known in the Philippines by its Tagalog name Partido Kommunista ng Pilipinas (PKP)-was at first affiliated with the Communist International through the CPUSA. It did not become an independent section of the Comintern until August, 1935 (Hoeksma, 1956, 92).

Throughout the 1930s the Filipino communists, like their comrades elsewhere, faithfully followed the Comintern line on revolutionary tactics. During the Comintern’s “left phase” of 1928-1934, the policy was one of radicalism of both a legal and an illegal kind. This involved support for workers’ and peasants’ strikes, and a small local peasant insurrection.’

Following the promulgation of a new line at the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935, the “united front from above” against fascism became the official line of the Philippine party during the years 1935-1939. This involved the creation of a Popular Front Party on December 22, 1936. Although the party was nominally a broad coalition, its direction, program, and form was determined by the communists, operating through the membership of their Marxist allies in the Socialist Party and the Toilers’ League (Hoeksma, 1956, pp.168-173). In 1938 the Socialist Party was merged with the Communist Party.

The Development of Rural Insurgency

The Philippine communist party first engaged in rural guerrilla insurgency during World War II, as part of the Great Patriotic War against the Japanese. Two

1. The American communist Tim Ryan articulated one aspect of this policy. See International Press Conference, Volume XI, 1931. Cited in Hoeksma (1956, p.113).

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months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the Philippine communists had conceived of the Hukbalahap (HZ&W ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon) or People’s Anti-Japanese Army (Saulo, 1969, pp.3637). It was officially formed early the following year. By September, 1942, the Huks, as they were popularly referred to, deployed about 3000 men in the field (Lachica, 1971, p.108). But the Huks were only one of many guerrilla groups in the Japanese occupied Philippines, and by no means the largest. In spite of their stated desire to cooperate with the United States armed forces to drive the Japanese out of the Philippines, the overwhelm- ing majority of casualties inflicted by the Huks on “the enemy” during the war were not Japanese soldiers but other Filipinos (Lachica, 1971, pp.109-110). During these wartime years, Huk military and political strategy was influenced by the presence of Chinese communist advisers (Taruc, 1967, pp.33-34).

The Philippine communists anticipated a political struggle for power in the post- war era and had established a front organization, the Democratic Alliance, as early as September, 1944, although it did not make its formal appearance until July 15, 1945. The purpose of the Democratic Alliance was to unify all communist- penetrated and dominated organizations for the “legal struggle” strategy for seizing power (Hoeksma, 1956, pp.281-283), but the party was also capable of adopting a strategy of armed struggle because the Huk veterans of the anti- Japanese resistance had not handed in their weapons at the end of the war.

After the war the United States granted independence to the Philippines. However, the failure of the Democratic Alliance candidates to win parliamentary representation at the 1946 elections (in part because of rigging) encouraged the party to reject this dispensation and to begin a guerrilla insurgency against the newly independent government. Fighting broke out at a low level in late 1946: which coincided roughly with the outbreak of war in Vietnam in December, 1946. During these years, in the absence of clear guidance from the Soviet Union over the proper revolutionary strategy, the Philippine communist party undertook a strategy which combined both legal and armed struggle (Hoeksma, 1956, pp.332-333). In spite of attempts at negotiations initiated by the new Quirino government, talks in August, 1948, broke down and the civil war was resumed. This coincided with the strategy of the communists in Malaya which escalated to full-scale insurgency in the second half of 1948.

In resorting to rural guerrilla insurgency, the Philippine communists were following a revolutionary path parallel to that being undertaken by communists in British Malaya and Burma, as well as by communists in French Indochina. As in all of the other cases, the resort to violent insurrection was consistent with the generally more militant line of the Soviet bloc since late 1947. It was in that year (1947) that Stalin had ordered the European communist parties to reject the American offer of Marshall Plan aid. That same year the Communist Information Bureau (Corninform) was formed and at its initial meeting in September, 1947, Andrei Zhdanov made his now famous speech on the division of the world into two camps-the camp of imperialism and war, led by the United States, and the camp of socialism and peace, led by the Soviet Union. As we will see, subsequent statements by Filipino communist leaders indicated that they had absorbed the message of this speech.

Perhaps as important as the official pronouncements of Soviet representatives were the inspiring actions of the Chinese communists, who had been assigned a

2. According to Taruc (1967), in an account written after his surrender to the government, the party then had 10 000 armed guerrillas.



tutelary role over the Filipino communists during the early years of the party. During World War II, Chinese communist officers had functioned as advisers to the Filipino communists and their Hukbalahap armed resistance movement. Evidence of some continuing Chinese influence is found in the fact that in November, 1949, representatives of the Philippine Communist Party attended the meeting in Peking of the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, where the Chinese communists called for the establishment of People’s Liberation armies throughout Southeast Asia. Two months later, at an expanded meeting of the Philippine party’s central committee, the name of the party’s military arm was changed to Hukbong A4agpapalaya ng Bayan, or People’s Liberation Army.

Soviet Attitudes Towards the Insurgency

As we have seen, since the 1920s the Soviet Union had delegated much of the responsibility for providing assistance and guidance to the Southeast Asian communist parties to the Chinese. The Soviet Union itself, however, was often held responsible for the insurgencies by the government who were under attack. In March, 1948, for example the Philippines President Roxas held a press conference at which he denounced the Soviet Union for supporting the Huks. The Soviet media denied any connection with the insurgency and in an article in Pravda, a writer castigated the “puppet government of the Philippines” for its “dishonest trick,” describing the allegation as an attempt “to slander the Soviet Union” (Maevskii, 1948, p.3). But in less than a year, with the Chinese communists’ military victory almost complete and armed struggle in the Philippines fully under way, Soviet spokesmen such as the orientalist Zabozlaieva (1949, p.247) were proudly publicizing the pro-Soviet pronouncements of Filipino communist leaders like Mariano Balgos, the general secretary of the Philippine communist party.

By late 1950, after initial communist successes in the struggle, the tide of the war began to turn in favor of the Philippine government with the accession of Ramon Magsaysay as Defense Minister, the restructuring of the Philippine military leadership and the reorganization of the counter-insurgency effort (see Greenberg, 1987). Yet even with the capture of most of the politburo of the Philippine Communist Party in October, 1950, the Huk insurrection was not destroyed. On the contrary, inspired by the victory of the Chinese communists, and the height- ened international polarization which resulted from the outbreak of the Korean war, the Huks stepped up their military offensive.

There is no evidence that the Soviet Union ever provided weapons to the communist-led Huk insurgents, but in their struggle, the Philippine communists were receiving at least propaganda support from the Soviet Union (Pravda, 19.51,

P.4). However, four years of depletion of their fighting strength through battlefield

deaths and surrenders, led to the virtual defeat of the Huk rebellion by 1954. In May of that year Huk guerrilla commander Luis Taruc surrendered. In May, 1957, the communist party was outlawed. The following month the secretary-general of the party urged all party members not facing criminal charges to “return to civilian life,” and to undertake further political activities by means of parliamentary struggle through nationalist and reformist organizations (Nemenzo, 1984, p.74). The fortunes of the communist insurgency in the Philippines had closely followed those of the communist insurgency in Malaya, and in both cases the closing down of the military operation coincided with the new less militaristic outlook emanat- ing from Moscow and Beijing.



Tiny remnants of the Huk guerrilla army remained in the countryside during the next decade and, together with political cadres, were able to sustain influence for a while over certain barrios in Central and northern Luzon. But deprived of political support from the communist party leaders, the last major surviving Huk commander, Sumulong, turned his organization into a Mafia-like illicit business organization, extorting funds and tolerance from landlords, businessmen, and local politicians (see Lachica, 1971, ch.8).

Thus for the first four decades after the foundation of the Communist International, the Soviet Union had either directly, or through fraternal parties and front organizations, assisted and guided the growth of the Philippine communist movement, and had supported its resort to armed insurrection. After the failure of that armed insurrection, the Soviet Union encouraged the reversion to political forms of struggle. With the reversion to a political rather than a military struggle, the party was unable to recreate a new mass base for its activities and became a marginal force in Philippine political life. Communism in the Philippines was later to receive a new lease of life as a result of the emergence of a new generation of radicals, inspired by Maoist political doctrine and its challenge to Soviet authority within the communist world.

In the Era of Triangular Enmity: the Soviet Union Versus China and the United States

The Sino-Soviet Split

The schism between the Soviet Union and China had many causes. One of the most important was the unwillingness of the Soviets to share their atomic technology with the Chinese until they could bring the Chinese economy and military under the same kind of control which they already exercised over Eastern Europe. In addition to this question of power and independence within the bloc, central to the dispute were questions of global strategy and insurrectionary doctrine.

A major issue of the dispute was the question of the global strategy against “imperialism.” Khrushchev, at the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956, had argued that the advent of nuclear weapons meant that the resolution through war of the fundamental conflict between the socialist camp and the imperialist camp was neither necessary nor desirable. If world war did take place, the socialist camp would survive, but peace, interpreted as the avoidance of “imperialist” military action against the socialist world and the national liberation movements, was a primary strategic concern.

Furthermore, the victory of socialism through violent “class struggle” was said by the Soviet leader to be no longer inevitable. Socialism could triumph in the non-socialist world through peaceful and legal political struggle as well as through armed insurrection. The Soviet position was one of caution and flexibility in the use of insurrectionary tactics.

Mao, on the other hand, argued that the Soviet position was revisionist in its denial of the inevitability of war between “imperialism” and “socialism.” Furthermore, Mao asserted the necessity of violence in the destruction of the “reactionary” state’s power. Participating in the parliamentary activities of the bourgeois state, as the French and Italian communists were doing, simply served to legitimize bourgeois institutions and dampen the revolutionary ardor of the masses. Moreover it could never effect the transition to socialism, which required the total destruction of the state. Given the refusal of the defenders of the

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reactionary social order to give up their power willingly, destruction of the reactionary state could only be realized by the application of revolutionary violence.”

These doctrinal disputes reverberated throughout the communist world, leading to splits in existing communist parties, and the formation of new parties claiming allegiance to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The splitting activities of the Maoists within the international communist movement was thus of concern to Soviet foreign policy (see, for example, Kapitsa, 1968, pp.lO-17; Kommunist, 1969, pp.95-100; Smirnov, 1969, ~~36-97; Kommunist, 1973, pp.88-105). Combatting Chinese influence within the communist world, particularly in Asia, became as important a part of Soviet foreign policy as the struggle against “imperialism.”

The militancy of the Chinese political-ideological challenge to Soviet authority sometimes transformed itself into a directly violent form. In 1969, Soviet and Chinese troops fought on an island on the Ussuri River, ostensibly over the contentious demarcation of their common border. So concerned were the Soviets with the Chinese challenge, that later that year they floated the idea of launching a “pre-emptive nuclear strike” against Chinese nuclear installations. It was the opposition of the United States to such a move which probably scuttled the project (see Kissinger, 1979).

Meanwhile the Soviet Union had by the late 1960s attempted to call an international conference of communist and workers’ parties, with the purpose of excluding the Chinese Communist Party from the international movement. But the opposition of several important non-Maoist parties, in particular the Yugoslavs and the Romanians, made the summoning of such a conference impossible. As a result, by 1970 Soviet global policy was left with only the political option in opposing the Maoist parties around the world who were challenging the Soviet Union and its local supporters from the left. In various countries this resulted in the Soviets developing good relations with politically conservative, anti-communist governments.

The Bifurcation of Philippine Communism

In Southeast Asia, in part as a result of their long experience of tutelage by the Chinese Communist Party, the majority of communist parties tended towards the Chinese line in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Foremost among these was the Indonesian party, the PKI, which by the early 1960s had become the largest non-ruling communist party in the world. It was partly through contacts with the PKI while on a one year Indonesian government scholarship in Jakata, that a young Filipino communist, Jose Maria Sison, became integrated into the Maoist fold.

Sison, then a junior member of the English literature faculty at the University of the Philippines, was equipped to bring the Maoist gospel to his fellow communists in the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP). These youthful communists were captivated by the radical ideology of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Like many of their generation around the world, they saw the PRC as the authentic revolutionary state, in contrast with the aging and politically cautious bureaucratic leadership of the USSR. Moreover, the PRC was during those years unequivocally hostile towards the United States-the arch enemy of the Philippine left-in contrast with what

3. For statements of the Chinese position see, for example, Peking Review (1963, 1964). For Khrushchev’s anecdotal account of these matters see Khrushchev (1974, pp.290-303).



was perceived to be the vacillating and compromising stance of the Soviets. This response to the international situation was parallel to the political situation within the Philippines, where the pro-Soviet PKP had abandoned armed struggle against the Philippine government and was advocating the path of “legal struggle.” In 1964 Sison founded the Kubataang Makabayun (KM) or Nationalist Youth, which became the organizational core of Maoism within the PKP (Lande, 1986, p.128).

In 1966 Sison led a delegation of Filipino students, mostly from the University of the Philippines, to the People’s Republic of China. Although the visit was ostensibly a cultural tour, it was in fact a project for political study in the history of the Chinese communist revolution and the theories of Mao Zedong (Mendoza, 1988). By 1967 Sison and his faction were deeply involved in conflict with the leadership of the party over revolutionary tactics. That year they were expelled from the PKP. On December 26, 1968, on the 75th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, Sison’s faction formed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), in what was desig- nated a “Congress of Re-establishment.” Denouncing what they called the “right opportunist” policy of PKP secretary general Dr Jesus Lava, the Sison faction announced the re-establishment of the party on the basis of Mao Zedong Thought, “the acme of Marxism-Leninism” (Nemenzo, 1984, p.28). By joining forces with a dissident remnant faction of the Huk guerrillas, led by Kumander Dante, the CPP was able to form the New People’s Army (NPA) on March 29, 1969. Later that year, the NPA launched a new guerrilla insurrection.

The Soviet Union and the Murcos Regime

Largely because of the role of the Soviets in supporting the Huk rebellion, the Soviet Union and the Philippines had never established diplomatic relations. However, shortly after the election of Ferdinand Marcos to the Presidency, the Philippine government began a series of diplomatic approaches towards the Soviet bloc. In 1967 the Philippine Congress authorized a fact-finding mission by several congressmen to the countries of the Soviet bloc. The delegation, on its return, recommended improved relations with these countries, especially in the area of trade. This was followed, in 1968, with a visit by Senator Benign0 Aquino to Moscow.

Initially the Soviet Union was lukewarm to the new friendliness displayed by the Marcos government. It was not unusual for the Soviet Union to have good state-to-state relations with anti-communist governments in the Third World, but these governments were usually predisposed towards a neutralist or anti-Western foreign policy. In the case of the Philippines, however, the Soviets were dealing with a country closely tied to the United States. Nevertheless, a Soviet cultural and scientific delegation did visit Manila in 1968, as did representatives of the Bolshoi ballet in 1969 (see Taylor, 1976, p.333).

The growth of Marxist radicalism among Filipino students during the 1960s and the ability of the student left to mount large anti-government street demonstra- tions in the urban areas, tempted the Soviet Union and its Filipino clients with the prospect of an anti-Marcos communist-led urban insurrection (see Maravilla, 1970). But the growing influence of Sison’s Maoist faction among the Filipino student left soon made itself apparent. Eventually the anti-Maoist imperative resulted in the Soviet embrace of the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. This Soviet embrace involved public justification of the installation of martial law in September, 1972. According to the Soviets, the Philippine government faced a serious problem of lawlessness posed by “the Maoists,” for which martial law was a necessary remedial measure. Two days after the event, Moscow radio reported:



as can be seen from the statement of the representative of the Philippine Government the campaign of terror in the country is being conducted by pro-Peking groups seeking to take over power (Moscow Domestic Service, 1972a).

Several days later Moscow radio reported that the Marcos regime was introduc- ing progressive socio-economic changes, including a land reform.

While the domestic Soviet media continued to report the arrests of so-called “subversive elements” and presented the martial law declaration in a favorable light (Moscow Domestic Service, 1972b), in its international broadcasts the Soviet Union defended the declaration of martial law as a justified response to an attempted coup d’etat which was engineered and financed by the the US Central Intelligence Agency (Moscow Radio, 1972). This analysis manifested a theme which was to recur over subsequent years: that the government of the Philippines was under all kinds of overt and covert pressure from “US imperialism” not to institute the independent policies which it was legitimately entitled to pursue.

An examination of the Soviet domestic press during 1973 reveals a pattern of reporting of events which still showed sympathetic understanding of the plight of the Marcos regime. The “Maoist threat” to the Philippines was a continuing theme. For example an article in Pravda in January, 1973, stated:

The local Maoists, who by their own schismatic and extremist activities inflict serious damage upon the democratic anti-imperialist movement in the country, are with the blessing of Peking striving to extract certain political gains out of the developing situation. Concealing themselves behind ultra-revolutionary slogans, they carry out massacres, killing petty officials and traders, organizing explosions in shops, centers of communication, and communal enterprises.

Accordingly, the writer expressed sympathy for the regime’s responses to this situation (Grigorovich, 1973, p.4).

In September, 1973, the Republic of the Philippines established diplomatic relations with Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (Pravda. 1973, p.5). At the beginning of October, 1974, Marcos announced his plans to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR at a future date (TASS, 1974a).

All of these developments had domestic parallels. During the second week of October, 1974, the pro-Soviet PKP undertook a public reconciliation with the Marcos regime in a display which was televised within the Philippines. Stacks of rifles and ammunition were handed over to the regime at public rallies in Nueva Ecija and Laguna. The PKP inserted into its constitution an explicit renunciation of armed struggle, and publicly pledged to cooperate with the regime (Nemenzo, 1984, p.85). TASS reported in an English language broadcast that the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines had met with President Marcos and had “offered the president their cooperation in implementing social reforms in the country” (TASS, 1974b).

The increasing friendliness of Soviet-Philippine relations culminated in the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries during Ferdinand Marcos’s visit to the Soviet Union in June, 1976. For the Soviets, even the non-communist opposition to Marcos was politically dangerous, since it weakened the main source of resistance to the Maoist insurgency. Yet at this time the Soviets had not lost sight of their “anti-imperialist” objectives. Not only did they laud Marcos’s domestic reign, they also encouraged any signs of nation- alism, especially with regard to the presence of American bases in the Philippines.



The final years of Marcos’s rule were a period of economic decline for the Philippines and coincided with a growth in communist NPA insurgency. But the Soviet Union remained, until the very end, supportive of the Marcos regime.

In the Era of Triangular Detente

Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” About Soviet Global Strategy

The Gorbachev leadership in the Soviet Union faced a monumental economic crisis which it had inherited from its predecessors: the massive outlays of expen- diture upon the military were at the expense of a civilian economy which was incapable of satisfying the basic consumption needs of the population. Furthermore the backwardness of the economic system, rooted in the structure of central planning and state control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, prevented the technological innovation upon which the Soviet military depended if it were to compete with the west in the quality of its defense equip- ment. Finally, the Soviet Union’s foreign military engagements-especially in Afghanistan, but also in Angola and Ethiopia-and its support of the Vietnamese in Cambodia and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua had drained the national treasury. In the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia there was also a political, diplomatic, and indirect economic price being paid for engaging in and supporting international aggression. American concern with these foreign military engagements was keeping Western high technology away from the Soviet Union, while forcing the Soviet Union to be the sole financier of its economically destitute militarized clients.

The first response of the new Gorbachev leadership was to attempt to resolve the main external conflicts in which the Soviet Union was involved by increased application of military force.J At some time in 1987, a decision was taken by the Soviet leadership to withdraw from their direct intervention in Afghanistan and to encourage a political settlement of the stalemated wars in Cambodia and Angola. This decision was in part prompted by the fundamental strategic reassess- ment of their relations with the Chinese undertaken by the Soviet leaders. In fact the attempt to create a reconciliation with the Chinese had begun under Andropov in 1982. Andropov’s reign was brief, and his interim successor, Chernenko, placed all domestic and foreign policy changes on hold. However, with the accession of Gorbachev in 1985, the move towards rapprochement with the Chinese was renewed. This move was a central aspect of Gorbachev’s important speech at Vladivostok on July 28, 1986.

The Chinese had placed three conditions upon normalization with the Soviet Union: reduction of Soviet forces on the Chinese border; withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan; and withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia. Gorbachev began to satisfy the first condition in 1987. In February, 1988, the Soviets announced their desire to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan. A settlement reached with Pakistan and the United States on this issue in May, 1988, led to the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops by February, 1989. In late 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew their troops from Cambodia on the advice of the Soviets. In both the Afghan and Cambodian cases, however, the Soviet Union provided

4. The first year of Gorbachev’s rule saw a major offensive by the Soviets themselves against the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, and by the Cubans against the Angolan guerrillas of UNITA. But none of these major offensives were able to destroy the capacity or will to fight of their opposing guerrilla forces.

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substantial military aid until the end of 1991 for local communist forces to continue struggling in what had been converted to a civil war.

In two of these three issues, Afghanistan and Cambodia, the Soviet policy of ending external military occupations was also part of a desire to improve political and economic relations with the United States. Ultimately, Gorbachev was pursu- ing genuine detentes, first with the Chinese and second with the West, in order to be able to reduce military expenditures and in order to attract Western capital and trade into the Soviet Union. This did not mean that the Soviet Union had abandoned its competition with the West, but it did mean that the Soviet Union had moved away from competition through direct military interventions in regional conflicts by its own and allied external forces, and towards competition at the political and diplomatic level.

In structuring the competition between the communist world and the West, Gorbachev revived the centrality of the concept of “peaceful coexistence.” This notion was emphasized during the Khrushchev era, an era to which Gorbachev looked back with qualified approval. But Gorbachev drew a distinction between the meaning of this term in his “new thinking” and its meaning in earlier formu- lations. “Peaceful coexistence” was no longer to be thought of as a specific form of “class struggle” (Gorbachev, 1987, p.147). As a Foreign Ministry report presented by Edvard Shevardnadze stated:

. . . It is necessary to distinguish coexistence, which is based on such principles as non- aggression, respect of sovereignty and national independence, non-interference in internal affairs etc., from the class struggle. The struggle of the two opposing systems does not appear to be the determining tendency of the contemporary epoch (see Pravda, 1988, p.4).

The Soviets now emphasized diplomacy, promoting improved economic and cultural relations with non-communist states, and encouraging legal political struggle, including electoral politics by communist parties in democratic nations. Most important, Soviet policy emphasized the importance of united front politics, particularly the importance of a united front of the left.’ Disagreements between Soviet and non-Soviet leftists were to be subordinated to their common objectives. All of this was reflected in the Soviet policy towards the Philippines. However, in the Philippines, as in some other countries, Soviet objectives were complicated by the different priorities and strategic perceptions of the local forces.

Soviet Policy Towards the Aquino Government

Soviet attitudes towards the Aquino government during the Gorbachev era were a product not only of the general precepts of “new thinking,” but also of the specific new perceptions of the Asia-Pacific region. Southeast Asia, though to a lesser extent than Northeast Asia, was seen as a focal point of rapid economic development. Moreover ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) came to be recognized as a political grouping, independent of the major Western powers, whose individual members could be cultivated as economic partners and as potential political allies. First, however, the Soviet Union had to overcome the suspicions of the ASEAN nations as a result of its alliance with Vietnam which had involved not only a significant military presence at Cam Ranh Bay, but the support of

5. This was underlined by the Soviet party’s former chief ideologist Vadim Medvedev (see Medvedev, 19W.

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Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia. The Soviet-Vietnamese relationship was an important reason why most of the ASEAN nations wanted the United States to retain its military base facilities in the Philippines.

The Soviet leadership had a more specific handicap with the new democratic government of Corazon Aquino. The Soviet Union had been one of the last supporters of the dying regime of Ferdinand Marcos, but now rapidly transformed itself into a supporter of the Aquino government. At the same time, it attempted to weaken the ties of Manila with Washington. Critical to its strategy was the fanning of anti-American sentiment, already strong among the Philippine intelli- gentsia. During the first two years of the Aquino government, a period of political instability characterized by several attempted coups by disgruntled military officers, the Soviets were quick to play up the allegations (usually originating from the Philippine left) that the United States was involved. This was most evident during and after the most serious of the coup attempts, which took place in August, 1987 (see, for example, TASS, 1987a, p.15). All signs of opposition to the American bases from Filipino politicians of any perspective were reported by the Soviet media. The bases appeared to be the Soviets’ main concern.

During his speech at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia on September 16, 1988, Gorbachev offered to withdraw Soviet forces from Cam Ranh Bay in return for American withdrawal from its bases in the Philippines. Obviously intended to influence US-Philippine negotiations on the extension of the US Base Agreement, the proposal generated a chorus of rejection from the other ASEAN nations and from the Philippine Defense Minister, who all regarded it as “unbalanced.” Gorbachev’s proposal failed to deter President Aquino from extending the base agreement for three more years (Buszynski, 1992, pp.164-165).

The major event of 1988 for Soviet-Philippine relations was the one-day visit of Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to the Philippines in December. This first- ever visit by a Soviet Foreign Minister resulted in a joint communique in which Shevardnadze repeated a Soviet vow not to support the CPP/NPA insurgency (Hong Kong AFP, 1988). Later, in July, 1989, Philippine Foreign Minister Raul Manglapus visited the Soviet Union. In their joint communique the two Foreign Ministers expressed agreement on a number of international issues, especially relating to disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts (Pravda, 1989, p.5). The confidence of Manglapus that the Soviet Union was not aiding the CPP/NPA insurgency was an important basis of the new positive attitude towards the Soviets by the highly nationalistic and anti-American Philippines Foreign Minister.h

Under Gorbachev, the objectives of Soviet policy in the Philippines were two- fold: first the desire to enhance Soviet political influence with both the government and the legal left opposition; and second the removal of the American bases, or failing that, use of the issue to weaken American influence within the country. All other questions, including Soviet relations with the rival communist parties, were a function of these two basic objectives.

The Emerging Strategic Dilemma and the Evolving Strategic Outlook of the Communist Party of the Philippines

The rapid growth in membership of the CPP and NPA in the Philippines- especially during the later years of martial law when the creation of the crony

6. Foreign Minister Manglapus was interviewed by the author in Manila in June, 1989.



system began to wreck the nation’s economy-posed a problem for the revolutionaries. Their potential armed strength could not be attained because of a short- age of weapons; there were simply more recruits than weapons. In December, 1987, the number of NPA guerrillas was estimated to be 25 000, with 15 000 of them able to bear assorted firearms. Of these weapons, only 7300 were high powered rifles.’ Given the absence of any reliable external supply by a foreign government, there was little which the NPA could do to acquire the heavy weapons necessary to undertake large-scale military operations against the armed forces. It was recognition of this objective reality which led the CPP to re-evaluate its Maoist ideology, particularly its strategic reliance upon rural armed struggle and the ideological imperative of “revolutionary self-reliance.” This Filipino strategic re-evaluation took place at the same time as the Soviet Union was itself beginning to re-evaluate its global strategy of military commitments to radical forces in the Third World.

There were two basic starting points for the CPP’s changed strategic outlook. First there was the desire to attain total political power in order to transform the political, economic, and social structure of the Philippines in a totalitarian communist direction. Second there was a recognition of the limited military means at the disposal of its revolutionary army, and the untenability of the Maoist slogan of “self-reliance” as a guide to the conduct and military logistics of a revolutionary war in the Philippines. An interview with CCP Central Committee Chairman Armando Linawag in the party organ Ang Buyan, of July 7, 1987, signalled this recognition:

No revolutionary movement including that in the Philippines can become victorious in isolation. In the era of imperialism, it is only through the vigorous and mutually supportive interaction of the world’s revolutionary forces that they can advance and win greater victories.

The Chinese had ceased providing assistance to the CPP/NPA in the mid-1970s and living off the Philippine army and purchasing arms on the international black market could not make up the shortfall. Thus strategic necessity prompted the CPP to reconsider its attitude towards the Soviet Union. Linawag explicitly stated this for the first time in the 1987 interview:

We are now in the process of seeking and establishing relations with the ruling parties of Eastern Europe and elsewhere....The ruling parties of Eastern Europe can be of great help to the Philippine revolution as we try to be of help to them through revolutionary struggle against US imperialism. To start with, we have a common No. 1 enemy in US imperialism.

Note that there was no request here for weapons or other material support. But it would not be expected that a request would be made in a party journal and at this stage of the relationship. Moreover this was a request for development of relations, not a statement that they had already developed.

A representative of the CPP’s legal trade union front organization the Kilusang

Mayo Uno (KMU-May 1 Movement) attended a labor conference in Moscow in February, 1987. The purpose of the trip was purportedly to convey a message from the CPP seeking further meetings between leaders of the CPP and its Soviet

7. Reports of senior Filipino military officers, based in part upon documents captured from arrested leaders of the CPP in March and May, 1988. Workshop on Philippine Communism. Information and Resource Center. Singapore, July, 1988.



counterpart (Bigornia, 1988a, p.6). The KMU had reportedly applied for membership in the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), a front organization run by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union whose headquarters were then in Prague. It had also been reported that senior CPP cadres had met the Soviet officials in Western Europe throughout 1987 in order to encourage the CPSU to re-examine its support for the PKP. Further, it was alleged that CPP cadres had travelled to Hanoi on “labor and feminist issue junkets” (Bigornia, 1988a, p.6). The National Democratic Front’s international representative Luis Jalandoni attended the 26th Congress of the French Communist Party in early December, 1987, and in the January, 1988, issue of Ang Bayan this was followed up with an article on the CPP/NDF’s solidarity with the French party (Bigornia, 1988b, p.6).

In a book-length interview published in 1989, Jose Maria Sison indicated that the stance of ideological rejection of the Soviet system which the CPP had embraced in the 1960s had become outdated. In what was a clear attempt at ideological fence-mending with the CPSU, Sison (1989) stated:

The CPP has decided to regard the Soviet Union as a country in the process of build- ing socialism and has ceased to call it social imperialist. The CPP has also ceased to call the CPSU revisionist.

Although all of these actions suggested initiatives on the part of the CPP towards establishing relations, they did not tell us what the Soviet attitude was.

Soviet Policy Towards the CPP Under Gorbachev

During the early Gorbachev years the Soviet media spoke in positive terms of the CPP-controlled organizations. For example, when Lindro Alejandro, general secretary of the CPP political front group BAYAN, was murdered on September 19, 1987, TASS referred to him as general secretary of “the progressive public organization Bayan.” Moreover, Alejandro’s death was put in the context of a right wing conspiracy directly related to the American bases issue (Tass, 1987b). This conspiratorial analysis of Philippine instability had become a standard feature of Soviet commentary about the country.

No concrete evidence to indicate that the Soviet Union was providing material assistance to the insurgency ever appeared and Soviet spokesmen consistently denied such an association. For example when Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Rogachev held a press conference during his visit to the Philippines in March, 1988, not only did he deny that the Soviet Union had been aiding the CPP or the NPA, but he also stated that the Soviet Union had no relations whatsoever with the CPP/NPA (Quezon City Radyo, 1988). In addition, in April, 1988, the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov denounced as “provocative and designed to complicate Soviet-Philippine relations” a purported statement by Richard Armitage, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, that the Soviet Union was giving financial support to the CPP and the NPA (TASS, 1988).

Of course, Soviet denials did not constitute conclusive evidence of Soviet non- involvement. Perhaps more persuasive, however, is a report by a top CPP leader, written in March, 1988, in which relations with the Soviet Union were discussed. In the document the CPP leader bemoaned the fact that the Soviet Union and its allies, including Vietnam, continued to recognize and support “the local pseudo- communist party of the Lavas.” However he welcomed the fact that in the last year or so the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and other socialist countries “have described the Communist Party of the Philippines and party-led forces in more

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positive terms...” Moreover there was increasing openness on the part of the Soviets, the Cubans, the Vietnamese, and other socialist countries to the establishment of “links with several party-led forces” and the writer anticipated more frequent contacts between the CPP and the Soviet bloc. He suggested that as “historical difficulties” between the CPP and the Soviet bloc were overcome, and as CPP-led forces became more politically decisive, relations between the CPP and the Soviet bloc countries “will most likely be established.“* However this Philippines communist writer cautioned that it was distinctly possible that the Soviet Union would exercise restraint in its dealings with the CPP, in order to avoid the risk of greater confrontation with the United States in a region “where the balance of forces are still heavily in US favor.”

More compelling is the fact that the Soviet Union soon began to refer publicly to the NPA as “rebels.” And in 1989 the Soviet media referred to NPA attacks upon US base facilities as the work of “terrorists” (Moscow Television, 1989). The available evidence therefore suggests that the CPP would have liked to develop its relationship with the Soviet Union but that the Soviet side responded in a very limited way. The Soviet relationship was only with “party-led forces,” that is with the CPP’s legal front organizations. The Soviet Union clearly rejected the CPP’s strategy of protracted rural armed struggle.

Conclusions

Soviet policy towards the Philippine communist movement passed through three distinct phases.

(1) During the era of international communist unity the Soviet Union aided the formation and growth of the communist movement, and then, acting in a limited way through the Chinese, supported a rural-based insurrection against the Philippine government.

(2) During the era of triangular enmity, with the original communist movement split into two opposing factions, the Soviet Union supported one party’s policy of legal non-violent political activity, and opposed the competing party’s more radical policy of rural-based armed insurrection. It thus adopted an explicitly counter- revolutionary stance in defending the anti-communist Marcos government of the Philippines against a communist insurrection.

(3) During the era of triangular detente, in the ecumenical spirit of Gorbachev’s “new thinking,” the Soviet Union continued its previous policy of good relations with the Philippine government, while reaching out to all that government’s opponents on the left. The Soviet Union softened its opposition to the more radical of the two communist parties, without either endorsing the CPP’s “protracted war” revolutionary strategy, or establishing party to party relations. But the Soviet Union did not abandon its support for the older, politically marginal, rival party, the PKP. Instead it pursued a strategy of a broad, united front, central to which was a united front of the left. Although the Soviet Union remained a supporter of the Philippine government. it simultaneously encouraged nationalist and anti-American tendencies from that government until the end of the Gorbachev era in August, 1991.

Thus it can be seen that during the first era Soviet policy towards the Philippines was determined by the Soviet Union’s global policy of alliance with China against

8. Extracts from an internal party document provided to the author by an officer of the Philippine Constabulary in Manila, June, 1988.



the United States. During the second era, it was determined by the Soviet adversarial relationship with both the United States and the People’s Republic of China, but with the anti-Chinese factor being more significant. During the third era which began with the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev, it was determined by the new and less acrimonious competition of the Soviet Union with the United States.

The part played by China during Mao Zedong’s lifetime was an important one in the life of the Philippine communist movement. However, the post-Mao derad- icalization of Chinese domestic and foreign policy rendered China largely irrele- vant to the political situation within the Philippines, even before the new Gorbachev leadership made detente with China a central aim of Soviet foreign policy.

Under Gorbachev competition with the United States became the overriding Soviet global priority in the Philippines, a competition that was contained within the political boundaries defined by the “new thinking.” This entailed attempting to develop good state to state relations with the government of the Philippines. This “new thinking” also prevented the Soviet Union from supporting the insurrection of the Communist Party of the Philippines, in spite of the overtures of the CPP for that support.

Thus the three eras in the evolution of the Soviet role in the Philippines might appropriately be conceived of as moving from (1) supporter of the revolution to (2) opponent of the revolution, and then to (3), in the ecumenical era of Mikhail Gorbachev, to tamer of the revolution. This final role involved a task which was not to be completed, because the tamer itself unexpectedly disappeared.

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Documents

The Soviet Union and the Philippine Communist Movement