ABSTRACT
At a formal meeting held at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1964, B. N. Ponomarev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and head of the International Department of the CPSU, took to the floor to deliver a report entitled ‘Proletarian Internationalism is the Revolutionary Banner of our Era’. The Party hymn - the International - rang out. The event commemorated the centennial of the First International. The speech he delivered stated a policy which indicated little departure from previously enunciated and attempted goals, but reflected a shift of emphasis in tactical approach. Through the vehicle of the banner of peace, that is, ‘peaceful coexistence’ and détente, the fears of nuclear confrontation and the importance of building up conventional forces to ‘defend’ peace, Ponomarev described the era of the 1960s as follows: 1
Peace is not a pacifist fairy tale or an abstract ideal for us. We are all aware that the danger of war has not yet passed. Striving to save mankind from irreparable calamities, we are maintaining our defence capabilities at a level that makes it possible to defend peace. In the thermonuclear age the defence of peace and the struggle for socialism and not two different causes but one great common revolutionary cause.
Finally, we understand our internationalist duty as consisting in support for all the revolutionary, democratic movements of modern times . . .
In observing the 100th anniversary of the First International, we Soviet Communists call upon all the fraternal parties and all the revolutionary forces to close their ranks more tightly, to overcome all difficulties, to rally under the banner of Marxism - Leninism in the name of the triumph of the working class . . .
