The New Flag, an sporadically appearing magazine about the Peruvian revolution published in the United States, is becoming more and more a source of disinformation about the Communist Party of Peru. There has been a history of altering documents without permission and even fabricating letters from readers, but this has taken a particularly dangerous turn because of their practice of altering Party documents.
This became noticeable in the December 1995 issue (Vol. 2, no. 3) which printed "excerpts" from the June 1994 PCP document "Instructions." Supposedly this was due to lack of space, but despite a promise to print the rest of the document, this was never done. In particular, point 6 was omitted, which began with: "Building the seizure of power demands that we sweep away the right opportunist line of revisionism and capitulation, and that we purge the Party." Considering that the New Flag has consistently downplayed or negated the struggle against the Right Opportunist Line, this is no accident.
This has grown worse in the latest issue from August 1997 (Vol. 4, No. 2; note that Vol. 4, no. 1 never appeared). The latest Party document, Overcome the Bend in the Road, Developing People's War, was altered to change the following points:
In the section Objectives point 4 was changed from:
4. - Crush the revisionist and capitulationist ROL.
to
4. Crush revisionism and capitulation.
Also, several sections after the quotations,
NEW PLAN:
POLITICAL STRATEGY:
MILITARY STRATEGY:
STRATEGY OF CONSTRUCTION:
IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS.
were ommited where they should have been repeated from the outline
In the section NOTES FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE GREAT CLOSING, where it should read:
"the same has occurred with the revisionists and capitulators of the right opportunist line"
they put:
"The same has also occurred with the revisionists and capitulators"
In the section KEEP THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS IN MIND:
where it should read:
"PEOPLE'S WAR: it must be developed taking the Military Line as the base"
they put:
"PEOPLE'S WAR: it must be developed with a Proletarian Military Line as a basis"
After the section CONSTRUCTION, the following was ommitted:
TWO-LINE STRUGGLE: Develop the two-line struggle against the revisionist and capitulationist right opportunist line (ROL).
Study the documents: The Struggle Against Revisionism, Lenin and the Proletarian Revolution, and Khrushchov's Revisionism.
along with the repetition of the sections:
OVERCOME THE BEND IN THE ROAD BY DEVELOPING THE PEOPLE'S WAR!
OBJECTIVES:
First Part: OVERCOME THE BEND IN THE ROAD, DEVELOPING THE PEOPLE'S WAR!:
Second Part: OVERCOME THE BEND IN THE ROAD, DEVELOPING THE PEOPLE'S WAR!:
ATTITUDE:
It is particularly sinister that the New Flag is trying to negate the struggle against the Right Opportunist Line, as called for by the Party. While some of these other changes are small, no-one has the right to alter Party documents for any reason. As we discover other discrepancies we will make them known to our readers.