Anti-communism

What brings Bolshevism to the people.
White Guard Poster

The signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact by representatives of Nazi Germany and Japan . November 25, 1936

Among the directions adhering to anti-communist ideology, rhetoric or practice, in the 20th century were:

• Conservatism .
• Liberalism
• Neoconservatism ("Reaganism") as the ideology and movement of the "capitalist revolution" of the 1980s considered the regimes of the government of the Communist Parties as the main enemy. The administration of Ronald Reagan sharply tightened policy towards the USSR and its allies, launched massive anti-communist propaganda, entered into alliances with political Islam, ultra-right forces and partisan movements (the " Reagan Doctrine ").

The first touches of the program, later called the "Reagan Doctrine," were presented in February 1985 in the presidential message to the US Congress "On the Situation in the Country":

We must not lose the faith of those who risk their lives on all continents from Afghanistan to Nicaragua , defying Soviet aggression and ensuring the preservation of the freedoms that belong to us from birth. The support of freedom fighters is self-defense.

Neoconservative anti-communism was distinguished by special energy and stiffness of confrontation. Communism was opposed by the concept of "conservative progress" - economic neoliberalism, bourgeois social modernization, and cultural populism. Prominent figures of the neo-conservative wave were such well-known anti-communists as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher , Franz Josef Strauss , Yasuhiro Nakasone , Amintore Fanfani , Brian Mulroney , Malcolm Fraser , Robert Muldoon .

• Nationalism of different countries and directions, often also encountered by the Communists during the civil wars ( Goryansk movement in Bulgaria, the Chinese Kuomintang from the time of Chiang Kai-shek , the Francisco Franco regime in Spain).

Especially pronounced anti-communism was the Ukrainian nationalist movement led by Stepan Bandera . The organization of Ukrainian nationalists not only led the armed struggle against the USSR by the forces of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , but also took on the international coordinating function. Yaroslav Stetsko and his wife Yaroslav stood at the head of the Anti-Bolshevik bloc of peoples .

• Fascism and National Socialism , who saw the enemy both in the communists inside the country, and in the regime of the USSR and the Comintern (the Hitler coalition was sealed by an agreement known as the Anti-Comintern Pact ). National Socialist leaders in their propaganda identified the communist movement with Jewry (Jew Bolshevism ). So Joseph Goebbels in 1936 declared: “What is called Bolshevism has nothing to do with what we mean by“ ideas “and“ worldview “in general. This is nothing more than a pathological and criminal kind of madness developed by the Jews , which can be easily proved, and led by the same Jews who seek to destroy the civilized peoples of Europe and establish an international Jewish world regime that will subordinate all peoples to their power ” ^[1] .
• Phalangism is a specific Spanish version of fascism. It consisted of ultranationalist traditionalism ( José Antonio Primo de Rivera ) and radical national-syndicalism ( Ramiro Ledesma Ramos ). Phalangism should not be confused with conservatively militaristic and clerical francism; it is a much more radical and populist movement. Ideological features are created by accents of the Spanish mentality. Despite the initial presence of left-wing syndicalist elements and even some of Ledesma Ramos’s sympathies for Soviet Russia, the Spanish phalanx held the position of extreme anti-communism.
• Garciamesism is a military criminal rule in Bolivia in the early 1980s. It was based on the alliance of the military junta with civil right-wing organizations and criminal structures. President Garcia Mesa called the eradication of Marxism and communism the first priority of his regime.
• Some currents of anarchism , especially anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism . Moreover, most anarchists have a positive attitude towards abstract communist ideas, but are almost always hostile to the political methods of the communist parties and the states of “real socialism” that existed in the 20th century.

Russian anarchists actively participated in anti-Bolshevik resistance, especially in the Makhnovist movement and the Kronstadt uprising . On September 25, 1919, the Moscow anarchist group carried out a major anti-Bolshevik attack - an explosion in Leontyevsky Lane .

Italian anarchists of the 1960s and 1970s quite often they were susceptible to neo-fascist propaganda and collaborated with neo-fascists on an anti-liberal and anti-communist platform.

• Right-wing radical solidarity combines the ideological principles of early fascism, phalanxism, Christian democracy (mainly in the Catholic version) and anarcho-syndicalism. Solidarity concepts are based on corporatism and partly syndicalism . Anti-communism traditionally occupies an important place in solidarity ideology.

The first manifestations of solidarity as a right-wing current are associated with the name of the German politician Eduard Stadler and his Anti-Bolshevik League ^{[2] of} 1919. Stadler opposed Marxism and communism with the populist "German socialism." Similar ideas were preached by the ideologists of "Austrofascism" and the Austrian "Christian corporatism."

Many of these ideological elements were borrowed by Italian fascism, then neo-fascism. In France, solidarity ideas dominated the People's Party (PPF) of Jacques Doriot in the second half of the 1930s, in the "neo-socialist" organizations, and now in the National Front and the "Nationalist Revolutionary Youth." In Spain, they are characteristic of phalanxism and national syndicalism. In Latin America, a vivid manifestation of solidarity ideology was observed in the Argentine regime by Juan Domingo Peron , his hustisialist party and the far-right terrorist group Anticommunist Alliance of Argentina . Similar ideas were professed by the regime of General Luis García Mesa in Bolivia 1980-1981. In Anglo-Saxon countries, solidarity is less prevalent, but noticeable among American far-right and "democratic Labor" in Australia. All these forces are prone to populism and corporate collectivism; they are all characterized by extreme anti-communism.

The Russian version of solidarity is represented primarily by the People's Labor Union and, in particular, by its branch of the NTS (Osc) ^[3] . Solidaristic ideological motives are characteristic of the right-wing nationalist forces of Ukraine, especially those directly originating from the OUN . They also manifested themselves in the East European anti-communist resistance of the 1940-1950s and in the anti-communist guerrilla movements of the Cold War.

• Social democracy contrasted the ideology of Bolshevism and Stalinism with the democratic traditions of the European labor movement. German Social Democratic Party chairman Kurt Schumacher ^[4] (a member of the anti-Nazi resistance) called communism "a worldwide reaction." In the Frankfurt Declaration of the Socialist International, the harsh rule of the communist parties is considered incompatible with the critical spirit of Marxism ^[5] .

In January 1919, the SPD stopped the pro-Soviet "Spartak rebellion" , the Social Democrat Gustav Noske led his suppression. In interwar France, the neo-socialists led by Marcel Dea and Adrien Marche consistently took an anti-communist position. Radical supporters of Jozef Pilsudski from the Warsaw organization of the Polish Socialist Party , led by Raimund Javorowski, created a " working militia " that carried out military actions against the Communist Party.

In Latin America, the Venezuelan Social Reform President Romulo Betancourt pursued a tough anti-communist policy at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. Right-wing socialist views "with East Asian specifics" adhered to South Korean dictator Park Jung Hee .

The parties of the Social Revolutionaries ( Boris Savinkov , Nikolai Avksentiev , Viktor Chernov ) and the Mensheviks actively participated in the Russian anti-Bolshevik resistance . Social-Democratic was essentially the program of the Union of the Labor Peasantry , which led the anti-communist Tambov uprising ; its leader Alexander Antonov was an activist of the Social Revolutionary organization. Similar positions were held by the participants of the Kronstadt uprising against the dictatorship of the RCP (B.):

Comrades and citizens! Our country is experiencing a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, economic ruin have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party , ruling the country, broke away from the masses and was unable to withdraw it from a state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that has recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which clearly enough indicated that the party has lost the confidence of the working masses. I did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of the whole nation, of all working people ^[6] .

In 1990-1991, the Social Democratic Party of Russia sharply opposed the CPSU .

• Many religions (including the Catholic and Orthodox Church, and especially Islamic fundamentalism ). Starting with the encyclical of Pope Benedict XV in 1920, Bonum Sana ^[7] , continuing with the encyclical Divini Redemptoris and a number of subsequent official documents issued by the heads of the Holy See ^{[8] [9] [10] [11] [12]} , communism was condemned by the pope for atheism , the desire to destroy the social order in society and undermine the foundations of Christian civilization. A prominent figure in 20th-century social Catholicism, Australian Bartholomew Santamaria was at the same time the leader of Australian anti-communism.

The anti-communist tendency of Catholic social doctrine was laid down in 1891 by the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum and developed by the encyclical of Pope Pius XI Quadragesimo Anno in 1931. Pope John Paul II (pontificate 1978-2005) played in the East European and world anti-communist movement not only an ideological, but also a prominent organizational role (active support of the Polish “Solidarity” , interaction with the administration of Ronald Reagan).

In the 1980s, political Islam - “ Mujahideenism ”, primarily in Afghanistan, came to the forefront of the anti-communist confrontation. The Khomeinist theocracy in Iran , which defeated the Tudeh Marxist party, held anti-communist positions.

The ideology of anti-communism occupied an important place in the Unification Church of the South Korean preacher Moon Song Myung .

• Zionism does not include anti-communism as an indispensable ideological element. However, the US-Israeli strategic alliance, the confrontation with the Arab regimes allied with the USSR, the growth of state anti-Semitism in the USSR and Eastern European states (especially the NDP) in the 1960s and 1970s. led the Israel and Zionist movement to a sharp conflict with the communist regimes ^[13] .

In the late 1970s, leadership in Zionism passed from the Social Democrats to the right-wing conservative forces ( Likud party ) led by Menachem Begin ^[14] . Israel has been actively involved in the global Cold War. ^[15] However, Israeli participation in the anti-communist confrontation of the 1980s was complicated by the rapprochement of the Reagan administration with political Islam and prominent anti-Semitic motives in the ideology of the extreme right.

• Paradoxically, a noticeable force in opposing Marxism-Leninism and "real socialism" in the 1970-1980s. was European communism . The largest Communist parties of Western Europe - the Italian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Spain , their leaders Enrico Berlinguer and Santiago Carrillo regularly clashed with the Communist Party. They condemned the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia ( Operation Danube 1968) and Afghanistan ( Afghan War (1979-1989) ), the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981. Eurocommunism contrasted the totalitarian principles of "real socialism" with speculative concepts of preserving the democratic order in the implementation of the socio-economic provisions of Marxism. The movement "Prague Spring" in Czechoslovakia in 1968 also belonged to the "Eurocommunist" trend as a whole.

The working class can and should carry out its historical mission in a democratic and pluralistic system.
Enrico Burlinguer, National Secretary of the Italian Communist Party

Spanish socialism will come with a hammer and sickle in one hand and a cross in the other.
Santiago Carrillo, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Spain

• A special category of anti-communists is noted - former communist activists who broke with the Communist Parties. Often they join the extreme right-wing forces and are distinguished by particularly violent anti-communism. Historical examples include Park Jung Hee , head of South Korea, Jacques Dorio (former member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party), head of the PPF, Jozsef Dudash in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Boris Yeltsin in Russia, and partly Bin Akao in Japanese ultra-right extremism.

Sometimes these influences combined: for example, in Reagan’s rhetoric , liberal ideology was combined with Christian-conservative.

Anti-communism was also the official ideology of the “Western Bloc” in the Cold War era. During this period, communist ideology was associated primarily with one of two superpowers - the USSR (although not all Communists and Marxists in the world supported their ideology of the Soviet Union), and anti-communism, respectively, with anti-Sovietism .

Within the Western bloc of the Cold War, tough anti-communism, in turn, opposed forces that considered peaceful coexistence with socialist states and convergence of systems possible. The major ideologists of anti-communism in the 1980s were US President Ronald Reagan (see also Reagan Doctrine ) and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher .

The CPSU program (1961) argued that the main content of anti-communism is "... slander of the socialist system, falsification of the political goals of the communist parties, the teachings of Marxism-Leninism ."

After the collapse of the communist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe in 1989-1991 and the drift of most of the communist parties in Europe towards social democracy, anti-communism as a political doctrine has largely, although not completely, lost its relevance.

The interwar period (1918-1939)

• In 1918-1920, a series of civil wars swept across Europe. The communist parties were opposed by the Russian White movement and the green rebels (1918-1920), the Finnish whites (1918), the Social Democrats and Freykors in Germany (1919), the opponents of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet republics (1919).
• The communist movement in Italy in the early 1920s was severely suppressed by the fascist party and the Benito Mussolini regime.
• The National Socialist Party and the regime of Adolf Hitler in 1933-1945 sought to physically exterminate the members of the Communist Parties in Germany and in the territories occupied by the troops of the Third Reich . Collaborationism in World War II was often justified precisely by anti-communism. At the same time, some anti-communist movements at the same time opposed German Nazism - for example, the Polish Army of Craiova .
• The defeat of the Communist Party was one of the outcomes of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.

Post-war period (1945-1991)

Europe

• The civil war in Greece of 1944-1949 ended with the victory of the monarchists over the communists.
• The far-right organizations of Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s carried out a "strategy of tension" - a complex of terrorist attacks. An international neo-fascist was formed, primarily Italian, Spanish and French ^[16] . Neofascist terror in Italy took on a special scale ^{[17] [18]} . The central figure of the international structure was Stefano Delle Chiaye ^{[19] [20]} . Relations and practical cooperation of European neo-fascists with Latin American right-wing dictatorships were established ^[21] . The actions were carried out in collaboration with NATO structures in the framework of the “Operation Gladio ” (Western Europe) and with the CIA in the framework of the operation “Condor” (Latin America).

The victims of neo-fascist attacks were representatives of the liberal authorities, leaders of the left-liberal direction. However, the original motivation was anti-communism. The Gladio system was formed as an armed underground in the event of a Soviet attack on Western European countries. In addition, neo-fascists resisted the Communist Parties, influential in Italy, Spain and France of the 1970s. (Despite the fact that the first two occupied “Eurocommunist” positions, while the Maoist version of communism even enjoyed some popularity in neo-fascist circles .)

In the last war, we teamed up with the Communists to beat the Nazis. In a future war, we will unite with the Nazis to defeat the Communists.
James Carey , Secretary of Congress of Industrial Unions

• In the countries of Eastern Europe from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, anti-communist forces resisted the regimes established as a result of World War II. The most active armed struggle was in Poland ( Craiova Army , “ Cursed Soldiers ”), Romania ( partisan groups ), Bulgaria ( Goryansk movement ), Albania ( Bally Combetar , National Committee “Free Albania” , Mustafa Group ), Czechoslovakia ( Black Lion 777 , Gostiny mountains ). Despite all the ideological differences, these movements combined anti-communism and anti-Sovietism.

The anti-communist sentiments of the Eastern Europeans periodically took the form of mass unrest and direct uprisings. The largest performances were:

in the NRA - Koplik ’s Uprising of 1945 , Postribian Uprising of 1946 , shares of the Mining Committee in Mirdit of 1945 - 1950 , rally of the underground in Tiran of 1951 ,

in the GDR - the Berlin uprising of 1953 ,

in NRB - Plovdiv Uprising of 1953

in Czechoslovakia - Pilsen Uprising of 1953

in Hungary - the uprising of 1956 ,

in Poland - the Poznan uprising of 1956 , student unrest and the intelligentsia front of 1967 - 1968 , workers' protests in 1976 , the strike movement on the Baltic coast of 1970 - 1971 ,

in SRR - a mining strike in the Zhiu Valley of 1977 ^[22] , a working riot in Brasov in 1987 .

These movements were suppressed by the authorities with the use of armed force, but forced economic concessions and social maneuvering.

The most powerful anti-communist movement in Eastern Europe was the Polish trade union Solidarity of the 1980s. Massive strike activity was suppressed in December 1981 by the introduction of martial law ^[23] , but the underground struggle continued until the spring of 1988. In the summer of 1989, Solidarity inflicted a crushing defeat on the PUWP even in the elections controlled by the authorities , and in the fall, it actually came to power.

Anti-communist sentiments in the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Albania in the 1970-1980s. were latent, but powerfully manifested during the 1989 Eastern European Revolutions . They took particularly tough power forms in Romania in December 1989 and partly in Albania in 1990-1991 .

Asia

• The nationalist Kuomintang party tried to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from coming to power. The Chinese civil war of 1946-1949 ended with the victory of the CCP, but the Kuomintang retained the island of Taiwan, on which they proclaimed the Republic of China , whose policy is characterized by harsh anti-communism.
• The Korean War of 1950-1953 was a massive breakdown of forces between different political systems. Kim Il Sung, with the support of the USSR and China, could not conquer the South; South Korea, with the support of 16 allies led by the United States, was not able to overthrow the North Korean regime (a partisan formation of North Korean anti-communists played a prominent role in the war). As a result, the Republic of Korea has become one of the centers of world anti-communism, and the DPRK ’s orthodox Communist Party’s power has been established in the DPRK for decades.

North Korean leaders are the most inhumane people on Earth.
Jung Doo-hwan , President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), 1980-1988

• A clash of a similar nature was the Vietnam War . The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the South Vietnamese Communists defeated the anti-communist "American-Saigon" coalition. Vietnam was united under the rule of the CPV . One of the consequences was the massive emigration from Vietnam .

Do not listen to what the communists say. Watch what they do.
Nguyen Van Thieu , President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), 1967-1975

Anti-communist political emigrants led by officers of the South Vietnamese army Hoang Ko Min , Le Hong , Dao Ba Ke created the National United Liberation Front of Vietnam ^[24] . The political base was located in the United States, the military - in Thailand. Militant incursions from Thai territory continued until 1989 , and armed underground attacks were also noted in the 1990s ^[25] . Since 1982, the Vietnamese party has been the center of the Vietnamese radical political emigration . The dissident movement in Vietnam - of a political, cultural and religious nature - operates by peaceful protest methods and is not large-scale ^{[26] [27]} .

• In the 1980s, anti-communist rebellion was developed in Laos. The united national liberation front of General Wang Pao and ELOL Pa Khao He relied mainly on the Hmongs . The greatest scale of hostilities took place in 1990 , to suppress the rebels, government troops used even the aircraft ^[28] .
• The anti-communist movement of Cambodia dates back to the Republican Khmer rebels, Serei Song Ngok Thanya . It developed maximum activity during the Cambodian-Vietnamese conflict of the 1980s. The Republican National Front for the Liberation of the Khmer People , led by Son Sann, entered into a coalition with the FUNSINPEC monarchists and even with the Khmer Rouge against the pro-Vietnamese NRC regime. The armed forces of the national liberation of the Khmer people and the National army of the Sihanoukists waged an armed struggle in alliance with the Polpot army ^[29] .
• The largest anti-communist action was carried out in 1965-1966. General Suharto regime in Indonesia. The Communist Party of Indonesia - one of the largest in the world after the Communist Party of China and the CPSU - was destroyed in the massacres of 1965-1966 . According to various estimates, between 0.5 million and 1.5 million communists and sympathizers died. The main role in the defeat of the KPI was played by the Indonesian national army under the command of Suharto and Sarvo Eddy , the Muslim militias of Subhan ZE , the Catholic militants Joop Beck , the KAMI student union and the KAPPI student union , the nationalist youth movement Pancha Sila - who spoke under the slogans of TRITURA .
• On October 6, 1976, an anti-communist coup occurred in Thailand . The military, led by Admiral Sangad Chaloryu and the government of Tanin Kraivichien, began repressions against the Communist Party of Thailand - membership in the CBT and equivalent organizations was punishable by death. The Thai army carried out a series of special operations against communist partisans in remote areas. Left-liberal and ultra-left organizations, including student ones, were also suppressed. This was preceded by large-scale anti-communist activity of conservative movements ( Ninth Force ), ultra-right organizations ( Red Gauras ) and peasant militias ( Rural Scouts ). The culmination was the massacre at Tammasat University ^[30] .
• The war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992 was ideological in character: Afghan Mujahideen fought against the PDPA and the USSR under the slogans of extreme anti-communism.

Latin America

• The right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America of the 1970-1980s were anti-communist. The military dictatorship in Chile in 1973-1990 led by Augusto Pinochet acquired the greatest historical significance in this series.

Our homeland rebelled against international communism and inflicted the most crushing defeat on it in the last thirty years.
Chilean Government Junta Declaration, 1974

Latin juntas usually pursued a neoliberal or comprador course in economics, asserted Catholic traditionalism in ideology and generally focused on the United States in foreign policy (although they often conducted a course more right-winged than American administrations and came into conflict with them). These were the regimes of Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Hugo Banser (Bolivia), the Argentine junta , Juan Bordberry (Uruguay).

Not a killer saw . The killer was Che Guevara . And Videla protected the country from terrorist attacks.
Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hos , Minister of Economy of Argentina in the 1970s

The military regimes in Paraguay (Alfredo Stroessner), Bolivia ( Luis Garcia Mesa ) and Guatemala ( Efrain Rios Montt ) of the early 1980s stood apart. Paraguayan stronism and Bolivian Garciamesismism combined extreme anti-communism with criminal populism ^[31] , Guatemalan Riosmontism with Protestant fundamentalism and a kind of “Latin populism” ^[32] .

• Another form of violent anti-communist struggle in Latin America was the paramilitary structure - the " death squads ":
  • Argentinean Anti-Communist Alliance ( Jose Lopez Rega , Rodolfo Eduardo Almiron )
  • Colorado Party Police in Paraguay ( Pastor Coronel , Ramon Aquino )
  • Uruguayan Nationalist Armed Defense ( Miguel Sofia Abeleira )
  • Guatemalan Mano Blanca at MLN ( Mario Sandoval Alarcon Lionel Sisnyega Otero )
  • Salvadoran organizations ORDEN , UGB , power units of the ARENA party ( Roberto d'Aubusson )
  • Chilean Homeland and Freedom ( Pablo Rodriguez , Roberto Tiem )
  • Secret Anti-Communist Army ( Herman Chupina Baraona , Jose Alberto Medrano )
  • in a later period, the Colombian Combined Self-Defense Forces ( Carlos Castagno Gil )
  • Mexican Tecos ( Antonio Leagno , Raimundo Guerrero , Jorge Prieto Laurens ) joined this category
  • a special place in Latin American anti-communism was occupied by the political structures of the Cuban emigration of various ideological trends: both the right ( Orlando Bosch ) and the left ( Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo ).

Not only the Communists, but also the Social Democrats, liberals, sometimes even conservatives, were persecuted by Latin American juntas and death squads. However, right-wing repressions in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador were justified by the suppression of the communist threat.

• Of particular importance were the civil wars in Nicaragua , in El Salvador and in Guatemala . In all these armed conflicts, one of the parties was positioned as anti-communist. In Nicaragua, it was a contra ; in El Salvador and Guatemala, governments and far-right death squads.
• In the next historical epoch - the 1990-2000s - Latin American anti-communism manifested itself in Peru and Colombia. Now the suppression of communist movements was carried out not by military juntas, but by the legally elected presidents - Alberto Fujimori and Alvaro Uribe . In Peru, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso and the Stalinist Revolutionary Movement Tupac Amaru were defeated. In Colombia, powerful blows were inflicted on communist (in parallel - on ultra-right groups) FARC .

Africa

• The armed struggle of UNITA by Jonas Savimbi (originally also the FNLA of Holden Roberto ) against the MPLA government in the Angolan civil war - at least at the stage of 1975-1991, was clearly anti-communist. The significance of the “Angolan section of the Cold War ” was emphasized by the fact that it was in the Angolan city of Jamba that an international meeting of anti-communist partisans was held - the Angolan UNITA, Nicaraguan Democratic Forces , the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan , Lao ELOL - the welcome telegram of which was sent by Ronald Reagan ^{[33] [ 34]} .
• In Mozambique, a civil war under anti-communist slogans against the FRELIMO government was waged by the RENAMO movement led by Afonso Dlacama .
• The civil war in Ethiopia on both sides was fought mainly under communist slogans - the leftist radical NFOT and ENRP opposed the regime of the DERG and the Marxist Workers Party . The conservative Ethiopian Democratic Union , led by Mangasha Seyum , represented the anti-communist position in the war.