able obstacles to continuing armed strug gle, a responsi l ble leadership has to know when to retreat But in such cases, for the clarification of the masses and to create the basis for future strug gle, it is important not to present defeats or setbacks as victories. It is one thing to declare that a certain phase of the struggle is over and can go no further - for example declaring an end to armed struggle. It is another thing to proclaim that this in it self amounts to victory' when everyone knows it does not. That is a prescription for undermining the revolutionary goals of the movement, demobilising the masses and demoralising the political cadres of the liberation movement The ending of armed struggle poses the question what next?'. It is one thing to end it to continue the struggle by other means. It is another thing to end it, as has happened in ColomI bia, and then for the former TO THE guerrillas to collapse into right wing social democratic politics.
All negotiations with an enemy include bluff and deceit on both sides. That is the art of negotiation. The 1973 Paris peace accords between the Vietnamese and the USA certainly included bluff and deceit from the Vietnamese: whether the US negotiators were aware of it is a moot point. So deals cannot be solely judged by their formal terms. The key question is what the revolutionary forces or liberation movements do in practice: but of course practice also involves what they say about them.
The classic case of a negotiated peace carried out by revo lutionary forces was of course the Brest-Litovsk peace deal ne gotiated with the Germans by Trotsky, on behalf of the Soviet government. This deal involved huge concessions, including