Luis Corvalan: biography and family

Luis Corvalan (photo posted later in the article) - one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Chile. His support was crucial to the coming to power in 1970 of Salvador Allende, the first elected Marxist head of state in the Western Hemisphere. He died in Santiago on July 21, 2010 at the age of 93 years. The Communist Party of Chile announced his death with "deep sorrow".

Ally Allende

The party, which became the largest communist organization in Latin America, was the main support of the left coalition led by the physician and Socialist leader Allende. Without the support of the Communists, his victory with a slight advantage in the presidential election in 1970 would have been impossible.

Allende, who nationalized Chile's industry during his country's leadership, committed suicide after being overthrown in a military coup in 1973. Corvalan, his close adviser, fled after the putsch. His only son was tortured, but he refused to reveal his father's whereabouts.

Gift for the 70th Anniversary

Later, the leader of the HRC was found and imprisoned. Three years throughout the world, the slogans were: "Freedom to Luis Corvalan!" Finally, on December 18, 1976, at the airport in Zurich , he exchanged for the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.

Brezhnev, whose 70th birthday was celebrated the next day, insisted on this gift. The Chilean was his ideal of a Latin American communist and a firm ally of the USSR.

Corvalan is a native of the peasant environment. He became one of the most prominent communists in South America, heading the Chilean Communist Party for three decades. He strictly followed the party line established in Moscow, up to the support of the invasion of the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia in 1968. And when the same line increasingly began to call for greater cooperation with non-Communists, Luis Corvalan responded with ideological maneuvering. "We do not put all Christian democrats in one basket," he said at the Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, referring to the organizations on the right of the Marxist coalition.

Critic of Allende

Corvalan criticized the economic management of the president-socialist and distanced himself from the enthusiasm of many allies in the coalition armed revolution in the Cuban style. Without fear of appearing as a conservative economist, he said that Allende's decision to raise wages to workers without increasing labor productivity caused inflation to rise.

Luis Corvalan felt confident enough to criticize the president in person, saying that he dropped to the cliches and began to repeat himself. Allende "showed signs of stagnation," wrote journalist Corvalan in 1997, adding that "the people's movement has moved further than he did."

The breadth of his views narrowed considerably when it came to the interests of the CPSU. After a visit to China in 1959, he highly appreciated the country's approach to Marxism. But when in 1961 relations between China and Russia deteriorated, Corvalan condemned Maoism.

He was elected Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Chile in 1958 and held this post until 1990.

Luis Corvalan: biography

Luis Nicholas Corvalan Lepes (later he discarded the last letter of his mother's name, becoming Lepe) was born on September 14, 1916, in Pelluko, near Puerto Monta in southern Chile. He was one of six brothers and sisters. His mother worked as a seamstress. When Louis was 5, his father left the family. The boy learned to read with the help of a friend of the mother who lived next door.

Corvalan studied at a teacher in Tom and received a teacher's diploma in 1934, but even earlier, in 1932, he found work as a writer and editor in the communist newspapers The Popular Front, Centenary, and others. In his view, Chile was to be governed People and be for people.

The Communist Party was banned in 1947, and Luis Corvalan was sent to a concentration camp in Pisaguua. After the legalization of the HRC in 1958, he was elected to the city council of Concepcion and twice by the senator from the province of Newbell, and Aconcagua and Valparaiso.

Luis Corvalan: family

The future leader of the CPC married Lili Castillo Riquelme in 1946 in Valparaiso. They had four children: the son of Luis-Alberto and three daughters. The son died of a heart attack in Bulgaria in 28 years. His wife and two daughters, Viviana and Maria-Victoria, survived Corvalan.

Key ally

In the 1970s, the Communist Party of Chile had about 50,000 members, which made it the largest part of the Allende coalition after the Socialists. Corvalan's party was seen as the representative of all the communist forces of South America, his success in the elections was admired. And he foresaw her growing influence. By the 1970s, the CPC had already had 20% of the vote. Its members were such outstanding people as the poet Pablo Neruda, writer Francisco Coloane and songwriter Victor Hara.

Nevertheless, local Communists were considered moderate, and Corvalan boring. "His pedantic speeches, uniform suits and old-fashioned hats seemed not designed to inspire Chilean youth," the New York Times wrote in 1968.

And Corvalan began to change his image. He began wearing bright ties, smiling at the cameras and posing with young communists in mini-skirts.

Junta

The Pinochet Putsch on September 11, 1973 put an end to the efforts of the Government of People's Unity. Thousands of people were killed, arrested and tortured. After Allende's government was overthrown and Corvalan escaped, the military power, persecuting him, arrested his son Luis-Alberto. He was tortured, but he was silent.

According to the Chilean press, Corvalan managed to leave thanks to his wife and daughters.

In custody

But soon Korvalan was found and imprisoned. In October 1973, his execution was postponed due to the fierce debate in the United Nations. The Chilean delegate insisted that the verdict had not yet been passed. Later Corvalan was found guilty of high treason.

In 1974, while he was being held in a Chilean prison on Dawson Island in the Magellan Strait, the Soviet Union appropriated the International Lenin Peace Prize to Corvalan and fanned the scandal, demanding his release in various international forums.

They exchanged a bully

The United States, acting as an intermediary, agreed on its exchange. Mr. Bukovsky, who documented that in the Soviet Union non-conformists were sent to Soviet psychiatric hospitals, was released by the Kremlin and settled in England. Luis Corvalan was also released from the dungeons.

Having freed himself, Luis Corvalan, the children and his wife went to Moscow and began to live there as high-ranking officials. According to some reports, he made a plastic surgery and returned to Chile incognito in the 1980s to organize resistance to the government. According to the surgeon, Luis Corvalan before and after the plastics - these are two different people. He thinned his nose and raised his eyelids.

Corvalan reappeared publicly in Chile in 1989, when Gen. Augusto Pinochet lost in the election, and for many years worked on memoirs that never were completed. During the forced emigration, he collaborated with Volodya Teitelboim and other exiled leaders of the CPC to restore the almost destroyed Communist Party of Chile. In the USSR, Korvalan was expected to be severely criticized by the CPSU for the failure of the government of the People's Unity. As one party functionary said, Lenin taught that it is not enough to make a revolution, it is necessary to know how to protect it.

The Chilean Way

Don Lucho, as Corvalan called his associates, had long advocated a peaceful path to socialism through elections and within the framework of the constitution. His internal conflict was that during the three years of the activity of the government of National Unity he could not dare to step down from the universally recognized constitutional path and arm people to defend the communist gains. But as he once colorfully expressed himself, on the crossing the horses are not changed. You can not suddenly move from work within the framework of the constitution to armed struggle, although in 1973 many leftists insisted on this. Luis Corvalan was still convinced that in the conditions of Chile, the people's government can only succeed when it receives the support of the absolute majority of the population favoring "progressive changes". And this meant attracting a large number of voters to Christian-democratic convictions. At that time it was unreal.

Pledge of Unity

The Communist Party of Chile suffered from a split, since under the dictatorship of Pinochet, part of it remained in the underground, and the leadership was in exile. After a long analysis and internal criticism in 1980, the party led by Corvalan began the policy of a "mass popular uprising." In an attempt to overthrow the junta, acts of sabotage, raids on banks and power outages were organized. And in 1983, the armed wing of the party was formed, the Patriotic Front of Manuel Rodriguez, who in 1986 made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Pinochet. As a result, five bodyguards were killed. A significant merit of the leader of the CPC is that his party, although greatly weakened by the coup, remained united.

Luis Corvalan wrote several books, including "The Government of Salvador Allende", "Communists and Democracy" and memoirs.