At the end of 1971, Cuban President Fidel Castro visited Chile in a four-week state visit giving credence to the belief that the Chilean Way to Socialism placed Chile en route to Cuban Socialism, i.e. soviet Communism.[9]
Supreme Court’s resolution
On 26 May 1973, Chile’s Supreme Court unanimously denounced the Allende régime’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions, because of its continual refusal to permit police execution of judicial resolutions contradicting the Government’s measures.
[edit] Chamber of Deputies’ resolution
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On 22 August 1973, with the support of the Christian Democrats and National Party members, the Chamber of Deputies passed 81-47 a resolution that asked “the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, and members of the Armed and Police Forces” [19] to put an immediate end to breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans.
The resolution declared that the Allende Government sought . . . to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system, claiming it had made violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct. Essentially, most of the accusations were about the Socialist Government disregarding the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.
Specifically, the Socialist Government of President Allende was accused of:
* ruling by decree, thwarting the normal legislative system
* refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its partisans; not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives
* ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
* sundry media offences; usurping control of the National Television Network and applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government...
* allowing its socialist supporters to assemble armed, preventing the same by its right wing opponents
* . . . supporting more than 1,500 illegal ‘takings’ of farms...
* illegal repression of the El Teniente miners’ strike
* illegally limiting emigration
Finally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende’s efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces were characterised as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks [20].
Soviet role
According to the Mitrokhin Archive, the KGB and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate launched a disinformation campaign following the coup.[22] It is reported that Salvador Allende had a long-lasting relationship with the KGB[23] and the Cuban packages scandal had revealed arms smuggling from Cuba.[24][25] On the other hand sources suggest that the Soviet Union was sympathetic to Allende, but did not assist him because they believed he was “weak” for refusing to use force against the opposition.[23]
According to Allende’s KGB file, Allende “was made to understand the necessity of reorganising Chile’s army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile’s and the USSR’s intelligence services”.[23]
It has been argued that the USSR refused to finance Allende mainly because of his unwillingness of forming a Soviet-type of bureaucratic system[26]
As a personal observer, a fact few noticed is the role Soviet Union during the days immediately following the coup d’état. In that time most local radios were silenced by the Pinochet regime and the people sintonized foreign short wave radios. Actually, the clear one was Radio Moscú. During those days the Radio Moscú broadcasted that an army commaned by general Prat was marching on the capital from the south to overthrow the military regime. Those news, without any other confirmation, gave confidence to small left-wing armed militants to begin a fight against the armed forces. However, later on those news proved to be false and many of the militants died in the fight and other were captured and tortured. This was also an excuse for the military to begin detaining people searching for guns and other military gear. Thousand of people suffered torture to reveal where the guns supposedly brought by the Cubans to make the Revolution were hidden.