In early 1976 the Ethiopian Amharic language daily, Addis Zemen, opened its columns to a surprisingly free political debate. Through a series of so-called letters to the editor, two political factions, one violently opposed to the military government, the other reluctantly in favor of it, exchanged daily barbs. Both groups considered themselves Marxists-Leninists, both wanted people's government and a socialist revolution. Both, it should be added, used a complex, abstract, highly intellectual and, in addition, not too clear language which rather belied their claims to represent the broad masses. Here, however, the similarity between the two groups stopped. anti-government faction, initially known as the Democracia group, accused the military council and its supporters of fascism. pro-government group, known as The Voice of the Masses, called its rivals anarchists. This debate was the first and most visible step in an attempt to heal the rift between the military and civilian left in Ethiopia, the major unresolved internal issue of the Ethiopian revolution. From the time of the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in September 1974, the military council, or Derg, was faced with the opposition of one or another faction of the radical intelligentsia, a large section of the student body, the old labor confederation, and, in general, most civilian organized groups. Such opposition was not directed against the policies enacted by the Derg-a sweeping land reform, the nationalization of major industrial concerns, and the organization of the population into peasant associations and urban neighborhood associations whose powers have become quite considerable. Rather, the opposition was directed against the military government per se, dubbed as fascist irrespective of the radical policies it enacted. tension between military and civilians had a very important impact on the course of the revolution. It undoubtedly radicalized it far beyond the Derg's initial vague concept of socialism, because the military tried to overcome the opposition of the leftist civilians by adopting many of their ideas. It also led to a period of outright terror, in which rival military factions and rival civilian factions entered into alliances and broke them up again, seeking to eliminate each other in the name of subtle ideological differences and a not-so-subtle struggle for power. Two years after the beginning of the ideological debate, the relations between military and civilians remained as difficult as ever, and the ideological arguments used to justify the rift remained mostly the same; at the same time the military and a part of the civilian left once again recognized they needed each other and were engaged, somewhat reluctantly, in a new search for cooperation.