During the height of the derg's rule (Millitary government that ruled Ethiopia for almost 2 decades),Lt. Col. Atnafu Abebe, the derg's deputy chairman said he could not condone the killings & oppressions made in the name of Marxism, an ideology he considered alien to Ethiopia's political traditions.He made his speech in the
regime's third congress & declared would be impossible to establish in Ethiopia during his lifetime .
He also ridiculed the notion of a workers' party in a largely peasant country and condemned the alliance with the USSR as alienating Ethiopia from its longtime Western allies who, besides weapons,had provided capital and technology.
Atnafu misread his popularity within the derg,and he completely misunderstood the attraction of the Marxist vision that now conditioned the derg's thinking. In response, Mengistu termed his old colleague in arms a reactionary, a view that the military council sustained. When, over the next few days, Atnafu refused several
times to recant, Mengistu had him summarily executed on 13 November 1977.
