On 4 May 2025, at the Kaisariani Shooting Range, right next to the site where on May Day 1944 the Nazis executed 200 communists, a large rally of the Attica Party Organization of the KKE was held to mark the 80th anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples, with Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the CC of the KKE, as the keynote speaker.
In his speech, D. Koutsoumbas noted, among other things that “9 May is and will forever be engraved in the memory of the peoples as the day of the Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples. As a day of honour, remembrance, and tribute to the millions who fell in the struggle to crush the imperialist fascist-Nazi Axis. As a day of remembrance of the enormous contribution of the Red Army, the Soviet people, and the national liberation movements of Europe, in the formation of which the Communist Parties played a leading role. (...)
The KKE, going against the tide of historical distortion and ignorance fostered by the system, will continue to honour and defend the enormous contribution of the Soviet Union to the struggle to defeat fascism and Nazism. Because it bore the main burden of the struggle, paying a heavy price (...)
The contribution of the popular national liberation movements was decisive in the defeat of fascism and Nazism. From the very beginning, under the leadership of the communists, it was these movements that opened the second front against Nazi Germany and its allies in the heart of occupied Europe. (...) We are proud that our Party, the honoured KKE, was the inspiration, organizer, and lifeblood of the great National Liberation Front (EAM), one of the largest resistance movements in occupied Europe. (...) Unfortunately, however, this mass workers’ - people’s struggle did not succeed in achieving final victory. The KKE, despite its enormous contribution, was not sufficiently prepared to raise the question of the conquest of workers’ power as the result and reward of the resistance struggle. Under the influence of the analyses of the International Communist Movement, it failed to create the conditions for a course that could lead to victory, to workers’ - people’s power after the liberation of the country from occupation. It viewed the struggle against imperialist war and fascism detached from the need to overthrow capitalist power, which gives rise to them. (...)
If the peaceful parliamentary path to socialism was not feasible in 1944, when the workers’ - people’s forces were massively organized, revolted, and even armed, and the capitalist state apparatus remained shattered, then this proves that it will never happen with such a strategy, it is pure utopia.
That is why it remains a valuable historical lesson that our Party, in all circumstances and under any correlation of forces, must remain unwaveringly committed to the goal of workers’ power. The goal of the People’s Alliance, as a social alliance with an anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist orientation, as a workers’ - people’s opposition to bourgeois power, must not change course or content. Only in this way can the workers’ - people’s struggle have a clear and distinct perspective. (...)
The Second World War—like the First World War before it, and dozens of other local and regional wars that marked the 20th century and continue to this day—was an imperialist war. (...) This monstrous imperialist crime against humanity was committed on the altar of capitalist interests.
All these factors, all these rivalries are still present today. (...) Our country is deeply embroiled in these rivalries, with the responsibility of the New Democracy government and the effective consent of all parties that support the capitalist system, the EU and NATO.
In Ukraine, a bloody conflict has been raging for over three years between the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, with its allies in the US, NATO, and the EU, and the Russian bourgeoisie, which has its own allies. Regardless of the real or non-existent pretexts used by each side, regardless of the monstrous lies we have heard in our country from the mouthpieces that were supposedly on the “right side of history”, it is now obvious that the war is fought over the division of fertile land, rare earths, energy, pipelines, ports, the Black Sea EEZ, market shares, etc. What else, if not this, is proven by the agreement signed in recent days by the reactionary Trump and Zelenskiy governments on the exploitation of the wealth of the Ukrainian people?
Capitalist Russia, on the other hand, has proven that although it is a relatively young “predator” in the capitalist world, it has the power to stand up to the Euro-Atlantic bloc and achieve success on the battlefield. This was a development that shook the Euro-Atlantic alliance itself, which for years had been presented to us as “unshakable” and built on “common liberal values”.
Today, the capitalist world is heading towards a new international crisis and the EU, transitioning to a war economy, is seeking once again to shift the burden onto workers. That is why it is preparing European societies – including the Greek one – to accept paying out of their own pockets and with their own blood for the interests of European capitalists and European monopolies. To accept without protest further cuts to their needs in order to pay for trade wars, tariffs and countermeasures, the arms race and the “war economy”, i.e., the adaptation of the entire capitalist economy to conditions of war. (...)
Eighty years after the end of World War II, the lessons drawn from it reinforce the position that, in the face of capitalist barbarity, the only alternative is socialism-communism. It is the liberation of the working class from exploitation, the establishment of new social relations, social ownership of the means of production, central planning, and the active participation of workers in the organization and management of social production and social services. (...)
For this reason, the KKE has set as its goal and seeks to strengthen its capacity at all levels, in every workplace and sector, in every city and village:
- To take the lead in developing struggles with demands, without detaching this action from the ideological-political discussion and struggle for the historic mission of the working class, the abolition of exploitative social relations.
- To link every economic and political struggle, under all circumstances, to the main political task, the struggle for workers’ power, and to make use of all forms of struggle in this direction.
- To repel every anti-communist attack and remain vigilant.
The KKE has proven its devotion to the working class, to the right cause of the people, to socialism, to proletarian internationalism by giving the blood of its best members! (...)”
inter.kke.gr
