Vladimir Lenin: The man who changed the course of history

By Nikos Mottas.

It was in the dawn of January 21, 1924, 98 years ago, when the heart of the greatest revolutionary in modern history, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, stopped beating. Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and architect of the first socialist state in the world, was 54 years old.

The name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is identified with two dialectically connected issues. On the one hand, there is his revolutionary activity and practice as the leader of the 20th century's most significant event- the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution. On the other hand, there is his theoretical work which is the development of the revolutionary theory of Marx and Engels in the era of Imperialism. That extraordinary combination of revolutionary theory and practice makes Lenin a unique personality in history who, 98 years after his death, remains “alive” in the collective memory and hearts of the working class people across the world.

Jean-Jacques Marie vs Grover Furr on Joseph Stalin

Jean-Jacques Marie and Grover Furr.

In December 2021, British journal "Historical Materialism" published reviews of two books ("Yezhov vs Stalin" and "Khrushchev Lied") written by American professor Grover Furr. The reviews are signed by French historian, specialized on Soviet History, Jean-Jacques Marie. 

According to professor Furr, "Historical Materialism" declined to publish his answer to Marie's reviews which, as he states, "are full of crude personal insults, attempts at sarcasm and full of shocking errors". 

EAM: Notes on Greece's National Liberation Front

 By Nikos Mottas.

The 27th of September marked the 80th anniversary of the foundation of EAM, Greece's National Liberation Front, which played the leading role in the struggle against the country's Axis occupation. The major force behind the foundation, organization and activity of EAM was the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) which led the popular, anti-fascist struggle during the 1941-1944 period. 

KKE and French communists honored the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune

Photo: 902.gr

“We are here in Paris to culminate the rich program of tributes, events, publications and other activities through which our Party honors the heroic Paris Commune, 150 years since the first “storming of dream” by the working class. We are here, we walked in the footsteps of the Commune and drawing strength and knowledge from its teachings, we continue the beautiful but difficult struggle. So that dreams will be vindicated”, said Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, during a speech in Paris, France.

Sergei Kirov — An example of Bolshevism

Sergei Kirov, one of the most prominent party and state leaders in the Soviet Union in 1920-1930, a charismatic personality and close companion of Joseph Stalin, was murdered on 1st December 1934 aged 48.

Sergei Mironovich Kirov (real name Sergei Kostrikov) was born on 27 March 1886 in the city of Urzhum, Vyatka province (now Kirov region) in a middle-class family. Sergei lost his parents at an early age and was raised, along his two sisters Anna and Elizabeth, by his grandmother Melania Avdeyevna. He was sent to the "House of Charity for young orphans" and in 1901 he graduated from City College. He later joined the lower Mechanical and Technical School of Kazan. 

Demosthenes Ligdopoulos, Greece's first communist hero

 By Nikos Mottas.

Demosthenes Ligdopoulos was born in Athens, Greece in 1898. At the age of 18, in 1916, he was enrolled at the University as a mathematics student. On the same year, alongside his co-students Sp. Komiotis, Fr. Tzoulatis and Tzoumas brothers, he founded the “Socialist Youth” of Athens. Since then, the socialist ideas and the labor movement became an inseparable part of his life. The Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 was an event that ignited the flame of Ligdopoulos' revolutionary thinking and activity.

The 103rd anniversary of Komsomol was honored in Russia

In Red Square, Moscow.

The 29th of October marked the 103rd anniversary since the founding of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, known as Komsomol.

Komsomol became the hope and reserve of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According to Lenin, it was an organization aimed to “teach communism” to the younger generations. Komsomol members defended the October Revolution from the very first moment, against the counterrevolutionaries and the foreign powers that attacked the country in 1918. 

KKE denounces the despicable anti-communist "resolution" circulated in the European Parliament

Another despicable and unhistorical anti-communist “informal resolution” is being circulated in the European Parliament. According to 902.gr portal, the European Parliament Group of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) denounces that the so-called “Informal group on European Remembrance” tries to promote a shameful resolution which is undersigned by some MEPs from the “European People's Party (EPP)” and the “European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)”. 

Truth and Lies about the 1956 counterrevolution in Hungary

"In autumn 1956, Hungary announced its withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, but Soviet troops invaded the country and suppressed the uprising." 

 

"In 1968 the Czechoslovak attempt to distance itself from Moscow was met with an invasion of the country by the member states of the Warsaw Pact.”

(Greek History book, 3rd grade of High School) 70

The legalization of the KKE in 1974

By Nikos Mottas.

It was on 23 September 1974 when the Greek government of “national unity”, under Konstantine Karamanlis, was publicly announcing the legalization of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) after 27 years. Alongside with the legislative decree, the government was repealing the infamous Law 509/1947 which was a source of persecutions, exiles, tortures and executions of thousands of communists during the post-war years. 

On 25 September 1974 the front page of “Rizospastis”, the official organ of the KKE, was dominated by the Greeting Message of the Central Committee to the working class, the peasantry, the whole people. Here is a significant excerpt of the message:

The memory of the Antifascist Victory does not fade away — Socialism is the future!

Statement by the Secretariat of the European Communist Initiative for the 76th anniversary of the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples and the defeat of Nazism. The statement reads:

76 years ago, the Red Army raised the Red Flag in the Reichstag, marking the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples and the defeat of Nazism. That was a fierce and bloody struggle, led by the Soviet Union with the decisive contribution of many anti-fascist, partisan movements, with the Communist Parties at the forefront.

Goebbels in Florida: Red Scare bill declares November 7th as... "victims of communism day"

A monstrous anti-communist bill that falsifies history was approved on Wednesday by the Florida House of Representatives. More specifically, according to the bill (HB 1553) students in Florida schools would be taught each year about “how people have suffered and died under communist regimes”!

Furthermore, the bill requires the governor of annually issue a proclamation designating November 7th – the anniversary day of the Great October Socialist Revolution – as... “Victims of Communism Day”!

Vladimir I. Lenin — Lessons of the Paris Commune

Lessons of the Commune
By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

After the coup d état, which marked the end of the revolution of 1848, France fell under the yoke of the Napoleonic regime for a period of 18 years. This regime brought upon the country not only economic ruin but national humiliation. In rising against the old regime the proletariat under took two tasks—one of them national and the other of a class character—the liberation of France from the German invasion and the socialist emancipation of the workers from capitalism. This union of two tasks forms a unique feature of the Commune.

150 years since the Paris Commune — Abstract from Karl Marx's "The Civil War in France"

Today, 18 March 2021, marks the 150th anniversary of the heroic Paris Commune, the first time in the history of mankind when the state power passed, albeit for a short time, into the hands of the proletariat, the most pioneering and only revolutionary class of capitalist society. 

The Commune founded by the workers of Paris lived for only 72 days. However its historic importance was enormous. Nothing after the Paris Commune would be the same for the working class, nor for the bourgeoisie which, from then on, would be forced to live with the nightmare of a revolution overthrowing its dominance.

On the occasion of the 150 years since the Commune de Paris, we publish two chapters from Karl Marx's work "The Civil War in France" (1871) which refer to the historical events of the then period. 

Australia: Greek communist immigrants condemn Senate's despicable anti-communist resolution

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) friends' organizations in Sydney and Melbourne strongly condemn the despicable resolution adopted by the Australian Senate that seeks to equate communism with and monster of fascism.

In the statement published on 902 portal, the ΚΚΕ Friends Organizations denounce the Australian Labour Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party for “cutting and sewing” in order to “turn History upside down and bring it to their anti-communist measures”. Alongside the two major parties were three “independent” senators and the far-right “National” party. 

PCTE: 100 years after the foundation of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE)

Statement of the Central Committee of the PCTE on the Centenary of the Foundation of the PCE (SEIC):

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) addresses to all the workers from our country in the start of 2021 – 100 years after the foundation of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) as the Spanish Section of the Communist International (SEIC) – and conveys the following statement.

Antonio Gramsci — I hate the indifferent

By Antonio Gramsci.

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the dead weight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power.

On the Anti-communist remarks of the Ecumenical Patriarch concerning the Holodomor

By Nikos Mottas.

“The Ukrainian term ‘Holodomor’ refers to the man-made and intentional famine, the devilish plan of the Stalinist system aimed at a well-planned genocide of a very pious people with the aim of eradicating the Christian faith and the Orthodox Church...”.

These words were not expressed by any extremist ultra-conservative bishop or priest, nor they were written in any right-wing newspaper. These are the words of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Orthodox Church, during a memorial service held at the Patriarchal Church in Istanbul on the occasion of the 87th anniversary of the so-called 1932-1933 Ukrainian famine (also known as “Holodomor”). 

Gus Hall: A great figure of the U.S. communist movement

By Nikos Mottas.

The 13th of October marked the 20th anniversary since the death of American communist and long-time leader of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) Gus Hall.

General Secretary of the CPUSA from 1959 to 2000, Hall was one of the most brilliant figures of the U.S. communist movement, alongside William Z. Foster, Paul Robeson, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, W.E.B. Du Bois and others.

His birthname was Kustaa Halberg and was born in 1910 in Saint Louis County, Minesota. Son of Finnish immigrants, he grew up in a working class family and was involved early on in the labor movement. He left school at the age of 15 in order to support his poor ten-child family by working in mines, railroads and lumber camps. 

EU and 'Black Ribbon Day': The anti-communist falsification of history shall not pass!

By Nikos Mottas.

Once again the European Union resorts to hideous anti-communism on the occasion of the so-called “European Day of Remembrance for victims of Stalinism and Nazism” (known as "Black Ribbon Day" which is observed annually on August 23rd. 

In a joint statement, the vice-president of the EU Commission Vera Jourova and the EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders reproduce the same old anti-communist slanders about the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Without any respect for history, the EU officials reproduce the blatant lie about the supposed “alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany”.