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| Nikita Khrushchev and Deng Xiaoping. |
140 years have been passed since the day when "the greatest living thinker ceased to think". It was the 14th of March 1883 when Karl Marx, the greatest of modern-era philosophers, died peacefully at his home in London. Three days later, during his burial at Highgate Cemetery, his close companion Friedrich Engels was saying: "An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt."
“If someone said that the Soviet Union would disintegrate, for us it would be like the sun would not rise the next day” the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, had said in an interview. This phrase captures the feelings of millions of communists and other progressive people who understood that the overthrow of socialism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union would mean a major social setback for the working people all over the world.
December 30th marked the 100th anniversary since the founding of the world's first workers' state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The creation of the USSR was the practical result of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution, the single most important event in modern history that became the first conscious step for the transition from capitalism to socialism and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
The founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 30 December 1922 marked the greatest state-political achievement of the revolutionary working class to date. It was the result of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the successful struggle of the young Russian Soviet Republic against counterrevolution and interventions, the overcoming of civil war and so-called "war communism".
Concluding the teleconference of the European Communist Initiative, Giorgos Marinos, among other things, noted the following:
Dear comrades,
The international and domestic developments in the 100 years since the founding of the USSR confirm the necessity to enrich our programmatic conception of socialism, incorporating all the positive and at the same time negative experience from the very course of socialist construction in the 20th century and drawing useful conclusions from the victory of the counter-revolution, first of all in the USSR.
Women’s role in production: its effect upon the family
Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form? These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their menfolk as well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of some, “bizarre”. No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia.
Every time a Communist Party compromised the aim of workers' power in order to participate (or support) a “progressive”, “left-wing”, “anti-capitalist”, “anti-fascist” etc, bourgeois government the results were utterly disappointing, leading to ideological degeneration and disintegration of the workers-popular movement.
A few days ago, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), a party with significant history, paid the price of its participation in the “progressive” government of the Socialists, by receiving a rather disappointing 4.4% and four seats in the legislative elections. This result marks an almost 2% loss compared to the 2019 election.
Within Venezuelan politics, there are many challenges to be faced by the parties, especially those of the left which are critical of the current system of government.
Among these parties is the Communist Party with its critical voice and which currently faces the contradictions of a country that can be read from various realities.
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.
"Dear Comrades: Receive the fraternal and revolutionary greetings of the Brazilian Communist Party, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. We recently successfully held our XVI Congress. The PCB is organized throughout the country and it’s present in the struggles of the workers and the youth.
Nazim Hikmet. The great Turkish poet of the world's working class whose poems praised and highlighted the people's struggles for a better future without exploitation.
The man whose poetry expressed the revolutionary desires and hopes of the proletariat, of the poor and despised people in every corner of the world.
It was 120 years ago, on January 15, 1902, when Nazim Hikmet Ran was born in the city of Thessaloniki, then part of the Ottoman Empire, from a Turkish father and a mother of German, Polish and Georgian descent.
The Cuban Revolution inspired and continues to inspire the workers-people's struggles in all over the world, proving the vitality of the Marxist-Leninist worldview and the significance of proletarian internationalism. Figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Vilma Espin, Fran Pais and others became eternal symbols of the revolutionary working class movement throughout the world.
Under the leadership of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz and with the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union and other socialist states, Cuba achieved a number of extraordinary – unprecedented in Latin America - achievements in sectors such as Health, Education, Womens' Rights, Culture, Sports, etc.
The deeply anti-worker policies of the bourgeois governments, from Boris Yeltsin to the current administration of Vladimir Putin, leads more and more Russians to consider what they lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Huge social achievements were abolished, the rich became richer and the poor became poorer, while the income for the working class families shrinks year by year. Capitalism has shown its real, repulsive, barbaric face to the working people of Russia.
It was thirty years ago, on December 26, 1991, when the red flag with the sickle and hammer was lowered from the Kremlin.
It was then, during the cold days of December, when the first socialist state of the world, the homeland of the world's proletariat, bent under the weight of the counterrevolution. Four days before, on December 22nd, the leaderships of three of the largest Soviet republics had decided the dissolution of the USSR, while the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had been outlawed on summer of the same year.
The interview (here in Greek) was originally published in "Rizospastis" weekend edition (18-19 December 2021). English translation by Nikos Mottas.
— The bourgeois parties celebrated when the red flag was lowered from the Kremlin. What were their main declarations at that time?
We translated and publish an article written by Andreas Sörensen, head of the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP), that was published in "Riktpunkt" on 30 November 2021. The article is titled "Has socialism worked in the North?" and provides a response to the arguments made by Sjöstedt and Dragstedt.
By Andreas Sörensen.