(Continued from previous post.)
Revival program needed
In the early 1990s an absolutely untenable socio-economic system was foisted on Russia. Three decades after renouncing socialism we still have not reached 1990 performance indicators. The country has not restored what has been destroyed not by war, but by irresponsibility and treachery, the greed of oligarchs and the crimes of corrupt officials.
The growth of left sentiments in the world meets with furious resistance of transnational capital. Influential forces here in Russia take its side. They seek to keep intact the destructive socio-economic model. These liberal revenge-seekers do all they can to prevent a revision of the system that has taken shape. They do not want to reject the course imposed on us in the vicious 1990s.
We communists know that from the perspective of large world processes the behavior of the Russian comprador bourgeoisie represents resistance of a historically doomed side. But today it is exacting a heavy price from our country and its citizens. An attempt is being made to wreck Russia through aggravating the economic crisis and actions of “the fifth column.”
Western strategists are inspired by the glaring flaws in the Russian bourgeois system. Our opponents know well what happened after the collapse of the Soviet model. They were at one with Yeltsin, Gaidar, Chubais and Kozyrev who were cutting up what they scoffingly called “the new Russia.” We were plunged in the most backward, absolutely primitive gangster capitalism. Those who planted multiple mines under the foundation of Russian statehood are still rubbing their dirty hands.
Those who run the Russian economy still do not have a firm commitment to break with the ideology foisted on us by the globalists, nor do they have a coherent program of transformations in our national interests. We hoped that under the circumstances power will at long last come up with a new socio-economic course and renounce the ideology of socialism-haters. Instead, we are stuck with a budget of addiction to commodity trade and technological backwardness. On practically all counts it envisages symbolic increase of financing, which in practice means decline in real terms, adjusted for inflation, or a reduction even in nominal terms. We see that the government’s financial and economic unit continues to ignore the need to break with the neocolonial structures of global capital, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. These people still cling to the ideology of a raw materials appendage which rejects the prospect of full-fledged development and forward-looking economic growth. The negative consequences are there for all to see.
Over the past 10 years our economy has registered an average annual growth rate of under 1%. In 2022 it shrank by 2%. Experts from Moscow University’s Chair of Political Economy point out that Russia’s GDP today is a mere 20—25% above that of 1990. Meanwhile the world economy has on average grown by three times on 1990. Тhus, the world economy over the past 30-odd years has been growing at least 12 times faster than the Russian economy. The same can be said of the USA and the leading European states whose economies have also grown by 2-3 times since 1990.
China has seen its economy increase by 8 times since the mid-1990s. The difference between the performance of oligarchic capitalism and socialism renewed under the leadership of the Communist Party is evident to all. This is what we should proceed from if we want to preserve our country and set it on the path of victories and successful independent development.
Over the same ten years real incomes of citizens dropped by 12% putting us in the sixth ten in terms of minimum wage. With its current budget policy Russia, according to UNESCO data, has dropped to 121st place in the world in terms of spending on healthcare, to 84th place in terms of spending on education and 37th place in terms of financing science.
Even the top moneybags have the same flat tax rate as citizens with medium and low incomes. Billionaires contribute to the treasury the same percentage of their assets as paupers. Yet the government is still reluctant to revise that rule which has been scrapped practically all over the world.
In the Soviet era one in every four scientists in the world was a Soviet citizen. In the last 30 years the number of highly qualified scientists in our country dropped by at least one third. Their number continued to decline in 2022. It was down 2.5% on 2021 and 9% on 2010. Without exaggeration, this poses a strategic threat because technological sovereignty is indispensable for survival and development.
In last year’s report “The Broken Vector of the Russian Economic Development” the same experts from Moscow University come to this conclusion: the economic model Russia took on board after the collapse of the USSR is categorically ineffective and contrary to the tasks of development. Equally ineffective and irresponsible is the management of the economy in its present form which is a direct result of adventurous and plunderous privatization.
As a result of de facto illegal privatization deals the majority of Russian enterprises ended up in the hands of owners who are incapable of running them effectively. They do not want to invest in development, are concerned only about their personal profit and syphon off huge financial resources out of the country. Only 15% of strategic resources are in the hands of the state. The lamentable results of privatization haunt the Russian economy determining its character and prospects.
The scientists see the only way out of the situation in transferring strategically important sectors to the state. On the immediate agenda is nationalization of the key enterprises and removing the oligarchy from management of the economy. The experts also come out for a revival of the Soviet practice of five-year plans. These should first and foremost envisage the restoration of existing and creation of new spearhead technology development projects.
These conclusions fully coincide with the demands of the CPRF. Our policy documents insist on the need for a new socio-economic course. The country faces massive social-economic tasks. Their solution demands a fundamental revision of the policy of the last 30 years. Without it we will go under.
The bandit Western sanctions have destroyed the former format of Russia’s interaction with the external world. A patch-up approach will not work in this situation. A change of economic and financial policy is required. A switch toward the path of a new industrialization – this is what guarantees our sovereignty.
Russia needs a massive industrialization, a rapid growth of the national industry and quick eastward reorientation of export and import.
It is high time to admit that the private sector should not hold sway in system-forming sectors. Today, when the question of economic growth is the question of national salvation, the state must play the key role. It alone can address such priorities as boosting of production, support of the poor, and expansion of foreign economic ties in new directions. The authorities should revise the untenable course which has brought colossal losses.
At the tail end of the previous year President Putin, conducting a meeting of the Council for Development and National Projects, set six key socio-economic targets for 2023:
— reorientation of trade;
— strengthening technological sovereignty;
— priority growth of the manufacturing industry;
— financial sovereignty;
— raising the incomes of citizens;
— protection of motherhood and childhood.
Commitment to these goals was reaffirmed in March of this year in the government’s report to the State Duma. This cannot but be welcomed. But such key socio-economic tasks can only be solved if there is a new and sound policy and a coherent program of actions.
Russia has all the resources needed to reverse the dangerous trends, and protect its present and future. The best way to combat the crisis of capitalism is to get rid of capitalism itself! This has been proved in our program of immediate measures to revive Russia approved by the Oryol International Economic Forum. We have ample grounds for demanding de-oligarchization of the economy, nationalization of strategic sectors, commitment of the financial system to the goals of accelerated development and revival of state planning. Our program has the backing of scientists, doctors, teachers and the heads of key enterprises. It offers a concrete and detailed plan of actions to tackle the strategic tasks facing the country.
It provides clear answers how to put an end to the policy of decimating the national industry and wrest its key sectors from the hands of foreign capital; liberate ourselves from the financial and legal diktat of transnational structures such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO; clear our strategic enterprises of the presence of foreign agents; implement a robust state program of the development of electronics, aircraft building, machine-building, woodworking; restore the single power grid; give the Central Bank the role of a truly state bank; put an end to the flawed practice of parking capital abroad, due to which we lost 600 billion dollars of our gold and currency reserves in 2022. Of that sum 350 billion have been unlawfully “frozen” in Western banks. A further 250 billion have been hastily spirited out of Russia by the oligarchs.
Our program is a program of a new industrialization which would involve research centers in reviving sectoral science and treble the spending on research and development.
Our program is a new development budget which can be brought up to 40 trillion roubles within a comparatively short space of time. It means comprehensive social transformations the most important of which would give back to our citizens free and high-class education and health service. It means reducing the retirement age to the former level: 55 for women and 60 for men.
In our Victory Program we summed up our key proposals and demands and complemented them with new ones which reflect the most important recent changes. We have submitted to the State Duma a range of exceedingly important draft laws envisaging all-round support of the social sphere and key sectors of the economy.
The sound character of our program has been convincingly confirmed by numerous parliamentary hearings and round tables devoted to the problems of the national industry, agriculture, healthcare, education and science. We have brought together top scientists, leading industry specialists whose knowledge and ideas should be the basis of a new policy serving our national interests.
To win the battle against those who declared an all-out war against Russia we need mobilization of the economy and ideology, science and culture. This calls for a new industrialization, a plan economy, information support based not on empty and noisy declarations, but on real policies in the interests of the country and its citizens. History vindicates our cause. Socialism has repeatedly confirmed its creative power and its role in saving the Motherland. The Great October pulled the planet out of the First World War, and our Great Victory put an end to the Second World War in May of 1945. Thereafter we have owed our salvation to the nuclear-missile parity which still ensures our security.
The West has more than once lowered “an iron curtain” on the Soviet Union. But the USSR’s leading positions continued to grow stronger. How was this achieved? Through economic independence! The independence we can only regain if we rely on socialism as the foundation.
To save lives, to save souls
The main security issue is preserving the population. To survive in our wide space we need a population of 200 million. To defend a territory of 16 million square kilometers we need a 1.5 million-strong army. But the demographic situation categorically runs counter to the strategic needs of our Power.
By the early 1970s the USSR was, in terms of life expectancy, ahead not only of the United States, but of the majority of European countries. And this despite the fact that in the early 20th century the average life span in Russia was 17 years less than in America.
In 1900 Russia had a population of 70 million. Fifty years later there were already 102 million of us. And this despite the two world wars. The next 40 years added 50 million. In 1990 there were 148 million of us, but now there are two million fewer of us. That is, in the last 30 years the country’s population did not increase but decreased.
We witness the continued effect of factors which lead to a demographic catastrophe and which stem directly from the current socio-economic policy. Russia has been dying out for the fifth year in a row.
Since 2018 the population shrank by 2.5 million, that is, by 1,500 people every day. Last year alone the population dropped by 600,000. Birth rate dropped by 6% on 2021. The birth rate was 9 per 100,000, the worst indicator since 2001. According to the Health Ministry, more than half of Russian men die before they are 65.
These colossal problems are closely connected with the high divorce rate. According to official statistics, out of a hundred new marriages between 60 and 65 end in divorce. It is one of the worst indicators in the world. In other words, three quarters of family unions fall apart. Half of divorced couples have no children.
The roots of all these phenomena are social problems which breed a sense of insecurity, of not being able to ensure a decent life for the children, housing, normal diet, medical help and good education. The demographic crisis leads to the crisis of manpower which also poses a threat to our national security. According to the results of a Central Bank study published in April 2023 Russia is experiencing the most acute shortage of manpower, especially in the young age bracket.
Along with the physical preservation of the people spiritual preservation is very important. Russia haters make it the aim of the information war to corrupt the souls and destroy the truth. In the fierce battle against the collective West it is not enough to strengthen the military potential. To move forward the Russian World needs inspiring values, a worldview based on the ideas of social justice. Education and culture should be the foundation of these ideas.
The destruction of the USSR and the liberal reforms were accompanied by a fierce ideological war aimed at destroying the unique system of educating the new generation. Thousands of children were left at the mercy of the street. They were fed “Western values,” including drug addiction, child prostitution, disdain for the acts of heroes, nihilism toward society. Everything connected with the achievements of the Soviet land and its youth, victories at the front and in the rear, the conquest of outer space and All-Union Construction Projects was expunged from the school programs.
In the middle of the 20th century we would not have won the war with Fascism, which was armed to the teeth, but for the Leninist-Stalinist modernization of the 1920s and 1930s. Its solid foundation was the brilliant development of the education system. The whole country went to school, hundreds of thousands of young people, children of workers, peasants and intellectuals, entered higher and secondary technical education institutions. As Stalin said at the 18th party congress, “a new Soviet intelligentsia has been created which has close ties with the people and is ready in its mass, to serve it faithfully.”
Satlin’s words are borne out by the biographies of the best Soviet writers, poets, film directors, composers who have left us a poignant chronicle of the Great Patriotic War. That chronicle includes “The Young Guard” by Alexander Fadeyev, “They Fought for Their Motherland” by Mikhail Sholokhov, wartime poetry of Konstantin Simonov. These outstanding authors created works that are the pride of Soviet literature. In those grim years they were war correspondents, working on the frontline and risking their lives. Yuri Bondarev went to the front in 1942 straight from school. The future author of the story “Battalions Ask for Fire Support” and the novel “Hot Snow” took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kiev from the Nazis.
In Russia before the Revolution about 80 percent of the population were illiterate. This is one of the reasons why Russia quickly lost its wind in the First World War: people were not prepared to fight. It was not until 1916 when it became clear how vulnerable a semi-literate soldier was that universal primary education was introduced. But the casualties could not be brought back.
Soviet power was very mindful of this sad lesson. Making education and culture generally accessible, it elevated them to an unheard of level of quality. In this way cadres were forged for a gigantic industrial breakthrough of the USSR and for the future Victory.
The course foisted on the country in the 1990s has been decimating our education for decades. It undermined fundamental and applied science. It took us several years to solve the obvious question: Russia must have a Russian Language Day.
On November 22, 1994 the World Bank published a report “Russia. Education in the Transition Period.” It set forth what amounted to a plan of destroying our education system. Part of the report was devoted to primary education, which it proposed to dump as unnecessary. The whole system of civic disciplines was also canceled. Basic subjects were emasculated. We are talking about mathematics, the Russian language and literature – all that shapes a person, citizen and a full-fledged specialist. Engineers also turned out to be redundant. Instead BA and MA degrees were introduced.
Sadly, one has to admit that this destructive plan was to a large extent implemented. We need urgently to rectify the situation. We cannot achieve an industrial and economic breakthrough without a massive increase of support for education and science on the part of the state. But the country which in the Soviet era, even in the grimmest war years, spent up to 17% of the budget on education, today spends no more than 4% of the budget, that is, less than one percent of the GDP.
Yes, it is heartening that in his address in February 2023, the President at long last declared that Russia is giving up the faulty Bologna system and is reverting to the traditional education system. But this is so far practically the only step away from the former dead-end course. Other steps are necessary. In an address to the Federal Assembly and the Government adopted at the CPRF-organized round table “Science and Education Under Sanctions” in April 2023 we called for the following measures:
— to ensure equal educational opportunities for Russian citizens irrespective of their material and social status;
— within five years increase the share of financing of education in the country by not less than 7% of the GDP, that is, to double it;
— urgently consider and support a body of legislation aimed at enhancing the status of education workers and increasing student stipends;
— raise the base salaries of education workers to not less than 70% of the average wage in the region and in the Russian Federation as a whole;
— in forming the federal and regional budgets proceed from the recognition of education as one of the main priorities of state policy.
The foundation for all this has been laid. It is in our draft law “Education for All” which we have developed. The CPRF considers it to be a key task to make our culture and education system truly of the people. The time has come to again cherish the achievements of all the peoples of the Soviet Union embodied in the unique Soviet civilization. Our ancestors created one of the most brilliant cultures in the modern world. Everyone in our country should be deeply aware that this is not only something to be proud of but also to be responsible for.
The Soviet pinnacle of the Russian World
It has to be stressed that the Communist Party has made a key contribution to the sacred cause of defending the USSR and the whole world against the Fascist invasion. This contribution is intellectual, managerial and military. Members of the CPSU and its youth wing, the Komsomol, made up more than half of the Red Army personnel.
Communists and Komsomol members were fighting in the front ranks and were the first to give their lives for Motherland and the socialist cause. Soviet soldiers who had not yet joined the Party, before going into a deadly battle, put a note in the breast pocket with the words: ”If I get killed please consider me to be a Communist.” Such was the last will of these selfless people. There cannot be a more convincing proof of the people’s selfless faith in the Soviet power and the Communist Party. There is no more convincing proof of the fact that Soviet power and the Party have fully deserved such popular faith. Thereby they deserved the Great Victory.
It is impossible to erase from the consciousness of our people faith in the social system which gave people a chance to live according to the laws of equality and justice. Our people have rejected capitalist exploitation and the power of a handful of fatcats over millions of poor people which so unnaturally installed itself here by the beginning of the 21st century. The Communists created a country whose victorious sons tossed the banners of vanquished invaders at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. Thereby they proved that the strongest army in the world is the army of socialism. It unites in its ranks all those who build society on the basis of equality and justice.
The Soviet civilization is the historical pinnacle of the Russian World militarily, economically, socially and spiritually. Today’s “party of power” lacks the reason, conscience, and will to inherit this outstanding experience. We see around the President many adherents of White Guard patriotism, an ideology that is muddled and sly, faulty and false. I would like to remind you that it was this ideology that led its adherents to national treachery and a historical defeat in the Civil War. Russia avoided collapse thanks to the victory of the Bolsheviks over the interventionists and their accomplices, the leaders of the White movement who had stooped to collaborationism.
Time demands that we protect our common home from Fascist scum, from latter-day “dog-knights,” from insane followers of Hitler. Particular historic responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of the present generation: to stop the slide toward an abyss. To achieve a fateful victory, our Motherland needs an effective economy, high-class science and education, a robust military potential and support of allies across the world.
The key condition of victory is the staunchness of our people and its ideological strong-mindedness in any confrontation. We have the experience of our forebears who knew how to rally in the face of dreadful peril. Russia needs consolidation of healthy patriotic forces for the sake of protection, development and prosperity of the beloved Motherland. Our country needs “a social contract” of a new type based on respectful attitude to the people, solidarity of working people and profound respect for the position of the citizens.
A patriotic front of struggle against the imperial West cannot grow out of the right of some to oppress and rob others. To create such a front, it is necessary to cast aside all delusions imposed on our country in the late 20th century. Neo-liberal dogma has cost our people dearly. Any attempt to continue nursing hatred of the Soviet era should be declared to be harmful and criminal practice.
To achieve victory and solve ambitious historical tasks Russia needs to rally around creative ideas and shining symbols. On the days in May our people pay attribute to the great feat of their ancestors with tears in their eyes and pride in their hearts. At such special moments it is not right to hide the key symbol, the Lenin Mausoleum. Draping it on national holidays is a cynical and absolutely inadmissible act. I declared it in my open letter to President Putin in April 2023 shortly before the birthday anniversary of V.I.Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state.
The celebration of Victory Day should be seen as an important act of people’s unity. The meaning and content of this event are sacred. So are all its symbols. The disgraceful practice of draping the Lenin Mausoleum is corrupting and intolerable.It is beneath the dignity of the country which today courageously challenges the heirs of Hitler, whom our ancestors defeated under Lenin’s banners.
In the conditions of struggle against Fascism which has reared its head the attitude to Soviet history has become a test of the maturity and responsibility of any political force in Russia. You may say what you like about socialism. But the past cannot be undone. Putting into question the feats of the Soviet people and its state means rolling out a carpet to Fascism. And Fascism, whatever its shades, brings evil, degradation and colossal losses.
For an anti-Fascist front and a better future for the planet.
Condemning evil is not enough. Evil should be fought. It needs to be overcome. That is why a very special event was held in the Hero City of Minsk on Lenin’s birthday on April 22, 2023. It was initiated by the Communist Parties of Russia and Byelorussia with the support of the UCP-CPSU. Representatives of a score of countries from Asia, America and Europe gathered in a symbolic place, the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War.
We met in order to hold our first International Anti-Fascist Forum and say a firm “No!” to war and reaction, neo-Fascism and oppression. We did it in Byelorussia where the number of victims and the amount of destruction during the war against Hitlerism were especially high. Every inch of that sacred land was awash with the blood of millions of Nazism’s victims. One in every citizens of the Byelorussian SSR was destroyed by the German Fascist aggressors.
The participants in the anti-Fascist Forum declared that Nazism is engendered by the crisis of capitalism. It grew out of Big Capital’s lust for preserving its power over the working people at all costs. To this end the imperialists have embarked on the path of supporting the darkest forces. They brought to power Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other rascals. The Nazis turned from a political fringe into a huge force which threatened to subdue the whole world.
The peoples of the Earth have no right to forget the experience of those great battles. In 1936, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy the Spanish Civil War broke out. The people’s power, in spite of the support from the USSR and other progressive forces, could not stand its ground. This paved the way for the most horrible war in human history. Decisive steps were taken toward the furnaces and gas chambers of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, Dahau and Sobibor, Majdanek and Oswiecim.
The world paid a heavy price for getting rid of Nazism. The heroes of that struggle – the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, the warriors of the Allied countries, the fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of China, representatives of the French and Italian Resistance, participants in the German anti-Fascist underground, Yugoslav and Korean partisans, Polish and Czechoslovak patriots — covered themselves with unfading glory.
The Red Flag over Reichstag in May 1945 is not only a heroic fact of the past. The meaning and significance of the Great Victory over Fascism reach out to the future. They sound like a tocsin appealing to the hearts of the new generations.
Today the situation is getting more and more alarming. Neocolonialism is rearing its head in Africa and America. Imperialists are stoking up tensions in Asia. To the roar of cannon in Europe and other corners of the planet the black smoke of war fires is spreading. Human misery and suffering are multiplied. The moaning of the wounded and dying is heard. Mothers shed tears of grief. The sinister outlines of the spider-like swastika are emerging ever more visibly from the gaping abyss. The deadly threat of a Fascist revenge is growing. The emboldened Nazi beast has crept out of the wolf’s den in search of new victims.
People of good will need unity and courage in the battle against absolute evil. This means struggle against the prime cause. Capitalism in its neo-liberal guise has created a global system of plundering entire countries and peoples. It has stained itself with aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Byelorussia. An unprecedented sanctions pressure has been unloosed against the peoples of Russia and China, Cuba and the DPRK. Military threats and political blackmail are increasingly used.
On the eve of the Second World War Hitler’s storm troops were orchestrated by financial capital. In the 21st century it again directs later-day Nazis. Seemingly vanquished Fascism has not disappeared from the face of the Earth. The world oligarchy needs its services. As a result, Nazi riff-raff stages marches in Vilnius and Tallinn. Books are being burned in Kiev. Monuments to Soviet liberator warriors are being dismantled in Warsaw. Euro MPs initiate wicked resolutions trying to equate Hitler’s Nazism and Soviet Socialism.
In Ukraine, US and NATO support has elevated Nazi ideology to the rank of official ideology. The Bandera lot ensconced in Kiev has turned Ukraine into a concentration camp for dissenters. They have banned undesirable media outlets, strangled the opposition, and launched reprisals against communists. The Nazis burned people alive in Odessa, blew up and killed people from behind the corner. The Azov* thugs with a wolf hook on their chevrons have for years terrorized Donbass. Everyone who has preserved the ideals of the brotherhood of peoples and loyalty to the Great Victory over Fascism has become a victim of reprisals.
The Western governments are pumping weapons into Bandera Ukraine. Zelensky already says he wants to have a nuclear arsenal. But the gentlemen from NATO did not sound the alarm even then. Moreover, London contemplates providing Neo-Nazis with depleted uranium ammunition.
NATO countries have not just stuffed the world with military bases. Four hundred US bio-laboratories in various parts of the planet are conducting experiments with dangerous viruses and bacteria. The consequences of such activity threaten humankind as a biological species.
The communists have always claimed that “Fascism is war.” We see clear proof of it today.The bacilliof “the brown plague” are too dangerous. They should be rendered harmless confidently and quickly.The horrors condemned by the Nuremberg International Tribunalmust not be repeated. The world reaction must not be allowed to plunge the world into a new catastrophe. Individual heroes cannot solve tasks of such magnitude. It takes mass activity of working peoples and nations.
Analyzing the situation from all sides the participants in the Minsk anti-Fascist forum pointed to the ever deepening crisis of the bourgeois ideology. Indeed, the globalists cover up their dangerous actions with pseudo-intellectual research. They like to pluck from the theories of Nietzsche, Chamberlain and Gobinau the most reactionary ideas about the “superman” and “race superiority.” A grim cocktail of neo-Malthusianism and post-humanism is being cooked. Man-hating nonsense is put forward about the “priority of technological progress over social development.” Klaus Schwab and his ilk put the old ideas that inspired Hitler and his accomplices in pseudo-scientific wrapping. Vices and perversions are extoled as humanistic values.
Such false “innovations” are promoted by those afflicted with ethnic and racial prejudices who want to take revenge on the fighters against Fascism and colonialism. These circles are possessed by the idea of total control over humanity. Declaring cancelation of the great Russian culture and “redundancy’ of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chaikovsky, they target humanistic culture of the whole world seeking to throw it into times of unheard-of savagery and an electronic concentration camp.
Progressive-minded people know that neo-liberalism is a vicious enemy of independent development and democratic norms. Western political systems have degenerated into absolute autocracies. Bourgeois elites have lost touch with the values of freedom and humanism. Writhing in agony, capitalism has proved that it is ready to accept reincarnation of Fascism. World reaction actively encourages the followers of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, Antonescu and Mannerheim, Pilsudski and Quisling. They cynically falsify historical facts hoping to erase the memory of the Second World War.
For all the peace-loving forces on the planet the key to success is unity in struggle, cohesion and assertiveness. Resistance to world reaction can only be successful if it is worldwide.Only international solidarity can protect humankind from the Fascist threat and from sliding into the abyss of a world war.
The final document of the Minsk Anti-Fascist Forum stresses: “The plans of a ‘new world order’ lead to aggression and conflicts, neo-Fascism and neo-colonialism and the threat of a new world war. The whole world is becoming a battlefield. We must win this battle – in the name of all the best that has been created by world culture, in the name of a worthy future for humankind!” These are words from the Manifesto for Uniting the Peoples of the World unanimously supported by the participants in our meeting. “Protect Humanity from Fascism!” has become the title of the Manifesto.
The Manifesto recalls that the great militant alliance of opponents of Fascist barbarism – communists, patriots, fighters against tyranny and democrats – took shape in the flames of the Second World War. It was created in spite of the social and ideological divergences, differences of political and religious views. Such was the bidding of the time. The present day again calls for united actions of all the people of good will in the struggle against neo-Nazism, reaction and militarism.
The Manifesto “Protect Humanity from Fascism!” is a document that carries a great political message. It provides a convincing ideological platform for uniting all the left, truly popular forces in the world. Only such a union can overcome the main threats to humanity in the first half of the 21st century.
We Fight for Justice!
Do we have a chance to win? Undoubtedly! The systemic crisis of capitalism is growing, which impedes the globalists in their bid to keep the world within set limits. The prosperity of the “golden billion” — the West’s show window – has long been based on colonial plunder of the rest of the world. But even these powers face a catastrophe. That is why even in the heart of capitalism public consciousness tends to grow more left.
Only the destruction of the USSR and the socialist community has enabled capitalism to delay the aggravation of the systemic crisis in the late 20th century. Imperialism’s doping at the time was capture of new markets and temporary absence of the competition between capitalism and socialism. But the effect of the doping wore off. The crisis spiral continues.
The data of the international research organization Oxfam speak of a catastrophic rate of mass impoverishment. Amid the corona virus pandemic the number of billionaires in the world has increased by 573. Their total wealth accounts for 14% of the world GDP. The ten richest people on the planet have more wealth than 40% of the Earth’s population. The wealth of eighty chief billionaires on the planet exceeds half of the total world wealth. One percent of the richest people own more than 45% of the world wealth. The poorest half of the world owns just three quarters of a percentage point of that wealth!
Extreme polarization continues. In 2022 the number of poor people increased by 263 million. The number of people who found themselves below the poverty line for the first time equals the populations of Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain combined. The reality is such that the total wealth of the billionaires would not only pay for corona virus vaccines for the whole humankind. These resources could prevent the impoverishment of those who lost their livelihood because of the pandemic. But the interests of the peoples are alien to the capitalists.
The mind-boggling enrichment of a handful of “the select” eats up the incomes of all the rest. Half a billion Earth inhabitants live in absolute poverty, One in every ten goes to bed hungry. By the beginning of 2023 a billion people lived on two dollars a day. Another 3 billion live on 5 dollars a day. Half of the planet’s population has sunk into poverty! The authors of the Oxfam report titled “Survival of the Richest” come to this conclusion: we witness the biggest growth of global inequality and poverty since the time of the Second World War.
Decline of living standards is fast spreading to the middle class. According to the IMF, the purchasing power of the dollar dropped by a third within a decade and a half. The quality of consumption is falling in the USA and Western Europe. For the first time new generations live worse than their parents and grandparents.
All this is reflected in social statistics, with 56% of the people in 30 major countries saying that capitalism brings more harm than benefit. This is the opinion of between half and three quarters of the population even in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Singapore. Half of respondents in the USA, too, are unhappy about capitalism. Mass disenchantment is growing even among those who are considered to be socially well-off.
A new aggravation of the systemic crisis of capitalism is evident. Assessing this situation, the authoritative economists Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini and Thomas Picketty have shown that the pandemic is not the cause of the problem but a litmus test of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
The apologists for capitalism have no plan of counteracting the crisis. Behind their hackneyed phrases the Western elites hide the desire to preserve a unipolar world. Their policy is totally bereft of a creative element. Their militancy targets socialist China and our country. Latter-day “crusaders” of capital are ready to make humankind pay any price for preserving the globalists’ control over the world and even, for this purpose, push the planet into a maelstrom of a world war.
The inadequacy of the capitalist system and its danger for humanity is more and more openly recognized by our country’s leadership. Addressing the Valdai Forum, V.V.Putin said that capitalism is in a dead end. He stressed that the civilizational breakthrough achieved by the Soviet people had created a powerful basis for the Great Victory. He noted the successes the USSR had achieved contrary to sanctions and blockades on the part of the capitalist world. A natural consequence of these statements would be recognition that a renewed socialism for Russia is inevitable.
The start of the special operation in Ukraine caused a justified upsurge of patriotic hopes among our fellow-citizens for long-awaited change. Yet today we say in a forthright manner: no cardinal badly needed renewal of the country’s internal policy is taking place. While supporting the efforts to uphold the political sovereignty of the Russian State in the struggle against Nazism and Bandera ideology, society demands ever more persistently that the country’s socio-economic course be adjusted to match the magnitude of historical tasks.
Recent sociological surveys show that three quarters of our citizens are convinced that the Soviet era was the best in our history. Among its achievements which should be our beacons today the absolute majority name social justice, the state’s concern about people, guaranteed right to work, free and high-class education and medical service. The centenary of the USSR which we marked in the late 2022 increased society’s interest in the Soviet legacy and the wish to see it revived.
Today we maintain: socialism is ever more assertively knocking on humanity’s door. We see its powerful sprouts in Russia as well. They are in the enduring socialist ideals. They are in the souls of young men and women who know that their grandfather was a communist and are proud of it. They are in the rejection of anti-Sovietism by those who march in the ranks of the multi-million Immoral Regiment. They are in the unique example of our “people’s enterprises” whose experience is confidently demonstrated as proof of the advantage of the socialist way of running the economy.
The CPRF recently marked its 30th birthday. All these years we have adhered to the principle: our main weapon that never gets rusty is an honest and upfront position, persistence in upholding our cause, and firmness in protecting the interests of the popular masses.
We see the Russian World as a vibrant and original civilization. Russia connects North and South, West and East by land, air and water. It is a center of diverse experience of human economic and creative activity, an heir to great humanistic values and a great spiritual culture. Today, as more than once before, it is at the focus of a struggle that determines the future of the planet’s peoples.
The challenge time presents us with is extremely important. And the stakes are extremely high: will the rapacious appetites of the global oligarchy destroy the world, will the imperialist aggressors burn humankind in the conflagration of a world war or will it be able to avoid the worst, take on board as a model the outstanding practices of social progress and open up new historical horizons?
The saving victory will only come if we understand that it is necessary to follow the unique experience of social justice and solidarity accumulated over the last hundred years. It makes perfect sense that it has delivered the most impressive results.
We shall do everything to safeguard our long-suffering and heroic people against a catastrophe and follow the path toward new victories in the battle for the Russian World – a battle on which depends not only our destiny, but the future of the whole humankind!
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... -humanity/
CPRF talks a good game, pity it often behaves as a social democratic party. Given it's current condition it is correct in backing the bonapartist regime, both for the sake of the people of Donbass and in opposition to rampant US imperialism which threatens the existence of the Russian state. But Russian culture, yes, and if you want to call it the Russian World, fine. But a separate civilization, naw, Peter saw to that.