Contribution of the Communist Party of Sweden

Contribution of the Communist Party of Sweden
to the European Communist Action conference on “80 Years Since the Anti-Fascist Victory
Conclusions and Significance of the Anti-Fascist Victory Today”

 

Dear comrades,

First of all, we would like to thank the KKE and the TKP for facilitating this meeting on this important topic. The Soviet Red Army’s victory over Hitler-fascism eighty years ago was a  historical achievement of socialism. We honor the bravery and sacrifice of the soldiers of the Red Army, along with anti-fascist partisans all over Europe with the communists at the forefront. We remember the millions of victims of the fascist regimes and their imperialist war, and how 27 million Soviet citizens and soldiers lost their lives to the invading
fascists, and in driving them back to Berlin, where the final victory over the Third Reich was achieved.

This was a victory of socialism in more ways than one. The Soviet leadership knew that it was only a matter of time until the bourgeois capitalist states would try to bring an end to the revolutionary socialist workers’ state. The Third Reich’s invasion was one of genocidal
colonization, and repelling it was a matter of survival for both the Soviet people and for the first socialist state. Doing this would have been impossible had the economic policies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union not been successful in industrializing the country on a scale and at a pace that were unprecedented. In the words of Joseph Stalin:

“We are 50–100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.” What had been one of the most backwards countries in Europe at the time of the great October Revolution in 1917, was at the end of the 1930’s surpassed only by the United States in industrial output. This despite the enormously destructive so-called civil war following the October Revolution, in which around a dozen foreign powers intervened.

This despite the people of Imperial Russia having been uneducated and largely illiterate. The scale of the achievement of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet workers and peasants is hard to grasp and it is an example to us all.

Socialism-communism was fundamental to the victory over fascism 80 years ago. Yet this victory is today appropriated by the capitalist Russian state in support of an imperialist war against another former Soviet Republic. In support of a war in which brother fights brother, worker kills worker. People who during Soviet times lived together in peace, but now are sacrificed on the altar of monopoly capitalist profits.

That the hard-won achievements of the Soviet people are used in this way today is an insult to the sacrifices that they made in order to destroy the Nazi beast, and an insult to all the working people of the world. We denounce this defilement of the legacy of the great Soviet Union.

The rise of fascism in the 20th century was no random occurrence, nor the invention or doing of some “great man of history”, but rather a result of capitalism’s crisis and the need of monopoly capital to preserve itself. Neither was it a departure from capitalism, but rather capitalism turning to open class-based terror when bourgeois democracy couldn’t secure its order.

Similar to the 1930’s we are currently seeing a great rush for armaments in preparation for what can very well come to be another large-scale war of imperialist redivision. We see the reemergence of nationalism on a grand scale, with many leftist parties embracing
chauvinism, however delicately expressed, in a way that recalls the great betrayal of the social democratic parties that voted for war credits, and thus enabled the imperialist First World War and the slaughter resulting from it. On top of the accelerating militarization, the enormous cost of which is carried by the working people, we also see repression increasing on all fronts.

In contrast with the 1930’s, today’s working people have no Soviet Union to place their hopes on. The great socialist power is gone, lost to counter-revolution, and its memory slandered through propaganda and the falsification of history. But what the people have achieved once they can achieve again.

As the contradictions within imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, grow sharper, and with this also the risk of generalized war, the scene is set for a reemergence of fascism. If the fight against this reemergence is to be victorious it cannot ignore the system which fascism grows out of: capitalism. A final victory over fascism can only be brought about by the abolishment of this system. Thus this final victory will require the building of socialism, and the struggle against fascism must therefore be the struggle for working class power and socialism-communism. Only socialism can erect a tombstone over fascism.

Inspired by the heroic anti-fascist struggle of the Red Army and the Soviet people, with determination and discipline we have every reason to believe that we can face fascism once again and emerge victorious like those who came before us. With the lessons of
history, and the teachings of Marxism-Leninism as our guide, our aim will be true. 

Long live the heroic victory of the Soviet Red Army!
Long live the heroes and martyrs of the anti-fascist resistance!
Long live socialism-communism!