Opening speech from the Communist Party of Turkey

Contribution of TKP to the meeting of the European Communist Action on the occasion of the 80 the anniversary of the Great Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples

May 9, 2025

Dear Comrades,

I would like to warmly welcome you all to the ECA Conference on the Great Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples, which is being jointly hosted by our Party and the Communist Party of Greece.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War — the Great Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples. From the very beginning, and especially after the onset of the Cold War, imperialism has sought to distort the core truths of this war. It has manipulated and rewritten history to serve its own interests, and these attempts have only intensified over the past decade.

Today, as fascist movements rise once again across many parts of Europe, it is crucial for our current struggle to expose the ongoing distortions about the nature of fascism and the true character of the victory against it.

First, fascism is anti-communism.

Anti-communism has always been the ideological backbone of the distorted narratives surrounding the war. We are repeatedly told that the Nazis came to power in 1933 because the communists refused to cooperate with the social democrats. In truth, it was the anti-communist stance of the social democrats that was decisive — they collaborated with the Nazis. These same social democrats had already prevented the revolution of 1919, and by 1933, they cleared the path for another counter-revolution. This reality, however, was concealed under the pretense of unity, where the social democrats were not to be offended — all in the name of a so-called broad alliance.

Yes, comrades, above all, fascism was an expression of anti-communism. It was a punishment meted out by the capitalist class to a working class that had come close to power in the 1920s. Fascism exploited ethnic divisions, targeting especially the Jewish people, and unleashed a campaign of racist hatred that led to mass slaughter. But this horror did not alter fascism’s fundamental essence: to crush communism. For decades, this fact was deliberately obscured, so that communists could be made to empathize with social democrats and even liberals.

Second, fascism is not an anomaly within capitalism, but a regime that serves capital’s needs at a particular historical juncture.

Yes, fascism attacked more than just communists. But that does not change the fact that fascism served the interests of monopoly capital. The capitalist world still insists on the lie that fascism and communism are “sister” totalitarian systems — equating Stalin with Hitler. The truth is this: fascism is a product of capitalism.

Fascism was not the result of authoritarian personalities or despotic whims; it was the outcome of capital’s requirements. This is important to keep in mind today, as we confront right-wing movements. Not all right-wing governments are fascist, but neither should we underestimate the damage that even “liberal” bourgeois politics can inflict on the working class. Fascism must neither be trivialized nor normalized.

Third, the claim that fascism was defeated by the capitalist European powers is a blatant falsification.

One of the most persistent distortions — from the Cold War to the present day — is the myth that the main forces responsible for defeating fascism were the US and Britain. In reality, these imperialist powers were no more innocent than Nazi Germany. They maneuvered skillfully to distance themselves from the carnage, particularly the mass slaughter of Soviet citizens. They also employed countless “libertarian” intellectuals, lacking both principle and memory, to help spread this lie.

Today, Russia, meanwhile, contributes to these distortions from its own side. It claims that Russia — not the Soviet Union — was the decisive force in defeating fascism. The victory of the Soviet Russia was only possible because the USSR was a socialist country. The Red Army, the partisan resistance, the relocation of industry — none of these would have been possible under capitalism.

The victory belongs to the Soviet Union, not to the Russian Federation. There is no continuity between today’s Russian army and the Red Army — only contradiction.

Fourth, the alliance between the USSR, the UK, and the US does not change the fact that these countries fought the war with fundamentally opposing ideologies, values, and goals.

Yes, an alliance existed between the Soviet Union, Britain, and the US — but it was a forced and temporary one. The Soviet Union was a socialist country with the working class in power; the UK and US were capitalist powers defending their imperialist interests. The ideological basis of the alliance was hollow from the beginning.

There was no unified “democratic front” against fascism. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war — nearly 27 million of its people were killed, and vast regions of its territory were destroyed.

And it was the Soviet Union, not the imperialist allies, that upheld its promises and conducted itself with basic moral and diplomatic decency.

In contrast, it was the US and Britain that launched a new war — the Cold War — even before the wartime alliance was dissolved. The world communist movement, unfortunately, could not be strong enough to avoid this betrayal to fade from memory, giving space for the lie that the USSR represented authoritarianism, while the West stood for liberty.

Fifth, the true war-mongers were the imperialist powers themselves.

The roots of the Second World War lay in the contradictions within the imperialist system itself. Two imperialist blocs clashed, and war became inevitable. The war was not triggered by Hitler’s madness or unrestrained German militarism, but by the accumulation of unsolvable contradictions within capitalism. Another key factor was the growing success of socialism in the Soviet Union, which increasingly threatened the imperialist system.

The imperialist powers — Britain, the US, and France — share responsibility for the outbreak of war. Both imperialist blocs were united in one key respect: their anti-communism. It was no surprise that Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. And after the invasion, though intra- imperialist rivalries persisted, the nature of the war changed. With the Soviet Union’s involvement, the war became a defense of humanity’s collective interest — a battle by the working class against a barbaric enemy trying to remove it from power.

Comrades,

On this 80th anniversary of the Great Victory, we must once again remind the world that it was the Soviet Union — the socialist project — that defeated fascism and Hitler. No anti-communist campaign can erase the memory of the only genuine social liberation project in modern history. The only path forward for Europe lies in reviving and strengthening this very project.

We pay our deepest respects to the fighters of the Red Army and to all the peoples who resisted fascism. They saved Europe — and humanity — from the scourge of fascism.