Comrades,

I would like first of all to convey greetings from Bulgarian communists to all those present at this forum and, above all, to its organisers, the Communist Party of Greece.

The 80-year history of your party is a wonderful celebration for all those of us who are here today, and for all communist and workers’ parties in the world who are holding high the banner of Marxism-Leninism.

The CPG, throughout its existence, has shown good sense, creativity and unrivalled heroism in defending the rights of the working class and all progressive strata of the Greek people. Through its vanguard action, it succeeded in gaining the great respect and affection of its own people as well as that of the international communist and workers’ movement.

Our party has always felt the close relationship and the objective need for our two parties to work together to solve the significant problems of the Balkans, and to demonstrate our movements’ stances that stem from life. We are certain that in the future, these relations will become stronger and more fruitful.

The revolutionary process is going forward in the modern age with greater vigour and depth. Its successes are integrally linked with the action of the communist and workers’ parties, which lead the anti-imperialist struggle of the working people and the building of the new society under new conditions. These successes have made necessary a deeper content and a faster pace of development. For us communists, the criteria in our struggle are the general laws and our support for them, in conjunction with a creative approach and consideration of the particular conditions in each country. These have always been an integral part of Marxism-Leninism.

Today, as never before, the role and importance of Marxist-Leninist parties is increasing with respect to the transformation of society, the struggle against reaction and war and the defusing of international tension. At the same time, our common experience is enriched and grows! Every party introduces innovations into its forms of organisation and its methods of action, and into the quality of party work so as to increase its effectiveness. A significant factor in a rich development of this process is the exchange of experience and mutual enrichment this entails. It was precisely on the basis of experience that the laws of Marxist-Leninist science governing the development of a communist party were revealed and tested in practice in the important principles of building the party. V.I. Lenin wrote that revolutionary theory could not be invented, it grew out of the sum total of the revolutionary experience and revolutionary thought of all countries in the world.¹

In this way the nature of the world revolutionary experience is shown to be an acquisition of the international communist movement. We could say that utilising the total experience of other Marxist-Leninist parties is one of the most necessary conditions and a significant factor in the further improvement of party work.

The entire course of the revolutionary labour movement, and the development of Marxist-Leninist theory have shown convincingly that the mutual enrichment of experience, and its creative utilisation are not just a subjective desire, but an objective established law in the development of the communist movement and one of its vital needs. This lies in the very class nature of the communist movement and its internationalist essence.

It is particularly important for us to discover the mechanism for shaping the experience of a Marxist-Leninist party, its cognitive roots and the successive stages of understanding its revolutionary and transforming activity (action, experience, theory).

Without this, it is difficult to estimate correctly what is possible and what is necessary in studying and utilising another party’s experience, to find in party work the general and the particular, to discover the nature of international experience in party work, to understand what Lenin meant when he said that every country introduces valuable original features into the general course.²

This is the general viewpoint from which we Bulgarian communists view the present problem.

Today our country, our people and our party are living in a complex situation. We, as all the former socialist countries, feel the brunt of the stifling pressure exerted by international capital and the corrupt capitalist forces in Bulgaria.

The causes of this process are complicated, multilateral and multileveled. The passage from socialism is an unknown phenomenon in human history. For the time being, there has been no assessment or analysis of what’s happening from the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint. Speaking honestly, we have drawn some basic conclusions for ourselves, but we believe that an objective reply can and should be given only after collective reflection by the world communist and workers’ movement.

Such a reply is necessary and I believe that we can take the first steps in this direction today. People throughout the world are waiting for our reply. We should not be silent on this issue.

The results of the reversal of socialism are already known to our people. The complete destruction of our industry and agrarian economy has been accompanied by unprecedented looting. The society is becoming increasingly polarised. Newly created capital is accumulating in the hands of a very small percentage of the population. All the national wealth built by the labour of generations of working people is being sold off for next to nothing. It is all passing into the hands of powerful international financial groups. Colonial «democracy» is being introduced rapidly into Bulgaria. Unemployment has grown to unprecedented dimensions.

Health, education, and culture are now unapproachable for the vast majority of people. During recent years, Bulgaria has had one of the world’s lowest birth rates. It’s impossible to enumerate all the disasters which the restoration of capitalism has inflicted on us.

At the same time, the managers – both the socialists and the so-called «democrats» – are following precisely the programme for the restoration of capitalism worked out by the US specialists.

From the political viewpoint, the process is under way of complete rejection of anything related to communism. What’s more, Bulgaria proved to be the only country in the world to revoke the Popular Tribunal’s convictions of fascist criminals and even to reward them! The hearing has already taken place and the ruling has been issued returning to the fascist criminals the property that had been lawfully appropriated from them by the people’s power.

Consultants in the economic field are being replaced by «democrats», but above all the best officials and their relatives are now unemployed. People are being persecuted for their convictions and live in fear of losing their livelihood.

Against this background, the minds of the people are being totally swayed by the media which aims to split our left forces. New parties are being created constantly to this end, which apart from their left phraseology, have no content, but serve the interests of capital. The Socialist Party has moved to centrist, social democratic and, in some cases, to liberal positions.

Efforts are being made to disband and fragment the communist movement. On our part, we have tried very hard to gather to our Communist Party the majority of communists who have the same views and actions. This has been admitted by all.

We are convinced that with the further class stratification of the society, and under the conditions prevailing in Bulgaria, this process is taking place very rapidly, the social base of our party is expanding significantly.

To be honest, despite the enormous efforts put forward by our communists, we are having a hard time addressing the problem of the objective social need for a strong communist party. We lack many things. With a huge effort we have been able to publish our party organ, the newspaper Pabotnitsesko Delo, once a month. This is simply not enough. Our voice with difficulty reaches people who live in conditions of total misinformation all over the country. Above all, we do a great deal of individual work, but here too we face problems of a financial nature.

The party’s scientific and professional workforce is also limited. All the previous theoreticians have either abandoned the front of struggle, or serve the new bosses. The young generation has grown up and there are no longer ways to work with them.

We have asked many fraternal parties for help, including those who are in power in their countries, to give us even a few of their basic documents. At this stage, only the Greek comrades have responded, by giving us their Statutes and Programme, and some theoretical articles from the press. They understood that we need this material today as though it were bread.

We also asked some ruling communist parties, mainly through their embassies in Sofia.

Some promised that they would help us and we still hope that they will respond to our request. But they greeted us in such a way that we don’t have much hope of our request being granted.

I would like to raise another delicate issue here, that of financing our party. Our Central Committee does not have a roof over its head. We all work at home. Rallying the poorest strata of the population, our party can count only on the member’s subscriptions which are minimal. The issue has frequently been raised of setting up joint companies with fraternal parties, which would make it possible for us to become stronger financially and to develop more energetic and constructive activity. We have the potential to do this. We hope that some of you will respond to our proposal and that we will be able to work together.

We address our basic proposal to all of you here present today. The times raise urgently the demand for the co-operation between communists of all countries to improve. We believe that the time has come to create a permanent consulting council of communist and workers’ parties. We are not willing to rely on the Internet, as some people propose. At this stage the revival of the Communist International is not anticipated. But we need a body which will be able to generalise and propagate the experience of the world communist movement.

We have to act in an organised way, to thwart the intentions of world capitalism.

Thank you for your attention. We wish you all success in your struggle for socialism and for the victory of our communist ideas.