Intervention of the Union of the Communist Parties (CPSU) by Tolstikov Vladimir

Dear comrades and friends,

I have been instructed by the Council of the Union of Communist Parties of the CPSU to convey warm fraternal greetings to you, the leaders of Communist and Workers parties, who have come to this conference.

I would like also to address warm gratitude to the organisers of the Conference, to the CPG, its CC, and to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece, the deeply respected comrade Aleka Papariga.

We are gathered here today to celebrate two occasions: the 80th anniversary of the founding of the CPG and the 150th anniversary of the publishing of the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Despite what one might call the external difference between these two events, they are closely connected organically, the one stemming quite logically from the other.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels’ brilliant generalisation of the experience of the world revolutionary labour movement in the preceding decades, and the first programme document of revolutionary communism, constituted the foundation on which the Great October Socialist Revolution was launched and the modern international communist movement was born.

One of its sections was the CPG, established exactly one year after the Great October Revolution and one year before the foundation of the Third Communist International which constituted the beginning of our movement. (One noteworthy detail: I had the opportunity to see the questionnaire form filled in by Comintern member cde N. Zachariadis, who was one of the first to fill it in, in his own hand, in Moscow in 1919).

Today the Manifesto of the Communist Party is as timely as it was 150 years ago. It keeps coming back to us and we read its prophetic words again and again, ever more deeply, and reproach ourselves for not having followed this source of Marxist thought always and in all things, for which we have been punished harshly.

There is probably no need for us to pause over how and why we in the USSR have reached the point we’re at today. But nor can we be totally silent about it.

Despite the significance of many of the causes of our defeat, I would like to pause briefly over the main one. The events of recent years in the former USSR have fully confirmed the prophetic words of Lenin, that nobody can abolish the revolution unless the revolutionaries themselves do it.

The indisputable successes in the advance of socialism, the enormous socio-economic dynamic that was collected in the many previous decades generated in the leadership of the USSR and the ruling parties of the eastern European countries a feeling of complacency and arrogance. I emphasise the word «leadership». Millions of ordinary communists and workers who used to trust «loyal» and «eminent» Leninists arrived at the point of being simply hostages and victims of an incompetent and frequently traitorous leadership.

We were not led toward the defeat of socialism for years, but over a good many of the most recent decades. To the degree that the building of socialism went ahead under the influence of scientific and technological progress, it was entirely natural for they’re to be complications and stratification in the social structure of Soviet society. Even within the working class, without even mentioning the intelligentsia, intermediate strata came into being with seriously discordant interests. If the policy of the Party had been correct, under the conditions where the popular form of ownership prevailed, all these issues could have been solved in the usual way. But the leadership of the CPSU ignored this; it could not advance ideas and goals, which would have integrated all social groups, even though the prompt assurance of the continuous qualitative transformations of social relations constitutes the primary political task of the ruling party.

The leadership of the CPSU, starting from Khrushchev, pronounced as out-dated Stalin’s view of the possibility of the class struggle becoming acute enough to develop socialism.

Instead of this, the CPSU, through the fault of its leadership, went from being the Party of the working class and gradually became the party «of the entire people», and thus the way was opened for practically anybody who wanted to join including petty bourgeois elements. There are always quite a few of these to infiltrate the ruling party.

Serious mistakes were made in selecting and placing leading cadres.

The result was that the Party was substantially altered. In the supreme leadership were people who were not only unworthy, but there presence there was quite accidental, and later they were the first to betray the party and socialism. At the same time, tried and tested cadres were driven out of the leadership and all power was concentrated in the hands of the group headed by the traitor Gorbachev. When these people found themselves at the «top», they began to regard state popular ownership as «booty» which was subject to be distributed among them.

We all know what the finale was. But I would like to quote one small passage from the Communique of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ parties that took place in Moscow last April.

After analysing the lessons to be derived from the temporary defeat of socialism in the USSR and in a number of eastern European countries, «the participants came to the main conclusion that scientific socialism did not suffer defeat, but rather the violation of its basic principles from which world imperialism and the European hustlers of socialism benefited. The participants believe firmly that socialism will triumph because it constitutes a necessary stage in the evolution of humanity.»

This then is why real communists and the Party base organisations all over the USSR, immediately after the Yeltsin regime’s illegal ban in August 1991 of action by the leading structures of the CPSU, developed the work of restoring the CPs in the republics and the CPSU as a whole.

As early as June 1992, the Plenum of the CC of the CPSU met, expelled M. Gorbachev from the Party and took the decision to begin preparations for the 20th Union-wide conference of the CPSU which was convened that same year.

In mid-1993, the 29th Congress of the CPSU was held, which, taking into account the particular circumstances, and until the recreation of the USSR, reorganised the CPSU into a Union of Communist Parties-CPSU, approved a programme and statutes, elected a Council for the Union headed by the distinguished leader of the Communist movement Oleg Semionovich Shenin. By July 1995, i.e. as we were heading toward the 30th Congress of the Union of CP-CPSU, the CPs had already been reinstated in all the former republics of the USSR. The UCP-CPSU is the rightful successor to the CPSU and the CPs which are active in the states now on the territory of the former USSR are the rightful successors of the CPSU organisations in the former Soviet republics.

Today the UCP-CPSU unites 20 communist parties and movements, which have a total of more than one million three hundred thousand communist members.

The main objectives of the UCP-USSR are to reinforce the unity within the communist ranks on the territory of the former USSR, to restore the fraternal union of peoples on an equal basis, to oust the anti-popular regime and to hand over power to the working people, achieving the transition to socialism. We will dedicate the forthcoming 31st Congress of the UCP-USSR, which is expected to take place on 31/10/1998, to examining these issues.

Events in Russia are evolving so rapidly that an acute revolutionary situation could arise at any moment and on any occasion.

This is why the role of the subjective factor, of the preparedness of the vanguard of working people to take fast decisive actions is greater than ever before.

The UCP-USSR is at the head of the popular movement for the regeneration of the renewed USSR. Three Congresses of the peoples of all the former Soviet republics have been held, and just a month ago the Assembly of the peoples of the USSR was held, which approved the «Basic positions for the Treaty of the Unified State». Today work is being done everywhere on many levels around this document.

Dear friends,

The tragic events of the recent years on the soil of the former USSR, the temporary defeat of socialism in the USSR and in many eastern European countries dealt a disastrous blow to the international communist and workers’ movement, to the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle of the peoples, the pan-democratic movement throughout the world.

Capital is an international force, and to triumph over it we need to rally communist and workers on an international scale. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels justly wrote: «Proletarians of all countries unite».

Our meetings and discussions lately with representatives from various countries have shown that the fraternal parties understand the consequences of this disastrous blow, develop reciprocal contacts, and actively seek for ways to restore the international alliance between communists.

The UCP-USSR takes an active part in this process. Representatives of fraternal parties attended our recent 30th Congress and it is our intention to invite you to the 31st Congress. In April of last year an international meeting was held in Moscow with participation by both Communist parties which are members of the UCP-USSR, and CPs from abroad. Twenty communist and workers’ parties attended the 80th anniversary of the Great October Revolution in Leningrad. There have been a number of meetings and conferences at the international, regional and bilateral level. Now we have begun the process of inviting delegations from fraternal parties’ abroad to the congresses of the CPs of the former Soviet republics, etc.

Taking into account the fact that the magazine Problems of Peace and Socialism and its informative bulletins have ceased publication, great attention has been paid in all these forums to arranging the exchange of information as an essential prerequisite for further work on rallying communists and organising the unity of actions by the fraternal parties.

The UCP-USSR is willing to take part in examining the question of publishing an «Informative Bulletin of Communist and Workers’ Parties.» We are also willing to examine the question of communist parties making more active use of the Internet system and the other possibilities for the more detailed reciprocal dissemination of information about our activities.

We are willing to examine the question of a publication by our information section about the action of our fraternal parties in the magazine Marxism and the modern age, which is published in Kiev, and in any other form. It will be very important if we can together solve the question of information at this conference.

Dear friends,

In our difficult struggle, may we be inspired by Lenin’s words: «Communist must know that the future belongs to them.»

Thank you for your attention.