Intervention of the Communist Party of Tadjikistan by Azim Nasimof

For you, dear comrades, taking part in the international conference of communist and workers’ parties.

Dear comrades,

Please permit me in the name of the Communist Party of Tadjikistan, and its president Sali Sabladovic Sabdolov, to congratulate all the communists of the CPG and comrade Florakis, the «patriarch» of the CPG, on the 80^th anniversary of the foundation of your Party and to wish you new successes in the struggle for the interests of the working people. To comrade Florakis I wish good health. May we celebrate his 100^th birthday in this same hall.

Dear friends, I represent the Communist Party of Tadjikistan. As you may know, after the reversal, after the dissolution of the USSR, Tadjikistan suffered more than all the other republics. Since 1992 a cruel war has been going on, a war launched against us by the imperialist forces.

As we all know, after the October Revolution, Tadjikistan became the centre for attracting various world-wide powers, imperialist powers. They always had designs on these parts. And having overthrown the USSR, the designs of these gentlemen became even stronger, so they launched a civil war there, and to this day a civil war rages in our country.

But the Communist Party, as the expresser of the interests of the workers, has always been loyal to the interests of the people. So our Party could not be destroyed. You know that in all the central Asian republics except for Tadjikistan, the communist parties have been abolished, while the leaders who were secretaries of Central Committees have today become … I don’t know what to call them. But in our republic the Communist Party held on, and today it numbers more than 80,000 members.

The forces of reaction were not victorious in Tadjikistan because the people were on the side of the communists. The Popular Front came into being. The leaders of this Front were communists, loyal communists, who did not spare either forces or their own lives in upholding the nation, the country, and democracy.

But our people are suffering hardships, comrades. On the eve of the October Revolution, our nation was on the threshold of extinction and only thanks to the October revolution, only with the help of all the fraternal peoples and mainly of the great Russian people, were the Tadjik people able to defend their independence, their nation and within a short period of time, they were able to preserve their ancient language and ancient literature, restore previously unknown manuscripts, and organise the economy which became a part of the unified people’s economic complex of the USSR.

When they say that Tadjikistan, and the republics of central Asia, constituted appendages supplying raw materials to some empire, they’re not telling the truth. This empire never existed. This was a union of states the like of which humanity had never known before. Such was the USSR. In practice, to tell the truth about this «empire», the Russian people suffered more than any others. We lived through the war years, the restoration of capitalism etc. That’s why, comrades, we know that everything written in newspapers and magazines after the overthrow of the USSR was an absolute lie.

It’s not true that Tadjikistan was an appendage supplying raw materials. For reasons of efficiency, of course, owing to economic efficiency, we grew cotton. One kilogram of cotton gave us 16 KGs of seed. We once sold a kg of cotton for two rubbles, for a kg of lumber we’d get 11 rubbles, a litre of gas cost one kapiki, a kg of sugar 80 kapikia, of flour 26 kapikia. All the anti-Communists, all the nationalists have kept quiet about these things. They never said a word about how much happiness this cotton brought the people.

Apart from that, and I’m speaking now as an economist, the state had more than 100 industrial sectors. In terms of its active work force, Tadjikistan held second place in the USSR. This was the reason for the «love» shown by international organisations, capitalist organisations such as the IMF, for our republic. They set out to ruin everything, the entire system. They started with the base of bases, i.e. to eliminate social ownership of the means of production. They spared neither means nor forces to wipe out the concept of social state ownership in Tadjikistan and to create ownership … of I don’t know what kind.

And the result is that today 80% of the industrial labour force is unemployed. In the past we produced a million tonnes of cotton, but last year, our output was only 300,000 tonnes. This is a result of the overthrow of the USSR.

The USSR did not collapse; socialism is invincible. Socialism is like the sun, comrades. That’s the kind of social phenomenon it was, and not because Marx, Engels or Lenin wanted it so. No! This is a social law, about the need for human development. Socialism gave us everything, and as Mr Georgadze says quite rightly, socialism was removed in our country by leaders such as Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, Yakovlev – you know them. It’s not worth talking about them. There is no way out of the crisis other than returning to socialism.

Let me thank all of you once again for this international conference. On my part I would like to express the wish, because now that all the forces of reaction have joined together against communism, the slogan of the Manifesto, Marx’s slogan «Workers of the world, unite», is becoming ever more timely. There is a need to create an International, a united organisation like the International.

And finally, permit me from my distant Republic to offer a small gift to cde Florakis so that he will remember us always, and know that in this distant, mountainous, sunny republic, people love him.