Contribution to the 12th International Communist Seminar
“The Marxist-Leninist Party and the anti-imperialist front facing the war”
Brussels, May 2-4, 2003

www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Oleg Shenin, President of the Council of the Union of the Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First secreta

The role of J.V. Stalin and of the Communist (bolshevik) Party of Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945.

Lastly, more and more proofs show that capitalism has reached some limits in its development. The contradiction between the more and more social character of production and private appropriation becomes flagrant and unbearable. Imperialism can not exit out of a whole serie of crises without a new war. March 20, 2003, enters history forever as the date of the destruction (at a still unknown scale) of a state of peace, which existed for 57 years.

V.I.Lenin stressed very correctly "Capitalism will not succeed to end peacefully. Either it leads directly to a revolt against the yoke of capital, or to the same result though the bloody, severe, painful path of war."

The Soviet Marxists refuted many times the myth, according to which life on earth had become safer and more regulated with the destruction of the USSR and the insisting desire of the USA to build an unipolar system under their hegemony. To the contrary, we have witnessed a powerful trend to imperialist occupation wars, aimed at a new share of the world.

The barbarious aggression against Yugoslavia four years ago, without any UN mandate, was a try for the forces of ultra-imperialism. However, three months of bombings didn’t make "victory" closer. The fall of Belgrade only occured after that the "allied" regime of the compradores in Russia betrayed the Yugoslavs. Today, Yugoslavia has disappeared from the world map – probably temporarily ! But its last Prime Minister is already dead: that Prime Minister, who has servilely dismembered his coutry according to the plans of the West and who has secretely delivered Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague tribunal; that traitor received what he deserved.

The complex large-scale provocation of September 11, 2001 and the following aggression of the USA against Afghanistan have marked the start of an undeclared third world war. Now it has entered a new phase. Behind the scenes, world Zionism can again be found. To protect its interests, one doesn’t care about the nuclear disarmament of Israel (300 nuclear warheads) and about the creation of an independent Arab state on the territory of Palestine. The stake is not only Iraq and the Middle East but the entire world. The goal of the aggression: to discredit and strongly weaken the United Nations and its Security Council, to revise the results of World War II, to impose an American construction of the world, by force and with new kinds of weapons, to make a decisive step towards complete and unlimited world domination.

All this can not even please the former partners and associates of the USA. This is why, for the first time, serious divergences have appeared between the USA and some big European countries. For the first time, the unity of NATO has fissured. For the first time, the European Union was about to split. Finally, and this is also the first time, the preparation of the aggression and the aggression itself have met a massive and united indignation of the peoples of the world. All these contradictions can fatally only deepen.

In these new historical conditions, the elaboration of a correct strategy and tactics for the international communist and workers movement is particularly important, because war increases to an extreme point all the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist world. Against the will of the ruling regimes, the revolutionary situation ripens quickly. In this respect, it is useful to refer to the lessons of history.

Analysing the experience of the struggle of the Bolshevik party to ensure Soviet power in Russia, V.I.Lenin drawed the conclusion, that the defense of the fatherland, conquered by the workers on capitalists and landowners, is an objective historical law: "The ruling class, the proletariat, if it wants to keep its domination, must prove it also by its military organisation."

The precision, the attention and the perseverence of Lenin in the formulation and in the debate of the fundamental problems of the defence of the country, where the workers did win, can be shown int the 14 plenums of the Central Committee, made under his leadership in this single year 1919, and in the 40 sessions of the Politburo of the CC of the C(b)PUS, where, among other questions, the military problems have been discussed.

At that time, in a period of most intense class struggle, discussing the military situation in the society was normal. Like others, J.V. Stalin assimilated the extraordinary methods of ruling the country in the conditions of a civil war, but, unlike many others, he was thoroughly studying the military art and applied simultanuously the principles of military science in political and State action. As he had never been enroled in the army and didn’t possess a military training, Stalin followed the courses of the military academy. It was often necessary to study not only the military factors but also the social and political factors. This is precisely during those years that the bases of his future role as strategist were established.

On May 29, 1918, when the white armies rushed from East and South towards the Volga, threatening to cut the centre of Russia from the cereal regions, the government appointed Stalin as chief responsible for the supplies in South Russia. On June 4, Stalin arrived in Tsaritsin. According to Raskolnikov’s memoirs, "Stalin was everything in Tsaritsin: proxy of the Central Committee, member of the revolutionary military council, leader of the work of the party and of the soviet... He solved all questions collegiately – as always -, in close contact with local institutions, which impressed them and which reinforced even more its authority."

The merits of Stalin, and his ability to solve military problems were highlighted on November 30, 1918, when he was appointed vice-president of the newly created Council of defence of the workers and peasants. This new organ of leadership, with Lenin at his head, had become the main military and economic centre during the civil war and took under its control the activity of the revolutionary military council of Trotsky, turning the later.

On January 5, 1919, Stalin was sent with Dzerjinski to the Eastern front, where Koltschak was attacking. The recommendations of the commission were the ground of the construction "of a strongly disciplined regular army". Stalin talked about it at the eigth congress of the party. Five days later, on March 30, by decree of the executive central committee, he was confirmed as commissary for State control.

On May 17, the CC of the party and the defence council sent Stalin on the front of Petrograd to fight Oudenitch. On July 3, when the threat of the fall of Petrograd was over, Stalin came back to Moscow, but on July 9 already, he was sent on the western front, and on september 26, on the southern front, where Denikin was marching on Moscow. On November 27, the presidium of the executive central committee awarded to Stalin the order of the Military Red Flag, in gratitude for his services in the defence of Petrograd and in the organisation of the attack on the Southern front.

During the civil war, Stalin was able to elaborate the fundamental theses of political strategy and tactics, which were incorporated to his work on the principles of Leninism: the concentration of the main forces at the decisive moment on the most vulnerable point of the adversary, the choice of the timing of the decisive blow, the resolute execution of the decided course through all difficulties, back up manoeuvre, "based on a correct retreat, when the enemy is powerful and the retreat unavoidable", use of the fighting and organisation methods, which correspond to the concrete situation, "to discover at any given time the particular link in the chain of events, which, when it is seized, allows to seize all the chain and to prepare the conditions for reaching a strategic success."

After the end of the civil war, agriculture gave around 65% of the production of 1913 and heavy industry a little bit more than 10%. More than 70,000 km of railways and around half of the network was out of order. The system of levy and distribution of the agriculture products was not suitable anymore. Tsiurupa said: "Everywhere, the demoralisation, disorganisation and the annihilation of our structure... Only on the Ukrainian front of the supplies, 1700 coordinators of agriculture have been killed." For this reason, the decision on the transition to the tax in kind and to the market relations was taken at the 10th congress of the party almost without any discussion.

Stalin considered the NEP as a necesseary rest. Proposing measures for an alleviation of the international situation of the country, he paid a particular attention to the help to the forces of national liberation at the East. He didn’t put forward "the help to the proletarian revolution at the West", but to use the antagonisms between dominating capitalist countries. This supposed the need to "search for forms and methods of economic cooperation with hostile western capitalist groups". But the agreements on trade and concessions with a series of capitalist countries excluded the open help to the proletariat of these countries.

In 1926 was published in Munich the second volume of Hitler’s book, "Mein Kampf", in which the future führer professed: "We will stop the secular germanic movement towards South and West Europe and we will look at the lands on East... When we are talking today about the territory of Europe, we first think to Russia and its neighbour states, its vassals." The international capital noticed and appreciated it. After six months, the national-socialists were already an influential political force in the country.

The Governor of the New-York State, the future president of the USA, Roosevelt, wrote in 1930: "Without any doubt, the communist ideas will become more powerful in our country, if we don’t succeed to maintain the old ideals of democracy." His goal was the defeat of communism. Vehement enemy of communism and of the Soviet Union, Churchill reestablished his positions.

In this difficult position for the destiny of our country and of the communist party, not all its leaders understood the correct path of development. Trotsky, having attracted some followers thanks to the misleading appearence of extreme leftism, predicted the unavoidable defeat of the USSR in the imminent war with world capitalism and, with a maniac insistance, called for the deployment of a world "permanent" revolution. In what is it different from the current "leftists", who call for a "new global revolution", or from the far right, which calls for the export of all the aspects of "democracy" by violence ?

The right "communists", having been "leftists" in their young time, like Bukharin, thought that the growth of agriculture production and of light industry was the first priority. They launched the slogan "get rich". Their political successors of today, who like to call themselves communists, but are in fact opportunists, are of the same kind. They don’t imagine other paths towards socialism, but through the reform of bourgeois society, by the "regulation of the market on a scientific basis".

Still in 1929, Stalin stated that Bukharin was a "theoretician without dialectic", a "scolastic theoretician". He formulated the question in the following form: "either Marx’s theory of class struggle, or the theory of integration of capitalism into socialism, either intransigent opposition of the class interests, or the theory of the harmony of the class interests". (This last "theory" is the basis of the program of the party newly created by the president of the State Duma, still recently called "communist").

Thus, it is not by accident that only the true Leninists, with Stalin at their head, were able to find the unique way for maintaining the independence and the survival of the country. This was the path of the construction, in the shortest delays, of socialism in a single country. The path to the construction of its material basis and to the creation of the new man, the man of socialist society, faithful to the ideas of socialism and internationalism, was coinciding with the idea of an unconditional defence of the advantages of socialism in the fatherland. This is at this task that the efforts of the communist party, led by Stalin, were aimed. This is what determined the huge successes in the gigantic development of the culture of all the population, in the impressive achievements of Soviet litterature and art, at a world level.

The coming to power of Hitler was considered by Stalin as a "sign that the bourgeoisie can not find a way out of the current situation on basis of a peaceful foreign policy; it is thus forced to resort to a war policy". After 1933, 78% of all long term credits of the Germans trusts were given by the USA. The part of the military expenses in the budget of Japan between 1934 and 1938 increased from 43% to 70%, in Italy from 20% to 52%, and in Germany from 21% to 61%. Fascism was strengthened on purpose and gradually. This is why Stalin decided the creation "of a basis of cereal production on the Volga." A very big importance was given to the heavy industry, the basis of war industry.

The falsifiers of Soviet history shed crocodile tears on the victims of the repression during the period preceding the war, including some military officers. Today, it is proved that Tukhatchevski, Yakir and others were German agents. It is not an accident if Khrutschev in 1956 didn’t dare to say a word about it. That the armed forces, although not without mistakes, had been cleaned of plotters, traitors and foreign agents, was a great achievement of the Soviet leadership. Without it, it would have been impossible to prepare the defence of the country. Without it, there would have been many Vlasov when the war outbroke.

The results of the second five years plan showed a technico-scientific improvement of Soviet industry. Illiteracy was eliminated among the people less than 50 years old, more than 10 millions of persons undertook intellectual work. The stakhanovist movement led to a growth of labour productivity by 82%. The historian Huntington, a strong adversary of the communist ideology, praised the victory of the Russians "on the hard natural conditons of North Eurasia", and placed the modernisation of the national economy of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1941 on the same foot as "the discovery of fire by our ancestors".

However, in the main aspects of armament, the USSR was still standing behind Germany, in particular for the airforce, as it was clearly shown in Spain. J.V.Stalin succeeded in a complicated situation to use optimaly the contradictions between imperialists. First, and absolutely correctly, after many hesitations from France and England, the pact of non-aggression with Germany was signed on August 23, 1939. This allowed not only to delay the beginning of the war but also to move the western borders of the USSR, to get back the territories lost in 1920: Western Ukrain, Western Belarus and Bessarabia.

According to the memories of V.M.Molotov, "Stalin forced Hitler to sign the non-aggression pact without any concertation with his Japanese ally. This caused a strong furor of Tokyo, on which we had counted. That predetermined the success of the negociations with the Japanese foreign minister Matsuoka in Moscow in April 1941." Then, Matsuoka and Molotov signed a non-aggression pact, without previous concertation between the Japaneses and the Germans, what they would have been forced to do according to the antikomintern pact signed before. On April 13, 1941, Stalin came himself at the station to accompany the Japanese minister, something he never did before. Molotov writes: "The train was one hour late. With Stalin, we offered him generously to drink and were almost obliged to carry him in the wagon. These farewells were worth the fact that Japan had decided not to fight against us."

In September-October 1939, the agreements of mutual assistance between Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia and Lituania were signed. It was no question of "sovietisation" of these Balt republics. Seven months negociations with the government of Finland didn’t give any result and the war started on November 30, which costed the Soviet Union not only large losses but also the exclusion from the Nations Society on December 14. But the border near Leningrad was movep up to the North.

Only after the aggresion of Hitler in Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg, its occupation of France and the creation of a classical revolutionary situation in the Balt republics, the sovietisation of the latter did start. The elections of July 14-15, 1940 gave an absolute victory to the unions of the workers, with 93% in Estonia and 99% in Lituania. Although the new bourgeoisie tries to present these elections as "illegal", nobody has succeeded in bringing the proofs of their faslification. On August 3, 5 and 6, 1940, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR has adopted a resolution about the acceptation of these three new republics in the Union. On August 2, the adhesion of Moldavia to the USSR was approved. This new republic included Bessarabia and the autonomous republic of Moldavia.

Thanks to the time won with the non-aggression pact, the preparation of the war was developing more intensively as ever. In this period, were elaborated and built almost all the kinds of modern weapons, with a technical level above the world level, and of course the German level, which was a bad surprise for the fascist Germans troops on the battlefields.

On May 5, 1941, during a meeting with the laureates of the military academies, Stalin declared that the war with Germany was unavoidable. "We, communists, are not pacifists; we have always been against unjust wars, imperialist wars for sharing the world, wars for enslavement and exploitation of the workers. We have always been for just wars, for the freedom and the independence of the peoples, for the liberation of the peoples from capitalist exploitation, for the just war of defence of the socialist fatherland."

End of May 1941, one month before the aggression of the USSR by Hitler’s armies, took place a session of the Politburo of the CC of the C(b)PSU, where the foreign and military policy was analysed. The country was not yet ready to strongly oppose the fascist German army, already remobilized. Germany has already subjugated Western Europe and had put all the resources of the European countries at the disposal of German imperialism, which reinforced the power of Germany. At that time, the fascist army had acquired the experience of modern war in Europe, and at the borders, 300 divisions, armed to the teeths, were standing, ready to attack.

About this meeting of the Poliburo of the CC of the C(b)PSU, J.V. Stalin noticed that "the period of 1939 to 1941 confirmed the correctness of the policy of the party for the preparation of the defence of the country by all means. First, we have created a strong economic basis to resist the aggression.

Second, by taking care everyday of the armed forces, we have trained a powerful and combative army and we prepared it for the defence of the fatherland.

History teaches us that, when one doesnt’ take care of the army and when one doesn’t give it some moral support, the army becomes demoralized. The army must enjoy an exclusive attention, and the love of the people and of the government – this is where resides the supreme moral strength of the army. One must fondle the army. This is the guarantee of success and victory."

And Stalin fondled the army and learned this to all the Soviet people. The red –then Soviet- army was the fondled kid of the Soviet people and stayed undefeated ! "This is ideal, when the general and the politician are the same person. The politician-strategist, who obligatorily knows international politics, must realize clearly the situation inside the country. He must know its economic possibilities, the political internal conditions and the mind of the people." (Clausewitz)

Stalin corresponded entirely to this description given by the German historian and military theoretician.

During the preparation of the defence of the country, the Politburo of the CC of the C(b)PSU took several important decisions to strengthen the influence of the party in the Soviet armed forces. For example, "About the reception of the red soldiers in the army", "About the work by the young communists in the red army", "About the selection of 4000 communists for political work in the red army."

However, when on June 22, 1941, Hitlerite Germany attacked cowardly our country and violated the non-aggression pact, the Red Army was first constrained to retreat after intense fightings. On June 24, the council for evacuation was created, with L.M. Kaganovitch at its head. Being obviously not satisfied by the activity of the Ministry of Defence, Stalin, in July-August 1941, took for him all the leading positions in the armed forces of the country. On July 10, in the framework of the reform of the High Command, Stalin replaced Timoshenko. On July 19, Stalin became Minister of Defence and, on August 8, commander-in-chief.

In October, during the hardest days, according to eyewitnesses and to his bodyguards, Stalin appeared regularly in the streets of Moscow; the people had to see that their leader was with them.

Nowadays, and this is very characteristic, three hours after the beginning of the Anglo-American aggression, Saddam Hussein appeared live on TV and called the Nation for a holy war. The end of the message: "Death to the aggressor !" coincides with the military appeals of the military Staff, 60 years ago: "Death to the German occupiers !". And one sees today that the Americans didn’t really expect to meet such a strong resistance from the Iraqi army and people, in spite of a ten years blockade and of long lasting spying activities. The bet on a "blitzkrieg" failed.

But in 1941, Mr. Roosevelt and Churchill, directly after the attack of Hitler against the USSR, declared themselves ready to help our country. However, their militaries were quite skeptical about the chances of Soviet Union. The Americans gave Hitler three months and the English until six weeks to crush the USSR. Nobody believed in its capacity to resist a long time.

The opinions of western politicians changed after the first meeting between Stalin and Hopkins on July 30. Stalin succeeded in creating among the allies the idea of a long war and of good perspectives for the Red Army. He transmitted immediately to Churchill that he "would welcome in any sector of the Russian front American troops entirely under American command". On September 3, in a letter to the English Prime Minister, Churchill, Stalin proposed "to create already this year a second front somewhere in the Balkans or in France". On September 13, he wrote to Churchill: "It seems to me that England could without risks put 25-30 divisions in Arkhangelsk or carry them through Iran in the southern regions of the USSR for a military cooperation with the Russian troops..." But the allies didn’t haste to help…

Already on September 28, during meetings with Harriman and Beaverbrook, Stalin didn’t ask the question of the second front but asked the English for help in Ukrain. When Lord Beaverbrook evoked the interest of the English to transfer troops in Caucasus, Stalin remarked: "in Caucasus, there is no war, but there is one in Ukrain." He was not behaving as a businessman but as an authoritarian leader. He was not asking but was demanding help insistantly and hardly, condemning any attempt of decreasing the volume of arms and strategic materials supply. It is interesting to know that the celebrated military help to the USSR from the allies constituted only 3% of its own military production during wartime. It is true however that this part was seriously higher in the first and most painful years of the war, when our war industry was not yet fully functioning.

When preparing an operation, the Staff called each officer of the Headquarter one after the other and worked with them a few hours. So that at the time of the meeting with front commanders, he was already informed and fully prepared to take decisions. Stalin prefered to be in personal contact with the people. This allowed him to better know the essence of the problem, to check the execution and to propose his advice to the specialists but also to learn from them. Almost all decisions were taken after a collegial examination with all most competent and responsible persons.

At the meeting of November 6, 1942, Stalin declared: "The Red Army carries all the weigth of the war against Nazi Germany and its allies. No other country and army could have resisted such an attack by wild gangs of fascist criminals... And not only resisted but also vainquished. The day is not far when the enemy will suffer new blows from the Red Army. And there will be celebrations in our streets !" Stalin constantly underlined the superiority of the Soviet country on the enemy on the moral and spiritual side, superiority without which the victory would be impossible.

After the meetings of Moscow in August 1942, Churchill remembered that Stalin told him "many unpleasant things", in particular that "we were too afraid to fight the Germans, that we violated the promise to open a second front, and about the supplies to Russia". At the same time, Stalin let understand that he was doubting about the sincerity of his partner by remarking: "we prefered a declared enemy to a false friend".

When, finally, the USSR, at the cost of incredible losses and privations, began alone to crush the fascist troops, Stalin got the opportunity to negociate with the allies in a strong position, to dictate them his conditions, to establish a new architecture for the world construction. Less than four years after the exclusion of the Soviet Union from the Nations Society, Roosevelt and Churchill asked the USSR for support for the creation of a new world organisation, doted with the right to send troops in any region of the planet. Stalin insisted firmly on the safety of the Soviet borders. In Teheran, he repeated what he had already said to Eden in December 1941: "Russians don’t have harbours without frost on the Baltic; this is why Russians would need the harbours without frost of Königsberg and Memel, and the corresponding part of the territory of Eastern Prussia. All the more that these territories are historically Slav. Churchill, who, before Stalingrad and Kursk, refused to even consider the question of the recognition of the western border of Russia of 1940, was forced to answer: "This is a very interesting proposal that I will certainly study".

The current Russian politicians are ready to abandon Kaliningrad, conquered with so much pain. More precisely, they are ready to serve it in a dish to Germany. They don’t even care about this territory of Lituania, Klapeida (Memel), that Stalin obtained (for the Russians!), when the Lituanian authorities makes humiliating demands for the transit of Russian citizens.

With a maniac obstination, the bourgeoisie is busy with confirming in the common consciousness the myth about "Stalin’s cruelties", about the execution by troops of the Interior Ministry in April 1940 in the woods of Katyn, near Smolensk, of 10,000 Polish officers. Blinded by an ardent anti-communism, the Yeltsin regime in 1993 acknowledged this falsification, by political interest. However, even before the liberation of Smolensk by the Red Army, international experts of the commission sent to Katyn by the Germans noticed that the bullets found in the dead bodies were of the German brand "GEZO", serie D, caliber 7.65 mm. On May 8, 1943, the pathologic liar Goebbels, wrote in his diary: "Unfortunately, Germans amunitions were found in the graves of Katyn... If this gets known by the enemy, we will have to renounce to all this story of Katyn". This is especially on this version that the Polish emigration, "the government in exile" of Sikorsky, insisted. Stalin declared firmly: "We will rid Poland of the emigrated government" and he categorically rejected "the pressure on the Soviet government in order to force it to give up some territories at the expenses of Soviet Ukrain, Soviet Belarus and Soviet Lituania." Roosevelt declared in a personal meeting that an important part of his electors was of Polish and Balt origin... and, although "he personally agreed with Stalin about the displacement of the border between Poland and Russia towards West..., he was not able to publicly support such an agreement in the current times."

In the memoirs of Harriman, Roosevelt asked Stalin at that moment, if one should not let the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lituania express their right to self-determination. Stalin answered that, in the past, Great Britain and the USA were the allies of tsarist Russia, in which the Balt peoples had no autonomy, but then nobody asked the question about public opinion. Stalin certified to Roosevelt that the population of the Balt republics will have many opportunities to express its will in the frame of the Soviet constitution, but he rejected the idea of an international control on that expression of their will.

Harriman explained "the leniency" of Roosevelt by his need to obtain the support of Stalin for the creation of the new international organisation of the United Nations. Stalin asked many questions to Roosevelt about the UN but he basically supported this proposal. All this showed that the world balance of powers had considerably changed in favour of the USSR.

Stalin was clearly occupying the position of informal leader of this small group. As leader of a power in war, Stalin came to a conference when and where he had decided. He stood against any attempt to add to the participants China and France. Consequently, Churchill and Roosevelt accepted the insisting demands of Stalin concerning the priorities in their military campaign in 1944. They accepted his proposals concerning the date of the operation "Overlord" and the command of the expeditionary troops. It is useful to remind this for the 60th anniversary of the Teheran Conference.

From February 4 to 11, 1945, the Conference of Yalta took place. During it, the allies tried obstinately to refuse an enlargment of the sphere of influence of our country but unsuccessfully. Although, in the decisions about Poland and Yugoslavia, the necessity to enlarge their government with representatives of pro-western forces was mentioned, one recognized in fact their communist, left basis, and the corresponding structure of the State of these countries after the war.

According to a secret agreement, signed in Yalta, the USSR had to enter the war with Japan on the side of the allies two or three months after the capitulation of Germany, at the condition of the recognition of the independence of the Popular Republic of Mongolia, of the return to the USSR of the South part of Sakhalin, with the contiguous islands and the Kuril islands. The lease of Port Arthur by the USSR was prolongated, as well as the preferential rights on the harbour of Dalni (Dairen), and the rights of Soviet Union on the railways of southern Mandjouria and Eastern China.

During the examination of the project of status of the UN, Stalin asked again the question of the adhesion to the UN of the Soviet republics. At the beginning, it was about Ukrain, Belarus and Lituania. The important point for the USSR was the transformation of the UN in an instrument of collaboration between the three great powers. The system of Yalta allowed our country for the first time in its millenary history to find a safe western border on almost all its length. To a potential aggressor were opposed powerful units of Soviet troops in Central Europe. The conditions were set for the creation of safe borders in the Far East. The Soviet fleet got the possibility to base itself in the harbours of the countries of South-East Europe. The safety of the USSR was firmly guaranteed and for a long time.

After one year and half, at the conference of Potsdam, the situation had changed. However, the authority of Stalin had increased dramatically. Stalin had, for example, on request of Churchill, refused to receive the king of Great Britain, Georges VI. Stalin was able to transform the previously adopted resolutions into favourable agreements for the USSR.

The victorious Soviet army came out of the war with high morals, with a strengthened organisation and militarily invincible. The correct policy of the C(b)PUS, the firm and clever leadership of Stalin maintained the unity of the army and of the people. The moral and political unity of Soviet society played a decisive role in the victory.

The country quickly healed from its injuries, in a very short time. But these injuries were deep. The Nazis had destroyed and plundered 1710 cities and towns. They had put fire to more than 70,000 villages and hamlets. They had destroyed around 32,000 factories, 65,000 km of railways, sacked 98,000 kolkhozes, 5000 sovkhozes and stations of machines and tractors. They had destroyed tens of thousands of hospitals, schools, technical institutes, libraries, plundered hundreds of museums, stealing enormous quantities of artistic and cultural valuables.

Our greatest loss during the war was the death of 27 millions of our citizens. They were mainly young people, the best and the more active of our men and women, and many childrens. A huge number of our citizens was killed in the Nazis concentration camps and in the occupied territories, while the total figure of the soldiers casualties for the USSR is comparable to the one of the fascists: 8,668,400 for 8,640,500.

A huge number of party members died on the battlefields. In 1946, Stalin declared: "Alone during the first six months of the war, more than 500,000 communists perished on the front, and during all the war – more than three millions. These were the best among us; they were generous and pure fighters, full of abnegation and of unselfishness, fighting for socialism, for the happiness of the people. Now we miss them... If they were still alive, many of our current difficulties would have been solved...".

But the important historical lesson was that victory was won on the striking force of imperialism by a new and young social structure. The hypocritical grovellers of capital, the fake historians try to veil, distort this fact. The victory was both military, political and ideological.

At the end of World War II, the USA used atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the start of their nuclear blackmail against their ally of the anti-Hitler coalition, the USSR. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, absolutely meaningless from a military point of view, were a clear warning for the Soviet Union: in the future, America wanted to dictate its will to the entire world. So began the "cold war".

The attempts by the Soviet leadership to stop the worsening of the international situation after the speech by Churchill in Fulton, were unsuccessful. The directive of the National Security Council N° 20/1 of August 8, 1948, stated: "The objectives of the USA with respect to Russia... basically amount to: a) bring to a minimum the power and influence of Moscow b) to change fundamentally the theory and the practice of foreign policy followed by the ruling government in Russia."

The USSR answered with dignity. The research in the fields of atomic energy and rockets technology resulted in the fact that J.V. Stalin, still during his lifetime, broke the atomic blockade and led our country in the world of atom and cosmos. Simultanuously, Stalin dedicated many forces to the creation of a jet-propelled airplane. The new industrial and scientific institutes, which he spoke about in 1946, were established first in view of their potential contribution to the defence of the country. Airbases were created and each of them created its own model of plane. And they were shown already in 1947, with the Mig-15. This is why the USA were forced to renounce to the plan "Fleetwood", adopted on September 1, 1948, which planed the start of the war against the USSR before April 1, 1949, and then to the plan "Trojan", with military actions from January 1, 1950 and the planed use of 300 atomic bombs against 100 Soviet cities.

The front of the struggle moved towards South East Asia, where took place the partition of Korea and where triumphed the Chinese revolution. The military activities on the Korean peninsula began on June 25, 1950. Today, Iraq suffered an aggression without any UN mandate, but, at that time, the USA succeeded in making the UN declare that the Popular Republic of North Korea was the aggressor and it sent in Korea troops under the command of the American general Mac Arthur. On October 1st, the general demanded an unconditional capitulation from the marshal Kim Il Sung and, on October 23, he took Pyongyang.

But then, this socialist brotherly solidarity, the proletarian internationalism, which we miss so much now, was displayed. On October 15, 1950, Stalin sent a coded message to the ambassador Shtykov: "After some hesitation and a series of provisory decisions, the Chinese comrades have finally decided to help Korea with troops. I am happy that this decision favourable to Korea has finally been taken. I wish you success. Phin Si. (Phin Si means: "western wind"). On November 25, North Korean and Chinese "armoured" troops began their offensive and started to drive out the adversary towards South.

The defeat of the American troops under UN command caused a shock in the whole "civilised" world and, on November 30, president Truman declared to be ready to use the atomic bomb against the troops of the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea and China, but he met a strong resistance from his allies. The first to react were the English. Their Prime Minister Attlee went urgently to Washington, where he declared that such a step would be suicidal.

But the hawks didn’t quieten down. On February 7, 1951, Mac Arthur called for help the armies of Tchan Kai Tchek and declared the start of the war against communism in Asia. On March 24, he demanded to use the atomic bomb but only got his superseding from the function of commander-in-chief of the UN troops. The socialist block suffered from the lack of resources, and at that moment, the hostilities stabilized on the 38th parallel.

On July 10, 1951, negociations, which would last two years, started. As they didn’t dare to use the atomic bomb, the Americans tried to change the balance of force with massive bombings on the territory of the Popular Democratic Republic of Korea but they met a strong resistance from the Soviet airforce and lost a few hundreds of their new planes.

Against the myth according to which Khrutshev would have been the first to proclaim, at the 20th Congress, the principles of peaceful coexistence, one must here also cite Stalin. In an interview to a group of American editors of regional newspapers, on April 2, 1952, J.V. Stalin declared: "Peaceful coexistence of capitalism and communism is certainly possible if there is a reciprocal desire to cooperate, if one is ready to respect the concluded agreements, if one respects the principle of equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of the others."

On August 17, 1952, comrade Stalin judged the situation in a series of meetings with the delegation of the Popular Republic of China: "America is not able to wage a big war. All its strength consists in its air raids, in its atomic bomb... The Americans are businessmen. Germans invaded France in twenty days. The Americans are not able to defeat the small Korea for two years. What is it for a power ? A war is not won with the atomic bomb." Now one sees that Stalin was a flexible dialectician. He used very well all the peculiarities of a difficult situation, and was able to establish the foundations of a long-lasting peace after the war, which guaranted to the Soviet Union the security and a position worth of a great power. He broke the capitalist encirclement and he built the basis of the development of socialism into a world system.

The great Marxist theoretician and practicioner, J.V. Stalin, didn’t live till the signature of the armistice in Korea, on July 27, 1953, which was up to now the basis of the peace in the peninsula. Half a century has elapsed since. The world has changed. Imperialism succeeded in taking revenge on a large scale, and now, it tries to establish a complete hegemony of capital on the whole planet.

The world policeman has put the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea on the list of the countries of the "axis of evil" and considers it as one of its next targets. In contrast to the situation of half a century ago, this socialist country confronts now almost alone international capital. I am convinced of the necessity to express our proletarian class solidarity with the courageous Korean people. Today, it is the only people able to display an efficient military opposition to the aggressor.

The situation in the Middle East is somehow different. The developments of the events force imperialism to put forward national and religious factors and to "present" to the public opinion its aggression as a fight of the Christian and "democratic" West against the totalitarian Muslim fundamentalism. But whatever can be the oppositions inside the bourgeoisie, in this case between the Anglo-American and Muslim bourgeoisie, it is the proletariat, including olderly people and childrens, which suffers the most.

The declaration of the president of Russia, like the ones of the other capitalist leaders who disagree with the US, was hard in its form but empty in its content, and was not able to stop the invasion of Iraq. All these leaders, both the ones who protest and the ones who support the aggression, look like hyenas, they don’t want to loose their share of the prey. The aggressor will not be convinced by appeals, by exhortations, by appeasement, like in 1938. He understands only the language of force.

"For capital, the union of the capitalists of all countries against the workers is more important than the interests of the society, of the people, of anything." One must diffuse this simple thought of Lenin among the masses by any means. Only broad and organised actions of the peoples of the world, active forms of struggle, are able to stop the war, to get rid of it and, at the same time, of imperialism.

The uneven development of capitalism shows that, like 85 years ago, its front may be broken in one or several countries. It is possible that the actual rupture occurs in a country of South America. Concerning Russia and the USSR, it is more correct to talk about an interruption in the restoration of capitalism.

In Belarus, State capitalism is dominating, but it maintains some parts of socialism in the social sector and in agriculture. And, although president Lukashenko is forced to step back in front of Russian big capital, the capitalisation and privatisation of the society in Belarus progresses slowly. This explains the furious attacks of international imperialism against an Union between Russia and Belarus and, above all, against the leaders of the Belarus republic. The social memory of the workers in these countries is still fresh and their energy and pressure make a return to socialism and to independence most likely precisely in this restricted space. We would be grateful, if the communist and workers parties could express their class solidarity with the proletariat of these two fraternal republics.

In Russia, the list of the billionairs, published by Forbes magazine, created a sensation: this list contains 17 Russians (three years ago, there was none); they possess a capital equal to half the State budget. With this number, Russia was over England, France and Saoud Arabia and was only preceded by the USA, Japan and Germany.

On May 5, we will celebrate the 185th birthday of Karl Marx. His conclusion, according to which "the accumulation of wealth on one side is at the same time the accumulation of poverty, of pain, of slavery, ignorance, moral degradation on the opposite side", can be applied to Russia. Our chances may grow, if we are able to create a strong left block, to unify in one organisation and to continue simultaneously a relentless struggle against opportunism.

From the developed capitalist countries, we hear some appeals for "a progressive transition to a new society". According to Marx, the most rational solution would be to buy back from the bourgeoisie lands, factories, workshops and other means of production. For this, according to Lenin, would be necessary:

Each party must answer by itself to these questions, according to the analysis of the current situation. Like before, we think that the main task of the international communist and workers movement is to establish an organisational unity, a firm ideological and political basis, the consequent construction of a new Komintern and the solution of the problems of its economic autonomy. Only in this case, we will be able to unify all the anti-imperialist forces in the world. In this moment of deep crisis, our main force is unity and the main danger is dissension.

Moscow, March 25, 2003