Contribution to the 15^th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the international communist movement".

Brussels, 5-7 May 2006

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

Situation in the Republic Belarus today
(from the position of the workers democracy)

Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Belarus

Author of article: Leonid Efimovitch Shkolnikov,

First Secretary of the Belarus section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Co-ordinator of the social organisation "For the Union and CP of the Union"

Dear comrades!

On the 19th of March 2006 the scheduled presidential elections took place in Belarus. You are familiar with the results: acting president, people's president and patriot Alexandr Lukashenko has received 83% of the votes in these elections where the percentage of participation of the voters was very high, reminding of the Soviet days. In the first place, it was the working class and its allies who voted for A. Lukashenko.

For many years already, military and political establishments of the global capital attempt to replace A. Lukashenko with their protégé as they have succeeded to do in Ukraine, in Georgia and other former Soviet republics, and to lead the Republic of Belarus into the stream of colonial democracy, to fasten it to their geo-strategic plans of establishing their complete global domination. They want to use Belarus as the last link in the chain of their anti-Russian Caspian-Black Sea-Baltic cordon sanitaire, to place their missiles at the border with Russia's
Smolensk region, to deprive Russia of its only reliable ally - Belarus.

This time, everything that they had at their disposal was thrown against the Belarussian people: dollars and euros, instructors and militants prepared in the bordering countries. Unprecedented psychological information attacks and sabotage were carried out, electronic mass media were
deliberately placed at the Belarussian borders, "the fifth column" was mobilized. There were even attempts to scare our voters by sabre-rattling by hinting at the Yugoslavian variant and to hang above their minds the sword of Damocles - of yet another one victorious "coloured revolution".

The leaders of the US and of the European Union have shown their demonstrative support for the so-called "only candidate" of the pro-Western opposition, A. Milinkevich. That was very short-sighted of Europe, because the European countries depend no less on Belarus than Belarus
depends on them, and it was clear from the very beginning that they'll have to deal with the real president - A. Lukashenko. After all, the shortest way of transporting energy and other resources from Russia to Europe goes through Belarus, and it is through Belarus that the enormous exchange of goods between the two carries out.

It was also very short-sighted because the victory of a pro-Western candidate would mean the leading role of the United States in Belarus. In this case the US would have received a powerful instrument of economic influence on their European competitors in their vital relations with
Russia. So, the blind solidarity of the EU with its transoceanic masters in their anti-Belarussian plans and European support of the Belarussian "fifth column" exposes the total disregard of the European peoples' interests by their ruling classes. For example, how will Mrs. Merkel now look into the eyes of the winner of the Belarussian elections, President Lukashenko, if
she was just recently receiving with open arms his political antipode Milinkevich in her residence? If she is forced, just like the other European leaders, to refuse the right to visit her country to President Lukashenko? And all of this while the economic and other interests of Germany and of all the other countries of the EU are substantially linked with Belarus! How do
they think to comply with these interests without meetings with the head of the Belarussian state?

The behaviour of the OSCE is just as short-sighted. This organization demonstrated that the security and co-operation in this region are of less importance to it that the regime change in Belarus. The acting Chairman of the OSCE , Belgian minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karel de Gucht crudely violated the principles of the OSCE by interfering into internal affairs of
sovereign Belarus, by calling on its authorities to release immediately A. Milinkevich who was detained for 15 days for systematically ignoring the laws of our Republic, for organizing unauthorized street actions in order to destabilize the peaceful situation, to push our country beyond the law into the sea of chaos and to reach his personal goals through fishing in these
muddy waters, against the will of the Belarussian people.

Where was the voice of the OSCE when the French government adopted sanctions
against immigrants and against the French youth who were defending their
social rights? Unfortunately, the double standards have long become a norm
of the activities of the European structures, and that undermines their very right to continue to exist in the future. Left and centre-left organizations in Belarus have called upon our people not to react to the orgy of the foreign and local anti-Belarussian forces in order to smash yet another evil plan of the global capital by peacefully voting for A. Lukashenko. All the efforts of the West and their "fifth column" in Belarus, both before and after the elections, including their
attempts to seek support of Russian authorities against the ally Belarus, were in vain this time as well.

Why did the working class of Belarus vote for A. Lukashenko in these elections? He did not promise socialist reforms. But for the working people, just as during the previous elections, there was no choice between capitalism and socialism here. They had a different sort of choice: between bourgeois democracy of colonial type, that is being persistently imposed on
Belarus by the military-political elite of the US/EU (of the type that they successfully installed in Ukraine, Georgia ad other former Soviet republics) - on one side, and on the other side, the continuation of the power of the national bourgeoisie (civil servants etc) who are forced to
rely on the working people in their confrontation with the Western capital and the Russian oligarchs and who, because of that, have to carry out policies that take working people's interests into consideration. And the main reason that the working class voted for A. Lukashenko is in the
fact that it made no mistake by trusting the presidential post to Lukashenko
for the first time in 1994 and by giving him a mandate for strong state
power in the referendum of 1996, against the desperate resistance of the liberal and national-extremist opposition and the pressure from its foreign sponsors. A. Lukashenko managed to lead the people of Belarus away from the disaster of the complete crisis.

The people supported A. Lukashenko during the elections of 1994, 2001 and
2006, after they were deprived of our powerful and caring Soviet multi-ethnic
Mortherland - USSR in 1991 and, as a result of this, have had its full share of suffering, of "joys" of the shock therapy, have familiarized themselves with the so much praised Western "democracy" and have seen for themselves the beastly grin of the wild capitalism and national-extremism, under the pro-fascist white-red-white flag of the Belarussian collaborationists from
the Great Patriotic War time. They were also left to deal on their own with the disaster of Chernobyl.

After his election in 1994 our President, unlike the other presidents in the former Soviet republics, immediately began to fulfil his electoral promises. He managed to stop the separatist tendency in the ex-USSR territory, and to replace it with a re-uniting one. Today, notwithstanding the remaining difficulties and obstacles from those who have destroyed USSR, he realizes the Agreement about Union state with Russia consequently, and the doors remain open for other republics too. Lukashenko managed to unmask and to cast aside the nationalist extremist opposition, to hold in leash predatory privatisation, to stop the collapse of the economy, of the material and spiritual people's welfare, to stabilize the Belarussian rouble, to
bring the unemployment down to 1,5% (which European and not only European state can boast of such figures?)

The workshops of the big factories, that were closed, have reopened and are already working now  for some time; these factories were created in Soviet times and are now being modernized. The state helped the large co-operative agriculture to survive, it receives modern machinery produced locally. The program of reviving of the countryside materializes successfully, the sale
of agricultural land remains forbidden. All of this allowed to achieve unprecedented, even in Soviet days, harvests and to secure the food supplies of the country. Many social achievements of the Soviet times are being preserved, including free education and free health care.

The president fully reformed the army that now has the capability to strike at any aggressor and to cause them large scaled damage. Based on the fast growth of the economy (9,6% per year), the salaries, the pensions, the student grants and the welfare payments grow constantly. The
enormous gap between the rich and the poor, like we see in Russia, in Ukraine and in other republics, was not allowed to grow. That, in turn, has allowed to consolidate the stability in the society, including in inter-ethnic and inter- religious relations.

As a result of all of this, the working class has been spared the declassing, the farmers have been spared the bankruptcy, the intelligentsia has been spared the extreme poverty and miserable destiny of lapdogs of the moneybags, the whole working population has been spared foreign debts, colonial dependency and pauperisation. And the successes in all areas of
life of the Belarussian society continue to grow, even though, of course, there are still many problems caused by the cataclysm of August-December 1991, when all the political, social economical and state structures of USSR were destroyed.

As we can see, the working class and other working people had many good reasons to vote for A. Lukashenko.

Taking all of this into consideration, all the groans and moans in the non-impartial Western media, all the numerous declarations and resolutions adapted there about the so-called dictatorship in Belarus, about "the lack of democracy", the "violations of human rights" and of "freedom of the  press", about the "illegitimacy of the president", - all of this has
nothing to do with the true reality and is an open and malicious bluff. There is no more or less dictatorship in Belarus than in any other state with state power, no more or less than in any Western democracy, because the power is a dictatorship, by definition, and the only question is in whose interests this power works.

In conclusion, the truth about the Belarussian elections is that the working
class and all the working people, feeling the danger of losing all their achievements, the stability and the growing welfare that are especially valuable, when you compare them with the disastrous situation of the working people in other former Soviet republics, rushed to rescue themselves, their country and their president, without taking into account the existing
problems caused by sabotage perpetrated by the destructive part of our bureaucracy.

It is highly unlikely to find another state in Europe or across the ocean where the electoral process would have taken place so peacefully, actively and so well-organized, would have been so legitimate, so transparent and so fair as in Belarus on the 19th of March 2006. All the sins that the rulers of the US, EU, OSCE and its Bureau for democratic institutions and human
rights (BDIHR) have accused us of, are well-known to them exactly by the electoral practices of the Western countries. Including, among others, the last US Presidential elections and the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Ukraine that were accepted as quite democratic, despite all the gross violations.

In reality, the BDIHR of OSCE, instead of fulfilling its role of helpers in
conducting of the democratic elections, fully became a weapon of psychological information war by declaring well in advance that democratic elections only take place in those countries where the pro-Western forces come to power, using lies and dollar injections, and that all the elections
in those countries where the West does not succeed in bringing to power their collaborationists, are "non-democratic".

That is why we have raised the issue of abolishing the BDIHR that is just as
urgent as the issue of closing down the so-called "court" in the Hague, created by aggressors, not

only for distraction of the public opinion's attention from the real culprits of the Yugoslavian tragedy, but also for the revenge and for physical extermination of patriots who have allowed themselves to organize the resistance

.
In short, the globalist "democracy" that has been persistently imposed on the people of Belarus, has yet again failed. The national democracy has won. Unfortunately, it is a bourgeois democracy too. Even though many achievements of Socialism have been preserved in Belarus, there is no Socialism, because there cannot be Socialism without the power of the
working class, and without all the public means of productions and all the results of his work being at his disposal. And after the successful warding off the colonialists' attack during these elections, after realizing their own power, the working people are unlikely to continue in all humility to be content with the existing democracy in our Republic, democracy that belongs to the Belarussian detachment of party and state bureaucracy that became bourgeoisie even in Soviet times and to their young successors. Because in reality, the power in the Republic still
belongs to the very same forces that were fully liberated from the control of  the proletarian state and of the people, as a result of the contra-revolutionary coup in Moscow in August 1991. These forces have hidden themselves beyond the borders of various republics in order to build each
its own fortress - bourgeois national state. They restrain the working class, they fully control former public property that became property of the state; they are currently fighting with the military and political elite of the global capital (US/EU) for the power and privileges, and that is why they need the support of their own people, that is why they have to take
care of him, - just as a farmer takes care of a cow that he milks.

Then, in 1991, during the contra-revolutionary coup in Moscow,  total demoralisation and disorder in Belarus were encouraged by the cowardly position of those with party cards, including the majority of the deputies of the Supreme Soviet, who voted for the temporary end of activities of their own party – the Communist Party of Belarus /Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By doing that the party-economic and state civil servants have maintained their power without giving it into the hands of the nationalist extremist opposition, represented by the so-called Belarussian National Front (BNF) that was brought up, just like in the other republics, by the Gorbachev-Yakovlev leadership of the USSR, under the false flag of "need for democratisation" , as if the true socialism does not include the true - the highest form of  it - proletarian democracy.

This is how the state capitalism was established in Belarus, - the only difference is that it grew not as a result of natural evolution of the private property capitalism, but as a result of the unnatural movement backwards from the real socialism. And the national bourgeoisie - the already named party bureaucracy- with the help of the people has yet again rescued its power and its social privileges in the recent elections, has maintained its bourgeois democracy in the presidential form of power. Of course, the victory of the 19th of March 2006 is not only in the
interests of the ruling bureaucracy, but also in the interests of the Belarussian working class that managed to free himself of the most cruel exploitation in today's world - the neo-colonial one.

If Russia as a result of the right-wing bourgeois coup in Moscow in August 1991 was thrown back into the private property capitalism of the pre-1917 era, although with some modern marks (oligarchs, criminal capital etc), then Belarus has fallen into a historical abyss not as deep - into the post-October 1917 period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), when they also had state
capitalism. The only important difference is that Lenin's NEP was conducted under the rule of the proletarian state headed by the Bolsheviks party, and that's why it was working for the Socialist future, while in modern Belarus it is taking place under conditions of the bourgeois bureaucracy state that can at any time easily fall into the same abyss of the private property
capital (either of national or of globalist-comprador shape), especially because the privatisation has not been fully stopped and because the pressure of the foreign capital on the Republic continues.

On the other hand, state capitalism can lead towards socialism, because, as we know, it is a directly pre-socialist stage of development of capitalism. In order to return to that path, it would be sufficient for the proletariat to take power and to place themselves above the bureaucracy, turning the state means of productions into the public property. That is possible under
certain conditions, both external (for example, if the Revolution aimed at Socialist resurrection would take place in Russia) and internal (on one hand, the possible and even inevitable harshening of the bureaucracy power's policy towards the workers that would lead to more resistance; on the other hand, the necessary strengthening of the communists' unity based on anti-opportunism and resurrection of the working people's trust in them as in their vanguard, success of the cause of the socialist education of the workers and qualitative growth of their class consciousness, decisiveness and level of organisation).

All of these opens the perspective of successful struggle for the real, higher level of democracy in Belarus - the power of the working class in union with the working farmers and people's intelligentsia  - which the current national bourgeoisie power would not accept voluntarily.

The stage which Belarus has achieved today, is the one when it will be able to develop itself based on its own, strong economy that survived the crisis, - demands the liberation of the creational energy of the working masses and as a result, demands their democracy, not the democracy of the bureaucrats.

This circumstance and the need of further defence against the non-stop psychological information aggression by the colonisers, urges to the President to seek the support of the working people, not just once in a while, - during the elections and referendums, - but on a daily basis. And there is only one way to achieve it - to begin to build up a higher
democracy in the country - the power of the working people. The Belarussian
republican organisation of the CPSU, acting through the communist social societies, has
already offered to the authorities the first steps in this direction which were not taking into consideration yet, unfortunately. We have offered:

1. To bring changes into the Electoral code of the Republic, but not those that are being forced on us with false references to "Western democracy" by the US/EU ruling elite in order to bring its Belarussian "fifth column" to power. We suggest changes that will open the road
into power to the working class in unity with all other working people, that
is to say, that will allow to rebuild the former functions of Soviets, who existed in
the Republic, and their whole system, and to fill it, in the first place, with workers and peasants deputies according to their creative role in the society, not with bureaucrats, and also with the representatives of the co-operative farmers and people's intelligentsia - with those who even without professional political experience perfectly feel and know their interests,
the interests of the working majority. Lenin said that a cook should be able to rule the state, if she would be taught it. And Lenin said this because any so called "professional parliament" is only capable of professionally helping the ruling exploiters to find a more comfortable and
secure position on the necks of the working people.

2.      To materialize article 13 of the Belarussian Constitution that was adopted as a result of the Referendum in November 1996 by the initiative of the President Lukashenko. This article says that the state should provide guarantees for the workers collectives to participate in the management of the factories, the organisations and institutions- guarantees that,
unfortunately, do not exist in reality.

3.      To restore people's (workers) control over all sides of life/ activities of the society, because only this would allow to fight the corruption, the mismanagement and the abuse of power by bureaucrats - in all places, unprejudiced and with surety.

4.      To put a halt on privatisation of the state property an to fully restore the role of the state on the economy. The power of the market economy in the states bordering to Belarus, where only the biggest and the strongest survive, especially demands to transform Belarus into one single strong state production corporation, that would be capable to bring the production to modern levels and to make our goods competitive by price and quality.

5.      To repeal the law about contracts for a limited time, for workers and other working people, as a compulsory form of employment that turns the creative worker into a speechless robot fully dependant from the employer and deprived of  security of tomorrow.

6.      To review the legislation that now leans on the side of bureaucracy and against the interests of working people, to stop the arbitrariness against the working people in courts and in the prosecution system, that refuses to apply even the existing laws. The contradictions between the power and the working people already exist in Belarus, even if they remain unseen in front of the battle between global capital and the national bureaucracy that is taking place now. These contradictions can appear tomorrow at the surface of the political struggle, and , if they
wont be solved from above, they inevitably will be solved in the interests of the working people "from below". Belarussian state capitalism today has the choice between two ways: either to
continue to move backwards, towards the private property capitalism (that is what many of the ruling bureaucrats would like to happen, as they seek privatisation, by the example of their Russian collegues) or to move forward, that means to resume the movement towards socialism. But at this moment it is trying to keep itself on a third way: to maintain all the existing privileges of power and property, to restrict private capital (both local and foreign), and to keep it away from decisive power and from private property on a large scale, and at the same time not to allow the Belarussian proletariat to come to power and to take over the state's property again.

In the near future there will be only two variants possible. The first one:
the bureaucrats will continue to have power over the working people - the creator of all the material and spiritual wealth, what, of course, would lead to resistance from their part, and in this case sooner or later yet another betrayal could take place: the bureaucracy would turn against its
own people and to go for an alliance with foreign anti-Belarussian forces in the West or in the East, the republic would become a colony, with an explosive social system (like Georgia), or with an apartheid system (like in the Baltic states), or with enormous poverty, like in Russian provinces, in Ukraine and in many other republics. The second variant: the working people would be able to realize their right to rule over the bureaucracy and to force this bureaucracy to work for them. In this case, the real democracy would be established - the Soviet power as the power of the working people. The further destiny of the presidential form of power depends directly on it. This form, as we know, is not a traditional form for the Soviet people, including the Belarussians. But the strong presidential power in Belarus could remain to be useful for the working people, if it will serve their aim to regain power. The presidential form of power is not in contradiction with the power of the working people, as the practice of world socialism shows us, if the President serves his people. That has been proved by the unforgettable comrade President Kim Il Sung in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, by comrade Fidel Castro in Cuba and by presidents of various socialist states in Eastern Europe, before socialism there was destroyed.

Today President Lukashenko launched the slogans: "A state for the people" and "de- burocratisation of the administration". It is a good initiative, especially in comparison with the situation in other Soviet republics. But we think, that it is in the interests of the workers to go further, to realize the slogan of constructing not "A state for the people" but "A people’s state", where life is determined not by the employees in power, like Maecenas, who make people happy, but by the people itself, who is in majority working people, and in the first place by the modern working class.

Today President Lukashenko leads the country on the path of a "socially
orientated market economy". In this sense the working people of Belarus are in better conditions than people in many other republics, where the private criminal capital, along with the totally corrupted civil servants, sucks blood from the working class and taunts them by market means. Not the market economy in its any possible shape, but the return to the path of the planned
socialist economy would be in the highest interests of the working majority.
Today President Lukashenko actively fights for the realization of his plan of a Unity State between Russia and Belarus, that would be in the interests of the Belarussian people. But the Unity state, that is being built by the Russian capitalists and the bourgeois national bureaucracy of  Belarus, of course, would be a bourgeois one, while the working people of Belarus, of Russia and of all other republics need the revival of the multinational Soviet socialist state - USSR, and a renewed one, that is, free from antisocialist deformations that have led to its destruction.

We support the creation of the Unity state of Belarus and Russia and the joining of it by other fraternal republics, because this would give many social advantages to the working class, and because the bourgeoisie, while it unites, also unites the proletariat, and only a united Soviet proletariat can become able to resurrect its Motherland – the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

That is why the Belarussian communists  perceive the creation of the Unity State as a stage on the way to resurrection of the USSR, as a very important task in the national liberation struggle of the Soviet people, of which the people of Belarus are an integral part.

That is why in 2004, following the initiative of the Belarussian communists
and supported by the CPSU, headed by Oleg Shenin, the International Social Organisation  "For the Union and for the Communist party of the Union" was formed and registered by
the Department of Justice of Belarus. Its head is comrade Shenin, and it already has 12 local branches in former republics of USSR.

The working class, undoubtedly, will resolve sooner or later all the contradictions in the interests of the working people. But in order to do that, they will need to put forward its conscious vanguard. The present state of this affair in Belarus is far from satisfactory.

The Party of Communists of Belarus (PCB) was infected by opportunism, including
national-communism,  from the very moment of its birth in December 1991
and, as we predicted, has fallen into the open collaboration with the most
reactionary forces on our planet, they even joined the anti-Lukashenko alliance
with the infamous S. Shushkevich - one of the three main destructors of USSR.

The Communist party of Belarus (CPB) that was revived in 1996 as an opponent of the PCB, was fully on the President's side, but is showing yet again its bureaucratic origins and its devotion to parliamentarism.  It has moved to the right without any attempts to stop the bureaucracy from building the democracy of the bourgeois nationalist type, against the interests of the working class.

The small group of Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, a part the of all-Union party that was created in the first place in order to destroy the CPSU from the left, considers it to be its duty to fight by all possible means its resurrection, constantly attacking CPSU and blocking any possible co-operation, even though without the Leninist-Stalinist CPSU it won't be possible to revive the USSR that was its creation. And, while doing this, the CPBSU continues to present itself as  a so-called "the only true defender of the interests of the Soviet  proletariat".

And only the Belarussian republican branch of the CPSU, as the whole CPSU, remains on the positions of the working class of the Republic and of all USSR, seeing as its main national task the task of resurrection of the renewed Soviet state. But our Belarussian republican branch of CPSU is small at the moment and has no strong links with workers collectives who were
depoliticised by the bureaucrats. We are trying to change this situation.

That is why the main task for the communists of the Republic is to unite themselves on a Marxist-Leninist base in a truly Leninist Bolshevik party, to unite with the working class, to gain his trust again, to mobilize and to organize, to arm him ideologically, and by doing so, to help him to return to power, together with his brothers in other former Soviet republics, to restore public property and, along with other working people of all the republics to re-establish our mutual state, the USSR. Only that will mean to create a real, higher democracy in Belarus, a democracy that would be capable of soundly withstanding colonial democracy, which is alien to our people and imposed on us by the West, and of overcoming the current national bourgeois democracy of civil servants.

In today’s world the contradictions between the labour and the capital show themselves on different scales at the same time: on the scale of single capitalist companies, on the scale of single states, on a global scale, where the states of the "Golden Billion" act as exploiters and all the other states of the world are the exploited ones.

The contradictions between labour and capital on a world scale have the strongest influence on our world. That is why when we have to oppose the globalist pressure on Belarus and their forceful export of fake democracy, our republican branch of CPSU is prepared to collaborate with our local national bourgeoisie, represented in Belarus mainly by civil servants, but at the same time we are prepared to rebuff all the anti-workers movements of the ruling bureaucracy and to agitate the working class to bring back his Soviet power, socialism and USSR, under the leadership of CPSU.

That is the current political, social and economic situation in Belarus – a country that, on one hand, is in the vanguard of positive social economic and re-uniting tendencies on the territory of the former USSR, that provides better conditions for its working class and other working people in comparison with other republics, but at the same time, on the other hand, has power structures that do not correspond with the workers’ and other working people’s contribution to the life of our society.

We, just as all Belarussian people, do recognize and do value highly the work of the current president A. Lukashenko and its results. We are judging him in a Leninist way,- that means, not just by his words, and not even by what he is doing, but by the actual results that he achieves. And he achieves quite a lot, including many things that the proletarian power would seek to achieve as well. But we think that Belarus under his leadership could retain its vanguard role in the so-called "post-Soviet" territory and to become a locomotive for the cause of resurrection of the state unity of the Soviet people only under the condition that it solves the task of bringing the working class back to power, along with his working allies.

At this moment the people of Belarus have started to fulfil the tasks of the new program of the social and economic development, that was accepted at the third All-Belarussian People’s Assembly – a form of direct democracy, unheard of in the West. The plans are enormous, but as the practice of the previous 5 years-plan has shown us, they are very real and undoubtedly they will be achieved, if nobody will interfere from the outside.

That is why Belarus and its President and its working people are in such need of the international support. We are sincerely grateful to the participants of this Seminar for such support, for your resolution of support to the Republic of Belarus and its President that was adopted at the previous seminar of the Communist and the Workers parties in Brussels in May 2005, for the fruitful visit of our comrades from the Belgian Workers Party to Belarus during the presidential elections, that was aimed at the realisation of that resolution in practice, for the positive response of communist and workers parties to our request to reject the attempts of the Party of Communists of Belarus that joined the anti-President anti-Belarussian alliance with the most reactionary forces of our planet – American imperialism and its "fifth column", including the infamous S. Shushkevich, one of the main culprits of the destruction of our mutual Motherland – USSR.

By the way, we fully share the recent statement of our President Lukashenko that S. Shushkevich did not have the authority to sign the Belovezhsky agreements, dissolving the USSR. Of course, the same applies as well to Kravchuk (Ukraine) and to Yeltsin (Russia). The people of Belarus have not given to Shushkevich the authority as our people have clearly voted for maintaining of USSR during the All Union referendum of the 17^th March 1991. Neither received he such authority from the Parliament that even didn’t have the right to discuss the issue of ratification of the unlawfully signed Belovezhsky agreements.

All of this means that the USSR continues to exist not just de-facto as a real remaining economic unity, as a united territory of all the Soviet people, as a fact of undying self-consciousness of the Soviet people with their mutual language of communication – Russian and with the Soviet socialist mentality, but also de-jure. It would be sufficient just to rebuild its state structures, by overcoming the bourgeois delusions and by coming back to the socialist path of development.

Under conditions of stabilization of the bourgeois power it will be extremely difficult to achieve, but the Soviet people under the leadership of a single, united and truly Leninist Bolshevik Communist party of the Soviet Union should be able to do that – for the sake of his own future as well as for the future of the whole planet.

Please be assured that the heroic people of Belarus will play his important part in this historic task.

Of course, when taking on the task of the resurrection of USSR, it will be necessary to fully understand the reasons for its destruction in order to exclude them in the future so that the renewed Union will be truly invincible, as the words of the National Hymn of the USSR say.

Enough has been said about the reasons of the destruction of the USSR – the first powerful Socialist state, hope of the working humankind that stood in the vanguard of its progress, that has defeated fascism, that has achieved the parity with the capitalist world and has openly questioned the continuation of its further robbery on our planet and its very existence. I would like to stress just one of them – the one that, I think, was of most importance.

The Socialist society, as the first and temporary stage of communism where the exploitation of a human by a human would be made totally extinct, was the first stage in human history where the humankind becomes able to rule its own destiny based on the scientific knowledge of the laws of social development, what should have allowed the steady evolutionary and revolutionary processes without disasters and damage for the human beings and in full harmony with the nature.

The scientific base of such society by right bears the name of its first creators, geniuses Marx and Lenin. And that is why any step aside from the main principles of Marxism Leninism, any subjectivism and any opportunism will inevitably damage the further development of socialism, up to going back to the former, exploitative formations.

If at the eve of the socialist revolution the disrespect of the vanguard for the objective laws of the social life, that were discovered and studied in details by Marxism-Leninism, leads to its defeat, then at the stage of developed socialism the same attitude leads to the death of socialism. The analysis of what happened to the USSR and to the socialist states of Eastern Europe demands to come to the conclusion that the fidelity to the principles of Marxism Leninism further developed in accordance with the modern situation, is the law of socialism, and the disregard for this law is disastrous for socialism. That is why it is vital that the level of development of the Marxist Leninist theory should be in compliance with the realities of modern life and the tasks of the struggle of the working class for power and for the public property, as well as it is vital that it should be in compliance with the level of knowledge of the social laws by the leaders and by the vanguard party, and that this knowledge should be united with the practice of the struggle of the wider working masses.

During a long period after the death of comrade Stalin, a gradual movement took place in the USSR – away from the Marxist Leninist character of the power of dictatorship of the proletariat in the country, and it led to the various deformations of socialism in all spheres of life of the society, until their qualitative growth has led to the counter-revolution, to the restoration of capitalism. Because, as we know, there is no such a thing a third way during the world-wide struggle between capitalism and socialism – it’s either socialism or capitalism.

So on the ground of subjective deformations of socialism in the USSR capitalism has grown up, and started feeling too cramped within the frames of the socialist system (alien to it), so that capitalism began to destroy these frames, until it finally managed to blow them up completely, due to the mutual efforts of the local and the foreign "nouveau riches", who finally were free to rob non-stop public funds and personal wealth of the working people and to super-exploit them, up to non-payments of salaries to workers for many months.

And here we approach another subject of our seminar – the role of the International as the collective intellect of the communists of our planet, that summarizes both positive and negative experiences of the struggle. Who, if not he, should have been timely warning the communist parties about the dangers of the slippery path of opportunism? And who, if not he, should have been accumulating and sending at the right time into the right place the internationalist support and help, mutually informing the parties and organizing their exchange of experiences of the struggle? Who, if not he, should have been manoeuvring skilfully the world’s communist and other progressive forces in order to strike back at the destructive efforts of the global capital?

There is something new, dictated by the current situation to the activities of the International. Capitalism at the globalist, final stage of its imperialist development has built and continues to build world centres of its total and full power: political ( Summit of the 8 main capitalist countries), economic (WTO, IMF etc), military (NATO), diplomatic (UN) etc.

As capitalism is united worldwide, only the proletariat, just as united on the same world scale, with proletarian states and party vanguard in a number of countries, can successfully withstand and resist it.

That is why the International should begin with the building of such worldwide proletarian organisations. The time has come to stop to argue that we do need the International, or that we don’t, that it is useful or damaging for the worldwide communist and workers movement, but just simply to organize it in practice. The only difficult problem in this sense remains the designation of the party that would be capable to provide the territory of its country for placing there the elected ruling organs of the International, and to finance the beginning of its activities. Fortunately, there are such parties in the world, and we are awaiting for their initiatives in this area.

Of course, the global capital will do everything it can in order not to allow the creation and the activity of such International. But that is what we have the proletarian solidarity for – so that we could overcome this and, with the help of the International, to win from capitalism all together. The situation in the world today is such that we either will materialize our party principle and slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" or the human civilization will cease to exist, without ever moving from its pre-history towards the real, communist history.