Contribution to the 15th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the international communist movement".
Brussels, 5-7 May 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Message

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

 

Author of article: Oleg Shenin, Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Dear comrades, participants of the Seminar!

Please accept my sincere regards and wishes to successfully discuss all the issues of this Seminar.

The Central Committee of the re-born Communist Party of the Soviet Union has sent in advance to your Seminar our detailed theses in relation to the main issues in the agenda. I hope that you already had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with this document so that I would not have to raise these issues once again in my letter.

As an addition to our theses the Central Committee of our party would like to ask you to discuss two of our proposals.

    1. About publishing of theoretical and information magazine of the Communist and Workers’ parties. In the past, the single printed organ for all parties was a permanent, indispensable and integral part of the international communist movement.

      2. Practically at the same time with the formation of Comintern, the magazine "International" started being published monthly in 6 languages, including Chinese. It has existed till the dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943.

      After a short break, the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties published the weekly newspaper "For lasting peace, for people’s democracy" during the years 1947-1956. It was published in 20 languages. This newspaper ceased to exist when the Bureau ceased to exist.

      Following the decision of the International Conference of the Communist and Workers parties in 1957, the publication of the magazine "Problems of peace and socialism" started, and continued for 32 years. This magazine was not just a "collective organ", it was also "collective organizer". It worked out various forms of collective work of the political parties, their continuous meetings, exchange of opinions and information, mutual discussions and formulation of conclusions and assessments etc. And these forms of internationalism were fully fit with the demands of the time. Lately this magazine was published in 32 languages and was available in 145 countries. And this magazine did not die a natural death. It was fighting heroically "till the last bullet" and was strangulated by contra-revolution, that was already raging at that time in USSR and in Eastern European countries, while the ruling communist and workers parties in these countries were giving up one position after another without any serious resistance.

      The history of the contemporary communist movement from the time of the Comintern is the convincing evidence of the fact that a single printed organ has always been its mailbox, its compass and its barometer, and I do not think there is a need to explain this in details here. All parties had permanent need in it – no less than they need it now. But we do not have this unique media for already 16 years. Bulletins, annual editions, etc always served as a useful addition to such edition, but they cannot replace it.

      Our Greek comrades have completed a great work for organizing and informing the communist and workers parties. They managed to bring a very effective system into life, at the cost of enormous efforts and means. I refer to Solidnet, the effect of which we all feel so clearly in our practical work. A very valuable, I would say, unique edition is "The Information Bulletin". Despite some delays, caused by need to translate and to re-print it, it is the one and only manual of mutual informing by the brotherly parties.

      We think that the Greek comrades are now very close to the realisation of the idea of regularly printing a single international edition for all communist and workers parties. I could give you a lot of strong arguments for the need of publishing such magazine. But we would like to ask your attention just for one aspect of it.

      There are two poles in the modern communist movement. We won’t be too strict in our evaluations of their positions, we will only say that in many aspects they are very close. But time brings its corrections into the communist movement, just as it does with any living and energetic organism, and these corrections often affect the positions.

      I could give you as an example V.N. Voronin who was the leader of the Moldavian Communist party until recently, but has very quickly become a loyal servant of the Romanian-Moldavian bourgeoisie. Or another example that is very familiar to the Soviet communists. When the contra-revolution had attacked the CPSU, the today’s CPRF took its historic place. In the beginning its leader G. Zyuganov was not shy to say that he and his party are the successors of the CPSU. Fifteen years have passed. The CPRF received comfortable buildings and other attributes of a big party from the authorities. And in Zyuganov’s speech on the XI th Congress of his party we read: " At the moment the Socialist revolution is not on the agenda, because the necessary contradictions are not ripe yet. Russia is facing objective necessity of bourgeois democratic reforms – for a change from the Bonapartist regime." (Pravda, 1-2nd of November 2005)

      What other "contradictions" does he need, if almost half of the population of our country lives below the poverty line, if almost 2/3 already urgently need improvement of their housing, if people have to pay for medical care, for holidays, for education and the overwhelming majority of the population cannot afford any of these? No wonder that under such conditions our population diminishes annually by at least 1 million people.

      The remarkable Soviet journalist N. Garufulina has written a superb book, "The Anti Zyuging", where she unmasks the process of degradation of the leader of CPRF from Marxism to such open opportunism, to put it blunt – because he finally received the crumbs from the master’s table. From this book it becomes clear that Zyuganov became well known, not because of his intellect or his influence, but because the ruling bourgeoisie is keeping him afloat and is using him as a pocket opposition in their false bourgeois democracy.

      I have given you these examples only in order to show how in such a short time people can change. And these people are well able to lead big parts of the Communist movement far away from our mutual goals.

      The reason that I am saying all of this, is that we should realize the historical responsibility that lies on our shoulders - the responsibility to keep our movement united. The magazine won’t be the panacea from all the problems and all shades of sins, but it will symbolize our movement as a united one, it will keep us within certain ideological frames, - of course, if we want to call ourselves Communists.

      Because, if you remember, a note was printed already in the last issues of "Problems of peace and socialism" that the opinion of the authors of articles was not necessarily shared by the editors.

      We would like to ask the participants of this Seminar to discuss our proposals and, if they agree, to send a delegation to Lisbon where on the 27th of May will take place the working session of the Commission for agreeing the agenda for the Conference of Communist and Workers parties in Lisbon this autumn.

      We will send a similar message as this to Lisbon.

      We would also like to ask for the same in relation to the second issue that we would like to raise..

    2. The second issue. Its short history: in 1969, on the instructions of the Commission that was preparing the International Conference of the Communist and Workers Parties, a booklet "Accusation act against imperialism" was compiled.

This was a very well prepared book, with strong photographic evidence about the crimes of imperialism in the 1st part of the XX century (100 pages in total). Apart from photos, there were plenty of figures, documents, and comments. It was translated in various languages and given out to the participants of the International Conference in 1969. Unfortunately, we have only 1 exemplar left, so we can only provide you with a photocopy.

We suggest preparing a new edition of this booklet, making it Volume 1. And later on to prepare, by mutual efforts of all parties, Volume 2 – about the crimes of imperialism in the 2nd half of the XX century.

By doing this, our parties will receive a very strong and very graphic political propaganda document. . We would like to ask the participants of the Seminar to discuss this issue and, if the agreement would be achieved, to raise this issue in Lisbon and to agree there and then on how to make a reality of it.

Our best wishes to all the comrades for the upcoming Great Victory Day!

Oleg Shenin,

Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

 

 

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