Gennady Zyuganov

1-20-06, 9:36 am

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is preparing, at the end of January 2006, to pass a resolution entitled 'On the Need for International Condemnation of Communist Regimes'. This is not the first attempt to put the communist idea in the dock, to rewrite history and revise the results of the Second World War and the victory over fascism. The CPRF, together with other communist and workers' parties, and all the progressive forces, has come out against this latest attack of the latter-day Inquisition. During the course of the debates on the draft PACE resolution the Communist Party of the Russian Federation presented to the world community a convincing set of arguments that prove that the resolution is not only untenable, but is a potential threat to the entire system of international relations.

Inept Attempt to Organize a Show Trial of the Communist Idea

On September 13, 2005 there was a meeting of the Political Commission of PACE in Paris. At the initiative of the Baltic countries and with the support of right-wing parties it discussed a report 'On the Need for International Condemnation of the Crimes of Communism' and the recommendations prepared on its basis. Some PACE officials had decided to stage an international show trial thus investing that organization with functions that it does not have. It was actually not just about 'condemning' alleged 'crimes of communism,' but about a global all-European and even world anti-communist campaign that may destabilize the situation in the world.

The report that was discussed was a specimen of savage, 'Cave-Age' anti-communism. It trots out again the moth-eaten argument about an alleged affinity between communism and fascism. However, any person with even elementary education is aware of the radical differences between them. For example, in the economic sphere the communists advocate nationalization of the economy and the creation of a public sector of production whereas fascists have always come out in favour of a corporate economy in which private ownership of the means of production is preserved. In the ideological field, the communists proceed from proletarian solidarity and unity of all the working people while fascism reduces everything to the supremacy of the 'Arian' race regarding all the other peoples as slaves.

In the years of the Cold War anti-communist propaganda cleverly applied the term 'totalitarianism' equally to refer to fascism and to communism. This is an out-and-out lie because the nature of communism and fascism is entirely different. The concept of 'totalitarianism' might just as well be used to describe many deeds of the French, English and American 'democracies', especially in periods of war (ranging from the invention of concentration camps and internment of hundreds of thousands of citizens belonging to 'suspect' nationalities to fostering present-day international terrorism).

By equating communism and fascism the leaders of the anti-communist campaign in effect are condemning the great humanistic tradition that traces its origin to the Great French Revolution. Communism also grew out of the early Christian idea of equality and work, the ideas of Enlightenment and secular humanism. Communism grew out of these ideologies, it stands on their shoulders. Another attempt, since the times of Nazi Germany, to condemn communism, is an attempt to discredit the principles of social progress, the ideas of Enlightenment and Humanism.

Obviously, one of the main aims of this campaign is to liquidate the historical legacy of the communist movement and revise world history as a whole. By consigning to oblivion a colossal part of history that is closely linked with the communist idea, the initiators of that provocation seek to change the future by redrawing it according to their own templates.

However, their knowledge of history is mediocre. As follows from the report, they reduce fascism to Nazism, that is, its German variety. But what about Italian fascism? What does one make of the variants of pro-fascist regimes in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Norway and other Third Reich satellite countries? How does one assess the fascist parties in Britain, France, the US and other Western countries? Why does the document call for condemning the Franco regime in Spain but does not say a word about the Salazar regime in Portugal? Or are we to assume that all these ideological brothers of Hitler's Germany should be rehabilitated in one fell swoop? I am sure that the world community will never agree to such a disgraceful action.

Reaction to Growing Communist Influence

The architects of the PACE provocation make no bones that what prompted their actions was that in spite of the anti-communism of recent years, the idea and practice of communism have not only survived, but continue to play a key role in the life of the modern world. 'Some countries are still ruled by communist regimes, the memorandum attached to the document said. It seems that a certain nostalgia for communism is still alive in some countries. This creates the danger of communists taking over power in one country or another The majority of leaders who are still on the political stage have to varying degrees supported communist regimes Various elements of the communist ideology such as equality and social justice, still hold attraction to many political leaders,' the report admitted.

In other words, the authors of the document were fully aware of the attractiveness and relevance of communism, of its being inseparable from modern civilization. It is the vitality and power of the communist idea that scares them, prompting an urge to 'cut the living flesh' disregarding any catastrophic consequences.

The initiators of the campaign are turning a blind eye to the history of Europe, which in the middle of the 20th century (especially during the war against fascism) was in many ways determined by the communist parties which made the decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism. Soviet communists soldiers, officers and marshals fought in the battlefields of the Second World War. It was the communists who made the decisive contribution to the fight against fascism in Italy, Greece, France and other European countries. They paid the highest price for the democratic future of Europe, earning, like the French communists, the honorary title of the 'party of the executed'.

And was it not the communists, above all, in the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist community, who played the leading role in the emergence of modern Europe and the whole world by ruling out the possibility of another major war for half a century? Was it not the communist Soviet Union that consistently championed European security?

Finally, was it not as a result of the competition between the two social systems the socialist and the capitalist that the West had to create and improve the institutions of democracy and social stability (borrowing a great deal from the experience of the USSR and other countries) which enabled it to attain a level of development of which Europe, the US, Japan and other states of the 'golden billion' are proud and even boastful.

Attempt to Erase History

And today the world community is being urged to erase all this colossal experience, to erase their own European history and usher in an era of communist-baiting. Attempts to disguise this course by verbose and not very coherent explanations to the effect that this is not a fight against communist ideology but an international investigation to condemn crimes allegedly committed in the name of the communist ideology are given the lie by the authors of that idea themselves.

'The communist ideology, wherever and whenever it was introduced, be it in Europe or elsewhere, has always led to mass terror, crimes and large-scale violations of human rights.' This is the main premise of the document's conclusions. In other words, it is criminal and is subject to eradication.

The authors of the document are indignant that 'the Communist Parties continue to be openly active in some countries', and that 'communist symbols are openly used,' that there remain 'monuments, street names and all sorts of other external symbols 'connected with the history of communism,' etc. Hence the document demands from all the communist and even 'post-communist' parties and PACE member countries 'to reassess the history of communism and their own past' (sic!) and to break with them. In other words, Europe and the world are called upon to renounce their own history.

This is a dangerous initiative that may boomerang against its own authors. One can recall tens of millions of the victims of European colonialism in Asia, Africa and America. It is easy to level the accusation of genocide against England, when talking about the fate of India, or against the US if one recalls the destruction of the indigenous population of America. And how about the war of 'the American democracy' in Vietnam where the civilian population was annihilated indiscriminately?

And why not recall the tragic consequences of the aggression of the 14 Entente countries against Soviet Russia? And, say, English concentration camps in the Russian north? And what about the tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war tortured to death in concentration camps in Poland in Early 1920s?

And why not call for a world condemnation of the bloody policies of such conquerors as the Swedish kings Gustav Adolf, Charles XII, the Prussian Friedrich II and Napoleon who buried the whole of Europe under piles of corpses?

Tens of Millions of People May be Outlawed

The initiators of the anti-communist provocation at PACE do not only want to rewrite history. They also put on the agenda the issue of punishing all those who had ever been involved 'in the deeds and crimes of the communist movement' and the communist states. Because everything that has to do with communism is declared to be criminal, the people who had any connection with it may, if one follows the logic of this document, be liable to punishment.

In general, PACE proposes a civilization-wide purge unheard of in the history of the human race. The authors would like to see all the countries and continents on the planet to be drawn into it because the communist movement even today is a phenomenon of the whole world civilization. Against the background of such punitive projects the highly dubious statistics of the 'victims of communism' is beginning to pale.

The communist parties today are active around the world, including in all the countries of Europe with the exception of the dwarf states of Monaco and Lichtenstein. They are represented sometimes very substantially in the parliaments of France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, San Marino and of course Russia. Naturally, there are communists in the European parliament and in PACE where the United Left group includes communists and left-wing MPs from Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, France, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries.

The influence of the communist and the left in the European continent is growing. In the decade between 1990 and 2000 the total electoral support of communist and left-wing parties in Europe increased threefold from 6.7 to 15.3%. One in every five or six European voters vote for communists and their allies in elections. Communists are in power in Moldavia today. Communists are members of the government coalition in Cyprus where they hold 4 ministerial portfolios out of 11.

Parliamentary elections in Germany have confirmed the strengthening (both in the West and East of the country) of the position of our comrades from the left-wing Democratic Socialist Party which is a successor to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany that ruled the GDR.

Communists are playing the decisive role in the life of the Asian continent. They are in power in China, the DPRK and Vietnam and have strong positions in the ruling circles of India (the head of the Indian Parliament is a communist), they are active in Japan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal where they have strong representation in the national parliaments.

The communist parties wield considerable influence in Africa and the Middle East. For example, in South Africa they are members of the ruling coalition and are represented in the government. Communists have been elected to the parliaments of Syria, Morocco and Israel. On the American continent, communists rule Cuba. They are represented in the parliaments of Uruguay, Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela and Panama.

And the resolution proposed that all these political parties, millions of communists and hundreds of millions of their supporters be effectively outlawed.

The Threat of Universal Destabilization

The authors of the document seem to be oblivious of the fact that their initiative would divide the world community. First, a dividing line appears within the European countries where the communist movement is one of the oldest and broadest-based political movements. Secondly, they are fanning the already pronounced conflict between the West (in the first place the US) and China, which is not going to renounce its communist essence and will stand firm defending its ideological foundations.

Thirdly, it provokes a new explosion in the post-Soviet space, and not only in the former USSR, but throughout Eastern Europe. For the globe is aimed not only at the communist parties but also at 'post-communist' organizations which play the key role in Central Europe. An overwhelming majority of citizens in that vast region are put in a position not only of suspects (suspected of sympathizing with the communist ideology) but persons persecuted for their possible complicity in the 'crimes of communism'.

This, in other words, revives the thinking and actions of the Third Reich which aimed at total destruction of everything connected with communism. This is highlighted by another obvious trend: an obvious attempt to prepare an attack not only on communists, but on the socialist and social-democratic parties, on the Socialist International.

What does it mean to declare the communist movement to be criminal? It means to declare criminal Marxism which underlies the communist ideology. But Marxism provides the philosophical foundations not only of communists, but also of social democrats.

Considering that the report has been initiated by right-wing conservative forces, who are the main political rivals of the social democrats, the above described course of events is highly probable. The GDR and Poland, for example, were ruled by parties that called themselves 'socialist' and 'workers'' which represented an organizational embodiment of political cooperation between communists and social democrats. That could provide a pretext for an attack on the Socialist International and all the left-wing forces in Europe and the world. By the way, the October 1917 Revolution in Russia was carried out by the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). This, if anything, might provide an argument for including the social democracy in the list of victims of global political repressions. For the authors of the report do not hide the fact that they are challenging history and are going to redraw it as they see fit.

The attempt to stage a world-wide campaign against communism is meeting with a worthy resistance. As soon as word came about the provocation at PACE, protests were lodged by the Italian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Greece, the Slovak Communist Party, the communists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Byelorussia, AKEL in Cyprus and many others.

Social-democratic organizations, workers' parties and movements, the anti-globalism front and other influential forces have come out against this idea. The participants in the meeting of 69 communist and workers' parties in Athens and political and governmental structures in many countries have voiced their protest.

The discussion of the draft anti-communist resolution of PACE that took place in September 13 seemed to have made it clear that the provocation is being rejected by the majority of the Political Commission. The Commission voted by 21 votes against 5 to drop the anti-communist memorandum from the agenda. But the initiators of the provocation made it clear that they intended to repeat their attempt in January 2006. Actually, they did it earlier. An allegedly revised document was again put before PACE in December 2005.

Fresh Attempt to Organize Show Trial of Communists

The desire of the authors of the report to convince the members of the Political Commission that the new version 'takes into account' the results of the September 13 discussion became immediately apparent. But anyone who reads the new draft can see that it is the same document only slightly 'touched up as regards terminology. Nevertheless, most members of the Political Commission of PACE, hiding their eyes, voted for putting the resolution 'On the Need for International Condemnation of Communist Regimes' on the agenda of the Parliamentary Assembly at the end of January.

Under the Resolution, the Assembly would call on the Ministerial Committee of the Council of Europe to set up a panel of experts to gather information on human rights violations by various totalitarian regimes, 'in particular, the Nazi, communist and Francoist regimes', pass an official declaration on the alleged 'crimes' of communists, revise school textbooks in the light of this and call an international conference to discuss these topics. The countries-members of the Council of Europe are called upon to carry out similar measures at the national level and mount anti-communist campaigns.

Thereby PACE takes on the role of initiator of an all-European hounding of communists, of establishing thought control in Europe and falsifying history. The Council of Europe, which initially had the slogans of human rights on its banners, is to be saddled with the role of medieval Inquisition and the notorious McCarthyists. A signal is given for the establishment of police regimes all over Europe. PACE is facing a fundamental choice: either it rejects the provocative idea backed by the US, or it passes an indictment on itself as a collective body of European states that embrace the ideas of freedom, rule of law and democracy.

This is a moment of truth for PACE. Its decision will determine the attitude of the world community (including such influential states as China, India, Brazil, Vietnam, Cuba and Venezuela) to that organization, which has long been experiencing a profound crisis and is sliding further and further into the quagmire of anti-communism, support of apartheid and double standards.

This is not the first time that the cheerleaders of anti-communism are calling for a crusade against democracy and social justice. Everybody remembers the fascist Anticomintern, the dark years of McCarthyism in the US, the persecution and bans of the communist parties, the dictatorships of the 'black colonels', military juntas, and Pinochets. All of them came to grief. This was so in the past and it will be so today.

One should not forget that the most complete, cynical and criminal expression of anti-communism was Hitler's fascism with its program of destroying the socialist and communist world view, with its orders to shoot all the commissars, Jews and members of the intelligentsia, and to enslave entire peoples and perpetrate genocide. Fascism was crushed by the communist-led Soviet Union. The Nuremberg trial of which we will be marking the 60th anniversary this year, was above all a trial of anti-communism, its criminal ideology, goals and methods.

The Conceptual Fallacy of the Report

The 'novelties' introduced by the authors of the report by renaming it from one 'contemning communist ideology' to one 'demanding a condemnation of communist regimes', mark a new step toward destabilizing the world community. They put the world on the brink not only of ideological disputes, but of a destruction of interstate and intrastate relations. For the report urges condemnation of countries which are the home of almost half of humankind.

For example, the document claims that lack of political pluralism is a sign of a totalitarian regime. But countries with a two-party system also come under that vague definition. These countries have been ruled by just two parties for decades and even centuries. All the other parties are virtually barred from running the state. We are talking about the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and a number of other countries.

Or take another example. The document lists the policy of nationalization in the economic sphere as a sign of totalitarianism. But that puts into question the legitimacy of the state structure in Austria and the Scandinavian countries where the government sector accounts for up to 50% of the economy. Besides, in the 20th century the policy of nationalization was pursued by Britain, France and Italy. So, to follow the logic of the document, their state system is also partly illegitimate.

The above examples suffice to draw the conclusion that the authors of the document are in fact planting a mine under the present-day structure of Europe and the world. Its adoption would make all international structures created after the Second World War, including the UN, illegitimate. For they were created with the most active participation of the USSR, the countries of the socialist community and the West-European states in whose governments and parliaments the communists played a considerable role.

Rehabilitation of Fascism

The document whitewashes fascism, both its old and modern varieties. For it was the USSR that made the decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazism. And whom do the present-day neofascists attack most ferociously? The communists. But inasmuch as the Soviet Union is listed among the criminal regimes, the actions of fascists were and will be justified and even legitimate. This flows from the logic of Mr. Lindblad's report and the resolutions and recommendations he proposes.

So Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and their allies were right in unleashing the Second World War? And it is they who are 'victims of communist totalitarianism'? What a travesty of history. It is open humiliation of millions of true victims of fascism. I think fascists will be the most ardent supporters of the document being discussed.

Declaring the present-day socialist countries to be effectively 'criminal regimes' legitimizes even a direct military aggression against them, not to speak about various economic and ideological sanctions.

The PACE document gives a free hand to the forces interested in destabilizing the present and former socialist states, or else it provides a blanket justification for international terrorism, for undermining stability for at least one half of the world in which the communist parties rule.

One should not give in to this provocation. It is necessary to put an end, once and for all, to the dangerous attempts to derail the already very unstable world in which we live.

We are proud of our past and we are strong by our truth. We have saved the world from the fascist plague to which the pillars of bourgeois democracy caved in. We set for the world an example that proves that humanity is not doomed to always live and serve Mammon. We have showed the way to the future. We do not intend to repent or ever stand on our knees before anyone. We will defend ourselves and our friends with all determination and persistence. We will stand our ground and prevail.

By donning the moth-eaten skin of anti-communist wolves, PACE and those who stand behind this disgraceful initiative are actually targeting Russia which no longer intends to reconcile itself to its present humiliated position and is gathering strength to stand up from its knees and move forward. PACE is joining those who have recently stopped at no wicked stratagems and threats in order to prevent us from doing so. They are trying to force us to abdicate forever our great history and its gains, to admit our 'inferiority' and resign to the role of a second-rate state. The actions of PACE are a challenge to all Russians regardless of their party affiliation and politics, a challenge to Russia.

This is the time to say a resolute 'No' to provocateurs from PACE and to act in a broad front in the name of Russia's future, in the name of Truth and Justice.

--Gennady Zyuganov chairs the central committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and leads the party’s faction in Russia’s national parliament.