Nikos Zachariadis (1903-1973)

The 1st of August marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of Nikos Zachariadis, General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1931 to 1956. He was born to ethnic Greek parents in Ottoman Empire's Edirne (Andrianoupolis) in 1903. At the age of 16, Nikos moved to Istanbul where he worked in various jobs, including as a dockworker and sailor. It was there when he started having his first organised relationship with the working-class movement. 

In 1919-1922 he travelled extensively to the Soviet Union. In 1923 he became a member of the Communist Party of Turkey. He studied in the newly-founded "KUTV" (Communist University of the Toilers of the East), also known as "Stalin School", in the Soviet Union. After the Greco-Turkish War and the exchange of populations, the Zachariadis family moved permanently to Greece, during a period of severe political and economic crisis. 

On summer 1924, after finishing his studies in the Soviet Union, Nikos Zachariadis travelled secretly to Greece where he undertook duties at the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). In 1926, during the dictatorship of General Pangalos, he was arrested and imprisoned in Thessaloniki. He managed to escape and worked secretly in various party positions. He was re-arrested and re-imprisoned in 1929, but once again he escaped and fled to the Soviet Union. During his stay in the Soviet Union he became a member of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). 

Communist Party, Turkey (KP): Critical questions on recent coup attempt and its aftermath in Turkey (English, Español)

Source: www.kp.org.tr.

The coup attempt and the continuing dispute in its aftermath was not only the concern of Turkey but of the workers’ and communist parties all over the world. Definitely, the course of the events should be considered regarding the class struggle in Turkey but at the same time that very coup attempt also referred to the class struggle around the world, indicating the relentless rivalry and weaknesses within the imperialist order.

In order to share with the international communist movement, the International Relations Bureau of the Communist Party,Turkey has prepared an analysis which consists of 10 critical questions on recent coup attempt and its aftermath in Turkey.

International Bulletin of Communist Party, Turkey No6.

Critical questions on recent coup attempt and its aftermath in Turkey:

Hillary Clinton: The portrait of an imperialist war criminal

Hillary Rodham Clinton. The so-called "lesser evil". The U.S. Democratic Party's Presidential nominee. The possible first U.S. female President. The supposed counterweight to Trump's right-wing extremism. 

Last June, on the occassion of CPUSA's endorsement of Mrs.Clinton, we were pointing out: "Hillary Clinton, like Donald Trump, is a choice of the U.S. monopoly capital, of the country's bourgeois class, for the position of the President. Mrs.Clinton's service as Obama government's Foreign Secretary is known and has been proved disastrous: Libya, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. The people of these countries know, better than anyone, what Imperialism means and what was Clinton's contribution in war crimes".

If we had to draw Clinton's political portrait that would be a portrait of an imperialist war-monger, a champion of hawkish aggression. 

From her stance as a First Lady to her voting record as a Senator and from her service as Obama's Secretary of State to her Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has proved her role as a ruthless promoter of U.S. Imperialism. 

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels- Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) Part II "Proletarians and Communists"

Manifesto of the Communist Party.

By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

First Published: February 1848.

Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137.

II. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. 

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. 

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. 

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. 

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels- Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) Part I "Bourgeois and Proletarians"

Manifesto of the Communist Party.

By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

First Published: February 1848.

Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137.

Preface to The 1872 German Edition.

The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French] Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been republished in that language in at least twelve different editions in Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The French version first appeared in Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A new translation is in the course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was published in Geneva in the sixties#. Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly after its appearance. 

Fidel Castro- La historia me absolverá (History will absolve me)

Honoring the 26th of July and the 63rd anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack, we publish the full defense speech of Fidel Castro in court against the charges brought against him after the Moncada attack. The speech was given on 16 October 1953. 

HONORABLE JUDGES:

Never has a lawyer had to practice his profession under such difficult conditions; never has such a number of overwhelming irregularities been committed against an accused man. In this case, counsel and defendant are one and the same. As attorney he has not even been able to take a look at the indictment. As accused, for the past seventy-six days he has been locked away in solitary confinement, held totally and absolutely incommunicado, in violation of every human and legal right.

He who speaks to you hates vanity with all his being, nor are his temperament or frame of mind inclined towards courtroom poses or sensationalism of any kind. If I have had to assume my own defense before this Court it is for two reasons. First: because I have been denied legal aid almost entirely, and second: only one who has been so deeply wounded, who has seen his country so forsaken and its justice trampled so, can speak at a moment like this with words that spring from the blood of his heart and the truth of his very gut.

Ronald Reagan: A Ruthless Mass Murderer No.2

 

9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001.

By Michel Chossudovsky / Source: Global Research.

Communist Party, Turkey (KP): "Step into action!"- Interviews with Kemal Okuyan and Özlem Şen Abay

Communist Party, Turkey: Step into action!

Turkey must exit NATO.

The EU membership process must stop;

All military agreements with the US must be abolished, all relevant military bases must be closed;

All religious associations must be dissolved. Any religious discourse must be forbidden in politics. Educational system must be refashioned on the secular basis;

The support for the terrorist groups in Syria must be called off.

These are the urgent demands that must be raised and popularized after the coup attempt of the Gulenists and their collaborators.

The Communist Party cannot let the immediate connections between the unjust system in the country and what happened thereof be passed over while struggling for such demands.

Imperialist Murderers: U.S. and French airstrikes kill over 140 civilians in Manbij, Syria

NOTE: Yesterday, 22 July, at least nine people were killed after gunmen attacked a shopping mall in Munich. It was a horrific action of terrorism, a crime against innocent citizens- our thoughts and solidarity goes to the families of those who lost their lives and to the German people. The Imperialists, too, expressed their sympathy and condolences for the victims of Munich. Among them, the Presidents of the United States and France, Barack Obama and Francois Hollande. Hypocrites! Just a few hours earlier, the governments of US and France had committed a bloody massacre by killing over 140 civilians- among them numerous children- after extensive airstrikes in the town of Manbij in Syria. 

‘Bloody massacres’: Syria appeals to UN after French & US airstrikes ‘kill over 140 civilians’.  Source: Russia Today.

Syria is demanding the UN take action after it says French war planes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border. The deaths came just a day after US air assaults killed a further 20 people in Manbij.

The Truth about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Imperialist Propaganda

By Nikos Mottas.

"If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible...”

- Harry Truman, 1941.

Since the end of the Second World War, the bourgeois historiography has tried to distort various incidents in order to vilify Socialism and the USSR. One of these incidents- which has been a "banner" of imperialism's apologists and other anticommunists- is the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”* which was signed in 1939. In it's unscientific, unhistorical effort to equate Communism with Nazism, the bourgeois propaganda presents the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as a medium of expansive policy by the USSR and Hitler's Germany. The distortion of historical events, the amalgamation of lies and the half-truths by the Imperialists and their collaborators aim in defaming the huge role of the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist struggle of WW2.

However, the reality is different than the one presented by the bourgeois historiography. Here, we will examine the circumstances and the events which led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, in an effort to debunk the anti-communist propaganda on this matter.

Ronald Reagan: A Ruthless Mass Murderer

Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, consists a political idol of the world's anticommunists, neoliberals and conservatives. Like his close friend Margaret Thatcher, Reagan was a staunch defender of his class- a bourgeois politician and political representative of monopoly capitalism. During his term in the White House (1981-1989) Reagan played a leading role in supporting the counter-revolutionary forces in the Socialist countries, while he left his mark in various horrific crimes against the people of Latin America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua etc.) and the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, etc). Here, we will present a series of articles and testimonies which expose the role of R.Reagan's bloody, murderous imperialist legacy - In Defense of Communism.

Accessory to Genocide in Guatemala.

By Robert Parry.

Source: consortiumnews.com.

May 11, 2013.

The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.

Communist Party of Greece (KKE): Statement on the developments in Turkey and the attempted military coup

Source: 902.gr / Translation in English: In Defense of Communism.

“The up-to-date data information, regarding the developments in Turkey and the coup attempt, refer to a sharpening of the internal, intra-bourgeois contradictions, of the differences between the various authority centers in the country, which interweave with the total international antagonisms in the broader region of Syria, of Middle East and Eastern Merditerranean, through the direct intervention and juxtaposition of powerful capitalist states.

In these antagonisms, Turkey has participated- and participates- having as an aim the protection of the Turkish bourgeois-class interests and its strengthening as a regional power. The active implication of Turkey in the Syria developments, the military operations it conducted in its northern part which is inhabited by populations of Kurdish origin, the relations with the Islamic State (Daesh) brought it in confrontation with its traditional allies, e.g. USA, NATO and others.