GRANMA INTERNATIONAL

Havana. June 10, 2014

Nuria Barbosa León
Orlando Méndez Perera (Photos)

René González is one of the Cuban Five who were convicted and imprisoned in the U.S. for fighting terrorism against Cuba, organized and financed in Florida. After completing his unjust sentence, he returned to Cuba in May, 2013, as did Fernando González who arrived home in February, 2014. Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino remain incarcerated in U.S. prisons, and millions of voices around the world continue to demand their freedom. Granma International spoke with René at the Cuban Friendship Institute.

What message would you send to your three imprisoned brothers?

First I would congratulate Gerardo and Ramón on their birthdays (June 4 and 9, respectively). Remind them that this is a happy occasion, even though they will complete 16 years in prison in September. They have been able to remain happy in adverse circumstances, in the prisons where they are confined, precisely because they defend Cuban children’s happiness, so they don’t grow up without parents, and so they can live without an act of terrorism or crime interrupting their lives.

We will continue the fight for their return home and we won’t rest until we bring this brutal and undeserved punishment to an end. A punishment which I have known, and remember every morning, when I wake up. I think about how they are waking up in a cell like the one I lived in, for more than 13 years, and I am overwhelmed by the urgent need to put an end to this punishment.

In your opinion, why is the 3rd Five Days for the Cuban Five in Washington so important?

Our fight has been to bring the truth about The Five to the U.S. – a truth which has been silenced, above all kept from the U.S. public. This event is important because this is an opportune moment to be heard by the White House. Millions of people are calling for resolution of the case and, to put it in astrological terms: the stars are aligned more than ever, due to political and historic reasons which are occurring right now.

We hope that the event will surpass the others and we will succeed, because we have organized ourselves well, have generated much support, and are well prepared. We want the city of Washington to feel the call for freedom for Gerardo, Antonio and Ramón, and that the U.S. government finally listens, and acts accordingly, to free our three compañeros.

After the events in Washington, what other activities are planned?

The most important thing is to organize to get the message to U.S. society. Other solidarity events in Cuba and other countries are planned, but the most important one is in Washington, this month of June. The most important thing is to unite a bit more, focus all the energy which has been generated towards other cities in the U.S., because only the solidarity of millions of people will open our compañeros’ cells.

We will continue to organize these types of activities to call attention to the issue, but once this event is over, we will be preparing for next year’s event because our interest is in systemizing the work.

The political discourse among the tenants of the White House is changing, we understand the reasons behind these efforts, but the important thing is that it changes. This is an opportune moment for the government to receive our message, which is why we must systemize the work.

Could you please send a message to the solidarity movements and committees calling for the freedom of The Five around the world.

First gratitude, secondly admiration, because these movements work in difficult conditions. In Cuba there exists a Revolution which has sown in the people, and in society, a feeling of solidarity, but in other countries this is unthinkable, with the predominance of individualism and selfishness. In this context, amidst these limitations, compañeros have remained in solidarity with Cuba, with The Five and this is worthy of admiration. I think they are extraordinary people and therefore deserve our respect and gratitude.

http://mltoday.com/the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-reconsidered?utm

The Collapse of the Soviet Union Reconsidered

by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny

In 2004, Thomas Kenny and I wrote Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 2004, the book has been published and reviewed in Bulgaria, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, France, Cuba and Spain. One or both of the authors have been present for discussions of the book in Greece, Portugal, France and Cuba, and a number of critics have reviewed the book in leftwing journals. In this presentation, Kenny and I will respond to two criticisms and one question prompted by the book. In the book, we put forth an explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union. We used the words “collapse” and “betrayal” in the title in spite of the possible misleading connotations of both words.

Still, there was no doubt as to what we were trying to explain, namely the radical transformation that displaced the political power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abolished most state ownership, centralized planning, and the system of social services, and fragmented the multi-national state. We argued that the Soviet Union did not collapse because socialism failed. Rather, the system of socialism based on collective or state ownership of property and state planning proved a remarkable success, particularly from the point of view of working people. The system proved itself capable of providing sustained economic growth over six decades, notable technical and scientific innovations, unprecedented economic and social benefits to all its citizens, all the while defending itself from external invasion, sabotage, and threats, and offering economic aid, technical assistance, and military protection to other nations struggling for independence and socialism.

The Soviet Union nonetheless had problems—some related to political and ideological ossification, some related to the quantity and quality of its economic output, and some related to the ongoing struggle with imperialism. These problems, however, did not cause the system’s collapse. What brought down Soviet socialism were the policies pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev. These policies emanated from a belief that the problems of socialism could be solved by making unilateral concessions to imperialism and by incorporating into socialism certain ideas and policies of capitalism. Gorbachev’s ideas had roots in Soviet political discourse, but they had never triumphed so completely as they did under Gorbachev.

What allowed these ideas to gain ascendancy was that in the previous thirty years a petty bourgeois sector rooted mainly in the illegal, private economy had developed within the Soviet Union. This so-called second economy had damaged the first economy, demoralized some of the population, corrupted segments of the Communist Party and government, and provided a social basis for the policies pursued by Gorbachev. Instead of curing the problems of socialism, Gorbachev’s policies in short order wreaked complete economic havoc and eventually toppled socialism.

Criticism #1

Some critics maintain that our explanation ignores a deep reason for the collapse, namely that the attempt to build socialism in the Soviet Union was doomed from the beginning by the insufficient development of the productive forces.

This is not a new idea. In 1918, Karl Kautsky had said that Russia was not ready for socialism. This idea drew on Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who believed that only the full development of the productive forces under capitalism would create the pre-conditions for the abolition of classes and on Engels’s description in 1875 of the backwardness of Russia. According to this view, the Soviet Union could have moved to socialism only by first allowing private enterprise to flourish and by developing the productive forces by joint ventures with foreign capitalists, both of which would have happened if the Soviet Union had continued the so-called New Economic Program (NEP) which Lenin introduced in 1921. A corollary of this idea was that the Soviet Union could only have avoided a collapse by pursuing the path of China and Vietnam today, the path of “a market economy with socialist orientation.”

Major problems exist with this explanation. It is not at all clear what Marx and Engels would have thought was the appropriate course for Soviet Communists in the 1920s. Though the Soviet conditions may not have been ideal to build socialism, Marx was well aware, as he said in 1853, that “men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted by the past.”

Moreover, in 1917 Russia was not quite so backward as the country described by Engels in 1875. It possessed some of the largest industrial factories in the world, and 10 percent of its population worked in industry. Admittedly, the new Soviet Union remained a mainly peasant country, and Soviet leaders like Viacheslav Molotov later acknowledged that backwardness “adversely affected socialism.” Nevertheless, those who think backwardness not only adversely affected socialism but doomed it must confront three challenges. First, however backward the Soviet Union was in the early 1920s, it did not remain so. Having the advantage of rich natural resources, a resourceful leadership, and a motivated population, the Soviet Union steadily overcame its backwardness. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union had become an economic power second only to the United States. In 1984 the economist Harry Shaffer wrote: “The United States is still ahead of the Soviet Union in total and per capita output, in consumption, and in living standards. But the Soviet Union has been steadily gaining on the United States.”

So, even if the productive forces started in a state of underdevelopment, they hardly remained there by 1985. While Soviet industrial development could not be disputed, some believed that the original backwardness nonetheless fatally weakened the system. Erwin Marquit asserted that the original backwardness led the Soviets to resort to “the utopian model of a centrally planned economy” and that the centrally planned economy “proved unable to match the pace of market-driven technological development in the West.” This is not convincing. Indeed, the exact opposite was true. Through state ownership and planning, the Soviet economy made remarkable strides not only economically but also technologically. By the 1980s Soviet technological development did not equal that of the U.S., but it remained not far behind and was gaining. In a book on socialist science and technology published in 1989, John W. Kiser III argued that the whole idea of a “technology gap” was an overstatement born of “America’s belief in the inherent inferiority of the Soviet system.” Because the Soviet system lacked an incentive to commercialize its technological achievements, the West had “a persistent tendency to underestimate them.” Kiser pointed to technological breakthroughs the Soviets and eastern Europeans made in metallurgy, chemistry, food processing, biomedicine and elsewhere.

As for computer technology, in 1986 the CIA concluded that a software and hardware gap existed between the Soviet Union and the West, but that “the Soviets will still be making rapid progress in absolute terms” and that in ten to fifteen years “the top Soviet scientific institutions will probably have equipment comparable to that of the best US national laboratories at present.” In other words, technological gaps were small and narrowing. Thus, technological backwardness hardly provided a compelling explanation of the collapse. A second problem with the backwardness explanation was its assumption that the New Economic Program (NEP), i.e. fostering development through encouraging private enterprise and foreign investment, provided a live option. This was like arguing that the American Civil War could have been avoided had the North simply allowed slavery to die out naturally. Though this idea may appeal to those who wanted to blame the abolitionists for the carnage of the Civil War, few, if any, historians think that was a live option in 1860. Similarly, sticking with the NEP did not represent a live option for the Soviets in the 1920s. In 1921, the Soviets had turned to the NEP to deal with problems created by the policies of “war communism,” particularly the alienation of the peasants caused by the confiscation of their grain. In a short time, however, the NEP developed its own problems.

In explaining why the Soviets abandoned the NEP, the historian E. H. Carr pointed to three grave problems. First, in 1922-23, the so-called “scissors” crisis occurred, in which wildly fluctuating grain prices led to food shortages, unemployment and the suffering of poor and middle peasants. Second, most Soviet leaders came to realize that the NEP condemned the Soviet Union to a long period of industrial backwardness, and this was a fearsome and intolerable prospect in the face of the growing threat from external enemies. Third, in 1927-28 falling agricultural prices caused peasants to hoard their produce creating starvation in the cities. For these reasons, reliance on the market and private incentives became untenable. Thus, real economic problems, as well as ideological preferences, compelled Soviet leaders to adopt new policies and to embrace public ownership and centralized planning. Under these circumstances, to call the Soviet move to state ownership and central planning “utopian” is preposterous. By making this move the Soviets industrialized quickly, defeated the Nazi invasion, and rebuilt quickly after the war.

Moreover, they did so while steadily increasing the standard of living of Soviet workers. To imagine that the Soviets could have achieved the same results by continuing the problematic policies of the NEP constitutes wishful thinking in the extreme. The backwardness explanation of the Soviet collapse contained a third weakness. This weakness is exposed by examining the lessons inferred by this explanation. It is entirely appropriate to judge an explanation by its lessons. For example, if a shepherd died by falling off a mountain cliff, only a fool would draw the lesson that people must avoid sheepherding and mountains. If, however, at the time of the accident, the shepherd was drunk, a reasonable person would draw the lesson that one should avoid drinking while tending sheep on mountain cliffs. Some who subscribe to the backwardness explanation of the Soviet collapse, drew the lesson that the Soviet Union should have avoided central planning and followed the path of China. But this lesson was no more reasonable than that of avoiding sheepherding or mountain climbing. At the very least, this conclusion is rash. Not even the Chinese themselves draw this conclusion from the Soviet collapse. According to Arthur Waldron, “Today’s official China believes that nothing deep or fundamental was wrong with the Soviet Union even in the late 1980s. According to the official narrative, the failure of the Soviet regime to continue is not attributable to a broad systemic phenomenon, but rather to a very specific failure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

Moreover, where the Chinese path will ultimately lead and what it will mean for the working class remain open questions. In the short run, the Chinese path has produced economic growth and increased income for the urban population. Nonetheless, since 2008 both the decline of economic growth rates and the entanglements of the Chinese economy with a stagnating world market cast doubts about this model’s continued viability. According to the New York Times in March of this year, China’s “growth has decelerated to its slowest pace in more than a decade.”

Moreover, the Chinese working class is paying a high price for a path that steadily diverges from socialist goals. For a decade, unofficial urban unemployment has consistently been over 8 percent. Foreign ownership and investment as a share of total manufacturing sales in China has gone from 2.3 percent in 1990 to 31.3 percent in 2000. Since direct foreign investment in China ($124 billion in 2011) has been increasing yearly and is now second only to the United States, the percentage of foreign ownership is undoubtedly much greater now than in 2000. Moreover, according to a recent study, “the inevitable outcomes of China’s capitalist development” has included “growing unemployment, inequality, and insecurity; the cutbacks in communal health care and education; worsening oppression of women; the marginalization of agriculture; and the multiplication of environmental crises.” To the extent that a market economy with a socialist orientation remains a dubious path to socialism, so it remains a dubious lesson to draw from the Soviet collapse.

In sum, the backwardness explanation must be rejected for three reasons. First, however backward the Soviet Union was in 1917, the productive forces did not remain undeveloped by 1985. Second, the explanation implied that the Soviet Union should have and could have continued the NEP. This idea was untenable at the time and is entirely fanciful in retrospect. Third, whether the Chinese path to socialism is more reliable than the Soviet one remains to be seen.

Criticism #2

A second criticism of our book arose from the treatment of Joseph Stalin. For some critics, the failure to denounce Stalin as a paranoiac, a criminal, an anti-Semite, a demon, a dictator and a mass murderer, constituted a fatal flaw. For some critics nothing would have been satisfactory short of subscribing to what Domenico Losurdo calls “une legende noire.” For some critics, our failure to condemn the cruelty under Stalin was an unpardonable omission. To this we would like to respond as Lenin did when Maxim Gorky’s expressed concern about “the cruelty of revolutionary tactics.” Lenin said, “‘What do you want?….Is it possible to act humanely in a struggle of such unprecedented ferocity? Where is there any place for soft-heartedness or generosity? We are being blockaded by Europe, we are deprived of the help of the European proletariat, counter-revolution is creeping like a bear on us from every side. What do you want? Are we not right? Ought we not to struggle and resist? We are not a set of fools….What is your criterion for judging which blows are necessary and which are superfluous in a fight?”

The truth is that we did not provide an overall assessment of Stalin, because we thought it too important to do in a cursory fashion in a study devoted to something else. As any historian, we raised a specific question—in this case the causes of the Soviet collapse—and confined ourselves to trying to answer it. We dealt with Stalin’s ideas and policies only as they related to our explanation.

To the extent that criticism of our treatment of Stalin relates to our explanation of the collapse, it deserves a response. Here a distinction must be made. As is well-known, a line of thought stretches from the 1920s to the present that socialism in the Soviet Union began an inexorable decline ever since it rejected the ideas of Leon Trotsky on the need to pursue a permanent, worldwide revolution and the futility of trying to build socialism in one country. From this point of view, the Soviet Union did not constitute socialism, and its collapse represented no more than a footnote to the exile of Trotsky. Only those who accepted these premises about the importance of Trotsky and the lack of socialism in the Soviet Union (which are really more political than historical judgments) could be satisfied by a Trotskyist explanation of Soviet history.

There are, however, other views of Stalin and his role in the Soviet collapse. One such view claimed that the Soviet collapse resulted from a “Stalinist deformation,” a kind of delayed result of Stalin’s policies. This view held that the Soviet Union built a socialist society based on public ownership and planning that worked well at delivering economic growth, securing military defense, and providing employment, economic security, health care, education and a high cultural level for workers. Nevertheless, coping with its own backwardness and with internal and external threats as well as other challenges led to anti-democratic deformations. These deformations took the form of “the cult of the individual personality, the authoritarian incorporation of all social activity under the disciplined control of the CPSU, and the subordination of all scientific and cultural thought and practice to political ideology.”

According to this view, a planned economy presented no problem in the Soviet Union, rather the problem resided in a legacy of Stalin’s authoritarianism. Stalin’s authoritarianism undermined attempts to decentralize control and responsibility, sapped initiative, and kept the socialist economy from realizing its potential. Anyone casually acquainted with the Western historiography of Stalin and the Soviet Union would hardly be surprised that some would blame him for the collapse of the Soviet Union, since one writer or another has held him responsible for nearly every calamity of the twentieth century. Any figure as complex as Stalin, the leader of a vast country going through numerous crises over an extended period of time, was bound to leave a complicated legacy. Thus, one can readily grant the existence of the problems adduced by those who hold the theory of Stalin deformation. For example, in a planned economy where the nature and size of production are set from above, there is an endemic problem of stifling initiative and responsibility below. The Soviet Union grappled with this problem for years, and Cuba grapples with it today. This problem did nor uniquely result from Stalin. Moreover, without giving them the name Stalinist deformation, we acknowledge that the size and methods of the repression “undoubtedly left a legacy of bitterness, timidity, servility, shame, and heaven knows what else.”

That, however, is not the end of the story. In evaluating Stalin’s legacy, one must distinguish between moral and political judgments—that is, whether certain behavior or policy was good or bad, justified or unjustified, positive or negative—and historical judgments about causation and consequences. Both kinds of judgment have a legitimate place, but the question before us is a matter of historical judgment. That is: did Stalin’s policies actually figure in the Soviet collapse? Frankly, those who hold the Stalin deformation view have done little to move the discussion from moral outrage to historical explanation. Stalin left a contradictory legacy on the question of authoritarianism and democracy. Those who subscribe to the Stalinist deformation explanation see only one side, that Stalin undermined socialist democracy and demoralized and demobilized the Soviet people and that this ultimately undermined the efficiency and productiveness of the socialist system and hence led to the collapse. But where is the evidence of this demoralization and demobilization? The great accomplishments of the Soviet people between 1930 and 1950, the collectivization of agriculture, the rapid industrialization, the raising of the educational and cultural level of the people, the defeat of Hitler’s invasion, the reconstruction of the country in four years after the devastation of the war, hardly suggested the work of a demoralized and demobilized population. The very opposite. These achievements required active, popular participation. Moreover, a clear-eyed view of Stalin’s legacy must admit that it contained elements of democracy and popular participation as well as autocracy and repression. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 symbolized this ambiguous legacy.

On the one hand, despite the Constitution’s democratic promises, the Soviet Union would remain a state where power was concentrated in the Communist party and increasingly in the leader of that party, where nominations for office and other initiatives came from the top, and where other institutions including the Soviets and trade unions served a consultative and implementing function at best. On the other hand, the Constitution represented an attempt for the first time in history, and under unfavorable circumstances, to give meaning to the idea of socialist democracy. The Constitution resulted from a two year process of discussion that involved large segments of workers, peasants and others in a nationwide debate of a draft document followed by a national referendum. The Constitution expanded the democratic rights of Soviet citizens by lifting voting restrictions on people associated with the tsarist regime, and while legitimizing the Communist Party’s exclusive role, it also called for multi-candidate, secret-ballot, direct elections. In a revolutionary departure from bourgeois constitutions, the Soviet Constitution included economic rights including: the rights to employment, annual vacations with pay, free medical services, free education up to and including seventh grade, equal pay, state aid to mothers of large families and unmarried mothers, maternity leave with full pay and maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens. [1]

The 1936 Constitution reflected another democratic legacy, namely Soviet policies toward national minorities. Historian Terry Martin characterized the Soviet Union as “the world’s first Affirmative Action Empire.” What Martin meant by that was that the Soviet Union “created not just a dozen large national republics, but tens of thousands of national territories scattered across the entire expanse of the Soviet Union. New national elites were trained and promoted to leadership positions in the government, school, and industrial enterprises of these newly formed territories. In each territory, the national language was declared the official language of government. In dozens of cases, this necessitated the creation of a written language where one did not exist. The Soviet state financed the mass production of books, journals, newspapers, movies, operas, museums, folk music ensembles, and other cultural output in the non-Russian languages. Nothing comparable to it has been attempted before…and no multiethnic state has subsequently matched the scope of Soviet Affirmative Action.”[2] In an opinion survey of several hundred Soviet citizens done by the Harvard Interview Project in 1950-51, the “overwhelming majority” of those asked about the 1936 Constitution agreed that its guarantees of national equality were in fact true.[3]

The ambiguity Stalin’s autocratic and democratic legacy even manifested itself in the repression of the 1930s. The campaign against Trotskyites and wreckers in 1937, which sent millions to prison and thousands to death, corresponded with a mass movement in the trade unions and workplaces for greater democracy. The head of the trade unions, Nikolai M. Shvernik, launched this movement in order to bring to the trade unions the promises of the 1936 Constitution, that is to say, secret ballots, multi-candidate elections, greater involvement of the rank and file, and greater accountability of trade union leaders. This movement went hand in hand with a campaign to end leadership cults and get rid of corrupt leaders, secret oppositionists and other “enemies of the people” who were embezzling union funds, violating safety rules, and wrecking housing, social services and production. As a result of this upsurge from below, by the end of 1937, “more that 1,230,000 people had been elected to positions in 146 unions in hundreds of thousands of union groups and shop committees….Final election returns showed a serious shake-up of personnel. More than 70 percent of the old factory committee members, 66 percent of the 94,000 factory committee chairman, and 92 percent of the 30,723 members of the regional committee plenums had been replaced.”[4] What took place in the trade unions in workplaces in 1937 embodied nothing less than a mass democratic movement from below to remove and punish certain trade union leaders. Historian Wendy Goldman called it “democratic repression,” and said, “repression was not something done to the Soviet people by an evil ‘other.’ It was actively supported and spread by people in every institution….”[5]

In short, if one looks at the Stalin legacy objectively, no direct line runs from Stalin to authoritarianism to popular demobilization to Soviet collapse. At least in the formulation of the 1936 Constitution, in the policy toward nationalities, and in the trade union democracy movement of 1937, Stalin mobilized rather than demobilized the masses. Moreover, if Stalin’s policies had really served to demobilize and demoralize the Soviet people, one would hardly have expected the Soviet people to have mourned his passing as they did or to have continued to revere him fifty years after his death. Yet, this is precisely what polls showed.[6]

In short, one can readily acknowledge that Stalin’s democratic legacy was ambiguous. Still, only a very one-sided and distorted view of Stalin could lead one to think that a Stalinist deformation so politically demobilized the mass of Soviet workers that it above all else caused of the Soviet collapse.

A Third Reaction
A third reaction to our book was not so much a criticism as a question expressed like this: why didn’t the Communist Party and the Soviet working class oppose the policies of Gorbachev and rise to the defense of socialism? In the book, we discuss this question on pp. 268-273. Certainly, the fact that rank and file resistance was not greater and more successful than it was constituted the most disturbing aspect of the whole process of Soviet dissolution. However disturbing, this fact in and of itself did not warrant jumping to the conclusion that there was something fundamentally amiss in Soviet socialism or that Soviet socialism had failed the Soviet workers in some fundamental way.

Gorbachev’s whole approach was one of trying to solve the problems of socialism by making concessions to the imperialists and by incorporating capitalist ideas into socialism. Part of this involved introducing aspects of bourgeois democracy while undermining and circumventing the traditional institutions of socialist democracy. To understand the ineffectuality of working class resistance, one does not have to look much beyond this. Soviet Communists and workers were denied traditional outlets of expression while their nominal leader steadily introduced capitalist ideas under the befogging notion of perfecting socialism. We argue that it did not have to be this way. Different reforms and a different process of reforms that mobilized the Communist Party and working class might have produced different outcomes. This had been attempted by Yuri Andropov, but the effort was cut short by his sickness and death.

Two recent trips to Cuba and a study of the recent Cuban reforms called “actualization” or “updating” have reinforced our conclusion about the fate of Soviet socialism. Obviously, the Soviet Union and Cuba represent two entirely different countries with very different histories and situations. A significant difference has been the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the U.S. on Cuba. Though the Soviet Union also experienced an economic blockade for two decades, the Cuban blockade has lasted longer and cost comparatively more. Now over fifty years old, the blockade has cost the Cubans by conservative estimates more than $104 billion in current prices and, if one takes into account the devaluation of the dollar against the price of gold, $975 billion.[7] Without the boycott, the Cuban standard of living today might well equal that of Western Europe.[8]

In spite of obvious differences, Cuba and the Soviet Union shared some features. Both the Soviet Union and Cuba had economies based on public ownership and centralized planning and had the political leadership of a Communist Party, and both Soviet society in 1985 and Cuban society in 2011 faced some similar problems, though to different degrees. For example, both societies had two currencies, a hard currency geared to international currencies and a domestic currency. The Soviet hard currency, whose use was illegal for most citizens, was limited to tourists, diplomats and a few others and was used only in hard currency shops. The Cuban hard currency, however, is not illegal, and many Cubans earn it legally by working in the tourist industry, by earning it as bonuses in certain workplaces, or by receiving it legally as remittances from relatives abroad.

The existence of two currencies creates more problems in Cuba than it did in the Soviet Union. The great disparity in value between pesos (CUP) and hard currency (CUC) (25 to 1) led to a number of problems including a growing inequality between those with access to hard currency and those without, and a brain drain from the professions without access to hard currency to those like tourism with such access. Driving a cab and receiving hard currency tips could gain more income than teaching. This was clearly demoralizing and inefficient. In another example, a second economy, or black market existed in both societies. In the Soviet Union, however, it represented a greater problem than in Cuba. Compared to the second economy in Cuba, that in the Soviet Union had existed for a longer period, was more widespread and highly developed, and was often linked to national minorities and an organized “mafia.” [9]

In some ways, the Cuban and Soviet problems resembled each other. There was a lack of productivity and efficiency, an insufficiency of quality consumer goods, a shortage of initiative and sense of ownership and responsibility in the workplace, an inadequate diffusion of computer technology, and so forth. Moreover, one could easily find similarities between the economic remedies proposed by Yuri Andropov in 1983 or even the early Gorbachev policies and the Cuban program of actualization proposed in 2011. For example, both reforms efforts hoped to increase efficiency, productivity, motivation and quality by linking compensation to effort, by decentralizing control and responsibility, developing joint ventures with foreign capitalists, encouraging cooperatives, and allowing more latitude to private enterprise.

The Soviet and Cuban situations differed in one outstanding way. The Cuban process of reform involved rank and file Communists and workers to a much greater extent than the Soviet one. In Cuba, from the development of the reform guidelines in 2010 through their ongoing implementation in 2014, the entire process embraced mass involvement and the building of mass consensus. The process began in December 2010 through February 2011 with discussions by the people as a whole, followed by discussions by the party in every province, and then followed by discussions at the Sixth PCC Congress in April. In total 163,079 meetings occurred, involving 8,913,838 participants. These discussions modified or incorporated with others 68 percent of the original 291 guidelines, modified 181 others, and created 36 new guidelines. [10] Discussion of the guidelines also occurred in the letters page of Granma, radio phone-ins, internet blogs and trade unions.[11] One observer noted: “A key point here is that the drafting of new employment law involves a process of consultation with the CTC (the central confederation of trade unions) so detailed and extensive that unions have a de facto veto.”[12]

In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov initiated economic reforms with workplace discussions. Under Gorbachev, however, rank and file discussion of changes took the form mainly of public relations and photo opportunities. The broad discussions, encouragement of criticism, and building of consensus were mostly missing from the Gorbachev reform process. Otherwise we would not be wondering today where were the Soviet Communists and workers?

If both criticism # 1 “Soviet backwardness” and criticism # 2 “the Stalin deformation” are unpersuasive, why do they remain so popular? We would suggest that the reason for the continued popularity of these explanations is that they draw upon and depend upon the ubiquitous ideology of anti-Stalinism and anti-Communism. Anti-Communism and anti-Stalinism are not merely disagreements with the socialist system or the policies of Stalin, but rather the treatment of this system and this man as the main evil in the world. Among most Western intellectuals, the Stalin-as-Monster dogma is not up for discussion. It is axiomatic. Even worse, it is a shibboleth. It is a passkey into the family of writers acceptable to the ideological establishment. U.S. academics, even those with unorthodox views, routinely include hostile references to Stalin in their work, even work unrelated to Soviet history, as a way of ensuring political acceptability.

Why anti-Stalinism remains such a touchstone deserves more attention than it has received. Recently, such scholars as Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr[13] have shed light on this question. One factor, surely, is that the Stalin demonization has the support from the “Left,” a “Left” cover, thanks to Trotsky and Khrushchev. Another reason is that Stalin serves as a handy personal symbol of the USSR in 1924-53, the time of its successful construction and also the time when the Soviet state was the main enemy of imperialism. Whatever the reason, for Marxists, like some of our critics, to indulge in anti-Stalin stereotypes and to press them into polemical service, is best understood as an opportunist concession to the pressure of ruling class ideology. Of course, the undoing of anti-Stalinism will not come about by beatifying Stalin, by heaping praise on him, or still less by ignoring the problems associated with his leadership. It will come about, rather, by patient scholarly work that uses the same standards to evaluate him as would be used to evaluate any 20th century leader.

Conclusion

The major criticisms that have been advanced against the argument of Socialism Betrayed do not stand up under careful scrutiny. The idea that the Soviet Union was done in by a birth defect, namely the backwardness of the productive forces, appeals mainly to those who dream of an easy and gradual path to socialism and those who think the Chinese have found the golden pathway to the future. It, however, requires ignoring the problems that beset the NEP in the 1920s and the Chinese today, and it means underestimating the hard choices the Soviets faced in the 1920s and 1930s and the tremendous progress they made in overcoming backwardness.

The idea that the Soviet collapse in 1991 was due to Stalin’s authoritarianism in the 1930s rests on a mountain of prejudice against Stalin and a one-sided reading of his legacy that ignores its strong, democratic elements. Finally, the ineffectuality of rank and file Communists and workers in resisting the destruction of socialism did not provide evidence of deep-seated problems of Soviet socialism. It did show, however, that undermining socialist ownership, planning, social benefits and internationalism required the simultaneous erosion of the authority of the Communist Party and the institutions of socialist democracy. If any good has come of the Soviet collapse, it is that Cuba seems to have learned this lesson.

Endnotes

[1] Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 409; Kenneth Neill Cameron, Stalin: Man of Contradiction (Toronto, NC Press Limited, 1987), 80-81.
[2] Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1-2.
[3] Martin, 387-389.
[4] Goldman, 14.
[5] Goldman, 19.
[6] Richard Pipes, “Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want,” Foreign Affairs (May/June, 2004), 14.
[7] Cuba vs Bloqueo: Cuba’s Report on Resolution 65/6 of the United Nations General Assembl entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” (July 2011), 54.
[8] Interview of Manual Yepe, Havana, Cuba, February 18, 2014.
[9] Interview of Marta Nunez, Havana, Cuba, February 18, 2014.
[10] “Information on the results of the debate on the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution,” translated by Marce Cameron, [http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.om/2011/05translation-guidelines-debate-summary-1.html], 2.
[11] Steve Ludlam, “Cuba’s Socialist Development Strategy,” Science & Society 76, no. 1 (January 2012), 47.
[12] Ludlam, 51.
[13] Domenico Losurdo, Staline: Histoire et Critique D’Une Légende Noire and Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied (Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media, 2011).

Statement of the Central Committee CP of Greece (KKE), on the results of the elections of May 18 and May 25, 2014.

May 27, 2014

1. The CC salutes the thousands of party members, friends of the party and KNE, people who cooperate with the KKE, the voters who fought in this battle, joined forces with the party and contributed to the strengthening of the KKE. The party fought in a unified way throughout the country, with the list of the KKE in the EU elections on 25th May, with the lists of the “People’s Rally” in the municipal and regional elections both in the first round on 18th May as well in the second round on 25th May.

In the EU parliamentary elections the KKE increased its percentage (6,1%) and votes (347.817) in relation to its percentage (4,5%) and votes (227.227) in June 2012, electing two MEPs. In addition, it won the elections in the municipalities of Patras, Haidari, Petroupolis and Ikaria. It had an increase in the country’s 13 regions, receiving 8.8% and 498,573 votes. It increased its votes in 214 municipalities. In 50 municipalities its percentage exceeded 10%. The percentage of the KKE in the EU parliamentary elections and in the regional- municipal elections reflects a trend for the rallying of forces around the KKE and the influence of its positions on new voters.

It also demonstrates, to a certain extent, the acceptance of the fundamental position of the KKE against the EU, the monopolies and the governments that support the “EU one way-street”. On this basis it is necessary for the party, from the CC to each Party Base Organisation, to tighten its relations with all the working people who took this step, came to the side of the KKE and supported it in the elections. The party organizations will discuss with the friends and the people who cooperated with the party about the conclusions and the significant experience drawn from the battle as well as about the goals and ways to organize the struggle and rally the people for a pro-people way out of the crisis.

2. The election result demonstrates the people’s anger towards ND and PASOK which undertook the burden of implementing the anti-people governmental policies and the “EU one way- street”. The election result as a whole does not demonstrate any reversal of the anti-people balance of forces; it does not constitute any “new political scene” in favour of the people.

Although a significant section of the voters of SYRIZA made this choice with the expectation of a left orientation, the first position of SYRIZA does not express any strengthening of the left, radical, antimonopoly, anti-imperialist political line. The election result, where SYRIZA took the first place, more ro less maintaining its percentage from June 2012, was formed under the pressure for an immediate change in government that would allegedly halt the current anti-people political line.

Nevertheless the political line of SYRIZA for the management of the system does not constitute any true opposition to the government’s anti-people policies. SYRIZA is neither willing nor capable of providing a pro-people solution. It is not on the people’s side. The results –above all in the EU parliamentary elections- indicate the consolidation of the tendency to substitute the visibly weakened PASOK by SYRIZA, as part of the reshuffling of the political scene that started in June 2012.

At the same time, the course of other social democratic formations appears to be volatile e.g. the “OLIVE TREE” which was the main electoral formation of PASOK. The “OLIVE TREE” rallied some forces but received a smaller percentage than in June 2012. Furthermore, the percentage of the Democratic Left was reduced in favour of the new formation “THE RIVER” that appeared with unclear and blurred slogans. Although the tendency of the KKE to rally forces and receive new votes is positive, the election results as a whole do not express any significant tendency towards the emancipation of the workers’ and people’s forces from the parties of the “EU one way- street”, the interests of capital and the monopolies.

The most extreme expression of this discrepancy is the high percentage of Golden Dawn. Generally there is a retreat as regards the people’s consciousness, a strengthening of conservatism. The ruling class and the system still possess significant reserves that allow it to appear with different mantles. This assessment is based on the votes and programmes both of SYRIZA, as well as of the “OLIVE TREE” and the “RIVER”. As a whole, the recomposition of the political system is underway, the creation of new barriers to radicalization, something that we must specifically monitor in the next period.

3. The line of counterattack and rupture against the capitalist path of development, the EU and the policies that support this path via assimilation and passivity must be further strengthened within the working class, the youth and the movement. Irrespective of the political developments and the correlation of forces among the parties that support the EU and the bourgeois management, the day after the elections the people will have to face the EU permanent memoranda and the policies that serve the competitiveness and the recovery of capital. These policies lead to the even greater bankruptcy of the people and cannot solve the acute popular problems such as the problem of unemployment.

This path is served both by government and SYRIZA as well as by the other parties. It is an anti-people and barbaric path of development which, despite their efforts, cannot be prettified. Thus, the governmental parties are making false promises that investments and capitalist recovery will allegedly relieve the people, while SYRIZA fosters the illusion that it will change the EU.

4. The Nazi Golden Dawn maintains a high percentage of the vote. In the recent period, alongside the other factors that reinforced Golden Dawn and which the KKE has repeatedly highlighted, we must also add the stance of the other political forces towards the voters of Golden Dawn, which treat them as electoral clientele. Isolating Golden Dawn so that it loses votes from the popular strata is something completely different from the opportunistic and dangerous tactic of the other parties that foster the rationale of its toleration and exculpation in order to fish for votes.

The KKE is committed to undertaking more initiatives in the movement, in the workplaces, in the popular neighbourhoods, amongst the youth, in order to expose the fact that Golden Dawn is supported by mechanisms of the system, by sections of capital, by the political line of the EU.

5. The overall electoral results in the rest of the EU countries are negative for the peoples. They highlight the need for the regroupment of the communist movement and the strengthening of the CPs and the mass popular movements in a direction of rupture and overthrow of the power of capital and the monopolies.

The tangible popular opposition to the EU, to its political line and institutions, which was also expressed by the mass abstention from the EU parliamentary elections in many member-states as a result of the many years of experience of the peoples regarding the EU, instead of acquiring an anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist orientation is trapped in conservative, reactionary parties, in nationalist and racist forces, fascist organizations, of so-called “euro-skepticism”, which serve the aims of various sections of capital.

These sections of capital seek the reformation of the Eurozone and EU, even via the withdrawal of countries from it, in order to serve their particular interests, to strengthen their competitiveness. These parties do not dispute the anti-people political line, the intensification of capitalist exploitation, the accession to some form of imperialist alliance. Consequently, they are not a solution for the peoples of Europe.

The parties that are rallied in the “European Left Party”, to which SYRIZA belongs, as well as communist parties that have abandoned the struggle against the EU and for the overthrow of the power of capital, also bear responsibilities for this situation. These parties, with the political line of prettifying the EU, their compromised stance in the movement, through their participation in anti-people governments in previous years, damaged the labour-people’s movement in their countries, led it to defeat, leaving the workers in these countries exposed to the populism of reactionary and fascist parties.

6. The atmosphere of the confrontation is being cultivated and focused, in the period immediately after the elections, on attempts to trap the people in the question regarding “which government will have the greatest negotiating capability” inside the walls of the EU and the capitalist development path. The people must not be trapped into waiting and choosing the allegedly lesser evil, which will consolidate today’s anti-people correlation of forces.

The KKE will strengthen its efforts and initiatives regarding the sharpening problems of the people, as it also did in the previous period with its proposals concerning the relief of the unemployed, the popular households etc. It will strengthen the efforts for the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement, the construction of the People’s Alliance, in order to strengthen the anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly direction of the struggle and the rallying of forces.

It will struggle, utilizing its elected MEPS, mayors, municipal and regional councilors, in order to expose the anti-people plans that are being concocted both in the EU parliament as well as in the regional and municipal councils. It will fight against all the anti-people measures of the EU, the governments and the local and regional bodies that support it.

It will make every effort so that solidarity and the common struggle of the peoples against the wars unleashed by the EU, NATO and the USA at their expense gain ground, especially today when dangerous developments are being witnessed in the entire region, from Thrace and Cyprus to Syria and Ukraine. It will make every effort so that the struggle for socialism is strengthened, which will liberate the workers and peoples from exploitation and oppression.

The KKE is the only party that provides the perspective of the country and people being freed from the shackles of the predatory alliance and all the debt, by overthrowing the owners of the accumulated wealth. A people sovereign and capable of appointing their own government, of workers’-people’s power, means a people capable of taking the wealth it creates into its hands, transforming it into the people’s property for its own prosperity. Then central planning of the economy in favour of the people will become a reality and the relations with peoples and countries will develop with their mutual interests as the criterion

May 26, 2014

The CC of the KKE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/2011/02/24/ABMj4XN_page.html

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, June 10, 8:00 AM

The sad irony of U.S.-Cuban relations is that Cuba, under the leadership of 83-year-old Raúl Castro, is changing rapidly, and the United States, despite President Obama’s promises of a “new beginning,” remains largely frozen in a self-destructive Cold War policy.

The fifty-plus year-old embargo of Cuba continues. The administration still lists Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The United States continues to sponsor covert activities — this time a U.S. Agency for International Development attempt to generate “smart mobs” through a secret text-messaging program — to help destabilize the regime. Ten presidents after the embargo began, U.S. policy remains dedicated to folly.

Meanwhile the world, the hemisphere and Cuba have changed. If anything, the embargo isolates the United States, not Cuba.

Washington’s relationship with the region is deteriorating, corroded by its policy toward Cuba. With few exceptions, the left-leaning governments that govern across Latin America have normal relations with Cuba and scorn the U.S. attempt to isolate the little island. At the last Summit of the Americas in 2012, the presidents of Brazil and of Colombia, one of the few remaining U.S. allies, joined several other countries in announcing they would skip the next summit in 2015 if Cuba is not invited. And well they should, as the summits become increasingly irrelevant, with regional trading and political ties developing with the United States, not Cuba, on the sidelines.

My recent trip to Cuba, as part of the nation’s first educational exchange trip to that country, reaffirmed what Josefina Vidal, head of the North American Division of Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, told our delegation in a wide ranging 90-minute conversation: “The U.S. is facing the risk of becoming irrelevant in the future of Cuba.”

The conservative Republican head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue, while visiting Cuba last month, reiterated the chamber’s call to lifting the embargo in his speech at the University of Havana. Donahue understands that the major victims of the U.S. blockade are U.S. businesses.

Cuba has just passed a new law facilitating foreign investment. A new rush is on. A Brazilian firm captured the major project of modernizing the port at Mariel. A Chinese company is building 34 wind turbines. And another Chinese company sells the new cars that are starting to be seen on the streets. A British developer has just initialed a deal to build a “luxury golf resort.” The European Union has opened a formal dialogue with Cuba on trade, investment and human rights.

The pace of change in Cuba is accelerating — and is visible on the ground. Paladares (private restaurants), tapas bars and even night clubs are sprouting up in private homes. When Obama rightly eased restrictions on the travel and remittances of Cuban Americans, visitors bearing gifts flooded the island.

Remarkable changes in sex education and official attitudes are apparent, with the state going from imprisoning homosexuals to launching campaigns against sexual violence, considering legalizing same-sex marriage, subsidizing sex-change operations and banning discrimination based on sexuality at the workplace. Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, the charismatic head of Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education, has become a renowned figure both in Cuba and across the world for her work in this area. Despite her government’s restrictions on political speech, Castro is an outspoken advocate for more open sexual discourse. When we met with her at the center, she expressed frustration at continuing official resistance to legalizing gay marriage and spoke of herself as a fighter — fighting for a new way of thinking about sexuality and supported by a growing Cuban grassroots network of activists.

Of course, Cuba faces severe challenges. The regime still keeps a heavy hand on the press and social media and, as I learned in conversations with a leading Cuban journalist, the recent Twitter scandal has made reform-minded Cuban journalists’ fight to modernize the country’s social-media infrastructure more difficult.

Human rights are still constricted. The regime knows it has to change but hopes to maintain core advances (particularly in health care and education) that are the signatures of the revolution.

With foreign investment, expanding private enterprises and increasing tourism comes greater inequality and increasing tension. Yet, as veteran journalist Marc Frank explains in his fascinating new book, “Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana,” there is a “grey zone” — a significant segment of Cubans whom Castro is trying to win over with his efforts to modernize the economy.

Amidst all of these changes, the United States is fighting yesterday’s war. At present, Cubans are freer to travel to the United States than Americans are to go to Cuba. What fears or fantasies support that idiocy?

U.S. policy is frozen in large part because bureaucratic inertia is reinforced by the hold anti-Castro zealots have on our policy — most notably Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who represents Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). But these zealots are growing ever more isolated. Recently, nearly four dozen former government officials, diplomats, retired military officers, wealthy Cuban emigres and business leaders warned in an open letter to the president that the United States is “increasingly isolated internationally in its Cuba policy,” and called on the administration to act on its own to ease travel for all Americans and allow increased trade and financial exchanges. Even Hillary Clinton — who has a hawkish track record on Cuba — claims in her new book that she urged Obama to ease or lift the embargo, although she seems content with the minor reforms that were made

Obama has said he needn’t wait for the Congress, he has a “phone and pen” to take executive actions. He could act now to negotiate with the Cubans the long-overdue trade of the Cuban Five (now three) jailed for espionage in the United States for USAID contractor Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba nearly five years ago for distributing communications equipment to Jewish groups. Obama could open up exchanges and travel for all Americans, while loosening financial restrictions.

In discussions with our delegation, former Cuban foreign minister Ricardo Alarcon noted that the fact the White House is prepared to negotiate with the Taliban but not its neighbor raises questions about how “rational” U.S. policy is. Sustaining a policy that has failed for over 50 years and 10 presidents, an embargo that has isolated the United States in its own hemisphere, a blockade that damages U.S. businesses and restrictions that constrict the rights of Americans — no, that doesn’t sound rational.

The experts suggest there is a window of time for the president to act — after the midterm elections and before the middle of 2015. The promised “new beginning” would be better late than never.

NEWS RELEASE
CONTACT: Paul Teitelbaum
520-762-6629
pault@iactucson.org
(English only) Alicia Jrapko
Phone: 510-219-0092
info@thecuban5.org
(Spanish and English)

“5 Days for the Cuban 5” To End June 10

Organizers cite progress in promoting case of Cuban 5/
normalizing U.S.-Cuba Relations
WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 8, 2014 – A five day series of events focused on changing the U.S. policy towards Cuba and freeing The Cuban 5 comes to a close this Tuesday, June 10th, with an evening of speakers and cultural activities. The evening will feature speakers from Cuba’s religious community, ambassadors from several Latin American countries, and participants in the 5 Days for the Cuban 5 events.

This past Sunday, people gathered at Sheridan Circle to remember the 1976 car-bombing that killed Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffit. Letelier’s son Francisco recounted how the murder of his father and Moffit were carried out by Miami-based Cuban exile groups, who went on to bomb a Cubana civilian airliner two weeks later, killing all 73 passengers on board.

These Cuban-exile groups were discussed as part of a two-day Conference on U.S.-Cuba Relations which also highlighted the case of the Cuban 5. The Cuban 5 are five Cubans arrested in the U.S. in 1998 for thwarting attacks against Cuba which were planned and orchestrated by these exile groups. The five Cubans received long prison sentences in the trial following their arrest. Two of the Cuban 5 have completed their entire sentences and returned to Cuba, while three remain in U.S. prisons, one serving a double-life sentence plus 15 years.

Last Saturday, over 500 people gathered in front of the White House to ask President Obama to free the remaining Cuban 5 and to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba. The protesters then continued through the streets of Washington to the Justice Department where the same demands were raised.

Tuesday evening’s event takes place at Bolivarian Hall, 2443 Massachusetts Ave NW in Washington and is sponsored by the International Committee for the Freedom for the Cuban 5.

For additional information on the 5 Days for the Cuban 5, please visit http://www.5daysforthecuban5.com

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 7 (acn) Students from 20 nations, who are taking difference courses in the Eastern Cuban province of Camaguey, held an evening sesión to express their support of the cause of the Cuban antiterrorist fighters held in US jails.

In the context of an ongoing international campaign and the 3rd Five for the Five action in Washington D.C. claiming the freedom of Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, the boarding students in Cuba also demanded Washington to put down its hostile policy against the island.

Haitian Luis Vidal called peace-loving people around the world to urge Washington to lift the over-50-year economic blockade of Cuba and to free the three anti-terrorists who were imprisoned in 1998 after they, along Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez, monitored violent organizations that planned terrorist actions against the people of Cuba.

The president of the Youth Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five in the eastern province, Jorge Belisario, said that the return to Cuba of the three men can only be achieved with the solidarity of the people of the world and particularly with the support of the US people.

During the evening session, the students stressed the example given by the mothers and relatives of the five antiterrorist fighters, who have suffered the absence of their beloved ones but have always expressed their optimism and spirit of struggle.

STATEMENT OF THE CC CPRF

STAND-STILL OF RUSSIA IS DEADLY DANGEROUS!

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation expresses its deep indignation at the events in Ukraine. Bandera-fascist junta which seized the power in Kiev goes on with its bloody punitive action against civilians. Security agencies under Kiev’s control subject residential areas, hospitals, schools and kindergartens to artillery attacks and aviation raids in defiance of mass victims among civil population. These actions have all the indications of open terror and ethnic cleansing.

CC CPRF believes that the so-called election of Mr. Pororshenko as the president doesn’t have anything to do with the idea of “free and fair elections”. Moreover, as the developments persuade us, his coming to power resulted in enlarging the punitive operation and its turning into a real slaughter. The footage of the bloody air raid in the centre of Lugansk, filmed by the eye-witnesses is really shocking. This act of terror equals to barbarous bombardments of Spanish Guernica, British Coventry and Soviet Stalingrad. This is the true face of fascism.

The war crimes that are being committed have no time limitation for prosecution. They must become the subject for consideration by a special tribunal. Punishment is inevitable for those who gave the criminal orders: Turchinov, Yatsenjuk, Avakov, Poroshenko. Those who fulfill their orders will not avoid punishment as well.

CC CPRF attracts attention to the fact that the most atrocious accidents coincide in time with the visits to Ukraine of major US politicians. In our opinion this is yet another evidence that this military reckless scheme of the Kiev junta was conceived by the Washington administration and is being managed by it. These steps by the American politicians must be severely condemned at the international level.

The possibility that this conflict will spread not only into the neighboring regions of Ukraine, but also into the bordering areas of Russia is quite real. It is our country that this war is aimed at. This war is fratricidal and destructive for the foundations of Russian statehood. The situation requires immediate reaction on the part of the president and the government of Russia.

CC CPRF stands for an immediate session of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. A number of measures must be elaborated without delay on how to stop conflict spreading and bring the situation in Ukraine to normal. Under present circumstances the CC CPRF considers it to be necessary:

– to recognize officially the Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics
– to secure a non-flying zone over the territory of these republics aiming at putting an end to death and destruction
– to arrange a humanitarian corridor for supplying people of the Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics with living essentials and for evacuating the victims
– to take measures to help refugees from Ukraine
– to support volunteers who would like to help the people of Ukraine in the struggle against bandera-fascist junta
– in case of further enlargement of the punitive operation against the citizens of the Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics to demand that the president of the Russian Federation should exercise the right given to him by the Federation Council to use armed forces for the protection of the life and freedom of the civilians.

Stand-still is becoming deadly dangerous!

Gennady Zyuganov
Chairman of the CC CPRF