The crisis of the liberal model of running the world was inevitable. I warned of its results and alarming challenges that would fill the new century twenty years ago. My book “Globalization and the Destiny of Humankind” which was published at the time has been translated into many languages. It provided a detailed analysis of the aggressive motives of the American imperialists and their underlings, outlined the perspective of the emergence of new world power poles represented by China and India. At the time they were only poised for an economic leap forward. Not many perceived them as a future alternative to the US hegemony. Now it has become evident that it is Russia’s union with these Asian powers that overturns the thoroughly Fascist “American dream” of a unipolar world. This union can put an end to total dehumanization which Washington strategists have set about to accomplish.
I continued the conversation about future challenges in the book “Russia in the Gunsights of Globalism” examining the history of our political, economic and spiritual confrontation with the West.
Then followed the books “The Russian Core of the Great Power” and “The Russian World on Two Axes” in which I described our country’s role in the 21st century. As more than once before, it is Russia that is at the center of the clash with Anglo-Saxon imperialism. The situation is highly dramatic. But the great heritage of the Soviet civilization may enable us to stand our ground and to prevail.
The time has come to continue this difficult and important conversation.
History has confronted us with grave challenges. They have turned out to be the most serious in the past three decades, since the time the traitors and turncoats made common cause with our external enemies and committed a crime of wrecking the Soviet country.
War has been declared
NATO has been tightening the noose around our borders for many years. History ordained that Russia protect the sovereignty and security of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, liberate the fraternal Ukrainian people from the Nazi-Bandera junta. In response to our desire to put a barrier in the way of the West’s aggressive plans its masters cast off the mask of “partnership” and civilized diplomacy. The globalists openly declared their readiness to deliver a lethal blow to our country by hybrid war methods. They think it is time to close “the Russian question.”
It was not yesterday that Russia’s enemies unleashed a hybrid war against us. The roots of this war go back to the centuries-old confrontation of our country with the West’s plans of conquest. Throughout history those who sought to subdue our Power and its people used the methods of a hybrid war along with the real “shooting” war. In it political and economic pressure has always been combined with information, intellectual and spiritual subversion of our society. Economic, moral and spiritual defeat of the enemy that cannot be defeated by military force – this is the main characteristic and substance of the hybrid war.
After the dismemberment of the USSR some believed that renunciation of socialism would pave Russia’s path to the West. Now, they rejoiced, we are part and parcel of this shining world. Not so. Those who promoted these ideas, wittingly or unwittingly, totally ignored the lessons of the First World War. Soviet Russia was not yet on any maps. But this did not prevent the European governments from engaging in a deadly battle for re-dividing the world. The cruelty and the number of casualties were unprecedented. Everything happened exactly in accordance with Lenin’s analysis in his great work “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.”
By joining the deadly fray the Tsarist Government embarked on an anti-national adventure. The Western powers – both direct enemies and formal allies – readily tore at Russia in pursuit of their own interests. The fact that our country was not yet socialist did not matter. The reason lay elsewhere: the capitalist predator always looks for prey. Likewise, by the end of the 20th century betraying the cause of socialism did not mean ensuring a prosperous future for Russia. Things turned out the other way around. The demise of the Soviet system caused appalling losses on an immense scale.
World capital set about “developing” the divided republics of the USSR according to its neocolonialist templates. It was steadily working to turn the recently advanced power into its own back yard. We were growing weaker. But it did not occur to the globalists to extend a hand of capitalist solidarity to what was now an anti-Soviet Russia. On the contrary their hearts were filled with hopes of further dismemberment of our country. The shining world turned out to be a gaping hole.
Over the course of the past year 1500 sanctions were imposed on Russia. Such a thing never happened to any country. An unheard-of economic, political and information sabotage campaign has been launched. Its aim is to force Russia to give up its hopes for independence and attempts to uphold its legitimate interests. At stake is the existence of our statehood. By challenging Anglo-Saxon hegemony we became the main target of its adepts in Washington, London, Brussels and other centers of modern capitalism.
Such is the criminal handwriting of neocolonialists. They hope that the series of provocations would enable them to avoid a world crisis of their system – capitalism. They try to preserve their power over the planet at all costs. These circles will not stop at attempting to burn insoluble problems in the fire of the third world war.
The American military has left its bloody footprints all over the world: in Korea and Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the Washington hawks are turning Ukrainian people into cannon fodder. In the eyes of the whole world they are implementing their hideous plan of fighting Russia with the hands of our blood brothers purposely poisoned with Nazism.
Today the meaning of the coup in Kiev in February 2014 is crystal clear. For eight years Ukraine was persistently preparing for war against Russia. Zelensky has now publicly admitted it. Three wars – shooting, economic and information — are being waged against our country simultaneously. Attempts are being made to defeat us in the battlefield, strangle us economically and slander us in the eyes of the world community.
By rising to defend our Fatherland against globalist diktat and Neo-Nazism being fostered in Ukraine and all across Europe, we have acknowledged the indisputable fact: Russia has failed and cannot but fail to be an organic part of the capitalist West. The globalists do not need it as an independent, strong and successful state. For them the key condition of Russia’s “integration” into their world is its destruction. There are no other options.
In February 2007 realization of this fact translated itself into President Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. The decisions made by the Russian leadership fifteen years later marked a real turning point.
The hybrid war declared against our country entered a new phase economically, politically and militarily. Russia is on the receiving end not only of thousands of sanctions called upon to strangle our economy. Fighting against us are NATO weaponry, NATO mercenaries and instructors. Meanwhile current and former Western leaders declare without blinking an eye that their agreements with Russia were a total bluff. These documents were fobbed off for signing in order to weaken our country and bide time. In the meantime they were strengthening their Bandera nationalist puppets.
Imperialism is rapidly unfolding a new war. It threatens to develop from a regional into a global one. By tightening the noose of violence and coercion, the globalists seek to destroy our country and liquidate its sovereignty. They calculate that this will guarantee the seizure of resources badly needed to shore up the crumbling world order whose construction they never managed to complete. To this end massive efforts are being made to undermine the processes of Russia’s integration with its neighbors. Political and cultural divisions are provoked in the Eurasian space. Attempts are being made to make us quarrel with traditional allies and erase the centuries-old unity of fraternal peoples united by the great history and deep ties to the Russian World.
This was the criminal goal of the 2014 government coup in Ukraine which precipitated its all-round degradation. The Kiev administration fell under total control of the reactionary forces directed from Washington. They were hastily turning Ukraine into an ideological and military test range for a decisive attack on Russia. The process of severance of our historical ties accelerated. The flywheel of political terror, ethnic and linguistic cleansing was put into full gear. The heroic Donbass rose up to defend its right to live and speak its mother tongue.
Nazism’s guides
The Kiev junta was hastily being prepared for a terrorist attack against Russia. The results of the parliamentary investigation of the State Duma into the Pentagon’s chemical laboratories in Ukraine clearly point to this. Ukraine was stuffed with objects for dangerous research, including the development of genetic weapons against ethnic Slavs.
The Ukrainian regime was also being groomed for a cultural-spiritual attack on the Russian world. Proof of this is the row provoked around the Ukrainian Orthodox churches by the Bandera nationalists and their tempters. The Holy Dormition Kiev-Pecherskaya Lavra, described by Holy Patriarch Kirill as the cradle of our civilization and national culture, is going through its Road to Calvary. Churches and monasteries adhering to the canonical historical Church with their inmates, old icons and relics of saints are subjected to violence and desecration.
For years Ukraine was wickedly being pushed into the quagmire of Russophobia before being driven into horrible fratricide. The USA is waging this war with others’ hands. By supplying arms and providing political support the Biden team is doing everything to prolong the death throes of the Neo-Nazi regime.
The sword of the barbarians who have come to think of themselves as the masters of the planet knows no mercy. It strikes women, children, old folks – all those whose only sin is their reluctance to obey others’ will, allow their ideals and values to be desecrated, to renounce their roots and the Russian language. These people are being executed for being loyal to their ancestors, the glorious victorious warriors who saved the world from German fascism and Japanese militarism.
The West’s Russophobia is unprecedented. The wish of Washington, London and Berlin to solve “the Russian question” brings to mind the grim pages of the past: Inquisition and auto da fe, Nazi rallies and Ku-Klux-Clan actions. The globalists who have embarked on the path of terror know no “red lines” such as are characteristic of normal people. The plans to use depleted uranium shells are direct evidence of the criminal character of imperialist policies.
We must all understand: a war of annihilation has been unleashed against us. Its aim is to dismember our country, enslave its people and turn our lands into a zone of colonial plunder. This threatens us not only with massive losses. To lose in this situation means to cease to exist.
The current challenge is as fateful as the Time of Troubles in the 17th century, the Patriotic War of 1812, the foreign intervention in 1918—1920, the battle against fascism during the Great Patriotic War and the treacherous wrecking of the USSR. The USA and its NATO accomplices are set to multiply their criminal achievements of “the wild 90s.”
Hating Nazism and experiencing fraternal feelings for the Ukrainian people, the CPRF has supported the special operation to liberate Ukraine from enslavement. Donbass has become an important center of resistance to imperialist reaction.
In the struggle against Nazi and Bandera riff-raff, and in confronting their Transatlantic masters we are inspired by the same thoughts and feelings that led our fathers and grandfathers into battle against fascism. Liberal ideologues justified the need to dismantle socialism by claiming that the end of confrontation between the socialist and capitalist systems would lessen international tensions, such that a peaceful idyll would gradually settle over the planet. These promises turned out to be a monstrous lie. The world has not become a safer place after the treacherous destruction of the USSR.
The demise of the Soviet land disrupted the system of checks and balances created by the great leaders of the victorious nations: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. Transnational capital set about accomplishing its real goal in the struggle against socialism and the Soviet Union: a new division of the world in its geopolitical and financial interests. The early 1990s ushered in a new stage of imperialist expansion which today has reached its peak and has put humankind on the brink of a third world war.
The kowtowing of Gorbachev and Yeltsin to the United States under the slogans of “new thinking” and “integration into the world community” played into the hands of Russia’s enemies. Far from becoming more friendly, the foreign policy of the countries that opposed us in the Soviet era has become more hostile. The achievement of the imperialist goals of the US and its satellites is aided by the expansion of NATO and other military blocs which has been going on for more than three decades. With the turn of the millennium this has been increasingly worrying our people and the country’s new leadership. The danger of enemy forces moving closer to our borders was becoming ever more evident.
In response the West has more and more openly put its stake on force as the main instrument of ensuring its interests. It dramatically increased the use of the “enemy image” to build up a military hysteria. In the early 21st century international terrorism and the Muslim countries were ”appointed” to be such enemies. But over time the United States and the states under its control began to assign this role to China whose example of successful socialist development worries them, and Russia, which they want to see only in one capacity, as a docile raw materials appendage. The West is prepared to undermine the sovereignty of our Power as much as it needs our gigantic natural resources.
The second decade of the 21st century brought a serious and welcome change to Russia’s foreign policy. The country’s leadership finally admitted that the West had never wanted to see our might and independence grow stronger. It contributed to the USSR’s defeat in the Cold War, its renunciation of socialism, its sinking into a systemic crisis, mass poverty and the decimation of the national industry. Russia was being deprived of its economic sovereignty, without which political sovereignty was impossible.
Our country is finally departing from the harmful worshiping of the West. Pushkin’s poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” written in 1831 helps to gain a deeper insight into the historical context of these processes. Already two hundred years ago the goals of the Western powers with regard to our peoples and the Slavic brotherhood were clear.
For decades we have been ringed by unfriendly states. It was no longer possible to retreat and there was nowhere to retreat. The West had to be given to feel Russia’s determination to uphold its national interests and those of its friends.
Now the designs of the USA and its satellitesare being smashed against the willpower and heroism of the defenders of Donbass and the courage and fortitude of our military. The cardinal change of the political situation in Europe has changed the situation in the whole world. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has highlighted the tectonic shifts in the world balance of forces.
Today, as our Armed Forces are conducting the special military operation in Ukraine to demilitarize and de-Nazify it, it is particularly important to remember the lessons of history, to hear its arguments and to understand its underlying plans. The key reminder and key benchmark is the history of our country’s Armed Forces.
Russia’s victorious pillars
Throughout the thousand-year history of the Russian state, since its foundation in the 10th century and to the present time, Russia faced attempts to destroy it by military force or at least to weaken militarily its vitality and influence in the world. Our people is peaceable, patient and kind, no one at all familiar with the Russian character needs to be convinced of that. Our past knows no mercenaries, a phenomenon that was universal in Western Europe. From the times of yore Rus had no soldiers of fortune who led mercenary troops in quest of booty, while free Cossacks quickly transformed themselves from rough-and-ready gangs into an organized force defending Russia’s borders. And yet, in spite of this Russia has had to fight throughout its history.
The famous historian S.M.Solovyov has counted 245 documented cases of invasions of Rus in the period between 1055 and 1462. General Sukhotin, a connoisseur of Russian military history, in his book “War in the History of the Russian World” published in St.Petersburg in 1894, wrote that “since the 14th century, from which one can count the revival of the Russian state, and to our day, out of the 525 years Russia was fighting wars for 329 years, almost two-thirds of its life.” And 134 times our people had to wage war against several enemies at once. On one occasion it fought against nine enemies, on two occasions against five, on 25 against three and on 37 occasions against two enemies.
The first comprehensive reform of the armed forces of Rus was the transformations carried out by Ivan the Terrible in the second half of the 16th century. These reforms saw the creation, for the first time, of a permanent army, the streltsy. In the 17th century it became the basis for the recreation of the Russian state unity after the Time of Troubles in 1605—1613, for the 1654 reunification of Great Russia and Little Russia, and for curbing the excessive appetites of Western Europe for Russian lands.
However, as Russia’s state and military might grew the streltsy army could no longer meet all the needs of the Power. Peter the Great’s decree of November 17, 1699 ushered in a fundamentally new approach to forming the Russian army, called the recruiting system. Recruitment made the army a truly people’s army, comprising all the social estates, increasing its strength and professionalism. Peter’s reform was the forerunner of the inseparable bond between the army and the people in the Soviet times which ensured our military victories and which is hated by Westernizers and liberals.
Suvorov’s ”wonder warriors” and Kutuzov’s “|eagles”, the heroes of Ismail, Chesma and Borodino gave Europe an object lesson in the effectiveness and efficiency of the Russian military machine. It was thanks to the selfless valor of the Russian soldier that by the middle of the 19th century Russia became the strongest world power.
The logic of the development of the Russian army and navy prompted another reform. It replaced recruitment with the principle of military conscription. Under the 1874 law all of Russia’s male population was liable to conscription.
The Russian Empire’s conscription policy was highly differentiated. While the standard term of service in the land forces was six years there were four categories who enjoyed exemptions depending on the education criterion. For example, those who had finished primary school served four years, those who had finished an urban school served three years and those who graduated from gymnasiums, only six months.
The Russia-Japan War and the First World War proved to be a severe test of the defense capability of Tsarist Russia. The army did not withstand that test. Not that the Russian soldier had become less staunch and brave. The reason was the overall degradation of the autocracy of the Tsars in the epoch before the revolution. A huge gap was formed between the needs of the working people, the needs of the country’s all-round development, on the one hand, and the goals of the rotten and corrupt regime, on the other.
In January 1918 the government of the young Soviet Republic signed a decree creating the Red Army. On February 23 of that same year mass recruitment of volunteers in its ranks began. The country faced a formidable historical challenge. At stake was not only the fate of socialism, for which the people had spoken out by carrying out the Great Revolution of October 1917. The very survival of the Fatherland was at stake in the struggle against foreign interventionists.
A call rang out over Russia which became a prologue to the birth of a new great army in a country devastated by the war and crisis. In a country which, or so its enemies thought, could not raise a combat-capable army within a short space of time. Yet that task was solved by the Leninist party and the people. In the mass consciousness the patriotic idea was linked with the great idea of equality, brotherhood and justice. The people for which the enemy prepared the fate of a conquered and enslaved one created the Red Army of Workers and Peasants and became victorious. Thanks to this our country survived as a single state and accomplished in the 20th century great military, social, economic, scientific and cultural feats, outstanding feats of socialism that are unequaled in world history and will forever be written in it in gold letters.
A quarter of a century after the birth of the Red Army the Great Patriotic War finally proved to the whole world the effectiveness and selflessness of the Soviet state and the people who cast in their lot with socialism and Soviet Power. It also proved the outstanding historic role of I.V.Stalin who led the country in those extremely difficult years.
It has to be borne in mind that by the end of April of 1918, two months after the Red Army started to be formed, its strength was under 200,000. However, two and a half years later, at the end of the war against the White Guards and foreign interventionists, its strength had increased 30-fold to 5.5 million. Thereafter, as a result of demobilization, its strength began to diminish. As of the beginning of 1932 it stood at a little over 600,000. But by June 22, 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, it had increased almost ten times to 5 million. In May of 1945, the Day of the Great Victory, it predictably stood at 11 million soldiers and officers.
During the war years our army routed 507 German divisions and 100 divisions of Nazi Germany’s allies, three times more than the Anglo-American troops. Three quarters of German planes, tanks, artillery and assault weapons were destroyed on the Soviet-German front without any participation of the Western countries.
If the West had been committed to historical truth and not to Russophobia and anti-Communism much in our world would have looked differently. Following the world-famous American writer and Nobel Prize laureate Ernest Hemingway the gentlemen from Biden’s team would do well to repeat his impassioned words uttered in 1942. He said that 24 years of discipline and work for victory had created the glorious Red Army. “Every human being who loves freedom owes to the Red Army more than he will be able to pay in a lifetime.”
No other country in history has paid such a huge and gruesome price for victory over the enemy. No other country has achieved a victory that had such colossal significance not only for itself, but for the whole world, bringing salvation from death not only to the victorious people but to the whole planet. The Great Patriotic War in which the Soviet power, at the cost of colossal sacrifice, overcame Fascism is our abiding sense of pain. Victory in this war is our great pride. It was unconditional proof of the grandeur of the socialist system and moral rightness of the socialist idea which was inscribed on the banners and lived in the hearts of those who saved the world from the “brown plague.”
Over the course of its history the task of saving Russia was more than once shouldered by our heroic soldiers and outstanding commanders. In the battles for the Motherland they forged their victories and covered themselves in unfading glory. The names of Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov and other brilliant military leaders have lived in the people’s memory for centuries.
Throughout its entire history our Power has been a constant target of external enemies. The country’s difficult and heroic destiny prompted Emperor Alexander III his famous words: “Russia has no friends, our vastness is feared. Russia has only two reliable allies, its army and navy.”
A country with such a destiny is obliged to have a strong army. Russia’s history has always been inseparable from is Armed Forces. That is why all the great leaders of our country – from Peter I to Lenin and Stalin – did not only create a powerful state, but built an invincible army.
One of the most outstanding commanders of the Great Patriotic War, Marshal Zhukov, said: “Time has no power over the grandeur of all that we have lived through in this war. The people which once experienced such great trials, will always draw strength from this Victory.”
And today, as we continue to stand up to the pack of Russophobes and anti-Sovieteers who seek to slander our history and our army, we can confidently repeat these words of Zhukov: “We know: neither time nor the wickedness of our enemies have power over historical truth. They cannot cancel the outstanding feat of the Soviet country and the Soviet people.” The results of the past remind us today that Russia will secure itself against external threats only if its internal policy is based on the ideas of justice and the interests of the majority of the people.
The “reformers” who undertook to dismantle the gains of socialism were undermining our country’s defense capability and its military-industrial complex. Many enterprises had to switch to producing pots and pans instead of tanks and guns. A purposive and well-planned campaign was launched to demoralize army servicemen.
A logical consequence of such policy was the dismantling of major overseas bases of the Russian Armed Forces in Lourdes (Cuba) and Kamran (Vietnam). To this one should add the wave of army and navy downsizing that took place at the same time, humiliating doing of Washington’s bidding and fawning to NATO, capitulation to the West conducted under the slogan of “fighting international terrorism.” In spite of everything, the Russian soldier has all this time honestly fulfilled his military duty. The Russian leadership’s military policy made a long-awaited fundamental turn. But the dire consequences of criminal deeds are felt to this day. Without them the aims of the special military operation to liberate Ukraine from Nazism, the Bandera legacy and NATO expansion would have been reached much sooner and more confidently.
What we have been warning about for many years has become starkly confirmed: the re-division of the gigantic geopolitical heritage of the USSR has not been completed. Hence Russia needs to be ready to act in the world in conditions of strategic instability for a long time to come. This means first and foremost that the military shield of our national security is of paramount and vial importance.
In the early 20th century, when many thought Russia was doomed, the communists, led by Lenin, managed to preserve the great Power thanks to the Red Army. They rallied and invigorated the country. Our Fatherland rose from the ruins of a bankrupt monarchy and the pro-Western adventurers who replaced it. The builders of socialism rose to the colossal historical challenge.
We are the heirs of great victors! We know that Russia has more than once crushed the most fearsome enemies. The memory of this fills as with confidence that we will stand our ground this time around as well.
Strategic turn
Our adversaries counted on political and economic isolation of Russia. But they failed. Our political and economic interaction with partners in the CIS space, the Eurasian region, Latin America and Africa has, if anything, grown stronger recently. Our diplomatic and trade contacts have increased. Successful negotiations have been held at the venues of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Samarkand and the Eurasian Economic Union in Bishkek. The influence of the USA and the collective West has visibly diminished in a number of regions. It is not by chance that there was an obvious split at last year’s summit of ASEAN in Cambodia, and at the G20 summit in Indonesia. Half of the participating countries refused to vote for the Russophobic resolutions cooked up in Washington. As a result, the ASEAN summit failed to pass a collective resolution for the first time in its history. The final document of the G20 was fundamentally adjusted in line with Russia’s demands and with the support of friendly countries. The conclusion is obvious: the US State Department’s international policy is categorically at odds with the aspirations of the world community and is sustaining a defeat more and more obviously.
Western pressure, the attempts of the US and is allies to install “a new world order” meet with protest all over the world. Humanity does not want to live under the dominance of American globalists. This is evidenced by the opposition to the American course in a number of Asian and Latin American countries. The African Union formed in the early 21st century aims to strengthen the unity and solidarity of African states and peoples and developing a common defense policy. The majority of Asian, Latin American and African states categorically refuse to take a Russophobic stand toward which Washington and its European “helpmates” are pushing the world.
A hundred and fifty countries have refused to impose sanctions against Russia. Their population accounts for 60% of the world population. Even authoritative US and EU experts say that it is rather the Western world that finds itself in isolation. The scale of these developments is such that they can be compared to the collapse of the colonial system in the 1960s and 1970s.
Our opponents are clearly scared that the Russian civilization is adding its potential to the potentials of other civilizational centers: China, India and Persia. Our great civilizations are ready to offer peace in which order and not diktat will prevail. In it justice and not exploitation will reign. High culture and spirituality and not plunder and violence will prevail.
It has to be stressed that the states that follow the path of socialism are the staunchest supporters of Russia on the international arena. It is China which is demonstrating spectacular achievements under the leadership of the Communist party. Its 20th Congress which proclaimed the end of the era of the unipolar globalist world was a key event of the modern time on the national and planetary scale. It is Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, and the DPRK. Finally, it is the Asian and African states whose managerial, scientific and medical cadres were formed at Soviet universities and institutes.
This is one of the key elements of the Soviet legacy which continues to serve us at this troubled time. It provides a lesson for us today. Addressingthe World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil in early 2023 I said that the new multipolar world would facilitate the struggle for social progress.The weakening of the US hegemony paves the way for a more just system of international relations. But multipolarity by itself does not lead to conflict-free development, social justice and socialism. Yet billions of disadvantaged people dream of a worthy life, free of oppression in which honest work and friendship of the peoples triumph. Only the struggle of working people for socialism will make it possible to build a new world!
The planet is beginning to see the dead-end character of the path toward which our country was pushed at the end of the last century. Two major powers – China and Russia – are called upon to play the key role in confronting American hegemony, strengthening the community of states seeking sovereign development and many-faceted peaceful cooperation.A milestone on the way toward forming a new concept of our interaction with the world was the 22nd Meeting of the Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Samarkand in September of 2022.
Between them the SCO countries occupy an area of 34 million square kilometers, that is, 60% of the territory of Eurasia. The total population of SCO countries is 3.4 billion, almost half of the Earth’s population. SCO participants stress that the SCO is not a military bloc. Unlike the key organizations of the collective West, it does not seek to bring military or political pressure to bear on anyone.
The constructive principles were reaffirmed at the Samarkand summit. Attention was focused on the speeches of President Putin of Russia and PRC Chairman Xi Jinping. The Russian head of state stressed signs of a fundamental transformation in world politics and economics. It is irreversible. We see a growing role of the new power centers interacting among themselves not on the basis of rules imposed from outside, but on the basis of common principles and the UN Charter, respect of the sovereignty, national values and the interests of one another.
In the West the idea of disintegration of the Soviet Union has been cultivated for decades. Now the idea of destroying the historical Russia has triumphed. The West is harboring plans to use our country in its confrontation with China. But this will not happen. Simultaneously the West has been creating a Neo-Nazi enclave in Ukraine to threaten and rock the situation inside Russia. The special military operation was launched to prevent this.
During his meeting with Xi Jinping the Russian President said: “The world is changing rapidly, but one thing remains immutable: the friendship between China and Russia, our good relations of strategic comprehensive partnership. We continue to strengthen these relations.”
One cannot but welcome this position. I am convinced that the strengthening of allied relations with the People’s Republic of China must be the bedrock principle of Russia’s foreign policy. In our internal policy we need to take into account the unique experience of China’s development which the whole world admires.
Addressing the participants in the International Forum of Marxist Parties organized by the Communist Party of China in July 2022, I said: time has shown convincingly that socialist China has become the locomotive of progress and the lode star for the whole humankind. The experience of the PRC has in fact acquired universal significance. It needs to be thoroughly studied and disseminated with due account of the national conditions in each country. The strategic partnership between Russia and China is deepening. The friendship between our peoples is growing stronger. The leaders of our states have repeatedly reaffirmed the readiness to expand close cooperation.
In 2022 the Communist Party of China marked its centenary. It was a great milestone in the history of the Chinese people which had huge resonance in many countries. The Russian communists held major events in Moscow to mark this momentous date.
From the moment of the creation of the PRC, within several decades, China traversed a path that took the developed states hundreds of years to traverse. Within a historically brief space of time the country overcame its semi-feudal and semi-colonial legacy to become a world power. In 2021 China put a final end to poverty. Continuous progress of the huge country is ensured. The strategic tasks of national development, the goals of “two centuries” and a great resurgence of the Chinese nation, are being realized successfully. The rapid growth of the economy and social stability in China confirm the strength of socialism and demonstrate its creative character.
The tragic experience of the USSR has shown that renunciation by the Communist Party of its leading role inevitably plunges society into chaos and leads to the restoration of capitalism. This lends especial value to the CPC’s efforts to strengthen and improve the system of party leadership at all levels.
Socialism in China is an impressive result of the creative efforts of the whole people. The CPC skillfully combines the principles of Marxism and the conditions in China. All the achievements of the PRC have become possible because the people and the party have preserved and constantly improve the ideas of socialism – in theory as well as in practice.
Apologists for the bourgeoisie have often claimed that capitalism is the only possible path for moving forward, “the end point of development.” But we communists have proved the opposite: a better alternative to capitalism exists. The construction of socialism in the USSR proved it in the 20th century. China’s achievements are proving it now in the eyes of the amazed world.
Today the European Union, at the bidding of its Transatlantic overseer, is sealing the “window to Europe” cut by Peter the Great. Instead we are to open wider the gates to Asia, to our friends and reliable allies. This work must become one of the key tasks for our country.
The great lessons of Victory
The special military operation of the Russian army in Ukraine can be seen as essentially the continuation of the events of the Great Patriotic War. Then our country had to fight against the united forces of Europe where Bandera’s people were on the side of the Fascists. Today their descendants have reared their heads seeking revenge.
Their open terrorist war against the Russian World and the brotherhood of peoples began on May 2, 2014. On that day the pro-fascist supporters of an anti-constitutional coup carried out that same year in Kiev, burned alive inside the Odessa Trade Union House almost 50 champions of the legitimate rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking people. This beastly act was rightly called a new Khatyn by analogy with the tragic events in a Byelorussian village burned to the ground by Hitler’s punitive troops in March of 1943.
Today the terrorist attacks of neo-Nazi pro-Bandera thugs nurtured by their Western mentors have added to their “record” terrorist attacks on industrial enterprises and civilians in several regions of the European part of Russia. On the eve of Victory Day they used military drones to attack our national holy place, the Moscow Kremlin. Such things did not even happen during the Great Patriotic War when the German army was within 30 kilometers of Moscow.
It is incumbent on the Russian state to administer a fitting rebuff to this wanton act of terror. We have unique experience of effective struggle against terrorism of every stripe. Today we must use it to take adequate measures against the bandits who have dug in on Ukrainian land and threaten our security arms in hand.
We have to be aware of the seriousness of the historical challenge we face. We must honestly assess our vulnerabilities and realize that if we are to move forward the main thing is to mobilize internal resources. Soviet history sets a great example of effective military and economic mobilization, which is precisely what we need today.
As Arseny Zverev, a talented Soviet economist who was the Soviet Finance Minister in 1938—1960, wrote in his book “Stalin and Money,” by the late 1930s the state budget was already geared to the needs of the defense complex. Its allocations for the People’s Commissariat of Defense accounted for 21% of the budget in 1938, 26% in 1939, 32% in 1940 and 34% in 1941, when it was already a wartime budget.
Expansion of the capacity of artillery and tank plants proceeded apace. In December of 1939 the legendary T-34 tank was put into service. In February 1941 serial production began of the Katyusha rocket launcher which would strike fear into the Germans. In March production was started of IL-2 assault plane dubbed flying fortress. In April-May on the directions of the Soviet leadership, a secret reinforcement of the Soviet forces was carried out, mainly in the military districts in the west of the country, as a result of which 850,000 reservists were called up to the army and navy.
At a meeting of the Politbureau of the CC AUCP(B) in May 1941 G.K.Zhukov, appointed Chief of the Red Army General Staff several months earlier, reported: during the course of the industrial modernization launched in the USSR since the early 1930s production of tanks increased by more than three times. The Red Army received almost 10,000 pieces of ordnance and mortars. The Soviet industry provided the army with about 18,000 combat aircraft. The numerical strength of the Armed Forces almost trebled, the air power increased sevenfold, the number of tanks put into service rose 43 times. 312 new warships were put into operation.
Such was the great patriotic, organizational and economic prerequisite of our Great Victory which shook the world four years later.
The results of economic mobilization aimed at liquidating the consequences of the devastation caused by the Hitlerites were also impressive. By 1940, a year before the Great Patriotic War, the USSR’s gross domestic product was 4.5 greater than twelve years earlier. The national revenue was five times that of 1928. The same 12 years saw the basic production assets grow by 2.6 times, capital investments by 6.7 times, production volume by 6.5 times. The number of workers trebled during the same period.
During the three five-year-plan periods the USSR put into operation 9,000 industrial facilities. On average 600 giant machine-building, metallurgical and power generating facilities were built every year. Owing to this in the ten pre-war years industrial output grew by 30 times, power generation by 24 times and oil and chemical industry output by 17.5 times. By the beginning of the war our country was the biggest producer of the main types of commodities in Europe, and on many counts was leading the world. Raw materials were not sold abroad on the cheap, but were used primarily to put out high-quality Soviet goods.
After Germany’s attack in June 1941 production started to decline. It dropped by almost half by November. But toward the end of the first war year decline gave way to sustained industrial growth. It never stopped until the early 1990s, the time of treacherous break-up of the USSR. As early as 1942 we were producing four times as many tanks as Germany, twice as many warplanes and three times as many pieces of ordnance of all types. It was then that the Chelyabinsk and Kirovo-Chepetsk thermal power plants and Karaganda Hydro–Electric Power Station went on line. Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsky plants launched production of all types of steel needed for the military hardware within days. All in all, 3,500 new big enterprises were built and 7,500 destroyed industrial facilities were restored during the war years. Between July 1941 and January 1945 the total floor area of residential housing built and restored amounted to 103 million square meters.
Such were the heroic exploits performed by the Soviet industry and economy which withstood the Fascist onslaught. But with the onset of savage capitalism it became the object of free-for-all plunder by Russian oligarchs and their foreign accomplices who turned the majority of Soviet enterprises into ruins. Those that survived were made to work not for the people and for our country, but for the enrichment of their owners and of their Western principals. What Hitler failed to accomplish became a reality in Yeltsin’s bourgeois Russia.
Soviet agriculture also withstood the cruel blows of the war. During the war years areas under crops in the eastern regions increased by 5 million hectares. Agrarian science was working successfully to breed new cold-resistant crop varieties. Areas under winter crops increased by 64% in Siberia and by 44% in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. These regions provided 67 million wagons of cargoes to the front and to other regions.
Invaders totally or partially destroyed and burned down 1710 cities and urban-type settlements, more than 70,000 villages. They destroyed 6 million buildings and left 25 million people without a roof over their heads. They put out of operation almost 32,000 industrial facilities, 65,000 kilometers of railways and 4,100 railway stations. They slaughtered or transported to Germany 7 million horses, 17 million cattle and 30 million sheep and goats. They razed to the ground 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, technicums and higher education establishments, and 43,000 libraries. No state in history had suffered such gigantic damage at the enemy hands. The world had not seen such a brutal and devastating war, economic and ideological aggression as that unleashed against the Soviet Union.
All the more impressive was the feat of the Soviet power which stood its ground against the most formidable enemy, and the feat of its rapid post-war rehabilitation.
A third of the basic assets destroyed by the Hitlerites were restored even before the war ended. The pre-war level of industrial production was reached as early as 1948 and in agriculture in 1950. Real per capita incomes in 1950 were 40% higher than in 1940. In 1946—1955, 201 million square meters of housing space was built, almost as much as in all the pre-war five-year-plan periods combined.
Already before the war Joseph Davis, US ambassador to the USSR in 1936—1939, wrote in his book “Mission to Moscow” that the most striking thing about the Soviet planning was boldness in making decisions and perseverance in implementing them.
Soviet science, which is today being strangled in the noose of thievish capitalism, made a colossal contribution to the victory over the enemy. The role of our medicine in the years when death stalked everyone in the battlefield is impossible to overestimate. Thanks to the selfless effort of medics three out of every four soldiers and officers hospitalized with heavy injuries were put back on their feet. What would have happened to them if they were put in the hands of the present-day health service run over by the steamroller of “optimization” and mass staff cuts?
The Soviet Gosplan started developing the Fourth Five-Year Plan as early as August of 1945 when the USSR was still fighting Japan. The main target was to restore the pre-war production level. Particularly tight control was imposed on gold mining and the production of precious metals, a key industry which today is in private hands and outside state and public control. As a result, the plan targets were exceeded many times over. By the end of the first post-war five-year-plan period national income was 64% higher than in 1940. At the gala Kremlin meeting on November 6, 1944 Stalin had every reason to say the following: “The economic foundation of the Soviet State turned out to be incomparably more viable than the economy of the hostile sates. The socialist system born of the October Revolution gave our people and our army great and invincible strength.”
In peacetime, the strength of socialism Stalin spoke about from the Kremlin rostrum in 1944, made the USSR the leading science and space power on the planet, a leader of progress which accounted for one fifth of the world’s industrial output.
Revival program needed
In the early 1990s an absolutely untenable socio-economic system was foisted on Russia. Three decades after renouncing socialism we still have not reached 1990 performance indicators. The country has not restored what has been destroyed not by war, but by irresponsibility and treachery, the greed of oligarchs and the crimes of corrupt officials.
The growth of left sentiments in the world meets with furious resistance of transnational capital. Influential forces here in Russia take its side. They seek to keep intact the destructive socio-economic model. These liberal revenge-seekers do all they can to prevent a revision of the system that has taken shape. They do not want to reject the course imposed on us in the vicious 1990s.
We communists know that from the perspective of large world processes the behavior of the Russian comprador bourgeoisie represents resistance of a historically doomed side. But today it is exacting a heavy price from our country and its citizens. An attempt is being made to wreck Russia through aggravating the economic crisis and actions of “the fifth column.”
Western strategists are inspired by the glaring flaws in the Russian bourgeois system. Our opponents know well what happened after the collapse of the Soviet model. They were at one with Yeltsin, Gaidar, Chubais and Kozyrev who were cutting up what they scoffingly called “the new Russia.” We were plunged in the most backward, absolutely primitive gangster capitalism. Those who planted multiple mines under the foundation of Russian statehood are still rubbing their dirty hands.
Those who run the Russian economy still do not have a firm commitment to break with the ideology foisted on us by the globalists, nor do they have a coherent program of transformations in our national interests. We hoped that under the circumstances power will at long last come up with a new socio-economic course and renounce the ideology of socialism-haters. Instead, we are stuck with a budget of addiction to commodity trade and technological backwardness. On practically all counts it envisages symbolic increase of financing, which in practice means decline in real terms, adjusted for inflation, or a reduction even in nominal terms. We see that the government’s financial and economic unit continues to ignore the need to break with the neocolonial structures of global capital, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. These people still cling to the ideology of a raw materials appendage which rejects the prospect of full-fledged development and forward-looking economic growth. The negative consequences are there for all to see.
Over the past 10 years our economy has registered an average annual growth rate of under 1%. In 2022 it shrank by 2%. Experts from Moscow University’s Chair of Political Economy point out that Russia’s GDP today is a mere 20—25% above that of 1990. Meanwhile the world economy has on average grown by three times on 1990. Тhus, the world economy over the past 30-odd years has been growing at least 12 times faster than the Russian economy. The same can be said of the USA and the leading European states whose economies have also grown by 2-3 times since 1990.
China has seen its economy increase by 8 times since the mid-1990s. The difference between the performance of oligarchic capitalism and socialism renewed under the leadership of the Communist Party is evident to all. This is what we should proceed from if we want to preserve our country and set it on the path of victories and successful independent development.
Over the same ten years real incomes of citizens dropped by 12% putting us in the sixth ten in terms of minimum wage. With its current budget policy Russia, according to UNESCO data, has dropped to 121st place in the world in terms of spending on healthcare, to 84th place in terms of spending on education and 37th place in terms of financing science.
Even the top moneybags have the same flat tax rate as citizens with medium and low incomes. Billionaires contribute to the treasury the same percentage of their assets as paupers. Yet the government is still reluctant to revise that rule which has been scrapped practically all over the world.
In the Soviet era one in every four scientists in the world was a Soviet citizen. In the last 30 years the number of highly qualified scientists in our country dropped by at least one third. Their number continued to decline in 2022. It was down 2.5% on 2021 and 9% on 2010. Without exaggeration, this poses a strategic threat because technological sovereignty is indispensable for survival and development.
In last year’s report “The Broken Vector of the Russian Economic Development” the same experts from Moscow University come to this conclusion: the economic model Russia took on board after the collapse of the USSR is categorically ineffective and contrary to the tasks of development. Equally ineffective and irresponsible is the management of the economy in its present form which is a direct result of adventurous and plunderous privatization.
As a result of de facto illegal privatization deals the majority of Russian enterprises ended up in the hands of owners who are incapable of running them effectively. They do not want to invest in development, are concerned only about their personal profit and syphon off huge financial resources out of the country. Only 15% of strategic resources are in the hands of the state. The lamentable results of privatization haunt the Russian economy determining its character and prospects.
The scientists see the only way out of the situation in transferring strategically important sectors to the state. On the immediate agenda is nationalization of the key enterprises and removing the oligarchy from management of the economy. The experts also come out for a revival of the Soviet practice of five-year plans. These should first and foremost envisage the restoration of existing and creation of new spearhead technology development projects.
These conclusions fully coincide with the demands of the CPRF. Our policy documents insist on the need for a new socio-economic course. The country faces massive social-economic tasks. Their solution demands a fundamental revision of the policy of the last 30 years. Without it we will go under.
The bandit Western sanctions have destroyed the former format of Russia’s interaction with the external world. A patch-up approach will not work in this situation. A change of economic and financial policy is required. A switch toward the path of a new industrialization – this is what guarantees our sovereignty.
Russia needs a massive industrialization, a rapid growth of the national industry and quick eastward reorientation of export and import.
It is high time to admit that the private sector should not hold sway in system-forming sectors. Today, when the question of economic growth is the question of national salvation, the state must play the key role. It alone can address such priorities as boosting of production, support of the poor, and expansion of foreign economic ties in new directions. The authorities should revise the untenable course which has brought colossal losses.
At the tail end of the previous year President Putin, conducting a meeting of the Council for Development and National Projects, set six key socio-economic targets for 2023:
— reorientation of trade;
— strengthening technological sovereignty;
— priority growth of the manufacturing industry;
— financial sovereignty;
— raising the incomes of citizens;
— protection of motherhood and childhood.
Commitment to these goals was reaffirmed in March of this year in the government’s report to the State Duma. This cannot but be welcomed. But such key socio-economic tasks can only be solved if there is a new and sound policy and a coherent program of actions.
Russia has all the resources needed to reverse the dangerous trends, and protect its present and future. The best way to combat the crisis of capitalism is to get rid of capitalism itself! This has been proved in our program of immediate measures to revive Russia approved by the Oryol International Economic Forum. We have ample grounds for demanding de-oligarchization of the economy, nationalization of strategic sectors, commitment of the financial system to the goals of accelerated development and revival of state planning. Our program has the backing of scientists, doctors, teachers and the heads of key enterprises. It offers a concrete and detailed plan of actions to tackle the strategic tasks facing the country.
It provides clear answers how to put an end to the policy of decimating the national industry and wrest its key sectors from the hands of foreign capital; liberate ourselves from the financial and legal diktat of transnational structures such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO; clear our strategic enterprises of the presence of foreign agents; implement a robust state program of the development of electronics, aircraft building, machine-building, woodworking; restore the single power grid; give the Central Bank the role of a truly state bank; put an end to the flawed practice of parking capital abroad, due to which we lost 600 billion dollars of our gold and currency reserves in 2022. Of that sum 350 billion have been unlawfully “frozen” in Western banks. A further 250 billion have been hastily spirited out of Russia by the oligarchs.
Our program is a program of a new industrialization which would involve research centers in reviving sectoral science and treble the spending on research and development.
Our program is a new development budget which can be brought up to 40 trillion roubles within a comparatively short space of time. It means comprehensive social transformations the most important of which would give back to our citizens free and high-class education and health service. It means reducing the retirement age to the former level: 55 for women and 60 for men.
In our Victory Program we summed up our key proposals and demands and complemented them with new ones which reflect the most important recent changes. We have submitted to the State Duma a range of exceedingly important draft laws envisaging all-round support of the social sphere and key sectors of the economy.
The sound character of our program has been convincingly confirmed by numerous parliamentary hearings and round tables devoted to the problems of the national industry, agriculture, healthcare, education and science. We have brought together top scientists, leading industry specialists whose knowledge and ideas should be the basis of a new policy serving our national interests.
To win the battle against those who declared an all-out war against Russia we need mobilization of the economy and ideology, science and culture. This calls for a new industrialization, a plan economy, information support based not on empty and noisy declarations, but on real policies in the interests of the country and its citizens. History vindicates our cause. Socialism has repeatedly confirmed its creative power and its role in saving the Motherland. The Great October pulled the planet out of the First World War, and our Great Victory put an end to the Second World War in May of 1945. Thereafter we have owed our salvation to the nuclear-missile parity which still ensures our security.
The West has more than once lowered “an iron curtain” on the Soviet Union. But the USSR’s leading positions continued to grow stronger. How was this achieved? Through economic independence! The independence we can only regain if we rely on socialism as the foundation.
To save lives, to save souls
The main security issue is preserving the population. To survive in our wide space we need a population of 200 million. To defend a territory of 16 million square kilometers we need a 1.5 million-strong army. But the demographic situation categorically runs counter to the strategic needs of our Power.
By the early 1970s the USSR was, in terms of life expectancy, ahead not only of the United States, but of the majority of European countries. And this despite the fact that in the early 20th century the average life span in Russia was 17 years less than in America.
In 1900 Russia had a population of 70 million. Fifty years later there were already 102 million of us. And this despite the two world wars. The next 40 years added 50 million. In 1990 there were 148 million of us, but now there are two million fewer of us. That is, in the last 30 years the country’s population did not increase but decreased.
We witness the continued effect of factors which lead to a demographic catastrophe and which stem directly from the current socio-economic policy. Russia has been dying out for the fifth year in a row.
Since 2018 the population shrank by 2.5 million, that is, by 1,500 people every day. Last year alone the population dropped by 600,000. Birth rate dropped by 6% on 2021. The birth rate was 9 per 100,000, the worst indicator since 2001. According to the Health Ministry, more than half of Russian men die before they are 65.
These colossal problems are closely connected with the high divorce rate. According to official statistics, out of a hundred new marriages between 60 and 65 end in divorce. It is one of the worst indicators in the world. In other words, three quarters of family unions fall apart. Half of divorced couples have no children.
The roots of all these phenomena are social problems which breed a sense of insecurity, of not being able to ensure a decent life for the children, housing, normal diet, medical help and good education. The demographic crisis leads to the crisis of manpower which also poses a threat to our national security. According to the results of a Central Bank study published in April 2023 Russia is experiencing the most acute shortage of manpower, especially in the young age bracket.
Along with the physical preservation of the people spiritual preservation is very important. Russia haters make it the aim of the information war to corrupt the souls and destroy the truth. In the fierce battle against the collective West it is not enough to strengthen the military potential. To move forward the Russian World needs inspiring values, a worldview based on the ideas of social justice. Education and culture should be the foundation of these ideas.
The destruction of the USSR and the liberal reforms were accompanied by a fierce ideological war aimed at destroying the unique system of educating the new generation. Thousands of children were left at the mercy of the street. They were fed “Western values,” including drug addiction, child prostitution, disdain for the acts of heroes, nihilism toward society. Everything connected with the achievements of the Soviet land and its youth, victories at the front and in the rear, the conquest of outer space and All-Union Construction Projects was expunged from the school programs.
In the middle of the 20th century we would not have won the war with Fascism, which was armed to the teeth, but for the Leninist-Stalinist modernization of the 1920s and 1930s. Its solid foundation was the brilliant development of the education system. The whole country went to school, hundreds of thousands of young people, children of workers, peasants and intellectuals, entered higher and secondary technical education institutions. As Stalin said at the 18th party congress, “a new Soviet intelligentsia has been created which has close ties with the people and is ready in its mass, to serve it faithfully.”
Satlin’s words are borne out by the biographies of the best Soviet writers, poets, film directors, composers who have left us a poignant chronicle of the Great Patriotic War. That chronicle includes “The Young Guard” by Alexander Fadeyev, “They Fought for Their Motherland” by Mikhail Sholokhov, wartime poetry of Konstantin Simonov. These outstanding authors created works that are the pride of Soviet literature. In those grim years they were war correspondents, working on the frontline and risking their lives. Yuri Bondarev went to the front in 1942 straight from school. The future author of the story “Battalions Ask for Fire Support” and the novel “Hot Snow” took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kiev from the Nazis.
In Russia before the Revolution about 80 percent of the population were illiterate. This is one of the reasons why Russia quickly lost its wind in the First World War: people were not prepared to fight. It was not until 1916 when it became clear how vulnerable a semi-literate soldier was that universal primary education was introduced. But the casualties could not be brought back.
Soviet power was very mindful of this sad lesson. Making education and culture generally accessible, it elevated them to an unheard of level of quality. In this way cadres were forged for a gigantic industrial breakthrough of the USSR and for the future Victory.
The course foisted on the country in the 1990s has been decimating our education for decades. It undermined fundamental and applied science. It took us several years to solve the obvious question: Russia must have a Russian Language Day.
On November 22, 1994 the World Bank published a report “Russia. Education in the Transition Period.” It set forth what amounted to a plan of destroying our education system. Part of the report was devoted to primary education, which it proposed to dump as unnecessary. The whole system of civic disciplines was also canceled. Basic subjects were emasculated. We are talking about mathematics, the Russian language and literature – all that shapes a person, citizen and a full-fledged specialist. Engineers also turned out to be redundant. Instead BA and MA degrees were introduced.
Sadly, one has to admit that this destructive plan was to a large extent implemented. We need urgently to rectify the situation. We cannot achieve an industrial and economic breakthrough without a massive increase of support for education and science on the part of the state. But the country which in the Soviet era, even in the grimmest war years, spent up to 17% of the budget on education, today spends no more than 4% of the budget, that is, less than one percent of the GDP.
Yes, it is heartening that in his address in February 2023, the President at long last declared that Russia is giving up the faulty Bologna system and is reverting to the traditional education system. But this is so far practically the only step away from the former dead-end course. Other steps are necessary. In an address to the Federal Assembly and the Government adopted at the CPRF-organized round table “Science and Education Under Sanctions” in April 2023 we called for the following measures:
— to ensure equal educational opportunities for Russian citizens irrespective of their material and social status;
— within five years increase the share of financing of education in the country by not less than 7% of the GDP, that is, to double it;
— urgently consider and support a body of legislation aimed at enhancing the status of education workers and increasing student stipends;
— raise the base salaries of education workers to not less than 70% of the average wage in the region and in the Russian Federation as a whole;
— in forming the federal and regional budgets proceed from the recognition of education as one of the main priorities of state policy.
The foundation for all this has been laid. It is in our draft law “Education for All” which we have developed. The CPRF considers it to be a key task to make our culture and education system truly of the people. The time has come to again cherish the achievements of all the peoples of the Soviet Union embodied in the unique Soviet civilization. Our ancestors created one of the most brilliant cultures in the modern world. Everyone in our country should be deeply aware that this is not only something to be proud of but also to be responsible for.
The Soviet pinnacle of the Russian World
It has to be stressed that the Communist Party has made a key contribution to the sacred cause of defending the USSR and the whole world against the Fascist invasion. This contribution is intellectual, managerial and military. Members of the CPSU and its youth wing, the Komsomol, made up more than half of the Red Army personnel.
Communists and Komsomol members were fighting in the front ranks and were the first to give their lives for Motherland and the socialist cause. Soviet soldiers who had not yet joined the Party, before going into a deadly battle, put a note in the breast pocket with the words: ”If I get killed please consider me to be a Communist.” Such was the last will of these selfless people. There cannot be a more convincing proof of the people’s selfless faith in the Soviet power and the Communist Party. There is no more convincing proof of the fact that Soviet power and the Party have fully deserved such popular faith. Thereby they deserved the Great Victory.
It is impossible to erase from the consciousness of our people faith in the social system which gave people a chance to live according to the laws of equality and justice. Our people have rejected capitalist exploitation and the power of a handful of fatcats over millions of poor people which so unnaturally installed itself here by the beginning of the 21st century. The Communists created a country whose victorious sons tossed the banners of vanquished invaders at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. Thereby they proved that the strongest army in the world is the army of socialism. It unites in its ranks all those who build society on the basis of equality and justice.
The Soviet civilization is the historical pinnacle of the Russian World militarily, economically, socially and spiritually. Today’s “party of power” lacks the reason, conscience, and will to inherit this outstanding experience. We see around the President many adherents of White Guard patriotism, an ideology that is muddled and sly, faulty and false. I would like to remind you that it was this ideology that led its adherents to national treachery and a historical defeat in the Civil War. Russia avoided collapse thanks to the victory of the Bolsheviks over the interventionists and their accomplices, the leaders of the White movement who had stooped to collaborationism.
Time demands that we protect our common home from Fascist scum, from latter-day “dog-knights,” from insane followers of Hitler. Particular historic responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of the present generation: to stop the slide toward an abyss. To achieve a fateful victory, our Motherland needs an effective economy, high-class science and education, a robust military potential and support of allies across the world.
The key condition of victory is the staunchness of our people and its ideological strong-mindedness in any confrontation. We have the experience of our forebears who knew how to rally in the face of dreadful peril. Russia needs consolidation of healthy patriotic forces for the sake of protection, development and prosperity of the beloved Motherland. Our country needs “a social contract” of a new type based on respectful attitude to the people, solidarity of working people and profound respect for the position of the citizens.
A patriotic front of struggle against the imperial West cannot grow out of the right of some to oppress and rob others. To create such a front, it is necessary to cast aside all delusions imposed on our country in the late 20th century. Neo-liberal dogma has cost our people dearly. Any attempt to continue nursing hatred of the Soviet era should be declared to be harmful and criminal practice.
To achieve victory and solve ambitious historical tasks Russia needs to rally around creative ideas and shining symbols. On the days in May our people pay attribute to the great feat of their ancestors with tears in their eyes and pride in their hearts. At such special moments it is not right to hide the key symbol, the Lenin Mausoleum. Draping it on national holidays is a cynical and absolutely inadmissible act. I declared it in my open letter to President Putin in April 2023 shortly before the birthday anniversary of V.I.Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state.
The celebration of Victory Day should be seen as an important act of people’s unity. The meaning and content of this event are sacred. So are all its symbols. The disgraceful practice of draping the Lenin Mausoleum is corrupting and intolerable.It is beneath the dignity of the country which today courageously challenges the heirs of Hitler, whom our ancestors defeated under Lenin’s banners.
In the conditions of struggle against Fascism which has reared its head the attitude to Soviet history has become a test of the maturity and responsibility of any political force in Russia. You may say what you like about socialism. But the past cannot be undone. Putting into question the feats of the Soviet people and its state means rolling out a carpet to Fascism. And Fascism, whatever its shades, brings evil, degradation and colossal losses.
For an anti-Fascist front and a better future for the planet.
Condemning evil is not enough. Evil should be fought. It needs to be overcome. That is why a very special event was held in the Hero City of Minsk on Lenin’s birthday on April 22, 2023. It was initiated by the Communist Parties of Russia and Byelorussia with the support of the UCP-CPSU. Representatives of a score of countries from Asia, America and Europe gathered in a symbolic place, the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War.
We met in order to hold our first International Anti-Fascist Forum and say a firm “No!” to war and reaction, neo-Fascism and oppression. We did it in Byelorussia where the number of victims and the amount of destruction during the war against Hitlerism were especially high. Every inch of that sacred land was awash with the blood of millions of Nazism’s victims. One in every citizens of the Byelorussian SSR was destroyed by the German Fascist aggressors.
The participants in the anti-Fascist Forum declared that Nazism is engendered by the crisis of capitalism. It grew out of Big Capital’s lust for preserving its power over the working people at all costs. To this end the imperialists have embarked on the path of supporting the darkest forces. They brought to power Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other rascals. The Nazis turned from a political fringe into a huge force which threatened to subdue the whole world.
The peoples of the Earth have no right to forget the experience of those great battles. In 1936, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy the Spanish Civil War broke out. The people’s power, in spite of the support from the USSR and other progressive forces, could not stand its ground. This paved the way for the most horrible war in human history. Decisive steps were taken toward the furnaces and gas chambers of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, Dahau and Sobibor, Majdanek and Oswiecim.
The world paid a heavy price for getting rid of Nazism. The heroes of that struggle – the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, the warriors of the Allied countries, the fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of China, representatives of the French and Italian Resistance, participants in the German anti-Fascist underground, Yugoslav and Korean partisans, Polish and Czechoslovak patriots — covered themselves with unfading glory.
The Red Flag over Reichstag in May 1945 is not only a heroic fact of the past. The meaning and significance of the Great Victory over Fascism reach out to the future. They sound like a tocsin appealing to the hearts of the new generations.
Today the situation is getting more and more alarming. Neocolonialism is rearing its head in Africa and America. Imperialists are stoking up tensions in Asia. To the roar of cannon in Europe and other corners of the planet the black smoke of war fires is spreading. Human misery and suffering are multiplied. The moaning of the wounded and dying is heard. Mothers shed tears of grief. The sinister outlines of the spider-like swastika are emerging ever more visibly from the gaping abyss. The deadly threat of a Fascist revenge is growing. The emboldened Nazi beast has crept out of the wolf’s den in search of new victims.
People of good will need unity and courage in the battle against absolute evil. This means struggle against the prime cause. Capitalism in its neo-liberal guise has created a global system of plundering entire countries and peoples. It has stained itself with aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Byelorussia. An unprecedented sanctions pressure has been unloosed against the peoples of Russia and China, Cuba and the DPRK. Military threats and political blackmail are increasingly used.
On the eve of the Second World War Hitler’s storm troops were orchestrated by financial capital. In the 21st century it again directs later-day Nazis. Seemingly vanquished Fascism has not disappeared from the face of the Earth. The world oligarchy needs its services. As a result, Nazi riff-raff stages marches in Vilnius and Tallinn. Books are being burned in Kiev. Monuments to Soviet liberator warriors are being dismantled in Warsaw. Euro MPs initiate wicked resolutions trying to equate Hitler’s Nazism and Soviet Socialism.
In Ukraine, US and NATO support has elevated Nazi ideology to the rank of official ideology. The Bandera lot ensconced in Kiev has turned Ukraine into a concentration camp for dissenters. They have banned undesirable media outlets, strangled the opposition, and launched reprisals against communists. The Nazis burned people alive in Odessa, blew up and killed people from behind the corner. The Azov* thugs with a wolf hook on their chevrons have for years terrorized Donbass. Everyone who has preserved the ideals of the brotherhood of peoples and loyalty to the Great Victory over Fascism has become a victim of reprisals.
The Western governments are pumping weapons into Bandera Ukraine. Zelensky already says he wants to have a nuclear arsenal. But the gentlemen from NATO did not sound the alarm even then. Moreover, London contemplates providing Neo-Nazis with depleted uranium ammunition.
NATO countries have not just stuffed the world with military bases. Four hundred US bio-laboratories in various parts of the planet are conducting experiments with dangerous viruses and bacteria. The consequences of such activity threaten humankind as a biological species.
The communists have always claimed that “Fascism is war.” We see clear proof of it today.The bacilliof “the brown plague” are too dangerous. They should be rendered harmless confidently and quickly.The horrors condemned by the Nuremberg International Tribunalmust not be repeated. The world reaction must not be allowed to plunge the world into a new catastrophe. Individual heroes cannot solve tasks of such magnitude. It takes mass activity of working peoples and nations.
Analyzing the situation from all sides the participants in the Minsk anti-Fascist forum pointed to the ever deepening crisis of the bourgeois ideology. Indeed, the globalists cover up their dangerous actions with pseudo-intellectual research. They like to pluck from the theories of Nietzsche, Chamberlain and Gobinau the most reactionary ideas about the “superman” and “race superiority.” A grim cocktail of neo-Malthusianism and post-humanism is being cooked. Man-hating nonsense is put forward about the “priority of technological progress over social development.” Klaus Schwab and his ilk put the old ideas that inspired Hitler and his accomplices in pseudo-scientific wrapping. Vices and perversions are extoled as humanistic values.
Such false “innovations” are promoted by those afflicted with ethnic and racial prejudices who want to take revenge on the fighters against Fascism and colonialism. These circles are possessed by the idea of total control over humanity. Declaring cancelation of the great Russian culture and “redundancy’ of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chaikovsky, they target humanistic culture of the whole world seeking to throw it into times of unheard-of savagery and an electronic concentration camp.
Progressive-minded people know that neo-liberalism is a vicious enemy of independent development and democratic norms. Western political systems have degenerated into absolute autocracies. Bourgeois elites have lost touch with the values of freedom and humanism. Writhing in agony, capitalism has proved that it is ready to accept reincarnation of Fascism. World reaction actively encourages the followers of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, Antonescu and Mannerheim, Pilsudski and Quisling. They cynically falsify historical facts hoping to erase the memory of the Second World War.
For all the peace-loving forces on the planet the key to success is unity in struggle, cohesion and assertiveness. Resistance to world reaction can only be successful if it is worldwide.Only international solidarity can protect humankind from the Fascist threat and from sliding into the abyss of a world war.
The final document of the Minsk Anti-Fascist Forum stresses: “The plans of a ‘new world order’ lead to aggression and conflicts, neo-Fascism and neo-colonialism and the threat of a new world war. The whole world is becoming a battlefield. We must win this battle – in the name of all the best that has been created by world culture, in the name of a worthy future for humankind!” These are words from the Manifesto for Uniting the Peoples of the World unanimously supported by the participants in our meeting. “Protect Humanity from Fascism!” has become the title of the Manifesto.
The Manifesto recalls that the great militant alliance of opponents of Fascist barbarism – communists, patriots, fighters against tyranny and democrats – took shape in the flames of the Second World War. It was created in spite of the social and ideological divergences, differences of political and religious views. Such was the bidding of the time. The present day again calls for united actions of all the people of good will in the struggle against neo-Nazism, reaction and militarism.
The Manifesto “Protect Humanity from Fascism!” is a document that carries a great political message. It provides a convincing ideological platform for uniting all the left, truly popular forces in the world. Only such a union can overcome the main threats to humanity in the first half of the 21st century.
We Fight for Justice!
Do we have a chance to win? Undoubtedly! The systemic crisis of capitalism is growing, which impedes the globalists in their bid to keep the world within set limits. The prosperity of the “golden billion” — the West’s show window – has long been based on colonial plunder of the rest of the world. But even these powers face a catastrophe. That is why even in the heart of capitalism public consciousness tends to grow more left.
Only the destruction of the USSR and the socialist community has enabled capitalism to delay the aggravation of the systemic crisis in the late 20th century. Imperialism’s doping at the time was capture of new markets and temporary absence of the competition between capitalism and socialism. But the effect of the doping wore off. The crisis spiral continues.
The data of the international research organization Oxfam speak of a catastrophic rate of mass impoverishment. Amid the corona virus pandemic the number of billionaires in the world has increased by 573. Their total wealth accounts for 14% of the world GDP. The ten richest people on the planet have more wealth than 40% of the Earth’s population. The wealth of eighty chief billionaires on the planet exceeds half of the total world wealth. One percent of the richest people own more than 45% of the world wealth. The poorest half of the world owns just three quarters of a percentage point of that wealth!
Extreme polarization continues. In 2022 the number of poor people increased by 263 million. The number of people who found themselves below the poverty line for the first time equals the populations of Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain combined. The reality is such that the total wealth of the billionaires would not only pay for corona virus vaccines for the whole humankind. These resources could prevent the impoverishment of those who lost their livelihood because of the pandemic. But the interests of the peoples are alien to the capitalists.
The mind-boggling enrichment of a handful of “the select” eats up the incomes of all the rest. Half a billion Earth inhabitants live in absolute poverty, One in every ten goes to bed hungry. By the beginning of 2023 a billion people lived on two dollars a day. Another 3 billion live on 5 dollars a day. Half of the planet’s population has sunk into poverty! The authors of the Oxfam report titled “Survival of the Richest” come to this conclusion: we witness the biggest growth of global inequality and poverty since the time of the Second World War.
Decline of living standards is fast spreading to the middle class. According to the IMF, the purchasing power of the dollar dropped by a third within a decade and a half. The quality of consumption is falling in the USA and Western Europe. For the first time new generations live worse than their parents and grandparents.
All this is reflected in social statistics, with 56% of the people in 30 major countries saying that capitalism brings more harm than benefit. This is the opinion of between half and three quarters of the population even in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Singapore. Half of respondents in the USA, too, are unhappy about capitalism. Mass disenchantment is growing even among those who are considered to be socially well-off.
A new aggravation of the systemic crisis of capitalism is evident. Assessing this situation, the authoritative economists Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini and Thomas Picketty have shown that the pandemic is not the cause of the problem but a litmus test of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
The apologists for capitalism have no plan of counteracting the crisis. Behind their hackneyed phrases the Western elites hide the desire to preserve a unipolar world. Their policy is totally bereft of a creative element. Their militancy targets socialist China and our country. Latter-day “crusaders” of capital are ready to make humankind pay any price for preserving the globalists’ control over the world and even, for this purpose, push the planet into a maelstrom of a world war.
The inadequacy of the capitalist system and its danger for humanity is more and more openly recognized by our country’s leadership. Addressing the Valdai Forum, V.V.Putin said that capitalism is in a dead end. He stressed that the civilizational breakthrough achieved by the Soviet people had created a powerful basis for the Great Victory. He noted the successes the USSR had achieved contrary to sanctions and blockades on the part of the capitalist world. A natural consequence of these statements would be recognition that a renewed socialism for Russia is inevitable.
The start of the special operation in Ukraine caused a justified upsurge of patriotic hopes among our fellow-citizens for long-awaited change. Yet today we say in a forthright manner: no cardinal badly needed renewal of the country’s internal policy is taking place. While supporting the efforts to uphold the political sovereignty of the Russian State in the struggle against Nazism and Bandera ideology, society demands ever more persistently that the country’s socio-economic course be adjusted to match the magnitude of historical tasks.
Recent sociological surveys show that three quarters of our citizens are convinced that the Soviet era was the best in our history. Among its achievements which should be our beacons today the absolute majority name social justice, the state’s concern about people, guaranteed right to work, free and high-class education and medical service. The centenary of the USSR which we marked in the late 2022 increased society’s interest in the Soviet legacy and the wish to see it revived.
Today we maintain: socialism is ever more assertively knocking on humanity’s door. We see its powerful sprouts in Russia as well. They are in the enduring socialist ideals. They are in the souls of young men and women who know that their grandfather was a communist and are proud of it. They are in the rejection of anti-Sovietism by those who march in the ranks of the multi-million Immoral Regiment. They are in the unique example of our “people’s enterprises” whose experience is confidently demonstrated as proof of the advantage of the socialist way of running the economy.
The CPRF recently marked its 30th birthday. All these years we have adhered to the principle: our main weapon that never gets rusty is an honest and upfront position, persistence in upholding our cause, and firmness in protecting the interests of the popular masses.
We see the Russian World as a vibrant and original civilization. Russia connects North and South, West and East by land, air and water. It is a center of diverse experience of human economic and creative activity, an heir to great humanistic values and a great spiritual culture. Today, as more than once before, it is at the focus of a struggle that determines the future of the planet’s peoples.
The challenge time presents us with is extremely important. And the stakes are extremely high: will the rapacious appetites of the global oligarchy destroy the world, will the imperialist aggressors burn humankind in the conflagration of a world war or will it be able to avoid the worst, take on board as a model the outstanding practices of social progress and open up new historical horizons?
The saving victory will only come if we understand that it is necessary to follow the unique experience of social justice and solidarity accumulated over the last hundred years. It makes perfect sense that it has delivered the most impressive results.
We shall do everything to safeguard our long-suffering and heroic people against a catastrophe and follow the path toward new victories in the battle for the Russian World – a battle on which depends not only our destiny, but the future of the whole humankind!
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 