WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
FOR BOLSHEVISM
INSIDE THE COMMUNIST AND WORKERS’ MOVEMENT
AUCPB - ВКПБ
No 4 (73) APRIL 2009
ABOUT PROFESSIONAL BOLSHEVIKS-REVOLUTIONARIES
We have repeatedly discussed questions with you on the merging of our Bolshevik party work with the workers’ and protest movement, with the struggle of the working people for their rights.
But, unfortunately, the results in this area are little more than modest. Only separate organisations are aiming on a daily basis to solve this task, expanding the party ranks, understanding that two, three or five people, even with their whole self-conviction, courage and loyalty to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of Lenin-Stalin, they cannot get behind them the thousands and tens of thousands of working people of their city or district. And indeed revolution is brought about by the masses of the working people, when millions of people rise up to the struggle. And to get them to follow can only be done by a party closely connected with them, living one life with people of labour, reflecting the root needs and aims of the working people in their everyday activity and struggle and, at the same time, pointing out the way to the working people and liberating them from exploitation and oppression.
I think that our fault lies in the absence of professionalism in our party work.
This is how Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put the question on professional revolutionaries in his outstanding work “What is To Be Done”, written at the start of the 20 century ) Autumn 1901 – February 1902) for the activity of a proletarian party in the conditions of the most brutal tsarist censorship and police brutality.
I shall cite separate extracts from his work:
“The fact is, of course, that our movement cannot be unearthed, for the very reason that it has countless thousands of roots deep down among the masses; but that is not the point at issue. As far as “deep roots” are concerned, we cannot be “unearthed” even now, despite all our amateurism, and yet we all complain, and cannot but complain, that the “organisations” are being unearthed and as a result it is impossible to maintain continuity in the movement. But since you raise the question of organisations being unearthed and persist in your opinion, I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools.
“As I have stated repeatedly, by “wise men”, in connection with organisation, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.”
“In this way, and in this way alone - (here, Lenin is talking about the study of illegal material, and about its distribution, and about demonstrations and other functions of the movement) - shall we ensure that reading the illegal press, writing for it, and to some extent even distributing it, will almost cease to be secret work, for the police will soon come to realise the folly and impossibility of judicial and administrative red-tape procedure over every copy of a publication that is being distributed in the thousands. This holds not only for the press, but for every function of the movement, even for demonstrations. The active and widespread participation of the masses will not suffer; on the contrary, it will benefit by the fact that a “dozen” experienced revolutionaries, trained professionally no less than the police, will centralise all the secret aspects of the work — the drawing up of leaflets, the working out of approximate plans; and the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each institution, etc.”
“in order to “serve” the mass movement we must have people who will devote themselves exclusively to Social-Democratic activities, and that such people must train themselves patiently and steadfastly to be professional revolutionaries.”
“Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!”
***
And that is the way Lenin puts the questions.
As we can see, the strength of a proletarian party, the strength of Bolshevism lies in its monolithic connection with masses, in the fact that Bolshevism has “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of roots deep down in the masses”
Up until today, we, as a rule have been displaying complete inability to connect our daily party work with the life of people of labour. Many of us have learned to talk by slogans and quotes. But they are completely unable to use their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism in daily reality. Its turns out that party work runs along at its own speed, and life flows along by itself. This, at the root is not true. This can only be called sectarianism. Today’s comrades believe that everything should be decided by the Central Committee, the Secretariat of the CC or, in Ukraine for example, the Buro of the CC. But indeed the result and effectiveness of party work depends not just on the skills of the leading party organs on working out the correct political line and tactics of struggle. But and to also to embody the decisions worked out, in life. And this already depends on the local party organisations, on the activity of Bolsheviks in the localities, on their connection with masses of working people, that is, with the labour collectives, learning institutions, scientific establishments, agricultural enterprises etc. Lenin writes that “scores” of revolutionaries will get down to the work of preparing leaflets, that is, the printing of leaflets, the planning of action, “the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each factory quarter, for each learning institution, etc”.
See how Lenin puts forth the task – the Bolsheviks must have an influence in every factory, plant, learning institution and every area of the city. But for this it is necessary that a party organisation, even if only made up of a few people, has tens of sympathisers in factories, plants, mines etc. Having one or two comrades in every factory or learning institution means ten will be gathered around the town, and then hundreds of sympathisers who exert a Bolshevik influence among the workers, students, pupils and employees of various types of establishments. Is it possible to win over tens and tens of sympathisers by distributing central party newspapers like “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” or “Serp I Molot” which are produced only once a month and in small numbers? No, of course not. Every party organisation must set up the publication of leaflets that reflect the state of affairs in the town, district, region, in this or that factory, enterprise, leaflets in which the anti-peoples policies of the local authorities or factory management are exposed.
In Kiev, Mr Chernovetsky, the Mayor, the city administration raised the fares for city rail transport 4 times: from 50 kopeeks to 4 gryvna. And how do the working people of Kiev respond? – They keep quiet. And the bourgeoisie need just that – so everyone stays silent. The Kiev organisation of the AUCPB prepared and printed a leaflet of protest against this rise in fares and called upon the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights (the leaflet was published in Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No12, 2008). But the quantity of leaflets printed was very small – in all only 100 copies. And in Kiev there are about 50 underground railways stations. In order to hand out on average 100 leaflets at every station we would need to print no less than 5 thousand leaflets. Only then could we start talking about some kind of Bolshevik influence on the people of Kiev.
And in this plan, an example has been shown to us by “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. In “RKP” No1 the leaflet by our Kharkov comrades has been published under the title “Enough of putting up with bourgeois disorder and destruction of the people!”. In this leaflet an analysis is given on the state of affairs at enterprises of Kharkov and the region, and it shows how the bourgeoisie is mercilessly closing down enterprises and throwing tens of thousands of working people onto the streets without any means of existence. And “Trudovaya Kharkovshina” appeals to the workers and working people with calls such as “Death to capitalism!”, “Long live the impending socialist revolution!” and calling on them to rise up to the struggle for their rights. It is good that the Kharkov organisation of the AUCPB, and the editorial of the newspaper “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” have for a long time set up cooperation with comrades from “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. But indeed such an analysis of the state of affairs needs to be done in every region, every major industrial centre, every town, city and village. And this is the task of the party organisers of the Central Committee and local party organisations of the AUCPB. But our comrades from Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh, Kherson, Simferopolya and others are staying silent, as if no mass closures of enterprises and establishments is taking place and that thousands and thousands of people are being left without jobs and a means to existence.
The most important task of each local organisation is to set up the systematic production of leaflets reflecting the state of affairs in the localities and calling on the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights. But this needs to be learned and to find young people who work on computers and can produce good quality leaflets.
In general, the task of every Bolshevik, of every professional revolutionary is to constantly study, to study Marxism-Leninism and most importantly, the skills to utilise the knowledge gained in daily practical activity and raise our common culture (in this connection we remember the words of V.I. Lenin when he said “a person may only become a communist only when he has enriched his memory with knowledge of all that wealth which has been gathered by humanity”, to learn the art and skill of working with people and attracting them over to our side, to our Bolshevik side (90% of the inhabitants of Ukraine exist on miserly kopeeks and are struggling to survive; we Bolsheviks live and exist in such conditions too on low pensions, wages, student grants and do not know how to go to the masses?!) to master the art of public speaking and carrying out propaganda work etc., etc.
For leaders and secretaries of party organisations and organisers of the CC, it is very important to have the skills in selecting the right people and place those Bolsheviks in those areas of work where they can demonstrate their skills most effectively. Some may be good at distributing Bolshevik press, some good at writing articles into newspapers, some – good at photography, others good at publishing leaflets, or working on computers, skilled at using the Internet and from there gathering information and critically analysing it, etc.
I would like to once again remind every CC partorg that your primary task is the forming of party structures in the localities. Many CC partorgs for many years have not recruited any comrades into the party. And this means they are simply not working with people in the given direction, have let this question slip or simply let it all go, which is inadmissible for a Bolshevik. Without any growth in the party ranks (not for the sake of membership growth alone and noone wants just a formal growth in membership because that is even more harmful) we cannot solve the tasks set forth by our party and will simply be unable to influence the masses with our Bolshevik influence.
Obviously, the rank of professional revolutionary also means that he is maintained by the party and carries out only and exclusively party work. But our party does not have such a luxury. But separate comrades do carry on only party work existing on their own pension, others have to earn extra over and above, but a large number of Bolsheviks work in order to maintain their families and Bolshevik work has to be done in their own free time.
But in any case, a Bolshevik has to always remain a Bolshevik, to correspond to his high rank of belonging to the vanguard of the proletariat, with the determination and selflessness to fulfil voluntarily the party responsibilities given to him – that is, to always remain a revolutionary, a fighter for the rights of the working people.
Another very important task for every Bolshevik and more so for every leader (secretary of a party organisation, party organiser of the CC and high-standing leaders) is in the attracting of young people over to our Bolshevik activity and to the struggle along with the training up of suitable replacements. Without the youth, we cannot guarantee gains in the movement. Namely the combining of living experience and knowledge of the senior comrades with youthful energy and ardour and make the flames of the impending socialist revolution which will sweep from the face of the earth rotten to the core imperialism.
Every one of us, every Bolshevik must understand that preparing the party and masses for revolution is not the result of some kind of spur of the moment upsurge, but that Bolshevik work lasts for years, that this is a lengthy struggle together with the working people for their rights, for their liberation. Only in such work and in such struggle does a Bolshevik become hardened, strengthen his character and forge out of himself a true revolutionary:
“it has to take years to turn oneself into a true revolutionary” (Lenin)
***
The situation in Ukraine is hardening. The closure of enterprises, the appearance of thousands and millions of newly unemployed people, the hikes in prices and tariffs on the most vital necessities for the lives of working people, all of this will inevitably lead to a growth in the struggle of the working people for their rights.
Our duty and most important duty of every Bolshevik, every party organisation is to take active part in this struggle, to be its vanguard, to raise the working class and working people of Ukraine up to the struggle for liberation from exploitation and oppression.
It is namely in such a struggle that one can become a true professional revolutionary and bring closer the implementing of the tasks standing in front of our party – to achieve the overthrowing of the power of capital, the revival of Soviet power and socialism and the revival of our great Soviet Motherland.
A. MAEVSKY
10 January 2009,
KIEV
DAY OF THE SUN
Comrade Kim Il Sung was the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the DPRK, the founder of the Workers’ party of Korea – WPK, and the Korean People’s Army – KPA. In the DPRK, the 15 April is celebrated as the Day of the Sun and is a state holiday.
Kim Il Sung was born in the period of occupation of the DPRK by the Japanese samurais. From an early age, he stood on the path of revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Korea, against the assimilation of Koreans by the Japanese and with that – against the destruction of the Korean nation which has a five thousand year old history. His father, Kim Hyong Jik, who was an outstanding leader of the anti-Japanese National Liberation movement, was the founder of the reorientation of this movement which took it away from a nationalist footing over onto a socialist one. He died very young (when Kim Il Sung was 14 years old, having left to his son the task – of liberating the Fatherland from the Japanese colonial enslavers.
Following the testament of his father, Kim Il Sung enters into the military-political school in one of the districts of the province of Jilin. This school was formed by the participators of the movement for independence and the patriotically minded intelligentsia of Korea with the aim of training cadres for the Korean Independence Army . In the academy, Kim Il Sung independently studied deeply the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was fascinated by the revolutionary theory of Marxism and began to carry out enlightening and explanatory work among the students of the academy, and becomes their leader. In October 1926 at a meeting of students and like-minded thinkers, Kim Il Sung forms the “Down With Imperialism Union” (DIU).
In his memoirs “With the Century” Kim Il Sung wrote : “The task at hand of the DIU was the overthrowing of Japanese imperialism and the achievement of liberation and independence of Korea. The end aim – to build socialism and communism in Korea and further, to overthrow imperialism in all its forms and build communism across the whole world”. Kim Il Sung together with his friends swore an oath: “To live and die together on the path of revolution in the name of the Fatherland and the nation”. In essence, this signaled the start of the Korean revolution, which had passed a victorious and hard path under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and successfully continued by his successor Comrade Kim Jong Il.
Later on in the period of struggle against the Japaneses, Kim Il Sung advances the slogan – “Arms are our life-Arms for Arms!”, forcing the preparation towards the unleashing of an anti-Japanese armed struggle. The national-liberation movement of Korea enters a period of a new uplift with the orientation towards the forming of the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerilla Army (formed on 25 April 1932, and then as a result of that – the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army).
In May 1936, Kim Il Sung forms the organisation of a united anti-Japanese national front – the League for the Rebirth of the Fatherland.
In the leadership of the struggle for the liberation, Kim Il Sung was a talented organizer of the armed struggle against the regular army of Japanese imperialism. The principles of SONGUN are in placing the armed forces as the corner stone in deciding all questions – and they remain the priority in the future in policies brought about by Kim Il Sung.
The liberation of Korea from the yoke of Japanese imperialism was brought about on 15 August 1945. The DPRK celebrates this day as the Fatherland Liberation Day.
The period from August 1945 until September 1948 was extremely complex and intense, connected with the start of the building of a socialist state, with the struggle for its formation and attempts at unifying the North and South of Korea into a united state structure, since by the end of the Second World War, the South of Korea had been occupied by US troops and the country had ended up divided into the North and South along the 38th parallel.
On 10 October 1945, on liberated land, the Central Organizational Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea is formed by Kim Il Sung. At the founding congress of 28 August 1946, by way of merging the CP of North Korea and the New Democratic Party of Korea, Kim Il Sung forms a united political organisation of the working people – the Workers’ Party of Korea. The first party organisation from the fellow-fighters of Kim Il Sung was formed by them on 3 July 1930. In the period of the anti-Japanese struggle, Kim Il Sung prepared cadres for the formation of a revolutionary party.
On 8 February 1946, Kim Il Sung forms the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea and is unanimously elected as its chairman. This Committee fulfilled the function of a people’s-democratic dictatorship as people’s power, relying upon a united democratic front, uniting broad anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic forces on the basis of the alliance of workers and peasants under the leading role of the working class.
During this period, land reforms, the nationalization of industry and a number of other democratic transformations were carried out. In a short time, the tasks of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution were successfully carried out. Further on, a policy towards socialist transformation was adopted by Kim Il Sung.
In February 1947, Kim Il Sung forms the People’s Committee of North Korea – the country’s first power of a proletarian dictatorship, and he is elected as its Chairman.
In March 1948 at the Second congress of the WPK, Kim Il Sung proclaims the policy towards the independent unification of the Fatherland, puts forth the tasks for the further strengthening of the revolutionary-democratic base and ideological-organizational strengthening of the party.
On 9 September 1948 at the 1st session of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung proclaims the forming of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and is unanimously elected as Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the DPRK (head of state).
As Chairman of Military Commission of the DPRK, Supreme Commander of the KPA, Kim Il Sung leads the struggle of the Korean people against the American aggressors in the Fatherland Liberation War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953). In this war, the national sovereignty of the country and the achievements of the Korean revolution were defended. The former chief of US troops, Clark, who signed the armistice treaty admitted the defeat of the USA, having said: “We suffered defeat in the sense that the enemy has not been defeated, but has become even stronger than before, and that is very dangerous for us”.
At the end of the war, Kim Il Sung leads the reconstruction and development of the country’s national economy and the formation of the economic basis of socialism.
In April 1955, Kim Il Sung defines the character and tasks of the Korean revolution: “All forces to the struggle for unification and independence of the Fatherland, to the construction of socialism in the northern part of the Republic”. Socialism in the DPRK was built on the basis of adopting five and seven year plans for the development of the national economy.
The general enthusiasm of the people in the construction of a new life was clearly embodied in the socialist movement CHOLLIMA.
The Workers’ Party of Korea under the leadership of its General Secretary takes active measures for the carrying out of the ideological and cultural revolution as the main elements of the Korean revolution.
In December 1972, the “Socialist Constitution of the DPRK” was adopted, which consolidated the achievements in socialist construction.
The principles of Juche were worked out by Kim Il Sung, laying as the basis of the ideological work of the party, having placed Man at the centre of attention as well as independence in politics, independence in economics and self-defence in defending the country (self-reliance). These principles in the future were formed as the THEORY OF JUCHE, by Comrade Kim Jong Il.
In October 1980 at the 6th congress of the WPK, Kim Il Sung defines the cause of transforming the whole of society on the basis of the JUCHE idea as the general task of the Korean revolution. The question of unifying the nation remains as before, the centre of attention of the Great Leader. In 1972, Kim Il Sung put forth 3 principles for unifying Korea – independence, peaceful reunification and great national consolidation. At the VI congress of the WPK the Great Leader proposes a structure for unification – the forming of a Democratic Confederative Republic of Korea.
Independence, peace and friendship are the main principles of the foreign policy of the WPK and the DPRK.
The Pyongyang Declaration – “We shall defend and advance the cause of socialism”, adopted in April 1992, played a significant role in the development of the movement for reunification and in the struggle of the peoples of the world against imperialism.
In the scientific-theoretical works of the Great Leader (38 volumes, 1938 – 1984, and 9 volumes of Selected Works), the theory, strategy and tactics of a democratic and a socialist revolution on the path of the construction of socialism and communism. His memoirs “With the Century”, are invaluable are remained unfortunately, unfinished.
Throughout his life, the Great Leader, Great commander, the everlasting president of the DPRK and General Secretary of the WPK, devoted to serving the people of Korea, and its liberation from the Japanese colonizers consequently saved the nation from destruction. He opened the road to a new, bright life, formed the fundament of socialism and successfully advanced the cause of the development of a socialist society. For his service to the people of Korea, he is lovingly called THE FATHER OF THE NATION, and the day of his birth – The Day of the Sun. today, the results of his titanic activity, his creative scientific-theoretic legacy live in the advancing movement of the country towards the heights of Juche socialism. Koreans with love say of him: “Kim Il Sung is always with us”.
The name Kim Il Sung is highly respected in the majority of countries of the world. He has been awarded with the highest orders of many countries, elected as an honored doctor of science and a professor of many major universities of foreign states.
His life is a clear and dignified example for copying to all those who nowadays are struggling for the liberation of their own country and their own people from the chains of imperialism for peace and socialism.
The name of the Great Leader has been written in gold letters into the historical chronicle of examples of the bests brains of humanity and outstanding revolutionaries, who make significant contribution into the development of civilization.
The formation and strengthening by the Great Leader in the storm of the most brutal battles of two wars, Korean Peoples Army can give a dignified rebuff to any aggressor who invades the sovereignty of the country. Continuing the cause of the Great Leader, Comrade Kim Jong Il is carrying out a policy of continuous strengthening of the country’s Armed Forces, defining the significance of the Army by the words – “Arms will defend Peace and Socialism”. After the advancing of Comrade Kim Jong Il to the post of Supreme Commander of the KPA in December 1991 and the designation of him on 9 April 1993 to the post of Chairman of the National Defence Committee of the DPRK, the country’s military affairs have been raised to an even higher level.
The priority of the Army is not just in the strengthening of the country’s defence, but also in economic construction – such is the present-day essence of the politics of SONGUN, the political philosophy and true politics of the Supreme Commander of the KPA, Comrade Kim Jong Il. The moral-political unity of Korean society is so high, that one of the highest ranking US military has stated: “The spiritual potential of the North Korean army is undoubtedly a PROBLEM, for no kind of electronic means can overcome the high strength of soul”.
The KPA is constantly modernizing it mobility, possessing up to date attack and defence equipment. In the DPRK a firm scientific and economic base has been created for the further development of the defence industry and equipping the KPA with the latest means for carrying out a modern-day war.
The launching of artificial satellites, the serial launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the successful testing of a nuclear warhead for these missiles has shown to the whole world that the USA has already lost its 60 year old unprecedented brutal cold war against the DPRK. Nowadays the territory of the USA is no longer unreachable for retaliation in the case of any military provocation by the USA against the DPRK. Having become a global nuclear power, the DPRK can at a faster rate peacefully and with certainty build socialism and simultaneously solve the question on reunification of the nation in the near future. The guarantee for this lies in the monolithic ideological-political unity of society, unity of the Army, Party and People, united with iron will and high authority of the Leader – the Supreme Commander of the National Defence Committee of the DPRK Comrade Kim Jong Il.
Congratulating the citizens of the DPRK on this famous date, we wish excellent Korea – the country of morning calm, its heroic, labour-loving and peace-loving people success in implanting the plans laid out by the Great Leader Comrade kim Jong Il.
On the occasion of this famous date, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (CC AUCPB) sends a congratulatory telegram to the Leader of the DPRK Comrade Kim Jong Il.
AUCPB
THE DEEPENING CRISIS OF IMPERIALISM AND OUR TASKS
Since autumn last year the imperialist world has been sunk into the deepest financial-economic crisis yet.
The US mortgage crisis that began developing in 2007 laid the start of the crisis, and after that it crossed over to other major capitalist powers. The chairman of the US Federal State reserve Ben Bernanke valued the common losses of investors from the housing market crisis in the US at 50 – 100 billion dollars. According to experts, by the end of 2007 the losses made by financial organisations amounted to approximately 400 billion dollars. Because of the mortgage crisis, American financers had to reduce the number of workplaces by more than 130 thousand.
The finance sphere began to crash not just in the US. The first victim abroad was the London based company Cambridge Place, which closed it fund Сaliber Global Investment that controlled money amounting to the sum of 908 million dollars. The shares of one of the largest British mortgage lending banks Northern Rock fell by 21%. Endless lines of worried customers stood waiting outside the branches wishing to withdraw their savings. The Swiss bank UBS, the largest in Europe in shares, announced the writing off of 10 billion dollars. The reason – the US mortgage crisis. In connection with the losses, UBS took the decision to cut 1500 jobs. Russian banks felt the effects of the crisis in financing which were deprived of access to Western markets. By the end of August 2007, vice chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Gennadi Melikyan called upon Russian banks not to get carried away by foreign loans, having stated that the Russian banking system is going through a crisis due to “unsettling affairs taking place in the USA”. At the start of August, the largest French bank BNK Paribas temporarily banned the withdrawing of money from three investment funds, the sum volume of investments which amounted to nearly 2 billion Euros. Following the announcement on the halting of its share operations, shares on the Paris stock exchange fell by 3%. At the same time, Germany’s biggest investment fund Union Investment, the German bank BHF-Bank declared the halting of its activity. The government of Saxony declared the sale of its landed bank Sachen LB which had suffered losses from risky operations on the US housing market. The crisis also hit Australia. The Australian hedge fund Basis Yield Alpha became the first victim of the US mortgage crisis in the Asia-Pacific region. The fund, at the head of which are found shares to the sum of about 1 billion dollars requested a bailout.
Ex- head of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspen compared the situation in autumn 2007 on the world markets with the crisis in 1987 and 1998. The expert also believes that events on the markets in 2007 remind us not only of the crisis of 1987 and 1998, but also the collapse in 1837 and also the bank panic of 1907. The negative tendencies on the world stock exchanges in 2007 are connected to the events on the mortgage market in America. The mortgage brokers clashed with a crisis in non-payment. The funds that invested their money in securities with mortgage protection finished up on the edge of collapse. The US mortgage crisis stretched down to all international trading platforms. Share indexes plummeted in Britain, France, Germany and Asia. Russia’s stock exchange also reacted quite nervously to events in the US. Major investors began to withdraw money from Russian shares and deposit them into US treasury papers, in order to insure themselves from growing risks. According to the opinion of A. Greenspen, America’s problems may affect the speed of growth in the Chinese economy…
The mortgage crisis of 2007 was the first swallow trembling of the entire financial-economic system of imperialism. Billionaire and international finance speculator George Soros, having predicted the mortgage crisis in May 2008 stated that “Ahead of us lies even more pain and grief”. “This reminds me of the Greek tragedy. You see the approaching danger but can do nothing to escape it”. He claims in his book “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means”.
“The core economy is riddled with fundamental rot, therefore we are all doomed”.(Material from the “Financial Times”, 31 May 2008).
And in Autumn of 2008, the biggest financial crisis burst out which began also in the USA and shook to the foundations the entire world capitalist economy. We spoke about this in detail in the newspaper Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No10 – 12, 2008. The financial crisis of world capitalism firstly hit the banking and other finance structures. And the major imperialist powers began to bail out their own financial-banking system using hundreds of billions of dollars for propping up bankrupt financial establishments.
The crisis in the sphere of finance has touched upon the real sector of the economy. World economists and political leaders have spoken of recession, that is, of a slowing of economic growth and even of a slump. And even in November 2008, the number of unemployed in the US grew by half a million and reached 10.3 million, or 7.5% of the workforce. The number of newly unemployed for November-December was more then 2 million.
The US economy is threatened with a “serious risk” of long drawn out stagnation, declared the chairman of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco Janet Yellen, reported Bloomberg on 4 January. “The present fall will probably be a lot longer and deeper than a “usual” recession”, said Yellen. “Reviving the financial system will be a lengthy process”, she emphasised.
Discussions on the world recession continue. And the further we go, the worse the outlook. Nobody is talking about the economy hitting rock bottom – everyone well knows that the rock bottom is still nowhere in sight. And at the present time there is a common opinion that the situation will still get worse before it gets any better. The world recession, according to the opinion of many, is going to be longer and deeper, and the consequences of it, more serious than any other financial crisis since the time of the Great Depression, writes the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
The path along which events have developed in the world economy during the last few months has simply been unprecedented, notes president of River Twice Research, Zahary Karabel. “The global stupor is the reverse side of information technologies and globalization, which were the main drivers of economic activity in the last 20 years, assumes Z. Karabel. Thanks to electronic stock exchanges, the movement of capital has been made easier. The chain of metal suppliers is no longer fragmented and regional, having become global and common. Chip-makers have become a single global branch, the prices for their product and reserves of producers are determined on the basis of a common world demand.
The last months of 2008 will enter history as one of the most serious global economic disasters; however hardly on the basis of the behaviour of the markets can one make any kind of forecast for the future. This is a fact: nobody knows how the situation is going to develop in the case of it being unprecedented, - note analysts.
Besides an insignificant growth over the past few days, leading traders have very discomforting results for 2008. The German DAX index fell by 40%, the New York Dow-Jones lost 35%, the Tokyo exchange in 2008 set a record low: the Nikkei index fell by 42%. According to German expert on securities Klaus Niding in the last days of 2008: “Next year is not going to bring any positive changes, moreover, a negative tendency will be observed”.
Governments across the world are going to have to increase stabilizing bailouts injected into the economy on the background of the world financial crisis, believes the head of the IMF, Dominic Stross-Kan. Like the chief of the IMF stated in an interview on the BBC, those measures which had been agreed upon at the G20 Summit in Washington may prove to be insufficient. By the opinion of D. Stross-Kan, a financial packet to the size of about 2% of the world GDP (that is, the world GDP amounts to about 60 trillion dollars) may enable a revival of the world economy. He turned his attention towards the fact that IMF forecasts on the state of the world economy are so pitiful and they may well be even more pitiful if the financial stimulations prove insufficient. With this, D. Stross-Kan warns that in January, the forecast will again re-examined and the situation may become even worse. We remind the reader that the IMF has already worsened its forecast for the development of the economy in 2009. Earlier, experts of the IMF assumed that the world GDP would grow by 3%, however now they are not hoping for anything more than a 2.2% growth. In 2008, the significance of this indicator stood at 3.9% and in 2007 – 5%.
***
As specialists note, the present crisis has roots in the 1970-s, when across the world the present day well-known process of globalization took hold and gathered strength.
According to the opinion of expert of the analytical magazine Executive Intelligence Review, Jonathan Tennenbaum, modern-day finance capital has declared war on the US physical economy. And it is winning this war. Banks and financial funds have transferred over to a strategy of complete destruction of industry. This process began 30 -35 years ago under the banner of the transition from “post-industrialism” over to a service industry. It was all put across as a positive thing – a new spiral in the development of society. But in actual fact, society slid over to an economy of financial “soap bubbles”. And today, the USA in essence is present at the burials of their industry.
Financial speculators operate according to a plan: they buy up companies that are in the verge of bankruptcy (these are car companies, aircraft building, transport and other branches), afterwards they then carve them up and sell them off in parts. Thus, assets are taken out of the sphere of production and re-poured into the sphere of financial operations. Out of “de-industrialised” America, production then goes to China, Mexico and other countries with cheap labour power.
It turns out that commodities are produced all over the place, but ever less in the USA. But the USA is ever more been allocated the role of the producer of virtual and paper money. Finance capital is orientated towards gaining a quick profit and able to only exploit those material assets which were formed before its arrival into this or that sector.
Today, under the power of financial speculators are not just countries whose economies are orientated towards the dollar (Ukraine included), but also the US itself.
It is characteristic that today’s model of “de-industrialisation” of America was planned initially in the 1970-s in New York. The first step towards this was the cutting by half of the provisions into public services and social programmes. Industrial enterprises were relentlessly shut down, the city began to increasingly aim towards it turning in the future into a zone of living space for wealthy people – “white collars”. New York became a territory for services and not a city producing commodities. As a result, during the past three decades, the living standard of 80% of its inhabitants has fallen significantly. With time, this situation had spread across the entire country.
America is gradually approaching the danger line: the crisis of the currency-finance system may bring about chaos comparable to that of the period of the Great Depression.
Similar problems no less apparent in form are being felt in the developed European countries. Germany, for example is de-industrialising itself at no less a tempo than the USA. Factories of traditional branches of industry (automotive) are being transferred to Asia. The country is now importing what it used to export a decade ago. And even at those enterprises that are still operating inside the country, a significant number of workers are of Asian origin. German corporations are profiting from this since, by using cheap labour power they gain super profits. But on the whole, the process is folding up with the de-industrialisation of the state. As a result, Germany is implacably moving towards dangerous proportions when only one in five will get to the so-called elite, that is, the wealthy layer of society, and the remaining 80% of the population will make up the crowd of “losers” of whom nobody is going to give a damn about.
Similar processes are starting to take place with us in Ukraine, in the capital city. In Kiev, the number of people that make up the ranks of the working class is falling. Enterprises are closing down under the pretext of “taking harmful production facilities away from the city”. Although in actual fact, this not a taking away, but a throwing out of production facilities. Kiev is fast becoming a city for the rich with a vast majority of a poor population in the city itself as well as the countryside in general.
Mr Tennenbaum believes that the world currency-finance system needs to be purged of speculation and it should be directed at major long-term investments. (Material from article by V. Subbotin “What are we choosing: the dollar or the Euro?”, “2000”, 14/03/08).
As we can see, Tennenbaum naively believes that capitalism at its highest imperialist stage can still be cured.
We Bolsheviks however know all too well that this cannot be done.
***
The processes underway in the imperialist world, a world of domination and all-power of finance capital, the ever more frequent and deepening crises speak of the fact that capitalism at its highest imperialist stage has completely exhausted its own resource of development. This is on one hand. On the other hand, it has prepared the technological, technical, scientific and material-technical basis of a future communist formation.
All the problems that have accumulated and stand before world civilization can only be solved having destroyed the domination of finance capital. That is, having destroyed capitalist production-economic relations and replaced them with communist ones. This can only be done by way of a revolutionary struggle aimed at the smashing of the bourgeois state machine and the replacement of it by the rule of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Naturally imperialism will not leave for history’s dumping ground voluntarily.
It is trying to extend its own predatory existence by the only means available to it – by way of unleashing more wars and military conflicts, grabbing up new sources of raw materials and cheap labour power.
In particular, on the eve of the new year, 27 December, Israel’s aggression had begun against the Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip under the guise of liquidating the HAMAS movement. By the evening of 9 January around 800 Palestinians had been killed, more than 3 thousand injured. Israel’s losses amounted to 13 killed and several tens wounded (from the editorial: on 19 January, the moment operation “Molten Lead” had ended and the Israeli troops began withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, the number of Palestinians killed amounted to 1300 people, and more than 5000 wounded).
Again the situation has become acute on the Indo-Pakistan border because of the continuing several decade old territorial dispute over the Dzammu and Kashmir state. The source of this dispute began in August 1947, when British India gained independence and the last British vice-royal Lord Mountbatten took the decision to divide the country into two independent states: India with a Hindu majority and Pakistan – with a Muslim majority. That is, he acted in accordance with the old colonial principle of the British Empire “Divide and rule!”. Here, religion served as the means of division and setting people against each other. Since then, there have been three military conflicts between India and Pakistan over the state of Dzammu and Kashmir.
***
THE USA
The US political elite have prepared themselves and are preparing world public opinion towards the most negative development of events.
On 19 October 2008, Joe Bayden, US vice president in the Obama presidential team declared that the first year of Obama’s presidency tough tests can been expected, comparable to those that fell on the shoulders of Kennedy in 1961-62. This will be the worst international crisis, when Obama will have to take firm unpopular decisions, both domestically as well as in foreign policy. And Bayden called on people to “tighten their belts, as ahead lie difficult times”.
Michael Hossudovsky, a well-known analyst in the article “A Second 9/11”: an integral part of the US military doctrine”, written 31 October, had gathered a selection of things said by US presidents over a number of years: “There is going to be a new mega act of terror; prepare yourselves, a mega act of terror is inevitable – wait for it….”
On 7 April, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, speaking at Yelsky University declared: “modern-day achievements in science and technology allow even a small terrorist group to not just kill thousands of people as in 2001, but hundreds of thousands”.
On 26 May, Dick Cheney, US vice-president under the Bush administration stated: “Noone can guarantee we won’t be attacked again”.
Thus, public opinion has already been prepared for a possible super terrorist attack with 100-s of thousands of victims.
Back in December 2003, the then head of the Central Command, General Tommy Franks said straight that an event that would bring about mass death would become the end of democracy in America, that is, the start of a dictatorship.
In April 2006, the Pentagon got down to planning another war (the third, after the campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq), in the case if another 9/11 was to happen. This time it would be with an expanded theatre of military operations into the Middle East.
One needs to note that on the eve of presidential elections, Obama and McCain spoke in a friendly fashion about the danger of another 9/11.
On 28 October, Pentagon chief Robert Gates, a declared hawk, believing that Russia (and China) is one of America’s main enemies, (he also will occupy the post of minister for defence in the Obama administration), declared that he “is concerned about the tens of thousands of nuclear mines and nuclear artillery weaponry”, since in his words, the Russians themselves will possibly have no idea of the number and whereabouts of such weapons.
One can draw a conclusion that the true masters of the USA - the Zionist-pro-fascist lobby of billionaires and multi-billionaires are prepared to do anything to delay the collapse of US imperialism, right up to and including the establishment of a fascist dictatorship.
And for this they may provoke any large-scale act of terrorism involving hundreds of thousands of people dying. And there is an enemy at hand – Russia.
So, victory over imperialism will come only by way of an acute class struggle.
THE SITUATION IN UKRAINE
Ukraine during the 17 years of so-called “independence” has turned from a highly developed socialist state in the makeup of the USSR into a backward country of peripheral capitalism, a country with a dollarized economy, sitting fully on the “dollar needle”.
Therefore, the world financial crisis has hit the Ukrainian economy very hard.
The IMF loan of 16.5 billion dollars which the government of Yulia Timoshenko took, is aimed not at rescuing the Ukrainian economy, but for bailing out Western banks. More than 10 billion dollars has not even gone into Ukraine, but has gone towards writing off debts which our banks took from Western financial institutions. But it is you and me who will be paying back these debts, since this credit was taken out by the Ukrainian state and the loan (with the size of interest corresponding to political conditions set, will be left to the state budget to pay off.
The world financial crisis has hit the Ukrainian economy hard which our rulers have closely tied in to the world capitalist economy, especially since Spring 2008, when Ukraine became a member of the WTO.
In November 2008, the GDP of Ukraine fell by 14% compared to November 2007. The last time a fall in GDP was observed in Ukraine was in November 2005 (by 2.7%) under the Orange president Victor Yushenko and the Orange government of Yu. Ekhanurov. The biggest fall in the GDP was recorded in 1994 – a fall of 22.9%. But the point is that at that time, the fall in GDP was gradual in character. The GDP and other indices fell gradually in the flow of a lengthy period at 1 – 2% per month. Back in August the State Committee for Statistics (Goskomstat) recorded a 10.9% growth in GDP in the annual calculation, in September – 5.5%, in October it already fell by 2.1% (in relation to October 2007) and, finally, the collapse in GDP in November by 14.4%. As the economic observers write, this is by no means the end of the fall, but just the start of its fall into a chasm.
Even more terrifying results of November are in the sphere of industrial production.
Just in one month, the fall amounted to 15.2% (compared to October) and 28.5% compared to November 2007. And this time the collapse is hitting all branches of industry, and not just oriented towards exports. Millions of people are losing their jobs or sent on unpaid leave. As a result we have a sharp rise in unemployment.
The consolidated deficit of the budget according to results of 2008, taking into account the deficit of the Pension Fund is forecast to amount to 29.4 billion gryvna. In the secretariat of the president, a forecast has been made of a 21 billion gryvna budget deficit in the first quarter of 2009. The result: the total state budget deficit for 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 will amount to 50 billion gryvna. All social welfare benefits are being placed under threat: pensions, grants etc.
Response by the authorities in these conditions
1) Various branches of power are attempting to point the finger of responsibility at each other.
On 18 December, Yu. Timoshenko laid responsibility for the recent destabilization on the currency market onto the head of state. In particular, the premier blamed V. Yushenko in the covering up of speculative operations on the currency market. On 19 December, Timoshenko had already demanded the resignation of president V. Yushenko and the head of the National Bank, Vladimir Stelmakh: “I won’t allow V. Yushenko to repeat the scenario of 1998 when they all started working and when they are now leading the country to default. I believe that the country’s president who is now working towards it being “the worse, the better” and is doing everything to make the situation worse, should resign tomorrow, together with the chairman of the National Bank”.
On 20 December, once again blaming Yushenko in that he together with the head of the National bank, Stalmakh had organised a corrupt plan for the collapse of the gryvna, Timoshenko said: “I clearly stated that I am in opposition to those bureaucrats, the president, the head of the National Bank and the entire criminal gang which surround him today….Yushenko and his closest allies wanted to make 4.5 billion gryvnas based on machinations with the currency exchange….. It is such a pity that Yushenko behind whom I stood at all Orange meetings) has today stooped so low that I am even ashamed to call him by his surname”.
The president in his turn, blames all the sins onto prime-minister Yulia Timoshenko.
In an interview with TV channel “Inter” on 21 December the president of Ukraine Victor Yushenko cites a question asked him by a voter back in 2004, in the period of the so-called “orange revolution”: “Victor Andreevich, why is that thief together with you?” In that same interview, the president, on reports by the press service of the head state declared: “The problem lies not in my relationship with this lady. She announced nation’s opposition to the state”, “The situation of course has for a long time slipped out of the control of the prime-minster. But today, the moment of responsibility has arrived. Who is going to answer for inflation at 22%? The foreign crisis? The crisis we have sits firmly on the shoulders of Grushevsky, on the seventh floor, in the office of the prime-minister” (Material from the Internet publication “RBK-Ukraine” from 21.12.2008, “SEGODNYA.ua”, 22.12.2008).
And there have been many such mutual accusations over the past few months uttered from the mouth of Yushenko and Timoshenko. These accusations are nothing other than an attempt to lay the blame on each other for responsibility over the catastrophic situation in Ukraine.
All the branches of power are to blame for it. The bourgeois regime itself is to blame, for leading the economy of Ukraine towards collapse, and the people – towards mass unemployment, impoverishment, hunger and extinction.
We can obviously see- this is a classic “crisis of the uppers”.
2) Another psychosis of nationalism, anti-communism and anti-Stalinism.
Again, (November 2008), the president of Ukraine Yushenko organised a wide-scale campaign devoted to the 75th year since the “golodomor” (state instigated famine).
In the “Appeal by the President to the Ukrainian people on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Golodomor of 1932-1933”, on 22 November 2008, Yushenko once again called on people to “condemn the crimes of Stalinism and the totalitarian Soviet Union. We were together in this hell….There is only one criminal. This is the empiric, communist, Soviet regime. Those who today deny the Golodomor and justify Stalin “as a rational way of rule” are taking on themselves the blackened and doomed stamp of evil. We condemn the smallest attempt at justifying the butchers of our peoples.
We have repeatedly written about that campaign of lies which was unleashed by the orange regime in relation to J.V. Stalin, the AUCP(B) and the Soviet Union.
In Ukraine, as in several other regions of the USSR, in 1932-1933 there was a famine. And there were a number of reasons for this, including:
- backwardness of small commodity individual agricultural production, fully dependent on the capriciousness of nature and the impossibility of using agricultural technology, the achievements in agronomy on small plots of land which at that time in the Soviet Union were scattered in 24 – 25 million small peasant farms;
- periodic and repeating every 10 – 12 years bad harvests in czarist Russia (and Ukraine was completely part of the czarist empire,) which killed millions of peasants who died from starvation.;
- drought, which hit Ukraine in that period, which led to extremely low grain harvests.
In that period in the USSR industrialisation of the country was implemented and hundreds of the biggest factories were erected in Ukraine: the Kharkovsky tractor factory, Dneproges and many others. On the map of the country new towns appeared. A significant part of the population relocated to these towns and worked at construction site of socialism, and afterwards, on the factories that were build by them. People had to eat. The scattered agricultural economy was not able to solve this question. Therefore, collectivisation of agriculture began. And the kulaks, the last exploiting class in the USSR began to fiercely resist collectivization, understanding that the soil beneath their feet was being taken away from them. They destroyed the grain so as not to give it to the state, set fire to granaries and other agricultural buildings, wrecked agricultural machinery and inventory, mercilessly killed collective farm, Soviet and party activists including children-pioneers. Also for several years, several million head of cattle were slaughtered. That is, the true guilty partner in the bringing about of the famine and death by starvation of around 640 thousand inhabitants of Ukraine (and not the many millions of people like the present authorities are saying) is in the main, the kulak, who had unleashed an acute class struggle against Soviet power, socialism and the collective farm system.
The present abusers of Stalin “forget” that namely in the Stalin years, Ukraine united all its iconic lands into a single state (Western Ukraine, Bukovina and Zacapathia); that already by 1940 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had been transformed into one of the most highly developed countries of Europe and in economic potential came out on par with France; and that in the post-war years the Ukrainian SSR had been transformed into a space power with free and one of the best in the world education and health system, and entered the ten top countries highly developed countries in the world; that the population of Ukraine continuously grew and by the 1990-s exceeded 52 million people and the calorie intake of the people of Ukrainian SSR like in the USSR on the whole was a lot higher than the average world level and answered to high international standards.
This whole lie about the “golodomor”, the “repressions” etc is needed by the orange regime with one aim only –to take the attention of the working people of Ukraine away from its responsibility over the results of the criminal anti-people’s policy of Yushenko, Timoshenko, Yanukovick and their predecessors Kravchuk and Kuchma, the entire bourgeois system as a whole which led to the present catastrophic situation in Ukraine.
Here are a few examples to what was earlier said:
- Ukraine according to research by the company GfK GeoMarketing from the 24.11.2008, occupies second place in Europe in the level of poverty, occupying according to the indicator of expenditure per average statistic inhabitant, 40th place out of 41 countries (the poorest being Moldova with its “communist” president). (“2000” No51, 19 – 25.12.2008).
- On alcohol consumption, children of Ukraine occupy first (!) place in the world. From the contempories -Ukrainians, are left only Israeli children, writes newspaper “Gaaretz” 26.12.2008, referring to data gathered by the ministry of education of the country for the World Health Organisation. Alcohol in Israel is daily consumed by 9% of girls and 19% of boys, placing it second place in the world after Ukraine for child consumption of alcohol. This indicator bears witness to those “outstanding achievements” of bourgeois democracy in Ukraine. This is in the first instance. And secondly, it speaks about Israel’s price it pays for its aggressive invading human-hating military policy which pushes Israeli children onto the path of alcoholism.
- On the night of 24 December, in Evpatory, two flights of a stairs of a housing block blew up. 27 people were killed. People said how they had been complaining and writing to the housing department about a certain businessman who had been storing gas canisters in the cellar. They had for a long time been afraid that at some time they could explode. The people who live there say, “We were certain that a disaster was in the waiting, but you know, like this happens a lot: people tear out their hair over issues, but the authorities look on with indifference. They say – just stop panicking!” And indeed this is not the first tragedy of its kind.
One of the biggest explosions in a block of flats happened in in Dnepropetrovsk in October 2007. 23 people were killed and 300 recognised victims.
Lugansk. On 2 – 3 February 2006, 8 people were killed and 17 wounded from two gas explosions in a housing block which occurred one after the other.
Lugansk. 21 October 2004, 5 people were killed as a result of a gas explosion which completely destroyed one section of a five-storey block of flats.
Bolekhov, Ivano-Frankovcky region, on 11 July 2008, a build-up of gas exploded that had accumulated in the basement of a local hospital. 3 people were killed, and 3 traumatised.
The authorities are destroying their own people using all available means for doing it. But responsibility for the ungifted criminal anti-people’s policy is pushed onto J.V. Stalin, the Bolsheviks and the Soviet socialist state.
3) Continuing forcing of anti-Russian hysteria. 2009 has been announced as the year of Stepan Bander (100 years since his birth (01.01.2009), 300 years since the “military-political action” of Masepa and “the signing of the Ukraine-Swedish union”.
All the traitors and butchers of the people of Ukraine, all the enemies of Russia – here the main idols of Victor Yushenko. Besides, the president himself educated in the Banderite spirit, faithfully serves not the interests of the people of Ukraine, but the interests of US-Zionist capital, leading the struggle for world domination and using Yushenko for forcing anti-Russia hysteria and aggravating the two brotherly peoples.
The very latest example is the relationship between Ukraine and Russia on the gas question and unwillingness of the president of Ukraine to sign a treaty with Russia even on the most discounted conditions. Yushenko is completely indifferent to the fate of Ukrainian people and a number of Ukrainian enterprises which technologically cannot function without gas. The main thing for Yushenko lies in how much harm can be done to Russia, and is serving his masters over the Atlantic Ocean.
4) Drawing Ukraine into NATO.
The dragging of Ukraine (and Georgia) into NATO is a core part of US strategy of surrounding Russia with US-NATO military bases and troops with the aim of making Russia submissive and getting hold of her countless natural wealth and resources. One of the elements of this strategy is the pitting of two brotherly peoples against each other about which I spoke about earlier, and that is being successfully brought about by the orange leadership of Ukraine with President Yushenko.
But on 4 December in Brussels at a summit of ministers of foreign affairs for the NATO member countries, Ukraine failed to achieve the desired status of PAM NATO (plan of action for NATO membership). More than that, this question was not even looked at in the light of the unwillingness of a number European countries to harm relations with Russia. The higher echelons of power in Ukraine played their role and strife. Thus, the mutual public accusations being made by Yushenko and Timoshenko are beneficial to a certain degree. On one hand, the working people of Ukraine from the source will know the truth about the leaders of the country, their moral appearance, for whom, personal gain and the aim at any price to keep hold of power stand higher than the interests of the people. And on the other hand, the unpredictable actions of the leadership of Ukraine is spoiling the country’s image especially in the eyes of the European-NATO imperialists.
Nonetheless, the process of dragging Ukraine into NATO continues. Minster of foreign affairs of Ukraine V. Ogrysko stated this summarising the NATO summit: “Today we de-facto received a Plan of action on entering NATO. From 2009 we are starting the actual integration into the Alliance”. We have a Special plan of Ukraine-NATO, the decision of which was taken back in 2002. NATO has pledged to strengthen the work of its information office in Kiev.
And the fact that such an integration is underway at full speed is shown by the Directives of the Defence Ministry No.F-14 “On the organising of participation in the process of planning and evaluation of the strengths of the international programme “Partnership for Peace” in 2008-2010” and the Chief of General Staff No.DGSh-10 “On organising the training of sub-divisions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated in the make-up of a Joint Fund of operational forces and the possibilities in 2009-2010”. According to the data in the directives, today’s military leaders are focusing their main attention on the training of Ukrainian sub-divisions for their full-scale participation beyond the borders of Ukraine in the make-up of the structures of NATO. Special attention with this is paid to the providing of continuality and irreversibility of the process of Ukraine’s entrance into NATO. The end result of the training of the military units and sub-divisions, in accordance with the demands of Directive DGSh-10 is “the achievement by them of the level of mutual compatibility and military readiness, allowing for them to be useful to the Forces of NATO response”.
THE WORLD CRISIS AND RUSSIA
The global financial crisis has also hit Russia very hard, being in essence a raw material appendage of the West.
The forecasts of economic departments for 2009 are bleaker than ever. Just before the new year, minister for finances of Russia, Alexei Kudrin pledged “it would be the worst year since the WWII”.
The ministry for economic development in its turn predicted economic degradation on all parameters. Thus, the GDP in 2009 will grow only by 2.4% compared to last year with the price for “Ural” oil at $50 a barrel. Industry also awaits a fall by 3.2% and in the refining sector a fall of even more, by 4.3%.
As a result, for the first time in recent years the country is being pushed towards a budget deficit. According to advanced data by the Ministry of finances, it will be from 1.5 - 2.5 trillion roubles. According to the worst forecast, next year Russia will again have to turn into a state-defaulter. This will occur in the case if the reserves accumulated on expensive oil (400 billion dollars) are insufficient to rescue the economy, and the state will again have to take out loans from the IMF, - notes economic observer Valery Bolotin in the article “The country is expecting complete collapse” (02.0.2009)
Unemployment is also on the rise. Another several million people will also be added to the already 5 million unemployed.
We need to note that the powers in Russia, as in Ukraine are carrying on an unbridled anti-Soviet, anti-communist propaganda campaign.
In the ranks of heroes and victims are people like bloody Nicolai II, the last Czar autocrat of Russia. Attempts are made at white-washing admiral Kolchak and give him the image of a loyal son of Russia. One cannot write about this admiral without shivering at the thought at the barbaric acts that took place under him and his henchmen.
WHAT ARE THE WORKING PEOPLE TO DO IN THIS SITUATION?
There is one way out of this situation about which we always talk about – rise up to the struggle for your rights.
This especially concerns Ukraine where again a pre-revolutionary situation.
It is plain to see that there is a crisis of the uppers. The uppers are practically unable to run the country – they are only occupied with warring with each other.
A crisis of the lowers is on the horizon, conditioned by:-
- millions of unemployed and growing numbers. Added to the millions are more millions (these include working people officially registered at work, but are on so-called compulsory “unpaid” leave) and millions of migrant workers returning from Europe and Russia, since there, the system does not know what to do with its own workers;
- a steady growth in prices and tariffs on vital foodstuffs and services, and a devalued gryvna;
- utter degradation of the industrial and agricultural production;
- a huge state budget deficit that threatens all social welfare payments and dooms to absolute poverty the workers in the budget sphere, pensioners and other categories of socially vulnerable working people.
People will just be placed under the threat of death by starvation.
Before the working people stands a dilemma: either to die like lambs, or rise up to the struggle for their rights.
But in order for a pre-revolutionary situation to transform itself into a proletarian revolution, and in order that the just anger of the working people could not be channelled and directed by any one group of the bourgeoisie against another, by having carried out another “orange revolution” and by the hands of the working people, replace one group of the bourgeoisie to the heights of power by another group of the bourgeoisie (also those same predators-exploiters), it is necessary to have the presence of the subjective factor, that is, a revolutionary proletarian party, closely connected with the masses of fighting working people.
We shall cross over to an examination of this question.
A. MAEVSKY,
Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (CC AUCPB)
Kiev, Ukraine
10 January 2009
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FOR BOLSHEVISM
INSIDE THE COMMUNIST AND WORKERS’ MOVEMENT
AUCPB - ВКПБ
No 4 (73) APRIL 2009
ABOUT PROFESSIONAL BOLSHEVIKS-REVOLUTIONARIES
We have repeatedly discussed questions with you on the merging of our Bolshevik party work with the workers’ and protest movement, with the struggle of the working people for their rights.
But, unfortunately, the results in this area are little more than modest. Only separate organisations are aiming on a daily basis to solve this task, expanding the party ranks, understanding that two, three or five people, even with their whole self-conviction, courage and loyalty to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of Lenin-Stalin, they cannot get behind them the thousands and tens of thousands of working people of their city or district. And indeed revolution is brought about by the masses of the working people, when millions of people rise up to the struggle. And to get them to follow can only be done by a party closely connected with them, living one life with people of labour, reflecting the root needs and aims of the working people in their everyday activity and struggle and, at the same time, pointing out the way to the working people and liberating them from exploitation and oppression.
I think that our fault lies in the absence of professionalism in our party work.
This is how Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put the question on professional revolutionaries in his outstanding work “What is To Be Done”, written at the start of the 20 century ) Autumn 1901 – February 1902) for the activity of a proletarian party in the conditions of the most brutal tsarist censorship and police brutality.
I shall cite separate extracts from his work:
“The fact is, of course, that our movement cannot be unearthed, for the very reason that it has countless thousands of roots deep down among the masses; but that is not the point at issue. As far as “deep roots” are concerned, we cannot be “unearthed” even now, despite all our amateurism, and yet we all complain, and cannot but complain, that the “organisations” are being unearthed and as a result it is impossible to maintain continuity in the movement. But since you raise the question of organisations being unearthed and persist in your opinion, I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools.
“As I have stated repeatedly, by “wise men”, in connection with organisation, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.”
“In this way, and in this way alone - (here, Lenin is talking about the study of illegal material, and about its distribution, and about demonstrations and other functions of the movement) - shall we ensure that reading the illegal press, writing for it, and to some extent even distributing it, will almost cease to be secret work, for the police will soon come to realise the folly and impossibility of judicial and administrative red-tape procedure over every copy of a publication that is being distributed in the thousands. This holds not only for the press, but for every function of the movement, even for demonstrations. The active and widespread participation of the masses will not suffer; on the contrary, it will benefit by the fact that a “dozen” experienced revolutionaries, trained professionally no less than the police, will centralise all the secret aspects of the work — the drawing up of leaflets, the working out of approximate plans; and the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each institution, etc.”
“in order to “serve” the mass movement we must have people who will devote themselves exclusively to Social-Democratic activities, and that such people must train themselves patiently and steadfastly to be professional revolutionaries.”
“Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!”
***
And that is the way Lenin puts the questions.
As we can see, the strength of a proletarian party, the strength of Bolshevism lies in its monolithic connection with masses, in the fact that Bolshevism has “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of roots deep down in the masses”
Up until today, we, as a rule have been displaying complete inability to connect our daily party work with the life of people of labour. Many of us have learned to talk by slogans and quotes. But they are completely unable to use their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism in daily reality. Its turns out that party work runs along at its own speed, and life flows along by itself. This, at the root is not true. This can only be called sectarianism. Today’s comrades believe that everything should be decided by the Central Committee, the Secretariat of the CC or, in Ukraine for example, the Buro of the CC. But indeed the result and effectiveness of party work depends not just on the skills of the leading party organs on working out the correct political line and tactics of struggle. But and to also to embody the decisions worked out, in life. And this already depends on the local party organisations, on the activity of Bolsheviks in the localities, on their connection with masses of working people, that is, with the labour collectives, learning institutions, scientific establishments, agricultural enterprises etc. Lenin writes that “scores” of revolutionaries will get down to the work of preparing leaflets, that is, the printing of leaflets, the planning of action, “the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each factory quarter, for each learning institution, etc”.
See how Lenin puts forth the task – the Bolsheviks must have an influence in every factory, plant, learning institution and every area of the city. But for this it is necessary that a party organisation, even if only made up of a few people, has tens of sympathisers in factories, plants, mines etc. Having one or two comrades in every factory or learning institution means ten will be gathered around the town, and then hundreds of sympathisers who exert a Bolshevik influence among the workers, students, pupils and employees of various types of establishments. Is it possible to win over tens and tens of sympathisers by distributing central party newspapers like “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” or “Serp I Molot” which are produced only once a month and in small numbers? No, of course not. Every party organisation must set up the publication of leaflets that reflect the state of affairs in the town, district, region, in this or that factory, enterprise, leaflets in which the anti-peoples policies of the local authorities or factory management are exposed.
In Kiev, Mr Chernovetsky, the Mayor, the city administration raised the fares for city rail transport 4 times: from 50 kopeeks to 4 gryvna. And how do the working people of Kiev respond? – They keep quiet. And the bourgeoisie need just that – so everyone stays silent. The Kiev organisation of the AUCPB prepared and printed a leaflet of protest against this rise in fares and called upon the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights (the leaflet was published in Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No12, 2008). But the quantity of leaflets printed was very small – in all only 100 copies. And in Kiev there are about 50 underground railways stations. In order to hand out on average 100 leaflets at every station we would need to print no less than 5 thousand leaflets. Only then could we start talking about some kind of Bolshevik influence on the people of Kiev.
And in this plan, an example has been shown to us by “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. In “RKP” No1 the leaflet by our Kharkov comrades has been published under the title “Enough of putting up with bourgeois disorder and destruction of the people!”. In this leaflet an analysis is given on the state of affairs at enterprises of Kharkov and the region, and it shows how the bourgeoisie is mercilessly closing down enterprises and throwing tens of thousands of working people onto the streets without any means of existence. And “Trudovaya Kharkovshina” appeals to the workers and working people with calls such as “Death to capitalism!”, “Long live the impending socialist revolution!” and calling on them to rise up to the struggle for their rights. It is good that the Kharkov organisation of the AUCPB, and the editorial of the newspaper “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” have for a long time set up cooperation with comrades from “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. But indeed such an analysis of the state of affairs needs to be done in every region, every major industrial centre, every town, city and village. And this is the task of the party organisers of the Central Committee and local party organisations of the AUCPB. But our comrades from Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh, Kherson, Simferopolya and others are staying silent, as if no mass closures of enterprises and establishments is taking place and that thousands and thousands of people are being left without jobs and a means to existence.
The most important task of each local organisation is to set up the systematic production of leaflets reflecting the state of affairs in the localities and calling on the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights. But this needs to be learned and to find young people who work on computers and can produce good quality leaflets.
In general, the task of every Bolshevik, of every professional revolutionary is to constantly study, to study Marxism-Leninism and most importantly, the skills to utilise the knowledge gained in daily practical activity and raise our common culture (in this connection we remember the words of V.I. Lenin when he said “a person may only become a communist only when he has enriched his memory with knowledge of all that wealth which has been gathered by humanity”, to learn the art and skill of working with people and attracting them over to our side, to our Bolshevik side (90% of the inhabitants of Ukraine exist on miserly kopeeks and are struggling to survive; we Bolsheviks live and exist in such conditions too on low pensions, wages, student grants and do not know how to go to the masses?!) to master the art of public speaking and carrying out propaganda work etc., etc.
For leaders and secretaries of party organisations and organisers of the CC, it is very important to have the skills in selecting the right people and place those Bolsheviks in those areas of work where they can demonstrate their skills most effectively. Some may be good at distributing Bolshevik press, some good at writing articles into newspapers, some – good at photography, others good at publishing leaflets, or working on computers, skilled at using the Internet and from there gathering information and critically analysing it, etc.
I would like to once again remind every CC partorg that your primary task is the forming of party structures in the localities. Many CC partorgs for many years have not recruited any comrades into the party. And this means they are simply not working with people in the given direction, have let this question slip or simply let it all go, which is inadmissible for a Bolshevik. Without any growth in the party ranks (not for the sake of membership growth alone and noone wants just a formal growth in membership because that is even more harmful) we cannot solve the tasks set forth by our party and will simply be unable to influence the masses with our Bolshevik influence.
Obviously, the rank of professional revolutionary also means that he is maintained by the party and carries out only and exclusively party work. But our party does not have such a luxury. But separate comrades do carry on only party work existing on their own pension, others have to earn extra over and above, but a large number of Bolsheviks work in order to maintain their families and Bolshevik work has to be done in their own free time.
But in any case, a Bolshevik has to always remain a Bolshevik, to correspond to his high rank of belonging to the vanguard of the proletariat, with the determination and selflessness to fulfil voluntarily the party responsibilities given to him – that is, to always remain a revolutionary, a fighter for the rights of the working people.
Another very important task for every Bolshevik and more so for every leader (secretary of a party organisation, party organiser of the CC and high-standing leaders) is in the attracting of young people over to our Bolshevik activity and to the struggle along with the training up of suitable replacements. Without the youth, we cannot guarantee gains in the movement. Namely the combining of living experience and knowledge of the senior comrades with youthful energy and ardour and make the flames of the impending socialist revolution which will sweep from the face of the earth rotten to the core imperialism.
Every one of us, every Bolshevik must understand that preparing the party and masses for revolution is not the result of some kind of spur of the moment upsurge, but that Bolshevik work lasts for years, that this is a lengthy struggle together with the working people for their rights, for their liberation. Only in such work and in such struggle does a Bolshevik become hardened, strengthen his character and forge out of himself a true revolutionary:
“it has to take years to turn oneself into a true revolutionary” (Lenin)
***
The situation in Ukraine is hardening. The closure of enterprises, the appearance of thousands and millions of newly unemployed people, the hikes in prices and tariffs on the most vital necessities for the lives of working people, all of this will inevitably lead to a growth in the struggle of the working people for their rights.
Our duty and most important duty of every Bolshevik, every party organisation is to take active part in this struggle, to be its vanguard, to raise the working class and working people of Ukraine up to the struggle for liberation from exploitation and oppression.
It is namely in such a struggle that one can become a true professional revolutionary and bring closer the implementing of the tasks standing in front of our party – to achieve the overthrowing of the power of capital, the revival of Soviet power and socialism and the revival of our great Soviet Motherland.
A. MAEVSKY
10 January 2009,
KIEV
DAY OF THE SUN
Comrade Kim Il Sung was the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the DPRK, the founder of the Workers’ party of Korea – WPK, and the Korean People’s Army – KPA. In the DPRK, the 15 April is celebrated as the Day of the Sun and is a state holiday.
Kim Il Sung was born in the period of occupation of the DPRK by the Japanese samurais. From an early age, he stood on the path of revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Korea, against the assimilation of Koreans by the Japanese and with that – against the destruction of the Korean nation which has a five thousand year old history. His father, Kim Hyong Jik, who was an outstanding leader of the anti-Japanese National Liberation movement, was the founder of the reorientation of this movement which took it away from a nationalist footing over onto a socialist one. He died very young (when Kim Il Sung was 14 years old, having left to his son the task – of liberating the Fatherland from the Japanese colonial enslavers.
Following the testament of his father, Kim Il Sung enters into the military-political school in one of the districts of the province of Jilin. This school was formed by the participators of the movement for independence and the patriotically minded intelligentsia of Korea with the aim of training cadres for the Korean Independence Army . In the academy, Kim Il Sung independently studied deeply the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was fascinated by the revolutionary theory of Marxism and began to carry out enlightening and explanatory work among the students of the academy, and becomes their leader. In October 1926 at a meeting of students and like-minded thinkers, Kim Il Sung forms the “Down With Imperialism Union” (DIU).
In his memoirs “With the Century” Kim Il Sung wrote : “The task at hand of the DIU was the overthrowing of Japanese imperialism and the achievement of liberation and independence of Korea. The end aim – to build socialism and communism in Korea and further, to overthrow imperialism in all its forms and build communism across the whole world”. Kim Il Sung together with his friends swore an oath: “To live and die together on the path of revolution in the name of the Fatherland and the nation”. In essence, this signaled the start of the Korean revolution, which had passed a victorious and hard path under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and successfully continued by his successor Comrade Kim Jong Il.
Later on in the period of struggle against the Japaneses, Kim Il Sung advances the slogan – “Arms are our life-Arms for Arms!”, forcing the preparation towards the unleashing of an anti-Japanese armed struggle. The national-liberation movement of Korea enters a period of a new uplift with the orientation towards the forming of the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerilla Army (formed on 25 April 1932, and then as a result of that – the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army).
In May 1936, Kim Il Sung forms the organisation of a united anti-Japanese national front – the League for the Rebirth of the Fatherland.
In the leadership of the struggle for the liberation, Kim Il Sung was a talented organizer of the armed struggle against the regular army of Japanese imperialism. The principles of SONGUN are in placing the armed forces as the corner stone in deciding all questions – and they remain the priority in the future in policies brought about by Kim Il Sung.
The liberation of Korea from the yoke of Japanese imperialism was brought about on 15 August 1945. The DPRK celebrates this day as the Fatherland Liberation Day.
The period from August 1945 until September 1948 was extremely complex and intense, connected with the start of the building of a socialist state, with the struggle for its formation and attempts at unifying the North and South of Korea into a united state structure, since by the end of the Second World War, the South of Korea had been occupied by US troops and the country had ended up divided into the North and South along the 38th parallel.
On 10 October 1945, on liberated land, the Central Organizational Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea is formed by Kim Il Sung. At the founding congress of 28 August 1946, by way of merging the CP of North Korea and the New Democratic Party of Korea, Kim Il Sung forms a united political organisation of the working people – the Workers’ Party of Korea. The first party organisation from the fellow-fighters of Kim Il Sung was formed by them on 3 July 1930. In the period of the anti-Japanese struggle, Kim Il Sung prepared cadres for the formation of a revolutionary party.
On 8 February 1946, Kim Il Sung forms the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea and is unanimously elected as its chairman. This Committee fulfilled the function of a people’s-democratic dictatorship as people’s power, relying upon a united democratic front, uniting broad anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic forces on the basis of the alliance of workers and peasants under the leading role of the working class.
During this period, land reforms, the nationalization of industry and a number of other democratic transformations were carried out. In a short time, the tasks of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution were successfully carried out. Further on, a policy towards socialist transformation was adopted by Kim Il Sung.
In February 1947, Kim Il Sung forms the People’s Committee of North Korea – the country’s first power of a proletarian dictatorship, and he is elected as its Chairman.
In March 1948 at the Second congress of the WPK, Kim Il Sung proclaims the policy towards the independent unification of the Fatherland, puts forth the tasks for the further strengthening of the revolutionary-democratic base and ideological-organizational strengthening of the party.
On 9 September 1948 at the 1st session of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung proclaims the forming of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and is unanimously elected as Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the DPRK (head of state).
As Chairman of Military Commission of the DPRK, Supreme Commander of the KPA, Kim Il Sung leads the struggle of the Korean people against the American aggressors in the Fatherland Liberation War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953). In this war, the national sovereignty of the country and the achievements of the Korean revolution were defended. The former chief of US troops, Clark, who signed the armistice treaty admitted the defeat of the USA, having said: “We suffered defeat in the sense that the enemy has not been defeated, but has become even stronger than before, and that is very dangerous for us”.
At the end of the war, Kim Il Sung leads the reconstruction and development of the country’s national economy and the formation of the economic basis of socialism.
In April 1955, Kim Il Sung defines the character and tasks of the Korean revolution: “All forces to the struggle for unification and independence of the Fatherland, to the construction of socialism in the northern part of the Republic”. Socialism in the DPRK was built on the basis of adopting five and seven year plans for the development of the national economy.
The general enthusiasm of the people in the construction of a new life was clearly embodied in the socialist movement CHOLLIMA.
The Workers’ Party of Korea under the leadership of its General Secretary takes active measures for the carrying out of the ideological and cultural revolution as the main elements of the Korean revolution.
In December 1972, the “Socialist Constitution of the DPRK” was adopted, which consolidated the achievements in socialist construction.
The principles of Juche were worked out by Kim Il Sung, laying as the basis of the ideological work of the party, having placed Man at the centre of attention as well as independence in politics, independence in economics and self-defence in defending the country (self-reliance). These principles in the future were formed as the THEORY OF JUCHE, by Comrade Kim Jong Il.
In October 1980 at the 6th congress of the WPK, Kim Il Sung defines the cause of transforming the whole of society on the basis of the JUCHE idea as the general task of the Korean revolution. The question of unifying the nation remains as before, the centre of attention of the Great Leader. In 1972, Kim Il Sung put forth 3 principles for unifying Korea – independence, peaceful reunification and great national consolidation. At the VI congress of the WPK the Great Leader proposes a structure for unification – the forming of a Democratic Confederative Republic of Korea.
Independence, peace and friendship are the main principles of the foreign policy of the WPK and the DPRK.
The Pyongyang Declaration – “We shall defend and advance the cause of socialism”, adopted in April 1992, played a significant role in the development of the movement for reunification and in the struggle of the peoples of the world against imperialism.
In the scientific-theoretical works of the Great Leader (38 volumes, 1938 – 1984, and 9 volumes of Selected Works), the theory, strategy and tactics of a democratic and a socialist revolution on the path of the construction of socialism and communism. His memoirs “With the Century”, are invaluable are remained unfortunately, unfinished.
Throughout his life, the Great Leader, Great commander, the everlasting president of the DPRK and General Secretary of the WPK, devoted to serving the people of Korea, and its liberation from the Japanese colonizers consequently saved the nation from destruction. He opened the road to a new, bright life, formed the fundament of socialism and successfully advanced the cause of the development of a socialist society. For his service to the people of Korea, he is lovingly called THE FATHER OF THE NATION, and the day of his birth – The Day of the Sun. today, the results of his titanic activity, his creative scientific-theoretic legacy live in the advancing movement of the country towards the heights of Juche socialism. Koreans with love say of him: “Kim Il Sung is always with us”.
The name Kim Il Sung is highly respected in the majority of countries of the world. He has been awarded with the highest orders of many countries, elected as an honored doctor of science and a professor of many major universities of foreign states.
His life is a clear and dignified example for copying to all those who nowadays are struggling for the liberation of their own country and their own people from the chains of imperialism for peace and socialism.
The name of the Great Leader has been written in gold letters into the historical chronicle of examples of the bests brains of humanity and outstanding revolutionaries, who make significant contribution into the development of civilization.
The formation and strengthening by the Great Leader in the storm of the most brutal battles of two wars, Korean Peoples Army can give a dignified rebuff to any aggressor who invades the sovereignty of the country. Continuing the cause of the Great Leader, Comrade Kim Jong Il is carrying out a policy of continuous strengthening of the country’s Armed Forces, defining the significance of the Army by the words – “Arms will defend Peace and Socialism”. After the advancing of Comrade Kim Jong Il to the post of Supreme Commander of the KPA in December 1991 and the designation of him on 9 April 1993 to the post of Chairman of the National Defence Committee of the DPRK, the country’s military affairs have been raised to an even higher level.
The priority of the Army is not just in the strengthening of the country’s defence, but also in economic construction – such is the present-day essence of the politics of SONGUN, the political philosophy and true politics of the Supreme Commander of the KPA, Comrade Kim Jong Il. The moral-political unity of Korean society is so high, that one of the highest ranking US military has stated: “The spiritual potential of the North Korean army is undoubtedly a PROBLEM, for no kind of electronic means can overcome the high strength of soul”.
The KPA is constantly modernizing it mobility, possessing up to date attack and defence equipment. In the DPRK a firm scientific and economic base has been created for the further development of the defence industry and equipping the KPA with the latest means for carrying out a modern-day war.
The launching of artificial satellites, the serial launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the successful testing of a nuclear warhead for these missiles has shown to the whole world that the USA has already lost its 60 year old unprecedented brutal cold war against the DPRK. Nowadays the territory of the USA is no longer unreachable for retaliation in the case of any military provocation by the USA against the DPRK. Having become a global nuclear power, the DPRK can at a faster rate peacefully and with certainty build socialism and simultaneously solve the question on reunification of the nation in the near future. The guarantee for this lies in the monolithic ideological-political unity of society, unity of the Army, Party and People, united with iron will and high authority of the Leader – the Supreme Commander of the National Defence Committee of the DPRK Comrade Kim Jong Il.
Congratulating the citizens of the DPRK on this famous date, we wish excellent Korea – the country of morning calm, its heroic, labour-loving and peace-loving people success in implanting the plans laid out by the Great Leader Comrade kim Jong Il.
On the occasion of this famous date, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (CC AUCPB) sends a congratulatory telegram to the Leader of the DPRK Comrade Kim Jong Il.
AUCPB
THE DEEPENING CRISIS OF IMPERIALISM AND OUR TASKS
Since autumn last year the imperialist world has been sunk into the deepest financial-economic crisis yet.
The US mortgage crisis that began developing in 2007 laid the start of the crisis, and after that it crossed over to other major capitalist powers. The chairman of the US Federal State reserve Ben Bernanke valued the common losses of investors from the housing market crisis in the US at 50 – 100 billion dollars. According to experts, by the end of 2007 the losses made by financial organisations amounted to approximately 400 billion dollars. Because of the mortgage crisis, American financers had to reduce the number of workplaces by more than 130 thousand.
The finance sphere began to crash not just in the US. The first victim abroad was the London based company Cambridge Place, which closed it fund Сaliber Global Investment that controlled money amounting to the sum of 908 million dollars. The shares of one of the largest British mortgage lending banks Northern Rock fell by 21%. Endless lines of worried customers stood waiting outside the branches wishing to withdraw their savings. The Swiss bank UBS, the largest in Europe in shares, announced the writing off of 10 billion dollars. The reason – the US mortgage crisis. In connection with the losses, UBS took the decision to cut 1500 jobs. Russian banks felt the effects of the crisis in financing which were deprived of access to Western markets. By the end of August 2007, vice chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Gennadi Melikyan called upon Russian banks not to get carried away by foreign loans, having stated that the Russian banking system is going through a crisis due to “unsettling affairs taking place in the USA”. At the start of August, the largest French bank BNK Paribas temporarily banned the withdrawing of money from three investment funds, the sum volume of investments which amounted to nearly 2 billion Euros. Following the announcement on the halting of its share operations, shares on the Paris stock exchange fell by 3%. At the same time, Germany’s biggest investment fund Union Investment, the German bank BHF-Bank declared the halting of its activity. The government of Saxony declared the sale of its landed bank Sachen LB which had suffered losses from risky operations on the US housing market. The crisis also hit Australia. The Australian hedge fund Basis Yield Alpha became the first victim of the US mortgage crisis in the Asia-Pacific region. The fund, at the head of which are found shares to the sum of about 1 billion dollars requested a bailout.
Ex- head of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspen compared the situation in autumn 2007 on the world markets with the crisis in 1987 and 1998. The expert also believes that events on the markets in 2007 remind us not only of the crisis of 1987 and 1998, but also the collapse in 1837 and also the bank panic of 1907. The negative tendencies on the world stock exchanges in 2007 are connected to the events on the mortgage market in America. The mortgage brokers clashed with a crisis in non-payment. The funds that invested their money in securities with mortgage protection finished up on the edge of collapse. The US mortgage crisis stretched down to all international trading platforms. Share indexes plummeted in Britain, France, Germany and Asia. Russia’s stock exchange also reacted quite nervously to events in the US. Major investors began to withdraw money from Russian shares and deposit them into US treasury papers, in order to insure themselves from growing risks. According to the opinion of A. Greenspen, America’s problems may affect the speed of growth in the Chinese economy…
The mortgage crisis of 2007 was the first swallow trembling of the entire financial-economic system of imperialism. Billionaire and international finance speculator George Soros, having predicted the mortgage crisis in May 2008 stated that “Ahead of us lies even more pain and grief”. “This reminds me of the Greek tragedy. You see the approaching danger but can do nothing to escape it”. He claims in his book “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means”.
“The core economy is riddled with fundamental rot, therefore we are all doomed”.(Material from the “Financial Times”, 31 May 2008).
And in Autumn of 2008, the biggest financial crisis burst out which began also in the USA and shook to the foundations the entire world capitalist economy. We spoke about this in detail in the newspaper Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No10 – 12, 2008. The financial crisis of world capitalism firstly hit the banking and other finance structures. And the major imperialist powers began to bail out their own financial-banking system using hundreds of billions of dollars for propping up bankrupt financial establishments.
The crisis in the sphere of finance has touched upon the real sector of the economy. World economists and political leaders have spoken of recession, that is, of a slowing of economic growth and even of a slump. And even in November 2008, the number of unemployed in the US grew by half a million and reached 10.3 million, or 7.5% of the workforce. The number of newly unemployed for November-December was more then 2 million.
The US economy is threatened with a “serious risk” of long drawn out stagnation, declared the chairman of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco Janet Yellen, reported Bloomberg on 4 January. “The present fall will probably be a lot longer and deeper than a “usual” recession”, said Yellen. “Reviving the financial system will be a lengthy process”, she emphasised.
Discussions on the world recession continue. And the further we go, the worse the outlook. Nobody is talking about the economy hitting rock bottom – everyone well knows that the rock bottom is still nowhere in sight. And at the present time there is a common opinion that the situation will still get worse before it gets any better. The world recession, according to the opinion of many, is going to be longer and deeper, and the consequences of it, more serious than any other financial crisis since the time of the Great Depression, writes the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
The path along which events have developed in the world economy during the last few months has simply been unprecedented, notes president of River Twice Research, Zahary Karabel. “The global stupor is the reverse side of information technologies and globalization, which were the main drivers of economic activity in the last 20 years, assumes Z. Karabel. Thanks to electronic stock exchanges, the movement of capital has been made easier. The chain of metal suppliers is no longer fragmented and regional, having become global and common. Chip-makers have become a single global branch, the prices for their product and reserves of producers are determined on the basis of a common world demand.
The last months of 2008 will enter history as one of the most serious global economic disasters; however hardly on the basis of the behaviour of the markets can one make any kind of forecast for the future. This is a fact: nobody knows how the situation is going to develop in the case of it being unprecedented, - note analysts.
Besides an insignificant growth over the past few days, leading traders have very discomforting results for 2008. The German DAX index fell by 40%, the New York Dow-Jones lost 35%, the Tokyo exchange in 2008 set a record low: the Nikkei index fell by 42%. According to German expert on securities Klaus Niding in the last days of 2008: “Next year is not going to bring any positive changes, moreover, a negative tendency will be observed”.
Governments across the world are going to have to increase stabilizing bailouts injected into the economy on the background of the world financial crisis, believes the head of the IMF, Dominic Stross-Kan. Like the chief of the IMF stated in an interview on the BBC, those measures which had been agreed upon at the G20 Summit in Washington may prove to be insufficient. By the opinion of D. Stross-Kan, a financial packet to the size of about 2% of the world GDP (that is, the world GDP amounts to about 60 trillion dollars) may enable a revival of the world economy. He turned his attention towards the fact that IMF forecasts on the state of the world economy are so pitiful and they may well be even more pitiful if the financial stimulations prove insufficient. With this, D. Stross-Kan warns that in January, the forecast will again re-examined and the situation may become even worse. We remind the reader that the IMF has already worsened its forecast for the development of the economy in 2009. Earlier, experts of the IMF assumed that the world GDP would grow by 3%, however now they are not hoping for anything more than a 2.2% growth. In 2008, the significance of this indicator stood at 3.9% and in 2007 – 5%.
***
As specialists note, the present crisis has roots in the 1970-s, when across the world the present day well-known process of globalization took hold and gathered strength.
According to the opinion of expert of the analytical magazine Executive Intelligence Review, Jonathan Tennenbaum, modern-day finance capital has declared war on the US physical economy. And it is winning this war. Banks and financial funds have transferred over to a strategy of complete destruction of industry. This process began 30 -35 years ago under the banner of the transition from “post-industrialism” over to a service industry. It was all put across as a positive thing – a new spiral in the development of society. But in actual fact, society slid over to an economy of financial “soap bubbles”. And today, the USA in essence is present at the burials of their industry.
Financial speculators operate according to a plan: they buy up companies that are in the verge of bankruptcy (these are car companies, aircraft building, transport and other branches), afterwards they then carve them up and sell them off in parts. Thus, assets are taken out of the sphere of production and re-poured into the sphere of financial operations. Out of “de-industrialised” America, production then goes to China, Mexico and other countries with cheap labour power.
It turns out that commodities are produced all over the place, but ever less in the USA. But the USA is ever more been allocated the role of the producer of virtual and paper money. Finance capital is orientated towards gaining a quick profit and able to only exploit those material assets which were formed before its arrival into this or that sector.
Today, under the power of financial speculators are not just countries whose economies are orientated towards the dollar (Ukraine included), but also the US itself.
It is characteristic that today’s model of “de-industrialisation” of America was planned initially in the 1970-s in New York. The first step towards this was the cutting by half of the provisions into public services and social programmes. Industrial enterprises were relentlessly shut down, the city began to increasingly aim towards it turning in the future into a zone of living space for wealthy people – “white collars”. New York became a territory for services and not a city producing commodities. As a result, during the past three decades, the living standard of 80% of its inhabitants has fallen significantly. With time, this situation had spread across the entire country.
America is gradually approaching the danger line: the crisis of the currency-finance system may bring about chaos comparable to that of the period of the Great Depression.
Similar problems no less apparent in form are being felt in the developed European countries. Germany, for example is de-industrialising itself at no less a tempo than the USA. Factories of traditional branches of industry (automotive) are being transferred to Asia. The country is now importing what it used to export a decade ago. And even at those enterprises that are still operating inside the country, a significant number of workers are of Asian origin. German corporations are profiting from this since, by using cheap labour power they gain super profits. But on the whole, the process is folding up with the de-industrialisation of the state. As a result, Germany is implacably moving towards dangerous proportions when only one in five will get to the so-called elite, that is, the wealthy layer of society, and the remaining 80% of the population will make up the crowd of “losers” of whom nobody is going to give a damn about.
Similar processes are starting to take place with us in Ukraine, in the capital city. In Kiev, the number of people that make up the ranks of the working class is falling. Enterprises are closing down under the pretext of “taking harmful production facilities away from the city”. Although in actual fact, this not a taking away, but a throwing out of production facilities. Kiev is fast becoming a city for the rich with a vast majority of a poor population in the city itself as well as the countryside in general.
Mr Tennenbaum believes that the world currency-finance system needs to be purged of speculation and it should be directed at major long-term investments. (Material from article by V. Subbotin “What are we choosing: the dollar or the Euro?”, “2000”, 14/03/08).
As we can see, Tennenbaum naively believes that capitalism at its highest imperialist stage can still be cured.
We Bolsheviks however know all too well that this cannot be done.
***
The processes underway in the imperialist world, a world of domination and all-power of finance capital, the ever more frequent and deepening crises speak of the fact that capitalism at its highest imperialist stage has completely exhausted its own resource of development. This is on one hand. On the other hand, it has prepared the technological, technical, scientific and material-technical basis of a future communist formation.
All the problems that have accumulated and stand before world civilization can only be solved having destroyed the domination of finance capital. That is, having destroyed capitalist production-economic relations and replaced them with communist ones. This can only be done by way of a revolutionary struggle aimed at the smashing of the bourgeois state machine and the replacement of it by the rule of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Naturally imperialism will not leave for history’s dumping ground voluntarily.
It is trying to extend its own predatory existence by the only means available to it – by way of unleashing more wars and military conflicts, grabbing up new sources of raw materials and cheap labour power.
In particular, on the eve of the new year, 27 December, Israel’s aggression had begun against the Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip under the guise of liquidating the HAMAS movement. By the evening of 9 January around 800 Palestinians had been killed, more than 3 thousand injured. Israel’s losses amounted to 13 killed and several tens wounded (from the editorial: on 19 January, the moment operation “Molten Lead” had ended and the Israeli troops began withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, the number of Palestinians killed amounted to 1300 people, and more than 5000 wounded).
Again the situation has become acute on the Indo-Pakistan border because of the continuing several decade old territorial dispute over the Dzammu and Kashmir state. The source of this dispute began in August 1947, when British India gained independence and the last British vice-royal Lord Mountbatten took the decision to divide the country into two independent states: India with a Hindu majority and Pakistan – with a Muslim majority. That is, he acted in accordance with the old colonial principle of the British Empire “Divide and rule!”. Here, religion served as the means of division and setting people against each other. Since then, there have been three military conflicts between India and Pakistan over the state of Dzammu and Kashmir.
***
THE USA
The US political elite have prepared themselves and are preparing world public opinion towards the most negative development of events.
On 19 October 2008, Joe Bayden, US vice president in the Obama presidential team declared that the first year of Obama’s presidency tough tests can been expected, comparable to those that fell on the shoulders of Kennedy in 1961-62. This will be the worst international crisis, when Obama will have to take firm unpopular decisions, both domestically as well as in foreign policy. And Bayden called on people to “tighten their belts, as ahead lie difficult times”.
Michael Hossudovsky, a well-known analyst in the article “A Second 9/11”: an integral part of the US military doctrine”, written 31 October, had gathered a selection of things said by US presidents over a number of years: “There is going to be a new mega act of terror; prepare yourselves, a mega act of terror is inevitable – wait for it….”
On 7 April, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, speaking at Yelsky University declared: “modern-day achievements in science and technology allow even a small terrorist group to not just kill thousands of people as in 2001, but hundreds of thousands”.
On 26 May, Dick Cheney, US vice-president under the Bush administration stated: “Noone can guarantee we won’t be attacked again”.
Thus, public opinion has already been prepared for a possible super terrorist attack with 100-s of thousands of victims.
Back in December 2003, the then head of the Central Command, General Tommy Franks said straight that an event that would bring about mass death would become the end of democracy in America, that is, the start of a dictatorship.
In April 2006, the Pentagon got down to planning another war (the third, after the campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq), in the case if another 9/11 was to happen. This time it would be with an expanded theatre of military operations into the Middle East.
One needs to note that on the eve of presidential elections, Obama and McCain spoke in a friendly fashion about the danger of another 9/11.
On 28 October, Pentagon chief Robert Gates, a declared hawk, believing that Russia (and China) is one of America’s main enemies, (he also will occupy the post of minister for defence in the Obama administration), declared that he “is concerned about the tens of thousands of nuclear mines and nuclear artillery weaponry”, since in his words, the Russians themselves will possibly have no idea of the number and whereabouts of such weapons.
One can draw a conclusion that the true masters of the USA - the Zionist-pro-fascist lobby of billionaires and multi-billionaires are prepared to do anything to delay the collapse of US imperialism, right up to and including the establishment of a fascist dictatorship.
And for this they may provoke any large-scale act of terrorism involving hundreds of thousands of people dying. And there is an enemy at hand – Russia.
So, victory over imperialism will come only by way of an acute class struggle.
THE SITUATION IN UKRAINE
Ukraine during the 17 years of so-called “independence” has turned from a highly developed socialist state in the makeup of the USSR into a backward country of peripheral capitalism, a country with a dollarized economy, sitting fully on the “dollar needle”.
Therefore, the world financial crisis has hit the Ukrainian economy very hard.
The IMF loan of 16.5 billion dollars which the government of Yulia Timoshenko took, is aimed not at rescuing the Ukrainian economy, but for bailing out Western banks. More than 10 billion dollars has not even gone into Ukraine, but has gone towards writing off debts which our banks took from Western financial institutions. But it is you and me who will be paying back these debts, since this credit was taken out by the Ukrainian state and the loan (with the size of interest corresponding to political conditions set, will be left to the state budget to pay off.
The world financial crisis has hit the Ukrainian economy hard which our rulers have closely tied in to the world capitalist economy, especially since Spring 2008, when Ukraine became a member of the WTO.
In November 2008, the GDP of Ukraine fell by 14% compared to November 2007. The last time a fall in GDP was observed in Ukraine was in November 2005 (by 2.7%) under the Orange president Victor Yushenko and the Orange government of Yu. Ekhanurov. The biggest fall in the GDP was recorded in 1994 – a fall of 22.9%. But the point is that at that time, the fall in GDP was gradual in character. The GDP and other indices fell gradually in the flow of a lengthy period at 1 – 2% per month. Back in August the State Committee for Statistics (Goskomstat) recorded a 10.9% growth in GDP in the annual calculation, in September – 5.5%, in October it already fell by 2.1% (in relation to October 2007) and, finally, the collapse in GDP in November by 14.4%. As the economic observers write, this is by no means the end of the fall, but just the start of its fall into a chasm.
Even more terrifying results of November are in the sphere of industrial production.
Just in one month, the fall amounted to 15.2% (compared to October) and 28.5% compared to November 2007. And this time the collapse is hitting all branches of industry, and not just oriented towards exports. Millions of people are losing their jobs or sent on unpaid leave. As a result we have a sharp rise in unemployment.
The consolidated deficit of the budget according to results of 2008, taking into account the deficit of the Pension Fund is forecast to amount to 29.4 billion gryvna. In the secretariat of the president, a forecast has been made of a 21 billion gryvna budget deficit in the first quarter of 2009. The result: the total state budget deficit for 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 will amount to 50 billion gryvna. All social welfare benefits are being placed under threat: pensions, grants etc.
Response by the authorities in these conditions
1) Various branches of power are attempting to point the finger of responsibility at each other.
On 18 December, Yu. Timoshenko laid responsibility for the recent destabilization on the currency market onto the head of state. In particular, the premier blamed V. Yushenko in the covering up of speculative operations on the currency market. On 19 December, Timoshenko had already demanded the resignation of president V. Yushenko and the head of the National Bank, Vladimir Stelmakh: “I won’t allow V. Yushenko to repeat the scenario of 1998 when they all started working and when they are now leading the country to default. I believe that the country’s president who is now working towards it being “the worse, the better” and is doing everything to make the situation worse, should resign tomorrow, together with the chairman of the National Bank”.
On 20 December, once again blaming Yushenko in that he together with the head of the National bank, Stalmakh had organised a corrupt plan for the collapse of the gryvna, Timoshenko said: “I clearly stated that I am in opposition to those bureaucrats, the president, the head of the National Bank and the entire criminal gang which surround him today….Yushenko and his closest allies wanted to make 4.5 billion gryvnas based on machinations with the currency exchange….. It is such a pity that Yushenko behind whom I stood at all Orange meetings) has today stooped so low that I am even ashamed to call him by his surname”.
The president in his turn, blames all the sins onto prime-minister Yulia Timoshenko.
In an interview with TV channel “Inter” on 21 December the president of Ukraine Victor Yushenko cites a question asked him by a voter back in 2004, in the period of the so-called “orange revolution”: “Victor Andreevich, why is that thief together with you?” In that same interview, the president, on reports by the press service of the head state declared: “The problem lies not in my relationship with this lady. She announced nation’s opposition to the state”, “The situation of course has for a long time slipped out of the control of the prime-minster. But today, the moment of responsibility has arrived. Who is going to answer for inflation at 22%? The foreign crisis? The crisis we have sits firmly on the shoulders of Grushevsky, on the seventh floor, in the office of the prime-minister” (Material from the Internet publication “RBK-Ukraine” from 21.12.2008, “SEGODNYA.ua”, 22.12.2008).
And there have been many such mutual accusations over the past few months uttered from the mouth of Yushenko and Timoshenko. These accusations are nothing other than an attempt to lay the blame on each other for responsibility over the catastrophic situation in Ukraine.
All the branches of power are to blame for it. The bourgeois regime itself is to blame, for leading the economy of Ukraine towards collapse, and the people – towards mass unemployment, impoverishment, hunger and extinction.
We can obviously see- this is a classic “crisis of the uppers”.
2) Another psychosis of nationalism, anti-communism and anti-Stalinism.
Again, (November 2008), the president of Ukraine Yushenko organised a wide-scale campaign devoted to the 75th year since the “golodomor” (state instigated famine).
In the “Appeal by the President to the Ukrainian people on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Golodomor of 1932-1933”, on 22 November 2008, Yushenko once again called on people to “condemn the crimes of Stalinism and the totalitarian Soviet Union. We were together in this hell….There is only one criminal. This is the empiric, communist, Soviet regime. Those who today deny the Golodomor and justify Stalin “as a rational way of rule” are taking on themselves the blackened and doomed stamp of evil. We condemn the smallest attempt at justifying the butchers of our peoples.
We have repeatedly written about that campaign of lies which was unleashed by the orange regime in relation to J.V. Stalin, the AUCP(B) and the Soviet Union.
In Ukraine, as in several other regions of the USSR, in 1932-1933 there was a famine. And there were a number of reasons for this, including:
- backwardness of small commodity individual agricultural production, fully dependent on the capriciousness of nature and the impossibility of using agricultural technology, the achievements in agronomy on small plots of land which at that time in the Soviet Union were scattered in 24 – 25 million small peasant farms;
- periodic and repeating every 10 – 12 years bad harvests in czarist Russia (and Ukraine was completely part of the czarist empire,) which killed millions of peasants who died from starvation.;
- drought, which hit Ukraine in that period, which led to extremely low grain harvests.
In that period in the USSR industrialisation of the country was implemented and hundreds of the biggest factories were erected in Ukraine: the Kharkovsky tractor factory, Dneproges and many others. On the map of the country new towns appeared. A significant part of the population relocated to these towns and worked at construction site of socialism, and afterwards, on the factories that were build by them. People had to eat. The scattered agricultural economy was not able to solve this question. Therefore, collectivisation of agriculture began. And the kulaks, the last exploiting class in the USSR began to fiercely resist collectivization, understanding that the soil beneath their feet was being taken away from them. They destroyed the grain so as not to give it to the state, set fire to granaries and other agricultural buildings, wrecked agricultural machinery and inventory, mercilessly killed collective farm, Soviet and party activists including children-pioneers. Also for several years, several million head of cattle were slaughtered. That is, the true guilty partner in the bringing about of the famine and death by starvation of around 640 thousand inhabitants of Ukraine (and not the many millions of people like the present authorities are saying) is in the main, the kulak, who had unleashed an acute class struggle against Soviet power, socialism and the collective farm system.
The present abusers of Stalin “forget” that namely in the Stalin years, Ukraine united all its iconic lands into a single state (Western Ukraine, Bukovina and Zacapathia); that already by 1940 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had been transformed into one of the most highly developed countries of Europe and in economic potential came out on par with France; and that in the post-war years the Ukrainian SSR had been transformed into a space power with free and one of the best in the world education and health system, and entered the ten top countries highly developed countries in the world; that the population of Ukraine continuously grew and by the 1990-s exceeded 52 million people and the calorie intake of the people of Ukrainian SSR like in the USSR on the whole was a lot higher than the average world level and answered to high international standards.
This whole lie about the “golodomor”, the “repressions” etc is needed by the orange regime with one aim only –to take the attention of the working people of Ukraine away from its responsibility over the results of the criminal anti-people’s policy of Yushenko, Timoshenko, Yanukovick and their predecessors Kravchuk and Kuchma, the entire bourgeois system as a whole which led to the present catastrophic situation in Ukraine.
Here are a few examples to what was earlier said:
- Ukraine according to research by the company GfK GeoMarketing from the 24.11.2008, occupies second place in Europe in the level of poverty, occupying according to the indicator of expenditure per average statistic inhabitant, 40th place out of 41 countries (the poorest being Moldova with its “communist” president). (“2000” No51, 19 – 25.12.2008).
- On alcohol consumption, children of Ukraine occupy first (!) place in the world. From the contempories -Ukrainians, are left only Israeli children, writes newspaper “Gaaretz” 26.12.2008, referring to data gathered by the ministry of education of the country for the World Health Organisation. Alcohol in Israel is daily consumed by 9% of girls and 19% of boys, placing it second place in the world after Ukraine for child consumption of alcohol. This indicator bears witness to those “outstanding achievements” of bourgeois democracy in Ukraine. This is in the first instance. And secondly, it speaks about Israel’s price it pays for its aggressive invading human-hating military policy which pushes Israeli children onto the path of alcoholism.
- On the night of 24 December, in Evpatory, two flights of a stairs of a housing block blew up. 27 people were killed. People said how they had been complaining and writing to the housing department about a certain businessman who had been storing gas canisters in the cellar. They had for a long time been afraid that at some time they could explode. The people who live there say, “We were certain that a disaster was in the waiting, but you know, like this happens a lot: people tear out their hair over issues, but the authorities look on with indifference. They say – just stop panicking!” And indeed this is not the first tragedy of its kind.
One of the biggest explosions in a block of flats happened in in Dnepropetrovsk in October 2007. 23 people were killed and 300 recognised victims.
Lugansk. On 2 – 3 February 2006, 8 people were killed and 17 wounded from two gas explosions in a housing block which occurred one after the other.
Lugansk. 21 October 2004, 5 people were killed as a result of a gas explosion which completely destroyed one section of a five-storey block of flats.
Bolekhov, Ivano-Frankovcky region, on 11 July 2008, a build-up of gas exploded that had accumulated in the basement of a local hospital. 3 people were killed, and 3 traumatised.
The authorities are destroying their own people using all available means for doing it. But responsibility for the ungifted criminal anti-people’s policy is pushed onto J.V. Stalin, the Bolsheviks and the Soviet socialist state.
3) Continuing forcing of anti-Russian hysteria. 2009 has been announced as the year of Stepan Bander (100 years since his birth (01.01.2009), 300 years since the “military-political action” of Masepa and “the signing of the Ukraine-Swedish union”.
All the traitors and butchers of the people of Ukraine, all the enemies of Russia – here the main idols of Victor Yushenko. Besides, the president himself educated in the Banderite spirit, faithfully serves not the interests of the people of Ukraine, but the interests of US-Zionist capital, leading the struggle for world domination and using Yushenko for forcing anti-Russia hysteria and aggravating the two brotherly peoples.
The very latest example is the relationship between Ukraine and Russia on the gas question and unwillingness of the president of Ukraine to sign a treaty with Russia even on the most discounted conditions. Yushenko is completely indifferent to the fate of Ukrainian people and a number of Ukrainian enterprises which technologically cannot function without gas. The main thing for Yushenko lies in how much harm can be done to Russia, and is serving his masters over the Atlantic Ocean.
4) Drawing Ukraine into NATO.
The dragging of Ukraine (and Georgia) into NATO is a core part of US strategy of surrounding Russia with US-NATO military bases and troops with the aim of making Russia submissive and getting hold of her countless natural wealth and resources. One of the elements of this strategy is the pitting of two brotherly peoples against each other about which I spoke about earlier, and that is being successfully brought about by the orange leadership of Ukraine with President Yushenko.
But on 4 December in Brussels at a summit of ministers of foreign affairs for the NATO member countries, Ukraine failed to achieve the desired status of PAM NATO (plan of action for NATO membership). More than that, this question was not even looked at in the light of the unwillingness of a number European countries to harm relations with Russia. The higher echelons of power in Ukraine played their role and strife. Thus, the mutual public accusations being made by Yushenko and Timoshenko are beneficial to a certain degree. On one hand, the working people of Ukraine from the source will know the truth about the leaders of the country, their moral appearance, for whom, personal gain and the aim at any price to keep hold of power stand higher than the interests of the people. And on the other hand, the unpredictable actions of the leadership of Ukraine is spoiling the country’s image especially in the eyes of the European-NATO imperialists.
Nonetheless, the process of dragging Ukraine into NATO continues. Minster of foreign affairs of Ukraine V. Ogrysko stated this summarising the NATO summit: “Today we de-facto received a Plan of action on entering NATO. From 2009 we are starting the actual integration into the Alliance”. We have a Special plan of Ukraine-NATO, the decision of which was taken back in 2002. NATO has pledged to strengthen the work of its information office in Kiev.
And the fact that such an integration is underway at full speed is shown by the Directives of the Defence Ministry No.F-14 “On the organising of participation in the process of planning and evaluation of the strengths of the international programme “Partnership for Peace” in 2008-2010” and the Chief of General Staff No.DGSh-10 “On organising the training of sub-divisions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated in the make-up of a Joint Fund of operational forces and the possibilities in 2009-2010”. According to the data in the directives, today’s military leaders are focusing their main attention on the training of Ukrainian sub-divisions for their full-scale participation beyond the borders of Ukraine in the make-up of the structures of NATO. Special attention with this is paid to the providing of continuality and irreversibility of the process of Ukraine’s entrance into NATO. The end result of the training of the military units and sub-divisions, in accordance with the demands of Directive DGSh-10 is “the achievement by them of the level of mutual compatibility and military readiness, allowing for them to be useful to the Forces of NATO response”.
THE WORLD CRISIS AND RUSSIA
The global financial crisis has also hit Russia very hard, being in essence a raw material appendage of the West.
The forecasts of economic departments for 2009 are bleaker than ever. Just before the new year, minister for finances of Russia, Alexei Kudrin pledged “it would be the worst year since the WWII”.
The ministry for economic development in its turn predicted economic degradation on all parameters. Thus, the GDP in 2009 will grow only by 2.4% compared to last year with the price for “Ural” oil at $50 a barrel. Industry also awaits a fall by 3.2% and in the refining sector a fall of even more, by 4.3%.
As a result, for the first time in recent years the country is being pushed towards a budget deficit. According to advanced data by the Ministry of finances, it will be from 1.5 - 2.5 trillion roubles. According to the worst forecast, next year Russia will again have to turn into a state-defaulter. This will occur in the case if the reserves accumulated on expensive oil (400 billion dollars) are insufficient to rescue the economy, and the state will again have to take out loans from the IMF, - notes economic observer Valery Bolotin in the article “The country is expecting complete collapse” (02.0.2009)
Unemployment is also on the rise. Another several million people will also be added to the already 5 million unemployed.
We need to note that the powers in Russia, as in Ukraine are carrying on an unbridled anti-Soviet, anti-communist propaganda campaign.
In the ranks of heroes and victims are people like bloody Nicolai II, the last Czar autocrat of Russia. Attempts are made at white-washing admiral Kolchak and give him the image of a loyal son of Russia. One cannot write about this admiral without shivering at the thought at the barbaric acts that took place under him and his henchmen.
WHAT ARE THE WORKING PEOPLE TO DO IN THIS SITUATION?
There is one way out of this situation about which we always talk about – rise up to the struggle for your rights.
This especially concerns Ukraine where again a pre-revolutionary situation.
It is plain to see that there is a crisis of the uppers. The uppers are practically unable to run the country – they are only occupied with warring with each other.
A crisis of the lowers is on the horizon, conditioned by:-
- millions of unemployed and growing numbers. Added to the millions are more millions (these include working people officially registered at work, but are on so-called compulsory “unpaid” leave) and millions of migrant workers returning from Europe and Russia, since there, the system does not know what to do with its own workers;
- a steady growth in prices and tariffs on vital foodstuffs and services, and a devalued gryvna;
- utter degradation of the industrial and agricultural production;
- a huge state budget deficit that threatens all social welfare payments and dooms to absolute poverty the workers in the budget sphere, pensioners and other categories of socially vulnerable working people.
People will just be placed under the threat of death by starvation.
Before the working people stands a dilemma: either to die like lambs, or rise up to the struggle for their rights.
But in order for a pre-revolutionary situation to transform itself into a proletarian revolution, and in order that the just anger of the working people could not be channelled and directed by any one group of the bourgeoisie against another, by having carried out another “orange revolution” and by the hands of the working people, replace one group of the bourgeoisie to the heights of power by another group of the bourgeoisie (also those same predators-exploiters), it is necessary to have the presence of the subjective factor, that is, a revolutionary proletarian party, closely connected with the masses of fighting working people.
We shall cross over to an examination of this question.
A. MAEVSKY,
Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (CC AUCPB)
Kiev, Ukraine
10 January 2009
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