Statement originally published by the RCWP-CPSU
Statement of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The RCWP has not only been closely monitoring the development of the situation in Ukraine since 2014, but is also actively developing cooperation with the communist organizations of Donbass and Ukraine. Thus, back in December 2014, the Congress of the RCWP noted the following provision in its final resolution:
“3. The Central Committee shall regard the struggle of the peoples of the Novorossiya republics against the Kiev junta in the south-east of the Ukraine as an anti-fascist struggle, considering that a strategically effective anti-fascist struggle in the Donbass is possible only under the condition of a struggle for the overthrow of capital, i.e., for socialism. At the same time, the task of the communists is to participate in the practical struggle and explain the political essence of what is happening, as a form of manifestation of the internal contradictions of imperialism, including not only Western, but also Russian and Ukrainian. To render practical assistance to the communist organizations of Donbass and the Workers’ Front, to demand that the Russian leadership officially recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.”
Political assessments and forecasts of our party have been confirmed by the practice of the development of events, including over the past six months since the XXIII Party Congress. Life proves the correctness of the arguments of the RCWP in theoretical discussions with opponents in Russia and in the international arena.
Thus, the unprecedented concentration of the power of the imperialist forces of the NATO bloc led by the United States, their increasingly frank statements of plans to inflict a military defeat and even the dismemberment of Russia by the forces of the Ukrainian Nazis, again and again prove the aggressive, aggressive nature of the war on the part of the West. And especially the cynical confessions of Western leaders, such as Macron, Merkel, Hollande, etc., that all the so-called Minsk agreements and the negotiations that took place until 2022 were actually needed only to divert the world’s attention from the West’s preparations for the expansion of the war, to pump fascist Ukraine with finances, weapons and train punitive troops, prove the validity of the conclusion that in many respects it was forced. protective, i.e. fair nature of the special military operation. (Although, most likely, the authorities of bourgeois Russia could not have failed to understand this earlier and used these agreements as a pretext for non-recognition of the people’s republics of Donbass and for restraining their actions to completely liberate their territories, unite the LPR and DPR within the framework of the Novorossiya project).
Theoretically, the Ideological Commission carried out an analysis of the history of the development of the situation in order to reveal the real essence of the ongoing war according to Lenin’s methodology. The conclusions of the March and October 2022 plenums of the Central Committee of the RCWP were confirmed, including the statements of the latter: “… P.Z. The object of aggression is Russia, and the means of implementation, the battering ram of NATO imperialism is Ukraine… In the event of Russia’s defeat, its repetition of the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, the iron heel of the modern fascist dictatorship will be established over the majority of countries of the world for a long time, which in no way corresponds to the interests of the working class of Russia, Ukraine, and the whole world. 9. In this regard, the struggle of the Russian Armed Forces to suppress fascism in Ukraine is just.”
The EC of the Central Committee paid special attention to the response to the attempts of ill-wishers to accuse our Party of supporting the bourgeois Putin regime and following the bourgeois national policy, which rejects the right of nations to self-determination, as well as to accusing the Party of social-chauvinism. The Central Committee categorically rejects these attacks.
From the very first day of its formation in 1991, our party has opposed all capitalist changes in our country. Modern bourgeois Russia emerged as a result of the counter-revolution and the destruction of the Soviet Union and its social system (socialism). The bourgeoisie that came to power in Russia, which consolidated this power through the criminal coup d’état of 1993, carried out by purely fascist methods, bears direct blame for the bloody conflicts in the republics of the former Soviet Union (Sumgait, Karabakh, Transnistria, Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Chechnya, Ossetia, Donbass and today Ukraine). All of them are links in the same chain and, most likely, not the last.
The “gentlemen” who seized power in the country, if accepted into a gang of bandits on a planetary scale, were ready to recognize the supremacy of the United States and formalize NATO membership. We remember Yeltsin’s proclamations in the U.S. Congress, “God bless America!” and heard Putin’s recent confessions: “We believed that we were our own, bourgeois, we wanted to be in this family of so-called civilized nations. And I threw my fishing rods into NATO…” But at the same time, the gentlemen dreamed of seeing themselves as completely equal to France, England and “all sorts of other Swedes.” However, the matter did not grow together with the introduction. It turned out that all the vacancies in the imperialist club were filled, and Russia was not seen from there as an equal partner (because then it would be necessary to share with her), but only as a fat bull that would be good to be butchered and eaten by the whole old imperialist company. Decades of foreign policy efforts with attempts to ask to be admitted to the ranks of “civilized countries” and even NATO have led nowhere.
It was in this way that the bourgeois leadership of Russia had to say goodbye to a whole series of imperialist ambitions and was forced to enter into open confrontation with the imperialist center, which the Russian ruling circles had previously so wanted to join.
Thus, the RCWP clearly sees that the existing Russian regime has only been forced, and perhaps temporarily, in the ranks of the fighters against Western imperialism. We Communists are convinced that the bourgeois regime is following a whirling course, that it is ready to bargain with the imperialist cannibals, that it is putting the fate of thousands of anti-fascists at stake, and that it can renounce denazification and the liberation of the peoples from fascist oppression at the first opportunity. From the very beginning of the events in 2014, the RCWP demanded more assistance from the authorities, including military assistance, to Donbass, on the other hand, warned the comrades that bourgeois Russia is not the Soviet Union, and that betrayal can always be expected from the current regime.
The Plenum of the Central Committee confirms the recognition of the progressive significance of the results of the popular referendums of the LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions on their entry into Russia. He considers it unreasonable and harmful to question their legitimacy or to consider proposals on the need for new votes in the context of the prospects for concluding some kind of peace. At the same time, we recognize the right of Ukrainians, like any other people, to self-determination. We also categorically reject the statements of such versions that there were alleged popular uprisings against fascism in Donbass, but they were absorbed and suppressed with the help of an influx of capital from Russia and its administrative protégés. They say that the anti-fascist fervor has faded. Such ideas are fundamentally wrong, because the comrades in the Donbas themselves understand that Russia’s intervention and armed struggle are absolutely necessary to expel Nazism. And the question of the dominance of the influence of capital and bureaucracy in the Russian Federation is another question, it is the subject of the common struggle of the Communists in Russia.
We are often asked whether we are observing what the Political Council of the Central Committee warned about earlier, saying that the possibility of a military campaign of assistance to Donbass by Russia, led by the anti-Soviet Putin, could not be ruled out into a truly completely aggressive war, when, under the pretext of helping Donbass, the Russian authorities will begin to solve their problems, and the troops will simply begin to occupy other regions of Ukraine. We regard this as a war of conquest, imperialist, and we will not support either of these imperialists. The question is clear, since today the actions of the Russian Armed Forces are also being carried out outside the territory of Donbass.
However, from our point of view, this is quite understandable and justified, since the war unfolded with such a large-scale participation of NATO, which was difficult to foresee in February 2022, and, firstly, the shelling of Donbass, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is carried out from territories located far beyond their borders, there are also warehouses of weapons, fuel, etc., and, secondly, combat and even more so sabotage actions against the Russian Federation are carried out far beyond the borders of Ukraine in 1991 and from various of its Territories. That is, it is simply impossible to refrain from fighting throughout Ukraine. In war, it’s like a coin.
Thus, the leading bodies of the RCWP in no way deviated from the line determined by the Party Congress and did not revise the decisions of the Central Committee and the Political Council.
In one way or another, the heated debates in the world communist movement revolve around this war, which has exacerbated to the utmost all the theoretical differences that had previously been outlined, but seemed insignificant. The matter did not stop at the controversy: today it is already possible to state the destruction and corrosion of a number of previously existing international communist associations and forms of work (EKI, KomObzor, etc.). Some parties on the left are trying point-blank not to notice that the United States and NATO are waging a war not just to expand their influence, but, in fact, are implementing their plan to eliminate Russia as a competitor and are striving for world hegemony. Moreover, fascist methods are increasingly being used and the processes of fascism of the bloc’s countries, especially Poland and the Baltic states, are being carried out.
Thus, in the current act of imperialist aggression in Ukraine by the United States and its allies, the Ukrainian people are only expendable material, which they do not regret spent. An illustration of this can be seen in the statements of Western politicians (Polish President Andrzej Duda and others) that the war is cheap, since American soldiers have not yet died in it. It turns out that the death of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who spend their lives in the name of the predatory interests of the Western “elites” is a perfectly acceptable cheap means of achieving goals. And the recent enthusiastic celebration of the veteran of the Nazi SS Galicia Division in the Canadian Parliament in the presence of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and the ambassadors of the Western bloc countries clearly confirmed the ideological continuity of modern imperialists and fascists of Hitler’s times.
The RCWP intends to continue to develop its genuinely Marxist, Leninist, anti-fascist line. We are ready to firmly declare: we are not changing the anti-fascist course!
Special attention should be paid to the issue of attitude and the search for allies. Some parties, ostensibly concerned with the purity of the movement and the danger of falling under a false flag, declare the undesirability of cooperating with bourgeois-democratic, other petty-bourgeois, or far from advanced elements and organizations. They declared the members of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (WAIP) to be almost agents of the bourgeoisie. We also disagree with a number of provisions of the VAIP’s position, for example, on the anti-imperialist nature of Russia and China, but… We know Lenin’s dictum that it is impossible to win with the vanguard alone! At the moment, together with the parties of the platform, we are allies in the fight against the main danger – the threat of fascism to the whole world and the unleashing of a world nuclear war by the imperialist pack of American-NATO imperialism.
We are in the same class system with the anti-imperialists!
The RCWP reaffirms once again that only the socialist path of development can put Russia and other peoples on a consistent anti-fascist course and liberate the working people from all forms of oppression. Only the upsurge of the class struggle can be the means by which the peoples will lead to a new socialist era. The role of the Communists in this struggle is to be the vanguard of the working people. The RCWP openly declares the desirability of escalating the war (imperialist in the estimation of some and defensive in the estimation of the other) into a broad and mass struggle for socialism in all the countries involved. Moreover, the RCWP believes that the current situation involuntarily helps to expose the bourgeois regimes in all the belligerent countries and contributes to the maturation of revolutionary situations in them.
Thus, the Plenum of the Central Committee confirms the assessment of the situation and the course of the party and instructs the secretaries of the Central Committee to hold it in Russia and at international forums, including at the meeting of the Solid Committee in Izmir (Turkey) on October 20-22, 2023.
The fight against fascism is the task of today. All forces must be thrown at it, all methods must be used, and any allies must be involved!
Moscow. October 7-8, 2023
