Never Again!

The slogan used by liberated prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp to denounce Nazism is always recalled on 27th January, now known as Holocaust Day. That was the day in 1945 when the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops advancing into the Third Reich.
Millions, including some six million Jews, suffered and died in that unspeakable horror. And this year, on the 80th anniversary of its liberation King Charles joined world and religious leaders to mourn those who perished in Nazi death camps to pledge that future generations must never allow the horrors of the Holocaust to be forgotten or repeated. But the role of the Soviet Union that liberated Auschwitz is being deliberately ignored by the imperialists and their lackeys that use Holocaust Day to justify their own moral bankruptcy. 
The decision to exclude Russia from Auschwitz’s 80th  anniversary commemorations sends a troubling message to the world about the value of historical truth. When we start erasing inconvenient aspects of history to suit present-day narratives we lose sight of the lessons that history teaches us. The Holocaust and the broader atrocities of the Second World War  were enabled by dehumanisation, propaganda, and the denial of reality. To combat these forces in our time we must commit to an honest reckoning with the past even when it is uncomfortable.
Selective amnesia is dangerous. The Second World War was a global conflict that required immense sacrifices from the Allied Powers that combined to defeat Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. But no country paid a higher price than the USSR. Over 27 million Soviet citizens died in the war including 8,7 million battlefield losses. To erase or diminish that contribution is to distort the historical record and risk undermining the shared understanding that has underpinned the post-war international order.
 It is undoubtedly true that the Holocaust was perpetrated in a climate of anti-semitism and abhorrent racism deliberately fostered by the Nazis and the German ruling class. The Nazis didn’t invent anti-semitism but they stoked it up and fanned the flames to make pogroms seem respectable and even "patriotic". But it was not the existence of racist ideas on their own which led to Nazism and the “final solution” but the ruling class of finance capitalists which wanted war and territorial expansion.
 It was this class which used the Nazis to advance its aims and which systematically elevated racism – and particularly anti-semitism – in order to find an excuse for wholesale theft, super exploitation and war to provide a convenient internal enemy on which the attention of the people could be focused.
The Nazis said the Jews were to blame for people's ills. They said that it was the Jews who bled the country dry. They claimed that the Jews were the enemies of the Germans and the entire human race.These lies were told in order to conceal the real exploiters and parasites –  the capitalist class as a whole. It ensured that capitalism was not blamed while millions of innocent Jews, most of whom were working class, were persecuted.
The leading German bankers, manufacturers and other big capitalists made a great deal of money from the war itself and from forced labour and the camp system in general. They survived the fall of the Third Reich largely unscathed and some of their successors are still leaders in the field today.
 Yes; we should all learn from the Holocaust. We should learn to struggle against every form of racism. But we should also learn that it was capitalism which backed Hitler, it is capitalism which resorts to unleashing fascism when it cannot rule in the old way and it was capitalism which created the gas chambers of Auschwitz – these are the lessons of history.

An enemy of the people

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead. He was 91. Imperialist leaders like Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the rest of the pack mourn him as an old friend. Sir Keir Starmer calls him a “great figure” who will “forever be remembered”.
    In the West you’d think a saint had died this week. But on the Russian street Gorbachev is hated. He’s the traitor who restored capitalism and broke up the USSR for the benefit of the Western corporations and the black-marketeers who emerged from the shadows to become the oligarchs that plunder the country today. He achieved nothing apart from bringing unemployment and poverty back to what was once the Soviet Union.
    Gorbachev didn’t come from nowhere. He wormed his way to the top of the Communist Party posing as a “reformer” who became the idol of the Eurocommunists in Britain and the rest of Western Europe.
    In fact the basis of post-war revisionism was laid down at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The vicious attack on Stalin by Nikita Krushchev had two main effects within the world communist movement. In the West it opened the door to the fallacy of Trotskyism, which until then, had been confined to small groups drawn from the middle strata.
    In the East the loss of confidence in the masses led to the rejection of the leading role of the working class. This created a climate of compromise and defeat and led to the conditions which counter-revolutionary traitors successfully exploited in the end.
    In the international communist movement it reinforced the drift towards social-democratic strategies and the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist thinking.
    They say it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But, as Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov says, that doesn’t apply to major politicians. “ I believe that Gorbachev was one of those rulers in the thousand-year history of Russia, who brought not only the peoples of our country, but also all allies and friends, absolute misfortune, grief and misfortune” he said. ”I consider it a great tragedy that he came to the crucible of political power...”

The new Cold War

By Rob Gowland

Or perhaps the heading should more correctly be “The Renewed Cold War”, for the original Cold War against the USSR never really ended. How could it? After all, it was simply a manifestation of the class war between capital and labour, between bosses and workers. And that won’t end until we have Socialism and do away with exploiting classes once and for all.
    The Soviet Union, a workers’ state, embodied all that the boss class loathed, so big business everywhere rejoiced when gullible Gorby succeeded in his plan to become General Secretary of the CPSU and then to show the Soviet people that capitalism and Socialism were essentially the same (he didn’t believe what the Communists said about capitalism and anyway capitalist politicians everywhere loudly proclaimed that they were in favour of peace, so that was surely true, for they wouldn’t lie, right?).
    Gorbachov abolished the Soviet Union and to his evident surprise he was subsequently spurned by Russians of all political persuasions. The Cold War was temporarily suspended, or more accurately diverted, to be focused on those former parts of the USSR that refused to accept the overthrow of Socialism. Such as Moldova and Belarus.
    Despite winning the civil war that the capitalist West inflicted on Moldova, the Communists there were only allowed 10 years in which to keep the country out of the clutches of NATO before it was subjected to one of a series of very well prepared ‘colour revolutions’ that swept the region.
    These combined some genuine grievances with racist populism and the usual airy-fairy glib demands of the typical capitalist ‘pro-democracy’ campaign. The campaigners were often imported from as far afield as Israel and Chechnya, anywhere where anti-Russian sentiment could be stirred up. As soon as the Communists were forced out of office, Moldova became staunchly embedded within NATO, as always intended.
    Imperialism’s intelligence agencies have become highly adept at managing these “popular counter-revolutions”, backed up by a constant barrage of propaganda to the effect that bourgeois democracy is the only form of democracy: any other sort is false or fake, “like they had in the Socialist countries”.
    Today, another ‘colour revolution’ is being attempted in Belarus, a former part of the USSR that opted to retain the Soviet system. For this act of defiance, it was hit with hyper-inflation, but has managed to maintain its economic independence and its Soviet-style social system in the face of capitalist hostility. The Communist Party of Belarus actively supports President Lukashenko. We should all join the campaign around the slogan “Hands off Belarus”.
    Make no mistake, the present ‘pro-democracy’ campaign against Belarus, like the similar campaign in Hong Kong, has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with clawing back territory, markets and resources for capitalism.
    The pundits of capitalism are well aware that today their favoured exploitative system is very much on the back foot. The economic and industrial superiority they used to enjoy has evaporated. That they enjoyed it was thanks in large part to not being invaded in the Second World War plus the huge profits to be made catering to capitalism’s unending stream of ‘small wars’. Instead, to their dismay, their former superiority has passed to the mixed economy of China.
    Any hopes that imperialists (and certain Trotskyists) held that China was “going down the capitalist road” were dealt a severe blow at the recent Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) where Xi Jinping reminded delegates that “what we are building is Socialism with Chinese characteristics, not some other ism”.
    Whilst some European imperialists are eager to grab whatever share they can of China’s economic and financial good fortune, US imperialism is deeply divided. The ruling elite, behind President Trump – a billionaire property developer – apparently believe that they can solve their problems with China and its ally Russia by resorting to the same bully boy tactics they use against small and powerless countries.
    Neither People's China nor Russia, however, is small or powerless. US war-hawks such as Mike Pompeo must have nightmares full of Chinese warships and Russian ultra-sonic missiles, amidst the very real prospect of Chinese companies taking over all America’s traditional markets.
    Trump is essentially a fascist, and as we know ‘fascism means war’. His main capitalist rivals, those backing the Democrats, are in many ways almost as reactionary but they believe bourgeois democracy provides a less troublesome climate for capitalist exploitation than fascism.
    The Trump administration, however, is in the driving seat at present and is pushing hard to initiate a trade war against both China and Russia, but especially China, being the main economic threat. As part of this campaign, it has also initiated a propaganda blitz, to convince people in Western countries that China is their enemy.
    Western governments are busy discovering Chinese plots to interfere in their internal affairs or simply to spy on them. To convince people that this is truly terrifying, Britain’s Tory government has actually set back the country’s development of a fifth-generation mobile phone network, in order to exclude Chinese tech giant Huawei from participating in its roll out!
    Capitalist pundits credit the problems caused by the Cold War with bringing about the overthrow of Socialism in the USSR. That is far too simplistic for what was in fact a complex amalgam of ideological, economic and subjective factors. Yet they clearly hope that by reverting to the worst tactics of the Cold War against the USSR, they will prevent the combined resources of China and Russia from burying them.
    With the massive ‘Belt and Road’ initiative well under way, and the focus of world trade inevitably shifting to the East, the ‘American century’ has already become a hollow mockery. This stepped up Cold War will not save it.

Gagarin in Greenwich

By New Worker correspondent

On 12^th April 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. He soon became an icon for the Soviet Union in a tour of the world that included over 30 countries. This was during the height of the Cold War and the American president, JF Kennedy, predictably barred Gagarin from visiting the USA. The British Conservative government, however, took a more mature approach to the Soviet cosmonaut, who received a rapturous reception from the crowds in London and Manchester in a tour that ended with a meeting with the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Sadly this foundry-worker turned spaceman died whilst on a routine training flight in 1968 – but his memory lives on in the former Soviet Union and throughout the global aerospace community.

Gagarin’s ashes are now buried by the Kremlin Wall but you don’t have to go to Moscow to pay your respects to the legendary cosmonaut. His statue stands outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, depicting Gagarin in his spacesuit astride the world.

It is, in fact, a copy of a monument that stands in Lyubertsy, the town where Gagarin worked as a foundry-man before joining the Soviet Air Force. The London statue was given to the British people in 2011 by Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency. Originally displayed in the Mall, it was subsequently moved in 2013 to its permanent home at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park in south-east London, in grounds renamed Gagarin Terrace.

Greenwich Park is open from 6am for pedestrians and 7am for traffic all year round. Admission is free.

• Yuri Gagarin -- our communist heritage 
• Gagarin in Manchester 
• London Welcomes Gagarin

Myths and. Reality of building Soviet Socialism

By John Maryon

There can be little doubt that the social, technical and economic transformation that occurred in the Soviet Union, particularly during the period of Joseph Stalin's leadership, was one of the most significant achievements of the 20th century. Millions of workers and peasants had their lives transformed from the back-breaking toil and oppression of near feudalism to becoming true masters of their own destiny as they carried forwards the historic cause of building socialism.

Soviet power had been proclaimed by the Congress of Soviets on 25th October 1917. The old state machine was abolished and elected Soviets established in the villages, factories and military units. Free education was introduced in all native languages and the people started to build a new socialist society. The peaceful progress of the young republic was cut short, however, by counter-revolutionary forces consisting of former military personnel, kulaks (wealthy peasants with land and animals), and sections of the privileged intelligentsia.

The struggle to build Socialism was going to be a hard, demanding sacrifice made more difficult by foreign intervention. The problems faced can be illustrated by an examination of events in the Ukraine, which to avoid becoming vassals of the Polish Princes or the Ottoman Empire had been part of Russia since 1654. Following the Russian Revolution and the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising it became part of the new Soviet state. The population comprised Slavs of the eastern group and Tatars of Turkish origin, in addition to Polish and German descendants and other minority groups.

The Ukraine language is similar to Russian and for many years was considered to be a Russian dialect. The Tatars have their own language and live mainly in the Crimea; a region associated with the suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 during the war for control of the Middle East. Although the main religion is Russian Orthodox, former Polish influence has left a strong Catholic church. At the time of the Russian revolution Ukraine's social strata comprised 80 per cent toiling peasantry, five per cent workers, and a small but growing class of capitalists who owned over 90 per cent of the wealth and land.

By 1918 Ukrainian reactionaries had set up four separate capitalist statelets, which all fought each other as well as the Soviet government that was using armed detachments of workers to oppose attacks by the White Guard alliance. The White Guards consisted of Nationalist armies and Cossack chieftains.

Following the end of the First World War the Soviet state, including the area of Ukraine, was subject to brazen naked foreign aggression. Attacks and occupations were carried out. Britain occupied Odessa, and Germany occupied a large part of western and central Ukraine. The onslaught against the Soviet state itself was carried out by British, French, German, American, Hungarian/Austrian and Japanese forces. A civil war with a war of intervention was taking place as the workers state opposed reactionary forces and the full fury of Imperialist aggression.

Unlike the imperialist backed forces of counter-revolution who all wanted dominance and personal gain, the Soviets were united for the common good, with military units formed of working peasants who took up arms to join the ranks of the Red army. The Soviets were supported by a war economy, unlike the largely mercenary White Guards who relied on foreign sponsorship. The well-to-do sided with the old regime but increasingly others found Soviet rule to their liking, including women who now enjoyed a new found status of equality with men.

In the spring of 1920 the Poles, encouraged by Western powers, attacked and captured Kiev. The White Guards advanced from their stronghold in the Crimea to capture areas of southern Ukraine. The Red Army counter-attacked and regained some territory. Overall the Soviet Union lost other areas in the Baltic and Byelorussia. Reactionary regimes were installed to form a {cordon sanitaire} designed to isolate the Soviet Union and provide a base from which to carry out sabotage and provocations.

During the 1920s and ‘30s the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became an industrially developed region, with coal from the Donbas supporting iron and steel production for machine building. Many attempts were made to wreck the factories but they were defended gallantly by the workers. The collectivisation of agricultural also took place during this period. For centuries the land, owned by the rulers, had been tilled by peasants on small plots using wooden ploughs with horses. Collectivisation enabled farms to be modernised and by the late 1930s the area had become the bread basket of the Soviet Union. Heavy industry in the region was referred to as the Soviet Ruhr.

The process of collectivisation, however, was not an easy one and coincided with one of the worst known drought periods of 1932–1934. Hitler and later the CIA alleged that the famine had been created deliberately by Stalin and vastly over-estimated casualties. Over one million people died at this time in addition to a vastly greater number who had earlier perished when invading armies killed, raped, slaughtered the farm stock, and burned the crops. There were four chief causes for the suffering:

1. Unprecedented drought conditions in many parts of the Soviet Union.

2. A typhoid epidemic that ravaged the Ukraine and North Caucasus regions.

3. Provocations by the Kulaks who slaughtered their cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and hens to avoid collectivisation.

4. Disorder of work provoked by sabotage, and also the murder of many leading cades and specialists by German-backed nationalists – the same people who would later support Hitler. The lies were designed to justify their invasion seven years later.

At 0400hrs on 22nd June 1941 Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in a war that led to the death of 27 million Soviets, destruction of over 90 per cent of its industry and widespread devastation. Over eight million people lost their lives in Ukraine, including over one million Jews murdered by the SS.

Nationalists from the former ruling class in Western Ukraine enthusiastically supported Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler did not trust them, they had betrayed their own people and no doubt would betray him if given half a chance, so they were not given front-line roles but put in charge of the death camps where they undertook with great enthusiasm the massacre of Jews, Communists, Socialists, trade unionists, disabled people and those mentally ill. Stepan Bandera, a leading fascist, active during this period, is today regarded as a national hero by some leading Ukrainian politicians.