80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism

 

Red Line TV Moscow Anti-Fascist Forum video with English sub-titles...

Free all Ukrainian political prisoners!

by Theo Russell

London comrades returned to Whitehall on Saturday to bring the crimes of the Ukrainian government to the attention of the British people. Some 30 protesters joined the picket opposite Downing Street organised by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign, to let the people “know that the regime in Ukraine, to which the British Government has given billions of pounds in financial and military support, has been committing horrific crimes against its own people, including Russian speakers, opposition activists and campaigners, journalists and Roma people, under the cover of accusing them of treason”.
    A IUAFS spokesman said: “Several mayors in eastern Ukraine have been summarily executed local along with elected civilian officials for "crimes" such as negotiating humanitarian corridors with the Russian military. They should have been entitled to a due process of law, instead of being tortured, shot, and then dumped in the street.
    “Hundreds of journalists, bloggers, politicians, elected representatives, activists, priests, sportspeople, and even Ukrainian negotiators and military officers have been arrested and beaten, and some tortured or murdered. Most were charged with treason simply for opposing Kiev's policies, and not brought to trial after many months.

NCP leader Andy Brooks

    “Alexander Matyuschenko, one of dozens of leftists arrested in Dnipro, central Ukraine, was an activist with the Livizta (Left) organisation, which campaigned against social spending cuts and right-wing propaganda. He was arrested by SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) and Azov members, tortured and forced to shout the nationalist salute, Slava Ukraini!, while his wife's hair was cut off with a knife.    "One of Ukraine’s most prominent human rights activists is Elena Berezhnaya, Director of the Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, who has spoken before the UN Security Council. She was arrested in March 2022 in Kiev. There has been no news of her since.
    "We know about these crimes because Ukrainian ultra-rightists and even regular soldiers have bragged about them in social media posts, including one of a Russian soldier who had one of his eyes gouged before he was killed, with the caption 'One-eyed captured Russian pig'.
    "We think it is essential to speak out about the actions of a government for whom the British government seems to have unlimited resources to support, at a time when millions here in Britain are facing a grim and uncertain future and our basic public services are chronically underfunded and understaffed”.
    During the protest a woman waiving the flag of the Donetsk people’s republic was attacked by a reactionary, believed to be from the Caucasian republic of Georgia. But he was dragged away by a policewoman supported by an Iranian who left a nearby protest to chivalrously intervene on the picketer’s behalf.
    Towards the end of the protest the demonstrators came under a torrent of abuse from a small group of Ukrainian and English supporters of the Nazi-infested regime in Kiev. They were, however, speedily warned off by the police.
    The protest was supported by the Consistent Democrats, CPGB (ML), New Communist Party, Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Fight and the Posadists in Britain. Solidarity messages were received from former Labour MP Chris Williamson who is now a leading member of the Socialist Labour Party, Phil Wilayto of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign in the United States, and Leonid Ilderkin from the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, who has recently moved back to Ukraine.

• Skwarkbox report
• La Lucha (USA) report

No to NATO, No to War!

We are in the middle of a hate-campaign not seen since the dark Cold War days of the McCarthy era, We’re being swamped with hysterical anti-Russian propaganda to justify sanctions and more military aid to the Ukrainian fascists.
    Though the Biden administration has ruled out direct US intervention in Ukraine some imperialist politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are still calling for “no-fly zones” and other direct NATO involvement in a conflict that could set the whole of Europe ablaze and possibly even trigger a nuclear war.
    They serve the war lobby within the United States – the so-called “deep state” that represents the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class that seek to dominate the entire world in the name of “globalisation” and the “new world order”. They’re also served by sinister forces within the labour and peace movement that have long acted as cheer-leaders for NATO and neo-colonialism.
    Some like Sir Keir Starmer and the Blairites openly embrace NATO and US imperialism while the fake lefters who pose as socialists essentially argue that peace is only attainable on imperialist terms.
    Now, more than ever, is the time for a clear call from the anti-war movement for an end to the fighting and a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the independence of the Donbas republics, Crimea’s decision to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.

Stand by the Seafarers

The mass dismissal of hundreds of P&O ferry workers reflects the reality of the world we live in today. Sacking workers to make way for cheaper scab labour was the norm in Victorian days when unions were barely legal and Management’s “right to manage” was the mantra of all the mainstream parties of the day. But it was more or less outlawed by legislation and agreed terms that the unions won through their industrial muscle in the decades that followed the Second World War.
    This all ended with the Thatcher era that followed Labour’s historic election defeat in 1979. The new Tory government launched an employers’ offensive that outlawed collective bargaining and a roll-back of most of what the working class had gained in the 20th century.
    There’s been no real fight-back. The venal approach of the careerists and bureaucrats and the decline of the genuinely militant left sabotaged any real resistance within the labour movement as a whole.
    It’s true that the storm of protests that followed P&O’s decision to summarily sack 800 workers has forced Management to offer redundancy terms that they hope will buy off some of the dismissed sea-farers. But the communist call must be to support the demand for the unconditional and immediate re-instatement of all the sacked staff and help the campaigns that the workers and their unions have launched to take on P&O and force them to do it.

Donbas: The people have made their choice

 by Boris Litvinov

Chair of the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic

In February 2014, a coup d'etat took place in Ukraine. The capitalists of Ukraine, with the support of international capital, brought to power Ukrainian nationalists with their fascist ideology and methods of governing the country.
     Incitement of hatred towards the Russians and Russia, towards Soviet history and the socialist country, towards communist ideology and the supporters of the union of fraternal peoples became the basis of the state policy of Ukraine. With the money of Ukrainian oligarchs, the United States and a number of Western countries, armed detachments of neo-fascists were created, which forced the citizens of Ukraine to submit to the will of the organisers of the coup by force and threats.
     Crimea, thanks to the unity of the goals and actions of the people and local authorities, held a referendum on its self-determination in March 2014 and returned to Russia, where it had been historically located until 1954.
     Resistance to the invaders came from the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. But in most areas, protests have been suppressed by force of arms and repression of dissent.
    The local authorities of Donbas chose the way of opportunism, submitting to the Kiev junta. And only the people of the proletarian, multinational Donbas (the Donetsk and Lugansk regions) rebelled against nationalism and fascist methods of imposing the will of those who had seized power on the inhabitants of Ukraine.
     Guided by the Constitution of Ukraine, which states that the source of power is the people who exercise their power, first of all, directly, using the UN principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, guided by the UN Charter and the practice of creating many states of the world, the rebellious people proclaimed the creation of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR). At a national referendum, with a turnout of 75 per cent, by a majority of votes – 90 per cent – the people of Donbas approved of the creation of the DPR and LPR.
     The Kiev authorities have been trying, for more than seven years, to strangle the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. Hopes for a peaceful solution to the issue within the framework of the Minsk process have practically melted away. Kiev does not want to peacefully resolve the contradictions between us, does not agree to conduct negotiations with the representatives of the DPR and LPR.
     The military situation is extremely tense. From the shelling of Ukrainian troops, people in the DPR and LPR, including children, die every day. The position of the communists of the DPR and the position of the Republic's leadership coincide in matters of war and peace. We have been calling on Ukraine for peaceful coexistence for seven years already. The lives of people on both sides of the confrontation should be the main value for any politician and government.
    We, the inhabitants of Donbas, defend our land, our cities and villages, our civilisational choice, our chosen path of life. And the Kiev junta is driving people to our land from all areas of its nationalist state – to die for the interests of Ukrainian big capital, for the geopolitical interests of the United States and some European satellites of America.
     Their goal is to destroy the people's republics, draw our brothers and sisters from the friendly Russian Federation into the internal Ukrainian conflict, weaken it and stop the barely outlined movement towards the unification of the peoples and states that previously made up Russia – the Soviet Union. Ukraine is counting on the help of the USA and other NATO countries. But drawing NATO countries into our internal conflict is drawing Europe, and indeed the entire Western world, into a war with us and Russia. We do not want this. We are against such a scenario.
     The people of Donbas made their choice to be with Russia in 2014. This is what our ancestors did back in 1654, when they were reunited with Russia into a single state. The inhabitants of the Ukrainian lands, together with the peoples of Russia, built and defended our united motherland for centuries. Our grandfathers and fathers built a great country – the USSR. Together they made the decisive contribution to the victory over fascism, liberated the peoples of the world from Hitler's bondage. Together they revived the country after the war devastation. They created a powerful industry, first-class science and education, sent the first man into space, created a reliable military shield to defend the country, built socialism and fought for peace on Earth.
     Yes, in the struggle against capitalism, the Soviet Union suffered a temporary defeat in 1991. For 30 years, we – the inhabitants of the Donetsk land – have experienced all the vices of the capitalist system, realized the futility of dragging behind Western civilisation. Like our ancestors, we decided to live in unity with Russia, Belarus and other peace-loving countries that respect our choice.
     Now we have to recreate and defend the civilisation called the "Russian world". And no pro-fascist Ukraine with its overseas masters will stop us on the path of uniting fraternal peoples together with Russia.
     Time will pass, and the people of Ukraine will realise that Donbas, fulfilling the behest of its ancestors “Together with Russia forever”, made the right choice this time too. They, the inhabitants of Ukraine, will go our way. So it was, and so it will be. For together we are strong. Only together with Russia and other fraternal peoples do we have a future.

US out of Ukraine!

by New Worker correspondent

On 10th April anti-war activists rallied outside the army recruitment centre in New York’s Times Square to demand justice for five-year-old Vladik Shikhov, killed on 3rd April by a Ukrainian drone strike on his Donetsk village. They called for an end to the US-NATO war build-up against the Donbas people’s republics and Russia.
    Protesters chanted, held posters and passed out informational leaflets to people passing by on this warm spring day. It was a modest first step toward building a movement to challenge the next imperialist war and educate workers in America about a critical conflict that has been systematically hidden from them.
    “President Joe Biden has a long history of supporting the far-right government in Kiev, dating back to his term as vice president and the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the legally elected government of Ukraine,” said Greg Butterfield, coordinator of Solidarity with Novorossiya & Antifascists in Ukraine.
    “Biden, like Donald Trump before him, is acting on behalf of Wall Street and U.S. Big Energy companies that are determined to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project from bringing Russian gas to Western Europe.
    “Washington considers Donbas civilians, like five-year-old Vladik, expendable. We do not,” Butterfield said. “We don’t believe that poor and working people in the U.S. would support risking war with Russia for Wall Street profits if they were informed of the facts.”
    The New York emergency protest has inspired the Anti-Imperialist Front and other anti-war movement to call for an international day of solidarity with the Donbas on Saturday 17th April.
    The call to action, No US-Ukraine war on Donbass and Russia, has been endorsed by the NCP and other parties and movements around the world.

• Struggle -- La Lucha report
  

No US-Ukraine war on Donbas and Russia

Joint statement 

initiated by Solidarity with Novorossiya & Antifascists in Ukraine

The right-wing government of Ukraine, supported by the US, has been at war with the people of the independent Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the Donbas for seven years. More than 14,000 people have been killed, according to the United Nations. The people of Donetsk and Lugansk live under a blockade by Ukraine and its Western allies. Workers in Ukraine suffer repression, joblessness and price hikes while their government sells off the country to Wall Street.
    On April 3, a Ukrainian military drone strike killed 5-year-old Vladik Shikhov and wounded his 66-year-old grandmother in Aleksandrovskoye, Donetsk. On April 4, another Ukrainian drone strike wounded a civilian in Nikolaevka, Lugansk. On March 22, a 71-year-old pensioner was killed by sniper fire near the capital of Donetsk. Many members of the anti-fascist People’s Militia have also been killed while defending residents.
    Since January, Ukraine has been building up its military forces on the front line of the conflict. It uses prohibited weapons, targets civilians, schools and homes in violation of international law and regional ceasefire agreements. Battalions of troops affiliated with neo-Nazi groups have been sent to the region, replacing regular Ukrainian Army troops. But the Ukrainian and U.S. governments and mainstream media blame Donetsk and Lugansk for taking steps to defend themselves, and threaten Russia for pledging to protect the people there if Ukraine invades.
    The Biden administration, as the Trump administration did before it, wants to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would allow Germany and other Western European countries to purchase Russian gas. Children, elders and other civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk are considered expendable targets by Kiev and Washington as they try to provoke a crisis to give them an excuse to further NATO military expansion and punish Russia.
    In recent days, the US and NATO have been warning of a Russian military buildup near the Ukrainian border, but never mention that one of the largest US Army-led military exercises in decades has begun and will run until June: Defender Europe 2021, with 28,000 troops from 27 countries operating in a dozen countries from the Balkans to the Black Sea. This is where the real danger of war is coming from.
     We say no! People in the U.S. don’t want war with Russia to protect the profits of Big Oil and U.S. banks. We don’t want the U.S. proxy regime in Ukraine to kill our sisters and brothers in Donetsk and Lugansk. We don’t want U.S. troops to be sent to fight and die in another needless conflict. We need an end to racist police brutality and anti-Asian violence. We need money for jobs, housing, healthcare and schools, not war.
    End U.S. aid to the Kiev regime! End all U.S. wars and sanctions! Shut down NATO and bring the troops home!

Endorsers:

Individuals:

•  Jose Maria Sison: Chairperson Emeritus of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle
•  Phil Wilayto: Coordinator, Odessa Solidarity Campaign
•  Berta Joubert-Ceci: Coordinator, International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes against Puerto Rico
•  William Camacaro, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle
•  Sharon Black, Peoples Power Assembly
• John Parker, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Los Angeles;
•  Joe Lombardo, National Co-Chair, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
• Professor Vijay Singh, editor, Revolutionary Democracy journal, New Delhi (India)
•  Bridget Dunne, Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (UK)
•  Theo Russell, International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (UK)
•  Andy Brooks, General Secretary, New Communist Party of Britain
•  Gedrius Grabauskas, Chairperson, Lithuanian Socialist Front
•  Donatas Shultsas, Chairperson, Lithuanian Union on Human Rights; 
• Heinrich Bücker, Coop-Anti-War-Café Berlin
•  Panagiotis Papadomanolakis, Editor, GuernicaEu (Greece)
•  Gerry Downing, Socialist Fight (UK) 

Organisations: 

• Anti-Imperialist Front
• Socialist Unity Party (U.S.)
• Struggle-La Lucha newspaper
• Borotba (Ukraine-Donbass)
• Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic
• Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine
• Women In Struggle-Mujeres En Lucha
• Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
• Workers Voice Socialist Movement (U.S.)
• International Action Center
• No Pasarán Hamburg (Germany)
• Anti-NATO Group Berlin-Brandenburg (Germany)
• “Frente Unido América Coordinamento Ucraina Antifascista (Italy)
• "Latina" Berlin (Germany)
• Communist Revolution Action – KED (Greece)
• Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (LCFI)
• Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)
• Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)
• Socialist Workers League (U.S.)
• Trotskyist Faction/Consistent Democrats (UK)
• Socialist Solidarity Party of Bangladesh
• Molotov Club

Johnson dips his snout into the bloody Ukrainian trough

 By Theo Russell

The British government is massively stepping up its military and political involvement in Ukraine, after a visit to Britain by President Volodymyr Zelensky and a high powered delegation which included a meeting with Prince William and a visit to Portsmouth Naval Base.
    The Johnson government is not concerned that Ukraine is infested with dozens of openly fascist militias who operate with freedom on the streets, where the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov sponsors the infamous Azov Regiment (logo based on the Waffen SS), and the head of the Kiev police, Vadim Troyan, is an Azov commander and an active member of the neo-nazi ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ movement.
    The UK has crossed a rubicon by agreeing to supply hi-tech armaments to the Kiev regime, reversing a policy of only providing ‘non-lethal’ military equipment, and a plan for a British military base in Ukraine.
    According to Russian sources Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told his British hosts that Ukraine is ready to agree to the creation of a British military base in the Nikolaev region, and “is considering the possibility of deploying British paratroopers”.
    The excuse for this put forward by Zelensky’s advisor Andriy Yermak is that Ukraine needs help to safeguard its security because “the suppression of post-election unrest in neighbouring Belarus posed a potential direct threat to Ukraine” – a pathetic bullshit lie.
Britain is also providing a £1.25 billion loan to Ukraine for the purchase of fast attack missile boats “capable of use in the Black Sea” with the contract for the first two ships conveniently going to UK shipyards.
    As if that isn’t enough, the Johnson Government has also proposed setting up a European Union or NATO centre to combat Russian ‘disinformation and counter-propaganda’ based in Ukraine. And at what the Ukrainians called “a historic meeting with the head of British diplomacy Dominic Raab” Britain agreed to support an international platform for “ending Crimea's temporary occupation by Russia”.
    Dmytro Kuleba said that during the visit last week Zelensky had pressed Boris Johnson to set a timetable for Ukraine to join NATO. This, along with US hopes to gain control of the Crimea naval base, is the principal reason for the imperialist-backed coup in Ukraine which swept hordes of fascists into positions of power in February 2014.
    As British defence minister Ben Wallace proudly announced during a visit to Kiev: “The Maritime Training Initiative will enable even closer collaboration with the NATO Alliance and Armed Forces around the world, and allows us to build on Ukraine's new NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner status”..
    The British Embassy in Ukraine Facebook page revealed in August that “as of today, more than 18,100 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel and nearly 4,000 military instructors have been trained by the UK-established Operation Orbital mission since 2015”, which “has deployed over 2,500 British military personnel and 400 courses”. Last year Operation Orbital was extended for another three years until March 2023.
    British taxpayers may wonder why it is so important for hundreds of millions to be spent training soldiers in a country 1,500 miles away, where over 80 fascist militias, who worship the traitors who collaborated with the German occupiers in the Second World War, have been incorporated into the armed forces.
    We sincerely hope that one day our politicians will be held to account for actively supporting and collaborating with Ukrainian fascists, and trampling on the glorious memory of the fighters against fascism who were our allies in the Second World War.

'Black Ribbon Day': more lies from the bourgeois camp!

By Nikos Mottas

The European Union  once again resorts to hideous anti-communism on the occasion of the so-called ‘European Day of Remembrance for victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (known as ‘Black Ribbon Day’), which is observed annually on 23rd August.
    In a joint statement, the vice-president of the EU Commission Vera Jourova and the EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders reproduce the same old anti-communist slanders about the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Without any respect for history, the EU officials repeat the blatant lie about the supposed “alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany”.
    In their statement, Jourova and Reynders shamelessly write that the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact “plunged Europe into darkness” and “led to the violation of the fundamental rights of millions of Europeans and it claimed the lives of millions more”.
    Once again the EU proves that anti-communism is a core part of its official ideology. The above statement by EU officials distorts history in order to vilify the Soviet Union and communism.
    Vera Jourova and Didier Reynders hide the fact that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact followed the 1938 Munich Agreement between Nazi Germany, Italy, Britain and France. The apologists of imperialism try to downgrade the significance of the 1938 Munich Agreement; however, it had a tremendous impact as an act of appeasement towards the Nazis. Following the agreement, Nazi Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and intensified their expansionist aggression towards Eastern Europe.
    The EU deliberately hides the fact that long before the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact, the Soviet Union tried many times to reach a defensive deal with Britain and France. Even a few months before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, on 23rd July 1939, the Soviets proposed the formation of a defence plan to Britain and France in case of a German attack; they refused, as long as the British had been secretly negotiating in London a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s representatives.
    What the EU and its bourgeois governments and parties are trying to do is to sow the seeds of anti-communism in the younger generations. That is why they blatantly distort history by shamelessly equating Communism with Nazism.
    The EU establishes “memorial days against totalitarianism” in order to hide that the only existing totalitarianism is the one of capitalist barbarity. Behind the rhetoric about “democracy” and “human rights”, the EU hides its participation in imperialist crimes, wars and interventions.
    But what kind of ‘democracy’ exists in Poland or the Baltic States where the communist parties face persecution, where communist symbols are banned, where the communists are being imprisoned?
    What ‘human rights’ does the EU defend when it participates in imperialist wars against the people of other countries (such as Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria), or when it promotes and sponsors openly fascist coups such as the one in Ukraine?
    The people of Europe must draw conclusions. The EU’s anti-communism goes hand-in-hand with the intensification of the attack against workers’ rights; it is connected to the strengthening of repression mechanisms in every member-state.
    Let the EU imperialists and their stooges – conservative, social democratic or liberals alike – be aware: Anti-communism shall not pass!

Why is the US conducting virus research in Eastern Ukraine?

by Theo Russell

Revelations by whistle-blowers are ringing alarm bells across Europe. Campaigners in Kharkov province, Eastern Ukraine, are appealing for international support to expose the work of US-financed bio-research labs in Merefa district, 10 miles south-west of the industrial city of Kharkov.

According to the Kharkov Ecological Monitoring Association (KEMA) and independent Kharkov journalists and bloggers, the laboratory complex was built by the US company Black & Watch, which has close ties with the Pentagon. The facility has been operating for several years and is officially called the Central Abstract Laboratory.

`KEMA’s source confirmed that in 2018 the lab carried out studies of influenza viruses with pathogens brought from the USA. Local staff were told that this research was to develop a so-called “universal, smart” vaccine, able to adapt to multiple virus mutations. These studies ended in early summer 2019 and all the results were “exported”.

The whistle-blowers also say they have evidence linking one of the laboratories with outbreaks of measles and diphtheria in Eastern Ukraine in 2018–2019.

The source also highlighted serious health and safety concerns at the lab. Water and electricity supplies were regularly cut due to local power cuts, including during major experiments. He said medical refrigerators were often turned off and adequate temperature ventilation conditions were often not maintained.

Last year some patients taking part in the lab’s medical experiments died, but details have been kept secret.

Strangely, the facility is guarded not by the Ukrainian police but by the National Bureau of Interpol in Ukraine.

In 2019 the laboratory collected biological samples and tested new drugs on residents of Kharkov, often homeless or low-income people. Attempts were made to give drugs being tested to state health and education providers, and even children's camps.

The Kharkov lab also carries out research on the ability of insects to carry dangerous pathogens including the Zika virus, West Nile Fever, Dengue Fever and others. In 2018 insects were released in a forest near the lab to study how the infected insects transmit the virus to animals.

A former employee of one of the biological laboratories located between the villages of Pesochin and Podvorki contacted KEMA anonymously and explained that the laboratory was working on normal research, but its real work was hidden from public view.

The laboratory’s work is under the direction of Melinda Haring, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Centre. The Atlantic Council was founded in 1961, is very close to NATO, and describes itself as “a non-partisan organisation that galvanises US leadership and engagement in the world, in partnership with allies and partners, to shape solutions to global challenges”.

Haring’s assistant Paul Niland is managing director of Pan Publishing and an active backer of the Kiev regime. He apparently oversees the ongoing research and co-ordinates the interaction of American and Ukrainian specialists.

The bio-labs are financed by the International Renaissance Foundation, part of the global network of ‘human rights and democracy’ organisations run by financier George Soros, with funds passing via the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Whilst KEMA’s source was still working in the laboratory, ex Health Minister Ulyana Suprun, her deputy Pavel Kovtonyuk and the head of the National Health Service of Ukraine Oleg Petrenko were personally involved in the project.

KEMA’s source also named Americans who have worked at the Kharkov facility, including senior researchers and professors from Vanderbilt University, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Indiana University School of Medicine, and several US hospitals.

One of these, Kartlos Kankadze, a Washington-based native of Tbilisi, is a pharmacist from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) who specialises in research on infectious diseases, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

KEMA has sent the evidence it has collected to ecological and health organisations in Europe and elsewhere, proposing joint research into the activities of the Kharkov bio-research labs.

According to KEMA: “We have sufficient information to start an investigation at the state level. However, given the complete absence of our country's sovereignty, the Ukrainian authorities will never take this step.”

Charilaos Florakis: The story of a Greek communist leader

by Nikos Mottas

Charilaos Florakis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1972–1991, passed away on 22^nd May 2005 at the age of 91. Florakis's life, indelibly tied to the struggles of the KKE, was devoted to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism.

Born in 1914 in Paliozoglopi, a small village in Thessaly, Charilaos Florakis joined the Greek Young Communist League (OKNE) in 1929. As an OKNE member and later as a student and active worker at the ‘TTT’, the Ministry of Posts, Telegraphs, Telephone Offices, he began his political activity during a politically turbulent period for Greece.

As a teenager, he felt the first signs of the ongoing class struggle in the Greek countryside of 1930s. A telegraph worker, he was a member of the TTT struggle committee active in union campaigns during the especially difficult circumstances of General Ioannis Metaxas’ fascist dictatorship.

Due to his union activity, he was transferred many times from town to town. Wherever he went however, young Charilaos worked to build clandestine groups of communists.

Guerrilla fighter

Florakis joined the resistance against the German occupation that began in 1941. In June 1941 he became a member of the KKE. He was amongst the organisers of the first mass strike in Nazi-occupied Europe, which took place in Athens in April 1942. At the same time, he joined the ranks of EAM-ELAS (National Liberation Movement – Greek National Liberation Army), going underground in May 1942.

As a member of the anti-fascist liberation movement in the Second World War, Florakis became a commander in the EAM-ELAS guerrilla army. From 1943 to 1945 he was promoted successively to the ranks of Captain and Major in the ELAS army. He participated in the bloody events of December 1944 against British imperialists and the Greek bourgeois administration. He was arrested in October 1945.

The struggle of the Democratic Army (DSE) against the Greek bourgeois forces and their imperialist allies was the most significant moment of class struggle in 20th century Greece. Charilaos Florakis had an active role in the 1946–1949 civil war as a senior officer in the Democratic Army, first as a Lieut-Colonel and later a Major-General in 1948. In September 1949, after the defeat of the DSE, he moved to the Soviet Union. Between 1950 and 1953 he studied at the MV Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, where he graduated with honours.

‘Captain Yiotis’ – his movement name – never submitted to ‘political correctness’. Well known not to mince his words in calling a spade a spade, he told journalist Christos Theocharatos: “Yes the Civil War was unavoidable because the domestic and foreign reactionaries had decided to subjugate and exterminate every patriotic and democratic resistance.

“We could have avoided it if we had simply waited to be arrested, tortured, humiliated and murdered. But wouldn’t this extermination, without resistance, be a unilateral civil war? The Civil War was a patriotic and democratic struggle, like the Resistance (in the Second World War), and not a fight for a regime. It was the continuation of the Resistance.”

For his political ideas and activity, as a communist and a Democratic Army commander, Florakis was persecuted by the Greek bourgeois state. He faced numerous trials and was imprisoned several times – but he would always manage to find the courage and transform his defence speeches in the courts into fierce tirades against his prosecutors.

In a testimony to the court in Larisa in April 1955, Florakis said: “Communists aren't those who have no homeland. Communists are simple people, hard-working people, having ties with the land they were born in…those who don't believe in homelands and who have no country are the plutocrats. Wealth gives them the ability to live in any place and any country they choose. The [German] Occupation proved, as well as the present situation does, who has a homeland, who loves her and who sacrifices himself for her freedom and prosperity.”

The accusations against him, the persecutions, the threats against his life, could never uproot from his mind his strong belief in the communist ideal, in the Communist Party, in the great values for which he fought. Addressing his prosecutors at the end of a trial, he said: “Personally – as I told you in the beginning – I am filled by the great ideals of communism. There is no power in the world that can oblige me to denounce them. For the realisation of the Party's policy, for the service of our People's interests, for Greece, I gladly offer all my powers and, without doubt, even the most valuable possession for a human being – my own life...”

Charilaos Florakis served a total of 18 years in the prisons of Greece's post-Civil War bourgeois state. He was imprisoned at the age of 40. He was released under conditions at 52, and then re-arrested and sent into exile at 53. In 1972, in the midst of the struggle against the Colonels’ dictatorship in Greece, he was elected First Secretary of the then-banned Communist Party and later General Secretary of the Central Committee.

He served as the General Secretary of KKE from 1972 until 1991, fighting with all his power for a Communist Party dedicated to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, and against any opportunist or revisionist deviation.

Staunch opponent of revisionism

Florakis’s role and stance against opportunism was particularly significant during the counter-revolutions of 1989–1991 in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Aleka Papariga, who succeeded him as General Secretary of the KKE, described his role: “In front of us, is the decisive contribution of Charilaos Florakis in 1990 in defence of the socialist system at the wide plenary of the Central Committee during the 13th Congress in 1991.

“He took the courageous stance of defying the mountains of lies against socialism and socialist ideology. He had – especially in the then extremely difficult and dark times – the solid belief that the world will change, that socialism will win. It isn't always easy to go 'against the flow'. It isn't always easy to remain firm when others are falling. And, even more, to pave new ways.”

Charilaos Florakis remained a consistent supporter of the important achievements of 20th century socialist construction. When Eurocommunists and revisionists were saluting the counter-revolutionary events in the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s, Florakis remained a staunch defender of the ideological heritage of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He knew that the counter-revolution was a negative setback for the international communist movement, but he was also deeply assured that it wasn’t the “end of history”.

“So, therefore, the overthrow in Eastern Europe is a 'triumph of Democracy' (ironically speaking)! But what powers were strengthened by this 'triumph’? The real democratic powers or those powers which, in the name of democracy, have literally come out against socialism? 'Triumph of Democracy' with the Communist Party outlawed! 'Triumph of Democracy' with new capabilities for imperialism's intervention! 'Triumph of Democracy' with unemployment, misery, hunger and crime!”

Charilaos Florakis never accepted the theory of the “end of history” that prominent bourgeois analysts and theoreticians, such as Francis Fukuyama, were promoting back then. More specifically, Florakis said: “Despite its metaphysical content it can't change reality. And the reality states that now, with the Soviet Union dissolved capitalism’s existing contradictions haven’t been weakened, but are getting stronger … Neither capitalism is eternal, nor the end of communism has come, for the simple reason that the people will not renounce the vision of a just society and won't abandon the struggle for socialism.”

Charilaos Florakis died on 22^nd May 2005 at the age of 91, in Athens. His funeral was attended by thousands of people, members and supporters of the KKE, communists and non-communists, young and old, working men and women. According to his own wish, he was buried at Agios Ilias, a quiet mountainous place surrounded by forest, close to his birthplace, Paliozoglopi.

Florakis was one of the 20^th century’s most significant figures in the Greek and European communist movement. A fighter, a leader, an extraordinary personality, but most of all, an unwavering communist who remained loyal to his ideas until the end.

In a speech in 1989, at the age of 75, Charilaos said: “If, like Faust, I had to restart my life, what would I do? I would become a communist once again and I would fight for a better world and, again, I would struggle – with less or more mistakes, doesn't matter – for the homeland, for democracy, for social justice, for Socialism.”

Memory eternal, comrade Charilaos Florakis.

IDOC