Dear comrades,

Exactly 80 years ago, here in this city, in Berlin, the Red Flag flew, the banner of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, which had been raised triumphantly in the Reichstag on 1 May 1945, marking the defeat of the so-called “invincible armies of the Nazi German state”. Germany surrendered unconditionally at dawn on 9 May 1945.

The KKE honours all those who fought and gave their lives for the defeat of fascism and the imperialist Axis of states that constituted it at that time.

We honour and defend from blatant distortion the enormous contribution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Red Army, which bore the brunt of the war, as well as the Communist Parties all over the world, which led the national liberation and anti-imperialist struggles. The KKE is proud to have been the inspiration, organizer and lifeblood of the great National Liberation Front (EAM).

The victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany and its allies was achieved thanks to:

• The role of the Soviet workers’ power in creating and organizing the defensive shield of the Soviet Union.
• The advantages of the socialization of the means of production and the central planning of the economy.
• The leading role of the masses, with the working class at the forefront.
• The role of the Communist Party as the revolutionary vanguard of the working class.

All this is a huge historical lesson for the present and future of the revolutionary movement.

The salvation of the Soviet Union would not have been possible if, in the 20 years after the end of the civil war that followed the October Revolution, it had not covered an enormous distance on the road of consciously planned socio-economic and cultural development, of socialist construction.

The Soviet epic is a legacy for all those who struggle to establish socialism-communism. It does not belong to governments like Putin’s, pillars of Russian imperialism, who use 9 May to ideologically reinforce the capitalist restoration in the USSR, appropriating the sacrifices of millions of communist men and women and concealing who created the Soviet achievement and for what reasons.

On the other hand, the bourgeois classes of the countries of Euro-Atlantic imperialism, NATO, and the EU, which are currently clashing with the Russian capitalists on Ukrainian soil over mineral resources, energy, pipelines, fertile land, market shares, etc., are trying to equate the USSR with today’s bourgeois Russia, which is their own creation. Thus, they are trying to erase 9 May 1945 from memory, distort its content and reverse the historical truth by invoking the Russian invasion in Ukraine. However, their frenzy during the last three years of the war cannot hide the fact that they were already on this path, because the defamation of the USSR, the Red Army, and the partisan movements has been a part of their anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda for years. Thus, they try to conceal the organic connection between the monstrosity of Nazism - fascism and monopoly capitalism and the great responsibility of all bourgeois —liberal and social-democratic— parties. This deliberate dirty campaign is spearheaded by the capitalist union of European countries, the reactionary European Union, which before the war went ahead to rename 9 May as “Europe Day”!

Dear comrades,

The KKE studies its history and the history of the International Communist Movement. It draws necessary and useful conclusions, including on the causes, conditions, and consequences of the imperialist World War II.

Therefore, here at this timely event of the European Communist Action, I would like to briefly touch upon certain issues which, in the KKE’s view, are related to the current ideological and political tasks of the Communist Parties, in the current conditions of intensified inter-imperialist contradictions and the attempt of the bourgeois classes to ideologically co-opt the peoples into their plans.

FIRST: Fascism emerges from the bowels of the capitalist system and is not merely the result of a form of management, such as neo-liberal policies, as the opportunist and social-democratic forces of Europe claim. It is a “disease” of the capitalist system and must be fought as such. It is one of the forms used by the monopolies to exercise power. It also defends capitalist ownership of the means of production, the exploitation of man by man. Particularly under the conditions of capitalist crisis, poverty, unemployment and the decay of the bourgeois ruling parties, the bourgeoisie utilizes the Nazi parties in various ways as a bulwark to serve its interests. It utilizes Nazi–fascist activity, which, with its extreme nationalism and alleged “solidarity”, casts a net over the popular forces, the unemployed, the ruined petty-bourgeois strata and co-opts them.

That is why the KKE, with more than a century of experience, struggles, and sacrifices for the people and socialism, emphasizes the need for a stable ideological and political front against any form of dictatorship of capital, such as Nazism and fascism. It underlines that fascism was never really an opponent of capitalism, but rather an expression of it. It underlines the relevance of what the great German communist thinker Bertolt Brecht wrote: “Fascism can only be resisted as capitalism, as the most naked, brazen, offensive, and deceitful form of capitalism. How does someone propose to speak the truth about fascism, to which he is opposed, if he does not propose to speak out against capitalism, which produces it?”

SECOND: The “matrix” of World War I is the same as the matrix of World War II, and of the wars that have taken place in Ukraine and the Middle East in the decades between the end of World War II and today. And this “matrix” is the capitalist relations of production, the capitalist system in its imperialist stage. In this context, the bourgeois classes still utilize nationalist and even fascist forces in their war plans, as we see with the admirers of Bandera and the Azov Battalions in Ukraine, or with the “Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics”, named after the fascist philosopher, at a large state university in the Russian capital.

As has been known for many years, the efforts of the USSR to form an anti-Hitler front were in vain. Only when the tide turned in the World War II (after the Battle of Stalingrad) did Britain and the USA form an anti-Hitler alliance with the USSR. This alliance did not change the nature of the war. It remained imperialist. And it also remained unjust to many forces in the anti-Hitler alliance.

We believe that World War II was just only from the perspective of the USSR, which fought to defend the working class and socialist power, and from the perspective of the resistance movements, which fought against the fascist occupation for the survival and progress of their people.

For Britain, the USA and the forces that bear their own responsibility for the emergence and rise of fascism in Germany, the war was unjust and imperialist because it was aimed at preserving and expanding the role they had secured in the imperialist system thanks to their victory in World War I. For the other side, of course, the fascist Axis, the war was imperialist and unjust because it aimed to overturn the balance of power established after World War I. Both rival imperialist alliances competed equally to secure their profits and geopolitical interests. Both are guilty of grave crimes against humanity. For example, the fascist Axis was in the forefront of mass executions and purges, but the US and Britain bombed Dresden and used nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without any military necessity, only to warn the USSR and to impose their own political agenda on post-war developments.

For all the bourgeois forces that took part in World War II, it was an unjust war! This conclusion is particularly valuable today, as various bourgeois forces, from the Russian government, which claims to be fighting Ukrainian fascism, to the German Social Democracy, which claims to be fighting the racist, pro-fascist AFD, wrap themselves in the mantle of “anti-fascism”, trying to hide the real predatory objectives of the belligerent sides in the imperialist war being waged in Ukraine.

THIRD: Unfounded parallels are being drawn today, causing confusion, as new global conflicts arise.

For example, some are trying to draw comparisons between today's China and the USSR during World War II, although it is obvious that capitalist relations have long prevailed in China and that it is now competing with the USA for supremacy in the international imperialist system.

Others are reproducing the division of bourgeois states into “fascist” and “democratic”, which, in our view, is erroneous, and which appeared after the 7^th Congress of the Communist International (CI). We have assessed that the 7^th Congress of the CI, with its guidelines, completely separated the “power” of finance capital from the interests of industrial capital. Similarly, it completely separated the capitalist states into fascist and democratic states. As a result of this division, the alliance of the labour and communist movement with a section of the bourgeois forces and states was elevated to ideology, and class readiness against the opposing class was weakened.

Today, there are some within the international communist movement who use the term “fascist” to describe some of the strongest imperialist powers, such as the USA and the EU, which “export” fascism to other countries. Of course, after the election of Trump in the USA and his close contacts with the Russian leadership, the supporters of this false distinction are in a state of confusion.

In reality, dividing the states of the international imperialist system into those that are pro-fascist and warmongering and those that are not, hides the root cause of the emergence and strengthening of the fascist current, which lies in monopoly capitalism itself, even within each country. Furthermore, calls to form “anti-fascist fronts” in a classless direction, i.e., in alliances without social-class criteria, together with all “progressive and honest people”, are ultimately detrimental to the communist movement. The same applies to the various so-called “anti-fascist fora” and “anti-fascist internationals” supported by bourgeois government forces. This attitude disarms sections of the communist movement and the working class, leads them to abandon their historical mission and adopt a line of supposedly “purifying” imperialism from “fascist forces”. Basically, in the name of fighting fascism, this opens the slippery slope to collaboration with opportunism, social democracy and the bourgeoisie or sections of it in each country. It opens the way for siding with one imperialist or another, i.e.  the workers’ movement will find itself supporting certain imperialist forces in a regional or generalized war on the grounds that the others are “fascist”, thus putting the class, workers’, communist movement under a false flag.

FOURTH: Problems of ideological and strategic unity manifested themselves throughout the CI regarding the nature of the revolution, the nature of the coming war following the rise of fascism in Germany, and the attitude toward social democracy. The dissolution of the CI (May 1943), despite the problems of unity it had and regardless of whether it could have been maintained or not, deprived the International Communist Movement of both a centre and the potential to elaborate its revolutionary strategy in a coordinated way, so as to transform the struggle against imperialist war and foreign occupation into a struggle for power, which is a joint task of all CPs under national conditions.

FIFTH: The communist parties can use the vital space created by the intra-bourgeois and inter-imperialist contradictions to develop their activity only if they have a clear understanding of the common, anti-labour and anti-people nature of all bourgeois factions and imperialist alliances and do not deviate from the goal of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist power. They must maintain their ideological, political and organizational independence. Otherwise, they will aggravate and perpetuate the division within the working class and its allies into opposing bourgeois and imperialist camps.

Dear comrades,

Concluding this brief introductory speech on behalf of the Communist Party of Greece, I would like to emphasize that our Party does not undermine the current difficult conditions, the negative international correlation of forces or the crisis in the international communist movement. However, history teaches us that the peoples have the power to face the difficulties and the negative correlation of  forces, and they can emerge victorious! The outcome of the war 80 years ago was proof of this.

For those who today choose the path of compromise, the path of integration into the system, Lenin’s words in the newspaper “Iskra”, founded in 1900 while in political exile here in Germany [in Munich], should serve as a reminder: “From a spark the flame will flare up”, taken from a poem by the revolutionary Decembrist Alexander Odoevsky to Alexander Pushkin.

In the midst of the storm of the counterrevolution, imperialist wars, and capitalist crises,  we, the parties of the European Communist Action, are called upon today to preserve this spark, because the future of humanity is not capitalism, but the new world, socialism!

09.05.2025