The Europarliament Group of the KKE on the dangerous developments in Ukraine

In a letter addressed to the President of the Europarliament, Martin Schulz, the Europarliament group of the KKE has condemned the adoption of a reactionary law imposing Mass Media censorship in Ukraine as well as the initiative of a Czech MEP, known for his anticommunist activity. The letter is as follows:

"With the present letter we would like, first of all, to denounce the new, reactionary law of the Ukrainian government, which imposes a regime of censorship on the Mass Media, publishing, films and every cultural and artistic creation, in the name of "protecting national security" and preventing the "fomenting ethnic hatred." This law constitutes another dangerous element of the politics of the forces that seized power after the intervention of the USA-EU-NATO in Ukraine, which took place in the midst of competition with Russia and the antipopular schemes of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie.

This is another strike of the Ukrainian government against the people; supported by fascist forces, the government continues to bomb Donbas and has banned the CP of Ukraine, while abductions, persecution and threats against communists and other workers and racist murderous attacks by fascist shock troops continue.

G. Marinos-Speech at Kiev, May Day 2015

The May 1 rally of communists and veterans of the antifascist war was held in the Ukrainian capital in an atmosphere of intense repression, provocation and police intimidation. The delegation of the KKE, comprised of G. Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE and Elisseos Vagenas, member of the CC and Responsible for the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE, was in Kiev at the invitation of the CP Ukraine.

Speaking at the event, G. Marinos noted the following:

Dear comrades,

The CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), thousands of members and friends of the party and the Communist Youth (ΚΝΕ), thousands of workers, express their internationalist solidarity with the CP of Ukraine, with the communist men and women of your country and decisively denounce anticommunism, the wave of persecution that is being organized by the government, by the Ukrainian authorities.

We denounce the anticommunist law 2558 that was recently passed in the Ukrainian parliament and we demand its annulment.

A Response to Dialogos Media on allegations against the KKE concerning mining in Halkidiki

In a dialogue with Dialogos media, a site associated, among other things, with truth-out.org (and, it unfortunately appears, with Dimitris Kazakis' chauvinist-nationalist and intensely anti-communist groupuscule EPAM), I pointed out that, mysteriously, Michael Nevradakis's otherwise commendable piece on SYRIZA seemed to suffer from the same amnesiac symptoms as The Guardian and Foreign Policy regarding the very existence, for the past 97 years, of a left party in Greece called KKE. Mr. Nevradakis had somewhat surrealistically limited alternatives to SYRIZA that are not Golden Dawn to EPAM, which did not even participate in the 2015 elections, ANTARSYA, which received 0.64% of the vote,  and "Den Plirono" (I won't pay), which also did not participate in the elections, and which is a single-cause movement rather than a party.

The reader can judge on their own the civilities I received as a response to my query on the motivations of such oblivion (I was subsequently blocked as a nuisance), but this piece concerns a particular such civility, which different "left" groupuscules in Greece have been trying to circulate abroad, namely, that in Dialogos' words, the KKE "supports destructive mining activities", and is in fact an ally of Eldorado Gold and its Greek affiliate, Hellenic Gold. I promised a response, which will restrict itself purely to the cataloguing of a number of facts -- as always, substantiated by the relevant documentation. Any more serious engagement has been unfortunately preempted by the very obvious anti-communist animus of the website, though this is an animus whose barely rational character those of us familiar with EPAM's chief, Kazakis, are quite familiar with.

1st May 1944-30 November 2014, Kaisariani

Announcement

On 27/4/1944 Communist bandits ambushed and murdered, in unmanly fashion, a German general and three of his entourage in Molaoi, Sparta. Many German soldiers were injured.

In retaliation, we shall:

1. Shoot 200 Communists on 1/5/1944,

2. Shoot all the men the German troops encounter on Molaoi, on the way to Sparta, in the surrounding villages.

Under the influence of this crime, Greek volunteers [Nazi collaborators] have willingly murdered 100 more Communists.

The Military Commander of Greece.

***

Historian Menelaos Haralambides on the Kaisariani executions:

Delegation of KKE joins May Day celebration in Kiev

On Thursday, 30 April 2015, a Delegation of the Central Committee of the KKE, composed of Giorgos Marinos, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of KKE, and Elissaios Vagenas, member of the Central Committee and Cordinator of the Department of International Relations of the CC of KKE, will depart for Kiev, after the invitation of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

The KKE Delegation will participate in Labor May Day activities organized in Kiev by the CP of Ukraine, a few days after the Parliament ratified the unacceptable law that equates communism and fascism and that forbids communist symbols and the propagation of communist ideology.

902, trans. Lenin Reloaded

KKE Parliamentary question on Ukraine statements by Min. Kotzias

KKE MPs Giorgos Marinos, Liana Kanelli and Thanasis Pafilis have submitted the following Parliamentary question:

«During his recent visit to the USA, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Kotzias stated, after meeting with American counterpart John Kerry (Washington, D.C, 20/4/2015), that he informed his American colleague of the "aid we provide to Ukraine at present."

This statement comes at a moment when:

- The Ukrainian Parliament has approved an anti-historical law that equates fascism and communism and uses this as a basis to obstruct the activity of communists and the propagation of communist ideas.

- Historically legitimated local fascists, belonging to the so-called Ukraine Liberation Army, through another law.

- Dmitro Yarosh, head of the Nazi organization "Right Sector", is appointed as consultant to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The European Parliament Group of KKE denounces the escalation of the attempts to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine and condemns the anti-communist persecutions by the Ukrainian government

The ongoing acts by the reactionary Ukrainian government which, with a law it voted on, attempts to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine, while at the same time cooperating openly with fascist parties and their armed gangs, are condemned by the European Parliament Group of the KKE through a Question of the MEP, Kostas Papadakis to the High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the EU Commission, F. Mogherini. The question highlights the following:

"After the fiasco in which the trial to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine developed in, the government rushed defiantly, shortly before the 9th of May -the 70th anniversary of the Antifascist Victory of the Peoples - to pass a law that, ignorant of history and based on the unacceptable notion promoted by the EU, equates fascism and communism and calls to "prohibit their propaganda". The law aims only on the actions of the communists and the fighters who opposed against the imperialist intervention of the EU - US and NATO in Ukraine. At the same as the trial to outlaw the Communist Party of Ukraine is pending and there was recently a request for the prosecution of its President Petro Simonienko, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government is by law making heroes out of the fascists of the so-called Ukrainian Liberation Army, which acted in World War II. The reactionary government of Ukraine is at the same time using fascist parties and their armed criminal organizations, as shown by the recent appointment of Dmytro Yarosh, head of the Nazi organization "Right Sector", at the position of adviser of the Ministry of Defence.

Letter of KKE GS Koutsoumbas to Ukraine President Poroshenko

Thursday, 16 April 2015

To the President of Ukraine Piotr Poroshenko

Mr. President,

On 9 April 2015, one month before the 70th anniversary of the antifascist victory, the Parliament of your country approved Law 2558, "on the condemnation of communist and nazi totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the prohibition of their propaganda and symbols." On the same day, the Parliament of your country approved another law, which glamorizes the local Nazi collaborators.

These decisions are a provocation for those who fought against the fascist monster. They are blasphemy against the millions of people who gave their lives in the struggle against fascism during the Second Imperialist World War. They aim at the unacceptable equation of the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany, whilst the contribution of the USSR, under communist leadership, in bearing the principal burden of the war against fascism, is well known. These decisions are an insult against the communists of other countries, such as Greece, who stood at the forefront of the struggle against fascism and imperialism, for popular rights and freedoms.

Statement of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE on the murder of comrade Hani Jbara

The KKE condemns in the most categorical manner the cowardly murder of comrade Hani Jbara, member of the CC of the Syrian CP, by an armed criminal organization.

The KKE expresses its condolences with the Syrian Communist party as well as with the family and friends of comrade Hani.

13.03.2015

KKE

KKE "sectarianism" (Pt. 1)

My google search on the words "KKE" and "sectarianism" yielded a stunning 823,000 results. It's as if there exists some kind of Word feature that inserts the second word after every use of the first: the KKE is "sectarian" with the same phrasal predictability that the sky is "blue", the summer is "hot", or that kittens are "cute".

But then, what does "sectarian" really mean?

In an article entitled "Understanding the Greek Communists" (as in "Understanding the sexual rites of Kiribati", or "Understanding bipolar disorder"), published in the inevitable Jacobin, Nicos Lountos glosses it this way:

The reality is that the KKE has been paying for its sectarianism more than its radicalism. The KKE not only opposes common action with other political forces on the Left, but it’s stood apart from the broader mass movement in recent years.

KKE "sectarianism", then, appears to involve two nominal features: a. the refusal of collaboration with other political parties allegedly on the Left and b. the refusal to participate in the "broader mass movement."

The KKE denounces the anti-communist persecution against the CP of Ukraine

The KKE carried out an intervention in the EU Parliament’s Foreign Affairs’ Committee in order to denounce the persecution of the CP of Ukraine and the dissolution of its parliamentary group. This committee carried out a special meeting, where the President of the Ukrainian Parliament, V. Groysman, was the central speaker.

The MEP of the KKE, Kostas Papadakis, stressed in his speech: “Mr Groysman in your country, which the Chair E. Brok in his presentation characterized as a country that could be an example to be emulated, the reactionary government that is supported by fascist forces dissolved the Parliamentary Group of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

In the same country, the President of the Administrative Court of Kiev that is conducting the Ukrainian government’s political persecution against the CP of Ukraine, resigned and made accusations that on the 16th and 17th of February he and other members of the judiciary were subject to searches in their offices, to searches of their computers and personal items. The president characterized these acts as being illegal and refused to bow to the pressure. 10 other judges of the same court demanded exemption from the specific trial in support of the President of the court.

Invisible Aspects of Opportunism: Semioticization

As is the case more broadly in postmodernism, the history of the communist movement is transformed for opportunism into an object of semiotic cannibalism. Cannibalism is of central importance for the semiotic politics of opportunism: anthropologically, it is part of the triumph over a defeated opponent; similarly, the opportunistic cannibalization of the communist past is a sign of triumph over historical communism. At the same time, cannibalism is a means of "incorporating" the communist Other, transforming him/her into something harmless and manipulable. Cannibalism is both murder and mourning over murder, an attempt to retain the trace of the now harmless dead as a "souvenir" -- hence the horrifying cannibalistic habit of retaining "souvenirs" of victims -- shrunken heads, teeth, hair, etc. Similarly, in opportunism's own semiotic cannibalism, communist history is "mourned" as a trophy, as a violently disjointed memory of a now dismembered (precisely into "signs") body (remember the exemplary anticommunist "trophy" of the 90s, a piece from the Berlin wall). Like actual cannibalism, semiotic cannibalism suggests both sadistic violence and imaginary identification with the object of this violence (I transform the Other, whom I swallow, into myself), and hence its character is both sadistic and narcissistic: it is an extreme form of simultaneous hatred for the Other and narcissistic libido so intense that it transforms this hated Other into a part of one's  own Ego.

Cornelius Castoriades on December, 1944

The remainder of the Trotskyist delusion that was burdening us and that we had not yet denounced was the idea that Stalinist parties had become bourgeois, just as 40 or 50 years ago, reformist Social Democracy had become bourgeois.

The hour of truth came in December, 1944. What kind of bourgeois or reformist party was this, that -- were we to set aside the dark and not entirely known story of the hesitations and stupidity with which the Stalinist leadership fought the battle of Athens -- was trying to take power by force of arms, slaughtered everyone and everything, etc? And what was it that mobilized the masses following it? It was at this point that the only political disagreement I ever had with Spiros [Stinas; major Trotskyist and anti-KKE militant] occured.

Maybe it was so he could salvage something out of the classical theoretical schema, maybe because the situation for someone bred in Marxism was monstrously incomprehensible, maybe because the situation was tragic -- seeing the little people come downtown from Kaisariani, from Pagkrati, from Peristeri, and being ready to die, and knowing that what they are dying for is the creation of concentration camps and a Stalinist dictatorship. At any rate, for one of these reasons, after December Spiros argued for a certain while --I don't know if the text in question is extant-- that this was an idiosyncratic military movement that echoed the dictatorial tendencies of the military personnel of ELAS. For me, on the contrary, as I have written anyway, the December events were, in a way, the Revelation, not of John, but of Joseph...and of ... Nicolai. These events, the politics of the party, the stance of the masses, were totally indigestible by classical theoretical schemata -- not only Trotskyist, but not even Leninist, and even, were we to be precise, Marxist schemata of viewing society and history. They showed where Stalinism was heading; it was clear as daylight that, had the Stalinists taken power, they would have installed a purely Stalinist regime like the one in Russia, and would have sooner or later purged the bourgeois and the petit bourgeois and the left-wing dissidents, as well as anyone who did not become their servile subject. This, of course, and I say this without arrogance, was corroborated en masse by what happened later (we didn't know it then) in Yugoslavia and in other countries, whether there was a Russian army or not; simply by virtue of the power of Stalinist parties, which of course, in conditions of military conquest and occupation, in conditions of national liberation struggle developed, as they later did in other countries (Vietnam and elsewhere), a gigantic military machine, on which they based themselves to take power.

Speech at the Athens Law School, 1989.
Translated by Lenin Reloaded.

We recruited some people. It was called New Times--New Era, rather. And then as time passed, it turned out that the Greek CP’s attitude was not a deviation but instead was following the line of the Third International--which, moreover, was disbanded soon thereafter (1943) by Stalin. Practically everyone abandoned us and left for the CP. And for my part, I joined the Greek Trotskyist party, the most left-wing faction, directed at the time by an extraordinary man named Spiros Stinas, who died a little less than two years ago--a hero and at the same time a secular saint, who was persecuted his whole life long and who surely almost never ate a hot meal for twenty years. I was active with them until the end of my stay in Greece, that is to say, until the end of ’45, and I never had any differences with Stinas, except on the occasion of the Stalinist coup d’état of December ’44--he thought that it was a military coup d’état, which in my view was meaningless; I, on the contrary, thought, not to go into details, that this attempt at a coup d’état was aimed at establishing [instaurer] in Greece what would later be called a people’s democracy, that is to say, the seizure of power by the Stalinists in order to establish a Russian-type society, with, of course, the necessary local variations. 

Interview at Agora International, 1990.

Brief biographical information on Cornelius Castoriades: A year after the events of December 1944, Cornelius Castoriades left Greece on board of the British ship "Mataroa", for Paris. He was quickly hired by the OECD. Most Greeks today think that he left because he was an ultra-revolutionary.

On his connections with Raymond Aron and other figures of the "anticommunist left", as well as the fascist Boris Souvarine, consult:

Christophe Premat

Annie Lacroix-Riz

Benoit Challand

Announcement of the P.O of the CC of KKE on New EU Sanctions Against Russia

The Press Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has announced the following on the subject of the new sanctions of the EU against Russia:

«Today, the European Union made public the new "black list" of persons of public office in Russia on whom sanctions are imposed, using as justification their involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Among those "punished" by the EU is Valery Raskin,  an MP of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and the Vice Chariperson of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

It is clear that, like their predecessors, the new sanctions, imposed after the implementation of the Ukraine ceasefire agreement, do not contribute to any resolution of the problems of the Ukraine crisis.  Furthermore, these sanctions belie the arguments of representatives of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, that it was thanks to their stance that new sanctions against Russia were not imposed. It is factually proven that the SYRIZA-ANEL government did not only agree to the same sanctions against Russia with which the previous, ND-PASOK government had agreed, but also to their perpetuation and further escalation».

16 February 2015.

902

Text translated by Lenin Reloaded.

Enemies

I have many enemies; but this enemy is different. This enemy tells everyone, everywhere, that he is really my friend. Well-intentioned strangers congratulate me: "Ah, what a great friend you have! And how alike you look!" As soon as I try to say it is not so, that he was never my friend, they look at me skeptically. "How rude, how ungrateful a friend he is!", they think. Sometimes, I don't bother to say anything. I just sit there, broiling with anger at the well-intentioned and at myself. What kinds of well-intentioned people are these, who don't know how to tell apart my friends from my enemies?

On the EU's Provocative Answer to KKE regarding Ban on CP Of Ukraine, 17/9/2014

The EU’s provocative answer to the KKE regarding the attempt to outlaw the CP of Ukraine

17/9/2014

The response of the High Representative of Foreign Policy of the EU to the question of the EU parliamentary group of the KKE in relation to the attempts to ban the CP of Ukraine was provocative. The EU parliamentary group of the KKE made the following reference in its press statement:

“The EU’s full support for the reactionary Ukrainian government and its aim to outlaw the CP of Ukraine and to escalate its persecutions against communists has been confirmed by the High Representative of the EU’s Foreign Policy C. Aston, with her answer to the Question of the EU parliamentary group of the KKE, which denounced the government’s persecution of the CP of Ukraine.

The statement of the MEP of the KKE, Kostas Papadakis, on the trial to outlaw the CP of Ukraine

The trial regarding the outlawing of the CP of Ukraine began on Wednesday (4/2) in Kiev. The accusers of the CP of Ukraine in the trial are the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Information Agency. They accuse the CP of Ukraine of “divisive propaganda”. Similar acts of persecution against its cadres and members are underway all over the country with baseless and untenable accusations, which are refuted and exposed by the party’s cadres. A representative of the KKE, Kostas Papadakis, member of the CC and MEP, attended the trial at the invitation of the CP of Ukraine. 

At the press conference organized by the CP of Ukraine for the Ukrainian mass media, K. Papadakis noted the following: 

 “Today’s trial, which will continue, is just a part of a barrage of persecutions that is underway at the expense of the CP of Ukraine, and also against its individual members and cadres. The persecution and machinations to outlaw the communists and their activity are unacceptable and reprehensible. They attack the people themselves and their rights. The communists of Ukraine made a great contribution to the struggle of the Ukrainian people, to all their achievements, both during the Great Anti-fascist Victory of the Peoples and also during the years of socialist construction, as well as today.