Dimitrios Patelis | Founding Member of the Revolutionary Theory Group (Greece)
Dear comrades!
Allow me, on behalf of the World Anti-imperialist Platform and the Revolutionary Theory Group, to thank the Organizing Committee for its initiative and for the honor of inviting me to participate in such an important International Scientific Conference.
The conference “73rd Anniversary of the Victory in the Korea War: Lessons of History and Resistance to US Imperialism at the Present Stage” is by no means an event of a merely academic nature.
On 27 July 2026, our beloved heroic people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) celebrate the 73rd anniversary of their Victory in the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953). The Korean People’s Army, under the command of the respected Comrade Kim Il Sung, relying upon the fraternal support of the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, delivered a decisive and unshakable blow to the armed forces of the United States, South Korea, and the combined forces of approximately twenty-one countries operating under the banner of the United Nations, which had intended to destroy the DPRK. Shoulder to shoulder, Soviet, Chinese, and Korean soldiers defended this Great Victory and safeguarded the freedom of the DPRK in battle against the superior forces of imperialism led by the United States.
In the summer of 1950, the United States, through blatant manipulation of the United Nations, launched a military intervention on the Korean Peninsula with the aim of suppressing the national liberation and socialist revolution of the people under the leadership of the communists of the DPRK. Twenty-one countries participated in this murderous imperialist intervention. Standing against this war were the communist internationalists, the Soviet Union, all of the early socialist countries, and all anti-imperialist and progressive forces. A total of 10,255 Greek soldiers and officers, for the most part through compulsory deployment, were sent to participate in this imperialist mission. The losses of the Greek Expeditionary Corps amounted to 182 killed and 610 wounded.
In May 1951, a mutiny broke out aboard one of the American ships transporting Greek and Turkish soldiers to Korea. The soldiers attempted to attack the Americans who comprised the ship’s crew. During the subsequent repression, the leading Greek junior lieutenant was killed.
On 22 January 1951, the Greek internationalist soldiers Stavros Kassandras and Nikos Pitsikas were executed for refusing to fight against the revolution of the heroic Korean people and for refusing to become instruments of the military machine of American imperialism. On 18 December 1950, the Extraordinary Military Tribunal of Athens sentenced them to death on charges of treason. The puppet bourgeois regime of the United States carried out the sentence with extraordinary haste.
At the beginning of February 1951, 176 Greek soldiers joined the Korean People’s Army!
To understand the heroism of these soldiers, it must be remembered that only on 30 August 1949, the revolutionary communist Democratic Army of Greece had been defeated by the occupation army of the United States and its local collaborators, many of whom had only a few years earlier been loyal collaborators of the Nazi occupiers. Tens of thousands of fighters were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and sent to concentration camps, while thousands were executed by the counter-revolutionary regime established by the United States. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and all progressive organizations were forced into illegality and subjected to relentless persecution. The heroic actions of the two executed internationalists and the 176 soldiers who deserted the imperialist forces and joined the Korean People’s Army as fighters for the revolution were carried out spontaneously because the organizational apparatus of the KKE had been virtually destroyed following the brutal repression.
These historical events testify both to the similarities between the history and heroic struggles of the peoples of Greece, Korea, the USSR, and the People’s Republic of China, and to the fraternal internationalist ties linking the revolutionary forces of our countries. Therefore, we must preserve and further develop these ties, especially at this critical stage of the escalation of the Third World War, with the military operations conducted by the US-NATO-EU axis in Ukraine (where more than 55 countries are involved), and amid the explosive situation developing on the fronts of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan.
After its victory in the Korea War, the DPRK, through state economic plans (three-year plans and five-year plans), achieved a rapid reconstruction of its economy and industrialization. Over the post-war decades, the country was transformed from an agrarian nation devastated by war into a dynamically developing industrial state with universal literacy and a comprehensive distribution system.
The experience of socialist construction in the DPRK, particularly its emphasis on self-reliance and the anti-imperialist struggle, exerted considerable influence upon the international left-wing movement, especially in the countries of the “Third World.” The DPRK stands as an important practical example of socialist construction alongside the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
These historical events have acquired particular significance under present circumstances. In 2022, the “Special Military Operation” began in Ukraine. Since then, the scale and intensity of the Third World War have continued to escalate.
At the end of 2024, at the height of the fiercest fighting, elite units of the DPRK Special Operations Forces arrived to assist and were immediately deployed to the Kursk direction. This became an act of the highest historical significance and a moral continuation of the traditions established in 1953. Just as Soviet soldiers once defended the skies and land of Korea, so today’s Korean fighters stood in defense of the land of Kursk. Korean soldiers demonstrated iron discipline, flawless training, and extraordinary steadfastness.
The heroic participation of the DPRK Special Operations Forces in the Ukrainian theater of military operations against the proxy forces of the Kiev Nazis and the more than 55 countries of the contemporary imperialist axis led by the United States gives practical substance and dynamic prospects to the emerging front of anti-imperialist and early socialist forces, provided that such cooperation is given appropriate continuity and depth.
While the conflict with Russia in Ukraine has continued for more than four years in the form of a protracted war of attrition, on 13 June 2025, the United States and Israel launched operations against Iran.
A further escalation occurred in Latin America on 3 January 2026, when the United States carried out air strikes against several targets in northern Venezuela, including the capital, Caracas, as part of a mafia-style operation aimed at kidnapping the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. This marked an escalation of aggression throughout Latin America, with particular emphasis on the Caribbean Basin and, ultimately, on Cuba―the first country of early socialism on the American continent. On 28 February 2026, the most aggressive circles of the financial oligarchy unleashed the military machine of the United States and the Zionist entity―the puppet state of Israel―with the objective of carrying out coordinated military strikes against Iran, thereby unleashing a major armed conflict.
The participation of the DPRK Special Operations Forces in the Ukrainian theater of military operations and the victorious Iranian counteroffensive marked a qualitative leap that changed the character of the war.
As a result of these developments, the escalation of the Third World War is not merely linear, quantitative, or territorial in nature. It represents a qualitative and fundamental escalation. Never before in history have such significant components of the military machine of the United States and imperialism as a whole―including its naval and air forces, as well as dozens of military bases and infrastructure facilities located in strategically important satellite countries―come under attack. Never before has the Zionist entity suffered strikes of such scale and strategic importance. For the first time, we have witnessed such a massive retaliatory blow against the vanguard, the forward infrastructure, and the advanced force-projection positions of the Axis. For the first time during the Third World War, we are also witnessing the establishment of real―not imaginary or blurred―”red lines,” which are not gradually softened or abandoned through concessions under pressure from the aggressor but, on the contrary, are upheld in a principled, coordinated, systematic, and resolute manner by the defending forces launching counterattacks.
The attempt by the United States and Israel to achieve a rapid victory through the elimination of Iran’s leadership (following the model of the attempted kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela) failed completely. Iran demonstrated the resilience of its political system and its capacity for organized resistance, presenting an example of effective anti-imperialist resistance and marking the transfer of the strategic initiative to Iran and the “Axis of Resistance.” This gives hope to the global anti-imperialist movement and demonstrates that peoples possessing a profound culture and a determined will to resist are capable of standing against even overwhelmingly superior forces.
The above-mentioned qualitative leap in the Third World War also reveals the crisis of organizational weakness within the anti-imperialist pole that is still in the process of formation and exposes the structural problems of the forces of resistance:
• the absence of unity (for example, India, which condemned Iran and cooperated with the United States, or Russia, which has made contradictory statements);
• the vacillation and self-interest of oligarchic circles;
• the danger that such disunity may ultimately nullify military successes.
Imperialism exploits every weakness. The aggressors (the United States, Israel, NATO, and the European Union) act methodically, yet their “elites” are mired in corruption, pedophilia, ritual killings, and impunity (as illustrated by the Epstein scandal). This deprives them of any moral right to leadership. Strikes against schools, hospitals, scientists, and civilians are not mistakes but acts of symbolic terror reflecting the depth of their moral degradation.
This war is undoubtedly imperialist, neo-colonial, predatory, and manifestly unjust on the part of the aggressive axis led by the United States. The vileness of this war is further aggravated by the fact that this axis revives, instrumentalizes, sanctifies, and strengthens Nazism, racism, fascism, and terrorism (in Ukraine, Israel, and elsewhere) by every possible means in pursuit of its murderous and catastrophic objectives. The exact opposite is de facto true of the camp formed and consolidated by those forces which are defending themselves and are compelled to launch counterattacks against this axis: theirs is a war of resistance, an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and manifestly just war.
In addition to the already visible results of this war―beyond the mass destruction of American and NATO weapons systems and military material in general, and beyond the annihilation of the armed forces fighting in the service of the attacking axis―the war has produced other consequences of enormous significance on the economic, political, military, and diplomatic fronts.
The rapid displacement of the US dollar and the euro from their positions and roles as global and international reserve currencies marks a colossal transformation in the global economic system. For the first time in the history of capitalism, the economic mechanism of parasitism exercised by the imperialist financial oligarchy is being undermined―the system through which surplus value is extracted on a regional and global scale by securing monopoly super-profits from all other peoples. This mechanism functions largely through the coercive imposition of the global currency as a peculiar system of tribute, compelling other countries, for example, to bear the cost of the United States’ budget deficit through the authoritarian issuance of currency (whether paper or digital), thereby imposing a kind of “tribute-tax” upon the peoples of the world.
These economic, political, and diplomatic changes are accompanied by new military partnerships and alliances. These developments signal and contribute to the complete failure of the imperialist camp led by the United States to consolidate its presence and control in West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
In light of these developments, there is also a sharp escalation of tensions in Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the organically potential theaters of military operations on the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. These two theaters are interconnected not only geographically but also historically with each other and with the theaters of military operations in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. For the present, it is sufficient to note that the aforementioned tectonic shifts in the correlation of forces illuminate the inherited contradictions that emerged after the end of the Second World War, during the Cold War, and throughout the process of counter-revolution and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the camp of early socialism in Europe.
The conflict in Ukraine marks the culmination of the escalation of the process of imperialist domination and the further fragmentation of the post-Soviet space, with the Russian Federation as its principal target―that is, the only political configuration capable of serving as the force of reintegration and the pole of attraction for that geopolitical space.
The conflict on the Korean Peninsula is intertwined with the phenomena explained by V. I. Lenin’s discoveries concerning imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism and the concept of the “weak link” in the world system, where the possibility of a revolutionary situation capable of leading to a victorious revolution becomes greatest. This conflict is a national liberation war, a war for the reunification of the heroic Korean nation, and a war for liberation from the brutal imperialist occupation and invasion of the United States, which replaced the equally brutal imperialist occupation imposed by the militarist imperial monarchy of Japan. Given the victorious socialist revolution and socialist construction in the DPRK, together with its geographical proximity to the People’s Republic of China, the stage of national liberation―which will also include the anti-fascist tasks of democratizing society and restructuring the economy on the basis of popular sovereignty―will, apparently, be relatively brief in duration and organically connected with the socialist stage as part of one unified revolutionary process.
International anti-imperialist support and internationalist solidarity, by every possible means and at every level, will be of extraordinary importance for the victorious outcome of the national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution throughout the Korean Peninsula. Anti-imperialist forces must contribute to weakening and preventing every criminal counter-revolutionary project of imperialism. Naturally, in opposition to the imperialist alliance of the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and to the overall expansion of NATO into the Indo-Pacific region planned by the United States, decisive importance will belong to cooperation and alliance in every sphere among China, the DPRK, Russia, Iran, and all forces inclined toward alliance with them.
The conflict in the Taiwan theater of military operations, with its revolutionary potential, possesses similar characteristics―both in scale and in substance―including national liberation, national reunification, anti-imperialist struggle, and related objectives.
The revolutionary movement must critically study, on the basis of revolutionary dialectical theory and the methodology of the “Logic of History” (see Logic of History: Questions of Theory and Methodology), the indispensable historical experience of socialist construction in all countries of early socialism. It must also make theoretical and practical―organizational―efforts to prevent discord and schismatic, destructive tendencies within the world anti-imperialist and communist movement.
In light of the above, the tasks of the World Anti-imperialist Platform acquire strategic significance for the revolutionary movement of our era. Today, more than ever before, it has become necessary to create, develop, coordinate, and organize the anti-imperialist forces of the world into a victorious united militant front at every level, in every country, and on every continent―especially where the heart of the revolutionary movement beats most strongly. The defeat of the aggressive axis led by the United States is a prerequisite for the very survival of humanity and, consequently, the guarantee of the victory of the revolutionary movement.
The defeat of imperialism in this mortal confrontation presupposes the exposure and crushing of opportunism (which is, de facto, an agency of imperialist objectives within the ranks of the revolutionary movement) and revisionism―the degeneration of revolutionary theory and methodology into bourgeois-reactionary ideologies (which often appear under a “revolutionary” mask and demagogic “left-wing” rhetoric). These ideologies disorient, divide, undermine, and ultimately neutralize the revolutionary movement by rejecting actually existing early socialism and anti-imperialism, while rejecting every victorious dialectical relationship between revolutionary theory and practice, and between strategy and tactics.
Communists and all progressive people of our planet are today called upon to reflect on the consequences that any victory of the aggressive imperialist axis led by the United States could have―not only for the revolutionary movement, but for the very survival of humanity itself. Only through the exemplary, vanguard, and leading role of revolutionary communist forces can the anti-imperialist united front struggle possess a firm foundation and a future. Only the prospect of socialist revolution can provide anti-imperialism and anti-fascism with strategic depth and inspire it towards victory.
Humanity now lives in the era of the decay and decline of capitalism, which is in its imperialist stage, while at the same time existing in the era of the global transition toward communism that was initiated by the October Revolution.
There exists an organic interrelation among the three constituent parts and driving forces of the revolutionary movement: the forces of early socialism, the anti-imperialist forces, and the workers’ communist movement within the global capitalist system. These forces arise from the contradictions between labor and capital, between the imperialist centers and the periphery, and between socialism and imperialism.
Victorious socialist revolutions occur at the “weak links” of the system―that is, in countries of intermediate levels of development where the tasks of national liberation and the struggle against dependency become intertwined with class contradictions. Therefore, abstract anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism are devoid of a positive constructive perspective, for socialism is not merely the negation of capitalism but the process through which communism emerges as a qualitatively new form of human development.
The victory of the progressive forces under conditions of world war is possible only through the conscious coordination of the three components of the revolutionary process into a single united front capable of seizing the strategic initiative. This has become a matter of humanity’s survival under the escalating conditions of WWIII, and the inevitable outcome of the coming wave of anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions.
Long live the struggle of the Korean people for the reunification of the nation and for socialism!
Long live the global anti-imperialist struggle!
Long live internationalism and the brotherhood of the peoples fighting against imperialism!