Collective of Struggle for the Revolutionary Unification of Humanity (Greece) | Patelis Dimitrios
In the summer of 1950, the USA – through brutal manipulation of the UN – led a military intervention in the Korean Peninsula in order to suppress the national liberation and socialist revolution of the people led by the communists in the DPRK. Twenty-one countries took part in this murderous imperialist intervention. The war was opposed by the communists-internationalists, the USSR, all the early socialist countries and the whole of the anti-imperialist and progressive forces. A total of 10,255 soldiers and officers from Greece were sent to this imperialist mission, mainly by force. The death toll of the Greek Expeditionary Corps was 182, while the wounded numbered 610.
In May 1951, a mutiny broke out on one of the American ships carrying Greek and Turkish soldiers to Korea. The soldiers tried to attack the Americans who were the crew of the ship. In the ensuing crackdown, the leading Greek second lieutenant was killed.
22.1.1951 the Greek internationalist soldiers Stavros Kassandra and Nikos Pitsikas were executed, because they refused to fight against the revolution of the heroic people of Korea, they refused to become instruments of the war machine of US imperialism. 18.12.1950 the Extraordinary Military Court of Athens judged them to death for the crime of high treason. In a summary procedure, the American puppet bourgeois regime executed them.
At the beginning of February 1951, 176 Greek soldiers joined the Korean People’s Army!
To understand the heroism of these soldiers: it was only on 30.8.1949 that the revolutionary communist Democratic Army of Greece was defeated by the US Occupation Army and its local collaborators, who a few years ago had been loyal collaborators of the Nazi occupiers. Tens of thousands of fighters were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and were exiled to concentration camps, while thousands were executed by the counter-revolutionary regime that the USA established. The KKE, and every progressive organization, was under a regime of illegality and 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, with the KKE’s apparatus practically non-existent after the deadly repression.
These historical events are of particular importance at the current situation. In 2022 the Special Warfare Operation in Ukraine was launched, while escalating tensions indicate that in 2023 the possibilities for the fierce eruption of new strategic fronts of the ongoing World War in South Korea and Taiwan are high.
These historical events are evidence both of the similarities between the history and heroic struggles of the peoples of Greece and Korea and of the fraternal internationalist ties between the revolutionary forces of our countries. Therefore, we ought to preserve and develop these ties, especially in this critical phase of 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 the explosive situation on the fronts of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan.
It gives me great emotion to be here as a representative of my organization, together with our comrades from the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, on the side of the Korean people and their avant-garde, the dear comrades of the brother party of the People’s Democracy Party -PDP.
This war is definitely imperialist, neo-colonialist, banditry and clearly unjust on the part of the aggressor axis led by the USA. The heinousness of this war is also marked by the fact that this axis is reviving, instrumentalizing, sanctifying and strengthening Nazism & fascism (in Ukraine and elsewhere) in every way and by every means to achieve its murderous and catastrophic objectives. The exact opposite is de facto true as regards the camp formed and consolidated by the forces which defend and are forced to counterattack the axis: it is a war of resistance, an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and clearly just war.
In addition to the already noticeable results of this war, apart from the massive destruction of American and NATO weapon systems and materials in general, apart from the extermination of armed forces fighting in the service of the attacking axis, the war has other extremely important effects on the economic, political, military and diplomatic fronts.
The rapid displacement of the US dollar and the euro from the position and from their role of world money and international reserve currencies marks the enormous changes taking place in the world economic system: The rapid displacement of the US dollar and the euro from the position and from their role of world money and international reserve currencies marks the enormous changes taking place in the world economic system: A mechanism that operates largely via the violent imposition through the world currency of a peculiar system of charging other countries, e.g., the cost of the US budget deficit, through the authoritarian (paper or digital) emission of currency, i.e., by imposing a kind of peculiar “tribute tax” on peoples.
These changes are also linked to rapid political and diplomatic shifts. With the catalytic role played by, for example, by PRC and Russia, peace mediations and peace processes are taking place between countries with long-standing conflicts, methodically orchestrated by colonialism and imperialism, on the foundation of the principle of ‘divide and rule’, through bloody incitement to ethnic, racial, religious and cultural hate. This is what we are observing now with the peacemaking between Saudi Arabia and Iran (and therefore Yemen), with the recognition of the legitimate government of Syria and its reintegration into the Arab and Islamic community, with the rapprochement between Iraq and Iran, but also between India, Pakistan, and China, and so on. These all imply a rapid expulsion of the US from the region, reduction & cancellation of the position and role of the racist terrorist state, Israel.
Economic, political, and diplomatic changes are accompanied by military partnerships and alliances. Events that signal and promote the abject failure of the US-led imperialist camp to consolidate its presence and control in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in the Far East, in Latin America and in Africa.
In the light of these changes, there is also a sharp escalation of tension in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly on the organically interconnected fronts of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. Both these fronts are interconnected with each other and with those of Eastern Europe, not only geographically but also historically. At this point it is enough to point out that the above-mentioned tectonic power shifts highlight legacy contestations that emerged from the end of World War II, from the “Cold War” and from the processes of counter-revolution and the disintegration of the USSR and the camp of the early socialism in Europe.
The conflict in Ukraine marks the end of the escalation of the process of imperialist domination and further fragmentation of the post-Soviet space, with the Russian Federation as the main target, i.e., the only configuration that can play the role of reintegration and a pole of attraction of this space.
The conflict on the Korean peninsula is interwoven with phenomena which are explained by V.I. Lenin’s discoveries about imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism and the “weak link” of the world system, in which the possibilities of an outbreak of a revolutionary situation that can lead to a victorious revolution are increasing. This conflict is a war of people’s and national liberation, a war of re-unification of the heroic Korean nation, a war of liberation from the brutal imperialist invasion-occupation of the USA, which came to succeed the brutal imperialist occupation by the imperialist Japanese militarist monarchy. Given the victorious socialist revolution and building in North Korea and the neighborhood with the PRC, the national liberation stage, which will also include anti-fascist tasks of democratizing society and restructuring the economy in terms of people’s sovereignty – apparently – will be rather short in time, organically linked to the socialist stage, in a single revolutionary process.
The international anti-imperialist support, the internationalist solidarity by all means and ways and at all levels will be of extreme importance for the victorious outcome of the national liberation struggle and for the socialist revolution in the whole of the Korean peninsula. The anti-imperialist forces should contribute to the disempowerment and prevention of all imperialist criminal counter-revolutionary projects. Of course, against the trilateral imperialist alliance of the USA-Japan-North Korea-Australia and the general expansion of NATO in the Indo-Pacific that the USA is planning, the contribution of cooperation-alliance in all fields between the PRC, North Korea, Russia and all the forces that tend to align themselves with them will be decisive.
The conflict on the Taiwanese front-field, with its revolutionary potential, has similar characteristics – in terms of proportions and scale – (national liberation, nation re-unification, anti-imperialist, etc.).
Given the above, the objectives of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform take on strategic importance for the revolutionary movement of the era. Today it becomes more necessary than ever to create, develop, coordinate, and organize the anti-imperialist forces of the world in a victorious frontal struggle at all levels, in all countries, on all continents. Especially there where the heart of the revolutionary movement beats most strongly. The defeat of the aggressor axis led by the United States is a condition for the very survival of humanity, and therefore for the victories of the revolutionary movement.
The defeat of imperialism in this life-or-death combat presupposes the unmasking and crushing of opportunism (the de facto agency of the aims of imperialism in the lines of the revolutionary movement) and revisionism, the degeneration of revolutionary theory and methodology into bourgeois-reactionary ideologies (which often appear with a “revolutionary” mask and demagogic “leftist” rhetoric), which disorientate, divide, undermine and ultimately nullify the revolutionary movement, rejecting existing early socialism and anti-imperialism, rejecting any victorious dialectical relationship between revolutionary theory and practice, strategy and tactics.
The communists, the progressive people of our planet, are called upon today to consider which consequences might have any victory of the US-led imperialist aggressor axis, not only for the revolutionary movement, but also for the very survival of humanity. Only with the exemplary, pioneering and leading role of the revolutionary communist forces the anti-imperialist frontal struggle can have a foundation and a future, only the perspective of the socialist revolution can give strategic depth and victorious breath to anti-imperialism and anti-fascism.
Long live the struggle of the Korean people for the re-unification of the nation and for socialism!
Long live the world anti-imperialist struggle!
Fight until the final victory!