When looking at Greek revolutionary history, we focus on the life and struggle of Nikos Zachariadis. Especially because when Nikita Khrushchev proposed the modern revisionist line at the 20th congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union in February 1956, he was one of the representative four leaders who stuck to a revolutionary line, opposing Khrushchev’s revisionism. At that time, the four main defenders of anti-revisionism were Nikos Zachariadis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Enver Hoxha, the General Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Kim Il Sung, the General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea (WPK).
Under Khrushchev’s orders, the KKE expelled a large number of resolute communists, including Zachariadis. Following this, the revisionist and opportunist line of the leadership of the KKE was set, and it gave full support to the Perestroika (Restructuring) and Glasnost (Openness) policies of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Even after leaving Greece and living in exiles, determined communists like Zachariadis held fast to their revolutionary principles, struggling against the revisionist line until the end of their lives.
The life and struggle of Zachariadis are particularly instructive in the light of the realities of the Greece revolutionary movement today. The historical root of the problems of revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism of the present leadership of the KKE cannot be found elsewhere. In the history of the revolutions of humanity, there are more than one or two examples of individuals and parties that, having taken a revisionist line, stayed on it until the bitter end. This problem in ideology is deep-seated and stubborn.
The consequences of the Kautskyite and Trotskyist tendencies of the present-day KKE leadership, embodied in the ridiculous sophistry of the “imperialist pyramid theory”, and resulting in such practical outcomes as the recent unilateral dissolution of the European Communist Initiative and the division and disempowerment of SolidNet, are very serious.
The importance of the KKE leadership correcting its historical errors, moving away from the wrong line of revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism, holding once more to revolutionary principles and returning to the correct line of communism as soon as possible cannot be overemphasized.
The current situation is a very dangerous one, in which World War III will soon be in full swing. As of the end of 2023, the probabilities of escalation of the war in Eastern Europe and of outbreak of war in East Asia are rising fast. A new war has begun in the Middle East (West Asia). The mood of war is spreading from Ukraine in Eastern Europe to Palestine in the Middle East, and then to Taiwan and South Korea in East Asia.
In February 2022, Russia launched an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist war, a war of liberation that was also a preventive war against the provocations of NATO imperialism. The flames of this war are fueling the struggle for justice amongst anti-imperialists all over the world.
The struggle for the freedom and liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea, has reached a turning point today. The war in Palestine is an anti-imperialist war, an anti-zionist war and a liberation war against 75 years of occupation and oppression. In the Middle East, anti-zionist and pro-Palestinian forces are becoming unprecedentedly united and Israel is deeply divided. Above all, the military and economic power of US imperialism and European imperialism has been seriously weakened by the war in Ukraine.
If the threatened war in East Asia breaks out, the US and European imperialist powers will have to wage armed struggle against the strongest anti-imperialist forces in three battlefields. And if we consider the East Asian war as two battles, Taiwan and South Korea, the imperialists will be fighting on four fronts: Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Taiwan and South Korea.
It should be noted that Russia, China and North Korea are powerful nuclear and missile powers. The strategic cooperation between these three countries is getting stronger and stronger, as confirmed by the North Korea-Russia summit in September and the China-Russia summit in October.
Against the provocations of US imperialism, China and North Korea are increasingly affirming their view that anti-imperialist, national-liberation and national reunification wars are going to be inevitable.
As we know, in Eastern Europe, as part of the anti-Russian maneuvers, based on the infamous “Grand Chessboard” strategy and using the well-worn tactic of “color revolution”, massacres of ethnic Russians in Odessa and Donbass were perpetrated after the Maidan coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, and the Ukrainian fascist authority tried to join NATO in 2021.
In East Asia, under the imperialist provocations to disrupt China by separating Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xizang (Tibet), Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, Taiwan’s secessionist maneuvers have already crossed a dangerous line, illustrated by the US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan in August last year and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing Wen’s visit to the USA in April this year.
The US-backed puppet Yoon Suk Yeol, who came to power in May last year, has turned South Korea into a darkness with fascist repression, just as much as Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky did in Ukraine, and the Korean Peninsula has become the brink of war through his anti-national belligerent policies.
The current situation in Taiwan and South Korea is so precarious that it would be no surprise to find that war had broken out there tomorrow. If either the war in Taiwan or the war in South Korea breaks out, war in the other will automatically follow.
All these military tensions and war crises are obviously being caused by the US imperialist policy of disintegrating China and of crushing North Korea. China and North Korea, which have been struggling to uphold the principles of socialism after the counter-revolution that swept the Soviet Union and the eastern socialist bloc in the early 1990s, are in a historic period in which they have no choice but to make decisive counterattacks against the persistent and vicious provocations of the imperialist forces.
One of the anti-China war signals of imperialists is the “New Washington Consensus and de-risking”. In April, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan declared the “New Washington Consensus” at an event of the Brookings Institution, emphasizing that the US’s approach to China is not about “decoupling” but “de-risking”.
On the surface, it seems that the Biden administration is pushing for partial “de-risking” rather than the full decoupling which the Trump administration claimed to seek, but this is a fiction, a distorted reflection of the essence. The truth is that a “new cold war” is being fought, as part of a full-scale drive towards World War III by the imperialist powers, and through this, they are forming a new front through which to demonize Russia, China and North Korea and to try to escape from their own political and economic crisis.
In other words, the announcement of the “New Washington Consensus” is a deception by the imperialist forces, which continue to provoke war in East Asia, particularly in Taiwan and South Korea, following their failure in the war in Ukraine, and hoping to shift responsibility for the outbreak of war onto China.
In fact, during the time of the Donald Trump administration, there was no war in Ukraine, no provocation of Taiwan’s secession, and President Trump held three summits with North Korean chairman Kim Jong Un. By contrast today, it is as if Joe Biden is trying to shake hands with Xi Jinping by extending his right hand in a “de-risking” gesture even as he hides the sword of Taiwanese separation behind his back with the other.
While pushing for a “peaceful rise”, China, which is aware of the US’s two-faced tactics, makes no secret of the fact that it will not give up on reunification with Taiwan, describing the restoration of China’s territorial integrity as a “core of core interests”.
We must not fall prey to imperialist deceptions. We must consolidate the anti-imperialist front and organize the anti-imperialist struggle over the world ever more vigorously in the face of the growing spread of world war.
The World Anti-Imperialist Platform (the Platform) has been launched in this period of great historical transition, holding high the banner of anti-imperialism in Paris, France in October 2022.
Since its establishment, the Platform has consistently adhered to its three main goals: organizing and participating in mass struggles against imperialism; waging an ideological battle against revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism; and strengthening the revolutionary forces of international communism.
The Platform has held international conferences with communist parties and anti-imperialist political organizations all over the world, has organized anti-imperialist mass rallies and demonstrations in Belgrade, Serbia (a neighbor of Ukraine and a weak link of NATO in Eastern Europe) in December 2022, in Caracas, Venezuela (the epicenter of the Bolivarian Revolution, on the 10th memorial anniversary of Hugo Chavez’s death) in March 2023 and in Gwangju, South Korea (the site of the 1980 anti-fascist armed struggle, on the occasion of the third party congress of the PDP) in May 2023.
In addition, we launched the “Platform News” website to strengthen our daily solidarity activities, propaganda and practice, and published the “Platform” monthly journal.
In the coming year, the Platform will continue to engage actively in solidarity activities and joint struggles, especially with the people of the oppressed countries who suffer from imperialism’s direct and constant economic exploitation, political repression and war manipulations.
Against the barbaric repression of imperialism and the fascist forces, in the face of the slander and divisive efforts of the international sectarian opportunist forces, and in order to achieve its three goals, the Platform has not taken a single step back or faltered, and has always bravely faced and overcome trials and difficulties.
We will continue to move forward with our indomitable struggle, chanting the slogans “Proletarians of the world, unite!” and “The people, united, will never be defeated!” from the ranks of the struggle.
Just as World War II resulted in the formation of the world anti-fascist front, defeating the fascist forces and dealing a major blow to the imperialist powers, bringing with it a great high tide for the communist and anti-imperialist movements, World War III is leading to the formation of a world anti-imperialist front that can deal a decisive blow to the imperialist powers and achieve a new great upsurge for the communist and anti-imperialist movements.
We are convinced that this historical path will be the path of fear and defeat for the imperialist powers and their puppet, fascist and opportunist proxy forces; and that it will be the path of hope and victory for the anti-imperialist forces and working masses everywhere.
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