Presentation at the seminar "Lenin's Teaching lives" on September 13-15, 2024 in Trukkental (Thuringia) in Germany.

Dear comrades,

the RCWP thanks the organizers for the opportunity to present its position at this seminar. Although there are serious disagreements in the world communist movement on the assessment of the war in Ukraine, we are convinced that one cannot shy away from discussion as an important form of theoretical struggle. Firstly, it hinders the general search for truth, and secondly, it simply indicates, as Lenin said, either communist arrogance or self-doubt. The RCWP is confident in its abilities and always defends its position based on Lenin and Lenin's theory of imperialism. Today, as in Lenin's time, the issue of attitude to the ongoing war (in Ukraine, Palestine and more broadly) is "The main issue of modern socialism."

On this main issue, in 2022-23, there was a division in the international movement and even splits in the ranks of some organizations. In particular, the European Communist Initiative (ECI) was divided into two parts. One of which, at the initiative of the KKE, announced the termination of the activities of the ECI and formed a new community – the European Communist Action (ECA).

These comrades sincerely oppose the war in general, arguing that all parties involved are equally imperialists and equally responsible for the unfolding tragedy.

The RCWP, as a party defending the positions of orthodox Marxism, spoke at the solidnet meetings in Havana and Izmir with an alternative point of view. We did not agree with the dissolution of the ECI and consider it our duty to respond to the continuation of the honest, but not less dangerous, misconceptions of the Greek comrades and their supporters.

The comrades mechanically reproduce the theoretical recipes of the Bolsheviks of the 1914-16 years, without bothering to fulfill Lenin's instruction to dialectically deal with the actual essence of a concrete, our war. Lenin tells us: "We are talking about modern warfare. It cannot be said more clearly in Russian. The words "real essence" show that it is necessary to distinguish the apparent from the real, appearance from essence, phrases from deeds."

"How to find the "real essence" of war, how to define it? War is a continuation of politics. It is necessary to study the policy before the war, the policy that led to the war. If the policy was imperialist, namely protecting the interests of financial capital, plundering and oppressing colonies and foreign countries, then the war resulting from this policy is an imperialist war. If the policy was national liberation, namely expressing a mass movement against national oppression, then it, resulting from such a policy, is a national liberation war."

In our case, it is necessary to study politics before the war, not even since 2014, but at least since 1991, when the counterrevolution took place in the USSR and the Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine is just one of the links in the chain: Sumgait, Karabakh, Transnistria, Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Georgia, Ossetia, Chechnya, Donbass, Ukraine... - a whole series of bloody conflicts in the republics of the USSR. And this link in the chain definitely won't be the last. The reason is that capitalism was revived in the republics. It was in the Soviet Union that all people, including Russia, Ukraine and Donbas, lived in peace and friendship. In fact, they represented the united Soviet people. And capitalism naturally brought a series of interethnic conflicts and wars. Conflicts of the formation of a new class of exploiters, conflicts generated by the desire of capital to redistribute the world in the territories of the former USSR with the significant participation of the interests of foreign capital.

Russian capitalism and the Russian authorities are class allies of their current opponent. Moreover, we remember how Yeltsin, speaking in the US Congress, proclaimed: "God bless America!" and then Putin asked Clinton to accept Russia into NATO. The Russian bourgeois class expected to be accepted into the world elite on equal terms. And in the early years, under Yeltsin and early Putin, the authorities obediently, even enthusiastically, were guided by the advice and direct instructions of the West. They shut down their own high-tech production, science, and the armed forces. They mainly developed only raw materials industries and primary processing. But in the global capitalist market, as the Communists warned, no one needs even a weakened Russia as an equal among other powers. This is June 13, 2023. In the conversation with war correspondents, President Putin expressed a simple but remarkably sincere expression: "And you know ... we believed that we were our own, bourgeois, we want to be in this family of so-called civilized peoples. And I threw fishing rods at NATO: let's consider this possibility, they threw us out of there, they didn't even consider us..."

For us Communists, there is no doubt that our own bourgeois squabbles are continuing. Continuing the president's vivid statements from Soviet children's literature, it's all about dreams of baskets of cookies and barrels of jam. Which were never received. Instead, they got a flick on the nose. Therefore, we explicitly state that the patriotism of Putin and the Russian ruling class consisted only in the desire to exploit Russian gas and oil pipes themselves without any restrictions, to receive rent from the sale of natural resources and the exploitation of workers. But they were not given this opportunity either. The goal of the strongest imperialism in the world, the United States and its allies, was not just to weaken the Russian competitor, but to suppress it and, preferably, dismember it. To this end, a policy of deterioration of Russia's relations with the former republics of the Union was deliberately pursued, the NATO ring around the Russian Federation was tightened and various economic restrictions were imposed. The United States has consciously and consistently worked to push the authorities and the peoples of Russia and Ukraine against each other. To this purpose, imperialism encouraged the revival of Bandera fascism in Ukraine and its use for punitive purposes in 1941-45. In 2014. A coup d'etat was carried out in Ukraine with much help from the West, and outright Nazis came to power in Kiev.

Today it is obvious that a predatory imperialist pack of fifty countries led by the United States, using fascism they have cultivated in Ukraine, aims to suppress and dismember the Russian Federation. The leaders of the Western bloc are openly talking about this. Merkel, Oland and others spoke frankly about the false nature of the so-called Minsk agreements, which were started only in order to equip and prepare the armed forces of Ukraine for war with Russia. Russia is a young, forming imperialist country, which is several times weaker than the United States in terms of economic and even more so financial power, not to mention the united Western bloc. Therefore, the pack of the most predatory imperialist countries, led by the United States, expects to solve its internal economic problems for some time due to its defeat and breakdown. The same as in 1991 they postponed their crisis by destroying the USSR. Therefore, the real essence of the war on the part of the United States and NATO, which is being waged by the hands of Nazi Ukraine against Russia, is explicitly imperialist, aggressive.

The real essence of the war on the part of Russia is largely due to its defensive nature. The struggle of the armed forces of Russia and Donbass to suppress the forces of fascism in Ukraine has a fair and liberating character.

Why do we speak about the comrades from the KKE and others? Do the leftist "non-combatants" (opponents of any war and all its sides) not see this real essence? From our point of view, they do not take into account a number of factors and therefore make theoretical and political mistakes.

First of all, The comrades are stubbornly trying to reduce this case to an unjustified, in their opinion, invasion of the Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine in February 2022. They seem to have forgotten that the punitive operation against Donbass was carried out by Nazi troops at least since 2014, after the fascist coup. By the beginning of its 8-year war at least 15 thousand residents of Donbass, mostly civilians, children and women, were killed by the Ukrainian Nazis. In addition, comrades who call themselves internationalists, for some reason do not hear that these punitive actions are carried out by real fascists who call themselves supporters and continuers of the deeds of Hitler's associates - Bandera and Shukhevych. Who burned 50 people alive in Odessa and commented on this event in the media as a "Barbecue from Colorads" (how they called Donbass people).

What should we do with real fascists? Or did they decide, for the purity of their theoretical constructions, that the Nazis should first fulfill their promises to kill off all residents of Donbass?

We cannot agree with this in any way. Therefore, the RCWP and the Communists of Donbass not only assess their own actions as a forced and defensive reaction, but also participate in the struggle directly. Our comrades are fighting at the front, we are helping the front.

The second thing. The Greek comrades rejected the scientific definition of fascism given by the Comintern (Dimitrov's definition). At the same time, they do not disclose their definition to us. In our opinion, simply because it does not exist. But they casually reproach the Comintern with remarks: ".... Today, the communist movement is more experienced, and it is enough for those Communist parties that rejected the logic of creating various "anti-fascist fronts" with the participation of bourgeois forces, drew conclusions from history, emphasizing that the fight against fascism should be indivisible from the fight against the capitalist "womb" that generates it." The statement is very loud, but incorrect. So it turns out that our comrades from the KKE, who had not decided for themselves what fascism is, observing the living fascists, casually reproached the Comintern, the Soviet Union, and Stalin for their wrong actions, who defeated the fascists in 1945. And Western bourgeois democracies were taken by them as allies and forced to fight!

Our comrades, fighting for their primacy and theoretical consistency in words, continue to push away possible allies for not being communists enough. We quote: "The World Anti-Imperialist Platform (WAP), in which the main role is played by social democratic forces and some communist parties or groups that do not have much influence on the working class of their countries, has clearly sided with the imperialist "robbers". That's how it turns out that the anti-imperialist struggle, if it is not conducted according to the recipes of the KKE, damages the Communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism. We also do not share WAP's assessment of China and Russia as centers of the world socialist movement. But it is absolutely impossible to abandon the allies and even write down the platform as an assistant of imperialism.

The third point, and this is the main one. The comrades still do not want to respond to the remark that they deform Lenin's theory of imperialism, denying the essence of its content - that (we quote) "... capitalism has now singled out a couple of states... especially the rich and powerful states that loot — with the money — the whole world." Putting forward their theory of the "imperialist pyramid", they practically deny that the main danger today comes from this couple - the imperialism of the United States and its allies in the NATO bloc.

But, without conducting a purposeful struggle against outright fascism and the main source of fascism – the most reactionary imperialism of the United States and their assistants, they claim that all fighting sides are imperialists and bear equal responsibility for the war, and led the source of fascism away from its responsibility.

We argue that in the actions of the Euro-Atlantic bloc, both in provoking the Ukrainian Nazis against Russia and in enhancing anti-Sovietism and Russophobia in Europe, we can see the signs of, if not revanchism, but some kind of revenge on Russia for the defeat of the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1945.

The fourth main point is the lessons of the ongoing general campaign of solidarity with the struggling people of Palestine.

Many comrades still do not want to see the indisputable fact that the same predatory pack of imperialists supports both the Ukrainian Nazis and the Israeli Zionists in the Gaza Strip. It's not even a mistake. Let's face it, this is the ideological disarming of our movement.

And the fact of the successful speech of the Ukrainian SS veteran of the Second World War, a fascist, in the Canadian parliament in the presence of the country's Prime Minister and Zelensky perfectly illustrates the essence of the process - the fascization of the political systems of the Atlantic Bloc countries is in full swing.

The fifth thing. The Greek comrades state that in this particular war "the EU is not dragging itself after the United States," that the statement of the Russian leadership about European leaders "obeying" the United States has no basis in itself." These thoughts look very strange, even ridiculous. The comrades deny the obvious – the interests of the EU countries are frankly obeyed to the interests of the United States. The example of the explosion of underwater gas pipelines and the refusal to supply cheap energy from Russia is the most understandable example. The role of the United States and its share in the trade of liquefied natural gas with Europe is growing. Military orders are growing, European workers are outraged, production and money are leaving the EU countries abroad, and comrades do not see the puppet nature of European leaders…

Comrades say a lot of true words about the need to link the struggle against war with the struggle for socialism, using the cracks that arise in the capitalist system. We support this. But the use of cracks in the imperialist camp is not visible. And again we hear arguments about the principled position regarding the equal responsibility of the fascists and their victims in the war. And again, we see how they do not want to be helped by not enough appropriate allies, including the Social Democrats, in the struggle. They just dream of a universal revolution. And they allow the enemy to strengthen. They take him away from responsibility, out of general control. Fascism cannot be defeated in this way.

The imperialists can only welcome such principled internationalist theorists.

The RCWP, while supporting the stated goals (denazification, demilitarization, neutral status) and defining the fight against fascism and aggression by the United States and NATO as the main task of the Communists today, in no way removes the blame from Russian capitalism and does not call for rallying around Putin, as some Russian communists do. Undoubtedly, this is the fault of the Russian bourgeoisie, which destroyed the USSR and brought wars to the peoples of the Union. The clash of Ukraine and Russia in a bloody battle is the realization of the imperialists' dream. And here the fault of the Russian authorities, who were unable to resist this policy, is also unconditional. The policy of anti-Sovietism and anti-Communism, not in such a pronounced form as in Ukraine and the West, is also inherent in the Russian bourgeoisie, who made the Vlasov tricolor the national flag of the Russian Federation.

We know that the only way out is socialism. The struggle against fascists must be turned into a struggle for socialism. But to do this, we cannot lose and let Russia repeat the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya...

The whole fight is still ahead. As the Comintern also noticed, the proletariat really cares in which conditions to fight: in conditions of bourgeois democracy or in conditions of fascist dictatorship.

All the forces of the Communists today must be directed to the fight against fascism, the main source of which is the imperialist bloc led by the United States!

International Department of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Workers' Party

August 23, 2024 Leningrad