75 years of the Anti-fascist victory – Day of Remembrance
Article by Nikos Kouzoupis, member of the Central Committee of AKEL and Head of the Ideological Bureau of AKEL
9th May 2020, HARAVGI newspaper
Today we honour the Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples over the Nazi monster. However this day, 75 years onwards, instead of being a day of remembrance and paying tribute to all those who gave their most precious possession – their own lives – on the battle fronts, in the Nazi concentration camps, in the guerrilla resistance movements in the countries under Nazi occupation, but also on the internal front in the struggle to supply the fighting army, is overlooked in most countries.
The attempt to wipe away the significance of this anniversary from humanity’s collective consciousness has its roots at the end of the 1940’s, that is, almost immediately after the end of the Second World War. The reason was obvious, because the ruling circles of the West sought to downplay the importance of the anniversary itself, but at the same time they sought to downgrade the extent of the victory and the prestige gained by the principal force that resisted Hitler’s Nazism, crushed it on the battlefields and hoisted the Red Flag with the Hammer and Sickle in the very heart of Berlin.
The military battles on the Soviet-German Eastern Front were not just a war between two warring armies, but a confrontation between two ideologies, two opposing and diametrically opposed socio-economic systems. No matter how much modern ideological advocates and numerous apologists of the exploitative system try to cover up this truth by engaging in communication tricks and imposing silence, the fact remains indisputable – it was a confrontation between socialism and capitalism.
Fascism, like its distinctive form, Nazism, is the product and child of the capitalist exploitative system. It is the expression of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic and the most imperialistic forces of financial capital. So when these forces and circles realise that “bourgeois democracy” cannot serve their interests and can no longer confront the rising workers and progressive movement, it resorts to open violence and terror to impose and perpetuate its power.
This is what happened back then in the interwar years at the level of national countries (Italy, Germany, etc.), but during the same period the same procedure is observed even at the level of international relations and on a global scale.
The rise of Nazism to power and the militarisation of German industry were the result of the speculative funding and economic support of the financial monopolistic circles of the United States, Great Britain and other capitalist countries.
The “policy of appeasement” pursued by the British and French governments is part of this framework, culminating in the Munich Agreement (1938) between Britain, France, Germany and Italy. This policy of appeasement, as well as the support provided by financial capital to Nazi Germany, aimed at exploiting Hitler’s fanatical anti-communist rhetoric to turn the Nazi war machine towards the East in order to crush the world’s first worker-peasant state, the Soviet Union.
The titanic effort of the Soviet people, who withstood the initial pressure of the Blitzkrieg war, stopped the advance of the Hitler hordes and with the resounding and sweeping victories in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk defeated the Nazi plans and laid the foundations for the Red Army’s liberation advance to Europe. May 9th, 1945 was the landmark of the victorious outcome of this mission.
The evil plans of the most reactionary and expansionist circles not only of financial capital but of others too, which believed that the attack of the Nazi troops on the Soviet Union would be the beginning of the collapse of the country from within had been refuted. The peoples and nations of the multinational Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, led by the Leninist Communist Party as one fist, as one set a strong example, relying on fraternity, solidarity and ideological cohesion to defend the common Soviet socialist state.
Consequently, the outcome of the Second World War marked not only the victor between democracy and fascism, but primarily the superiority of socialism over the most extreme expression of capitalism – namely Nazism.
Today, 75 years after the world-historical victory over fascism-Nazism, the ruling economic oligarchy with its institutions is trying in various ways to tarnish the Soviet Union and the Red Army, erasing the sacrifice of the Soviet Union’s millions of dead. It has proceeded to go one step further. It initially equated Nazism – the most extreme inhumane ideology – with socialism – the ideology of social justice and the full liberation of humanity.
Just a few months ago, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, the European Parliament approved a despicable resolution that blatantly violates the historical memory of the peoples with which it blames the Soviet Union for the start of the world bloodshed. In the most shameless way, it erases the whole prehistory of the resurgence of the Nazi war industry and the policy of appeasement of Hitler’s Germany that was pursued by the capitalist countries of the West.
But no matter how much effort these forces may make, no matter how much defamatory journalistic propaganda may be disseminated, no matter how much the mainstream media under the control of interwoven interests try to manipulate world public opinion to wipe out the role and the most important contribution of the Soviet Union and its people, no matter how much fascist-like forces in Eastern Europe desecrate monuments of glory and honor to the liberators of the Red Army, what is certain is that they can neither diminish, nor obliterate historical memory, nor pardon and relieve Nazism-fascism and those who sponsored them during the interwar period of their grave responsibilities.
May 9th with the Red Flag hoisted over the Reichstag in Berlin remains a beacon guiding the historical course of humanity to remind the new generations and the guilty, but primarily the Heroes, who in that particular historical moment saved human society from the black plague of Nazism. A beacon that points out to every citizen, who wants to be called a human being, the duty to fight against all those who insist on keeping the world captive to capitalist barbarism.
