AKEL on the 92nd anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of Cyprus

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 14 August 2018, Nicosia

The foundation of the Communist Party of Cyprus in Limassol on 19 August 1926 was and remains a landmark in our country’s history. From that day onwards, the working people of Cyprus acquired their own Party. The revolutionary message conveyed throughout Cypriot society by the Communist Party of Cyprus (CPC) is summarized in the following reference of its Program: “People are no longer divided into Greeks and Turks to fight amongst themselves about the greatness of their homelands, but divided into the poor and the wealthy.” This is the class and internationalist content of the ideology that has been guiding the CPC-AKEL for 92 years.

The establishment of the CPC is an extension and the result of the momentum that was unleashed all over the world by the October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917. Its messages had reached Cyprus too, finding a resonance in the most vanguard section of the Cypriot working class, but also among educated young people of the time, with the formation of the first Communist cells in the early 1920’s. These cells formed the basis for the establishment of the Party of the Working Class of Cyprus with Marxism-Leninism as its ideology.

The Communist Party of Cyprus was at the forefront in the organization of trade unions and the first worker’s struggles for wages.

It projected the need for an alliance of workers and peasants to confront the exploitation of their landlords, the usurpers and the big capital of the time.

It highlighted the need for the forging of a united anti-colonial front of struggle and the waging of a common struggle between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots against the British colonialists.

It embraced and organized within its ranks the vanguard Turkish Cypriot workers.

It became the first voice on our island that proposed gender equality.

It clashed and combated chauvinism, religious obscurantism, ignorance and prejudices.

It inspired pioneering people of the arts and letters and intellectuals to rally their forces in the organized struggle for a better world.

It spread and transmitted the communist ideals and the belief in socialism as a qualitatively advanced stage in the history of humanity.

Inevitably, the CPC suffered ferocious attacks waged against it by colonialism, the domestic ruling class and the hierarchy of the Church. Persecution, imprisonment, exile, trials, assaults and vilification represented the daily life for the vanguard communists of Cyprus. Nonetheless, the CPC managed to plant the seed and guarantee that the tree of the Party would be rooted firmly among our country’s working people.

The courageous activity of the members of the Communist Party of Cyprus became the yeast and basis for AKEL – the successor of the CPC – to become a mass and leading force in our country’s life and affairs, with an international recognition.

A force which wrote, with the bloody sacrifices it made, History in the struggles for the vindication of our homeland and which put its own mark in all the gains and rights of the people and workers.

A force that has withstood and endured all kinds of fierce attacks launched against it from powers both inside and outside Cyprus and which continues to withstand trials and ordeals.

A Party with a strategy that serves the present and tomorrow, which addresses all working people and the people and expresses the aspirations and demands of the young people of our country.

A Party that constitutes a force for our homeland and represents the perspective of the country.

With the momentum of our glorious 92-year history, with the strength that working people give us, with faith in the future that our people deserve, we are continuing our militant path of struggle.