English translation by Red Phoenix staff
Comrades, parties and organizations here present at the 21st SEMINAR INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE REVOLUTION IN LATIN AMERICA, we salute the comrades of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador for organizing the International Seminar, for its efforts to keep the Seminar alive once again, and also for receiving us in their country in an ever so fraternal way.
We introduce our colleagues to our paper on the contribution of made by the October socialist revolution for humanity, in particular for the worldwide defeat of Nazi/fascism.
Revolutionary Communist Party – Brazil
Under capitalism, wars are the result of competition between the dominant classes of different nations for the dominion of the planet. In World War I, two opposite imperialist blocks were formed: The Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turks); and The Triple Entente (Britain, France, and the Russian Empire).
Something new, however, arose during World War I: the October Socialist Revolution on 1917 in Russia; a new conflict was taking place in the world, now divided into two antagonistic systems, capitalism and socialism. The capitalist blocs had a common goal, the destruction of the first worker-peasant state in history, with a view towards the restoration of capitalism on a global scale. It was for this purpose that the winning bloc invested one billion Marks in the German economy in six years (1924-1929).
When Nazism seized Germany and made explicit its aspiration to world domination, the capitalist powers did not try to fight it. On the contrary, they closed their eyes to its aggressions and even encourage the Nazi monster to direct its attack against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The plan of the capitalist countries to destroy the homeland of the Soviets
In 1939, the USSR proposed to England and France a pact for joint military action if the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan), the Nazi/fascist bloc, were to initiate war in Europe. There was no formal rejection, but no step was taken by the capitalist countries to accept the proposed pact.
On the contrary, France and England supported appeasement with Germany and Japan. Left alone, in August 1939, the USSR signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany. Its leaders knew that, sooner or later, Hitler would break the agreement, but they managed to gain valuable time in order to transfer part of their industries to the east of the great Soviet territory, or to strengthen their defensive military capacity.
From 1938 to 1941, Hitler occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Yugoslavia and, finally, France. In central and eastern Europe, Germany acquired large quantities of war material, means of transportation, raw materials, strategic materials, and labor, becoming strong enough to attack the Soviet Union. In 1941, Hitler, the fascist beast, representing the interests of capitalist monopolies, attempted to put an end to socialism by invading the Soviet Union, burning down its factories and farms, dropping thousands and promoting the greatest carnage the world has ever seen. But the heroic Red Army, led by the Communist Party and Stalin, supported by a free people, rose up against the Nazi beast and crushed it, freeing humanity from fascism.
The Hitlerite invasion was ruthless. They people en masse (women, children, the elderly), organized death camps, deported people for forced labor in Germany. Where they passed, they left nothing standing. It was a policy of extermination!
In response, the government, the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet people cried out: “Death to the fascist invaders! To the front! Everything for victory!“ The ranks of the Red Army swelled to millions of soldiers. Several regiments of partisans were also created, counting on millions of combatants.
The dedication and bravery of the Soviet people moved the world and was decisive in breaking the capitalist resistance of naysayers in the USA, England, and France. The anti-fascist allied bloc, the only united front of the peoples for peace and against fascism was finally formed.
Hitler’s idea that the occupation of the USSR would be effortless, a “lightning war,“ toppled to earth. The Nazis did not imagine the resistance they would find in the main cities: Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kiev and Moscow, to name but a few. Men, women, seniors and children rose up as an impregnable wall.
The achievements of the Soviet people reverberated throughout the world, causing even a bourgeois newspaper such as the Washington Star, to publish: “The Russian successes in the fight against Hitler’s Germany is of great importance not only for Moscow and the Russian people, but also for Washington, for the future of the United States. History will pay homage to the Russians for having ended the blitzkrieg, putting in the adversary to flight.“
The Battle of Stalingrad
In June 1942, the invaders advanced, but found an insurmountable barrier in Stalingrad. During seven months of combat, the invaders lost 700,000 soldiers and officers, more than a thousand tanks, two thousand guns and mortars, 1,400 aircraft.
The invaders were destroyed, “cooked in the cauldron of Stalingrad.” In the defeat of Stalingrad, the Nazis lost 1.5 million soldiers and officers. “… From the moral point of view, the catastrophe the German army suffered in the approaches of Stalingrad had an effect under the weight of which it could no longer rise“. (The Second World War, B. Lidell Hart).
The Battle of Stalingrad ended on February 2, 1943 with the victory of the Communists and marked the turning point of the Second World War and, is considered the biggest and most bloody battle of all history. About that period, Stalin wrote: “The moral state of our army is superior to that of the German army, for it defends the homeland against foreign usurpers and believes in the justice of its own cause; while the German army conducts a war of pillage and spoliation in a foreign country, not having the possibility of believing, even for a minute, in the justice of its infamous work.“ After Stalingrad, conditions were such that dozens of other cities throughout the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were liberated from the yoke of the enemy in 1943 and 1944, which, in turn, established the conditions for the definitive expulsion of the invaders from the great Russian homeland.
With all these successes, the USSR prepared a gigantic counter-offensive to liberate, at the beginning of 1945, the countries of Eastern European, a large geographical area ranging from the countries covered by the Baltic Sea (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany) to the Carpathian region (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania and Ukraine). An important factor for this new victory over the Nazis was the enormous support received by the Red Army from the oppressed peoples, in particular the combatants of the communist parties. Following the liberation of these countries, the conditions were established for the USSR to direct its energies to the final defeat of Nazi/fascism.
The victory of the Caucasus followed, and the process of mass expulsion of the Nazi occupiers began. “The Soviet Union can boast of its heroic victories,” wrote the President of the USA, Franklin Roosevelt, adding: “… the Russians kill more enemy soldiers and destroy more armaments than the other 25 United Nations states as a whole.”
The end of 1943 marked the turn in the Soviet front and in the Second War in general. The movement against Nazi fascism was consolidated and expanded throughout the planet.
In June 1944, with the German army routed in all regions of the USSR, Anglo-American troops disembarked in the north of France, beginning the western front proposed by the Soviet government since the beginning of the invasion.
It can be said that by this time the war was decided by the German defeat in Russia. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill recognized the fundamental role of the Soviets. In a speech given in the House of Commons in July 1944: “… I consider it my duty to recognize that Russia mobilizes and strikes forces far greater than those faced by the allies In the West, which, for many years, at the price of huge losses, carried the main burden of the fight on land.”
A liberating army: “To Berlin!”
In spite of the immense losses, the Red Army advanced on the trail of the Germans into Eastern Europe, whipping the Nazis and helping the popular resistance forces to defeat the occupiers and their internal collaborators. Democratic-popular republics were elected with the Communist parties in a leading role in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. “To Berlin!” was the watchword of the liberating army. It was not easy. The Nazi resistance, though weakened, produced fierce and bloody fighting. The victorious Russians did not butcher the enemy or did not take revenge for the crimes committed by the German army on Soviet soil. They fed the hungry, organized medical care, transport, and the distribution of water and electricity.
On May 2, 1945, the German High Command signed the act of unconditional surrender of its armed forces, with the flag of the USSR waving in the top of the German parliament, in Berlin.
On May 9, there was an immense celebration in Moscow commemorating the end of the Great Patriotic War (As the Soviets called their participation in World War II) and from then until now, this date is celebrated in Russia as Victory Day.
The Allied countries, the USA and England, deferred all concrete aid to the USSR (which was fighting on the eastern side). Its aim was to unleash a second war (on the western side) against Germany, hoping that the Soviets would be defeated by the Nazis. Seeing the impossibility of this wish coming true and fearing that the USSR would alone defeat the Nazis/fascists, only on June 6, 1944 was the Second Front unleashed.
This event, known in history as the Normandy landing or the “D-Day” is usually presented in various American books, magazines and films as the determining day that guaranteed the definitive turn of the war. In fact, although the famous D-Day invasion was important, the forces of the Nazi army had already been defeated by the USSR, which was in full swing, marching into Germany, pushing back what remained of the Nazi troops back to Berlin.
The Red Army also contributed to the expulsion of the Nazis from China, from Korea and to the defeat of Japan. The sacrifice of the Soviet people was invaluable. But it was worth it because it freed Humanity from the Nazi beast. It was also the triumphant victory of socialism that emerged from the Second World War in Eastern Europe and China.
Stalin’s role in the victory
The role of Comrade Stalin was fundamental for this great victory of the Red Army . Let’s see what Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, had to say about Stalin’s conduct throughout the War: “Stalin was self-trained as a strategist. . . After the battle of Stalingrad and particularly the battle of Kursk, he stood at the center of strategic direction. Stalin went on to think about managing the categories of modern warfare. He was well acquainted with all questions of the preparation and operational implementation. He demanded that military operations be conducted in a creative way, that they be energetic and flexible, focusing on the displacement and the siege of the enemy. His military thinking showed clearly the tendency to utilize resources, to make a diversified use of all resources in the commencement and conduct of operations. Stalin began to understand well not only the strategy of war, which was easy for him, for he possessed the wonderful art of political strategy, but also the operational art.“
Likewise, Marshal Georgi Zhukov, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Armed Forces during World War II, attributed great merit to Stalin: “It was due to Joseph Stalin in person that solutions were found to problems of military doctrine, in particular those concerning processes of artillery attacks, the conquest of air dominance, the methods of the encirclement of the enemy, the displacement of encircled enemy contingents and their successive destruction by clusters, etc.“
The USSR suffered enormous losses in the War: 25 million Soviets died, many of them members of the Communist Party. Practically, the Soviet people had to start anew. And they did. In the words of V.I. Lenin: “It will never be possible to defeat a people in which the majority of workers and peasants know, feel and see that they defend their soviet power, the power of the workers; who defend a cause whose victory ensures to them and their children the possibility of enjoying all the benefits of culture, everything that was created by human labor “. (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, XXIX)
Long live the October Socialist Revolution!
Long live the International Seminar!
Long live the unity of Latin American revolutionaries!
Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party – Brazil