To the CC of the RCWP

Athens 03/06/2022

Comrades,

We received your reply to the CC of the KKE of 6 May 2022 and we also read the article which was published in SOLIDNET.

First of all, we are saddened with the style and the unacceptable accusations addressed to our party in both texts, which are absolutely baseless and unacceptable. The leadership of the RCWP is well aware of the fact that the KKE has supported your party as well many CPs, that it has essentially assisted them in difficult moments, and that it has expressed its solidarity in practice, faithful to the principle of proletarian internationalism. These facts refute the slander of arrogance on our party which are used in order to justify the mistaken positions of the leadership of the RCWP, positions that are far away from our principles.

As regards the essence of the dispute, you rightly notice that the reasons are deeper. Moreover, the fact that the RCWP is dragged by the plans of the Russian bourgeoisie, reproducing many of the arguments of political forces which it used to denounce as opportunist, forces that seek to utilize the articles of the RCWP against the KKE, must be attributed to a deeper disagreement. As a result of this deep disagreement, the RCWP has been politically embraced by provocative and fascist forces of “national-Bolsheviks”. This disagreement may have manifested itself in 2014, with the adoption of the bourgeois concept of “exported fascism”; however, it originates from the weakness of the RCWP to understand the Leninist theory on imperialism, i.e. the operation of the modern capitalist world, as well as from its weakness to draw conclusions from mistaken notions which marked the Communist International and the international communist movement for years, e.g. the strategy of “Popular Fronts” with social democratic and other bourgeois forces.

We will not refer to these issues in detail, as we have already mentioned the essence of the imperialist war that takes place in Ukraine between the forces of Euro-Atlantic imperialism and capitalist Russia, a war which has nothing to do with the interests of the peoples, nor, of course with that of the people of Donbas. We will neither dwell on your position on the so-called “popular character” of the bourgeois regimes in Donbas or on the anti-communists, whom you consider to be fighting fascism, or on the danger you see for the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation but not of Ukraine. After all, an ideological struggle is being waged in the international communist movement on these issues, and each CP is judged by its stance.

In our reply we would like to focus on other issues which are related to the bilateral and multilateral relations, issues included in your letter as well.

1. In your letter you mentioned that it was not proper for the 4 CPs (KKE, CP of the Workers of Spain,CP of Mexico, and CP Turkey) to take the initiative to issue a joint statement without consulting the communists in Donbas, Russia, and Ukraine. This position underestimates the importance of this initiative, which was embraced by 42 Communist Parties and 30 Youth Organizations, ignores the actual dimensions of the conflict that takes place in the Ukraine, and entangles the peoples of dozens of countries who are already faced with the multifaceted consequences of the imperialist war, while Donbas is merely a flashpoint that can give rise to a more generalized imperialist war. Procedural issues, which might have caused a delay or the cancellation of the initiative of the 4 CPS, cannot conceal the effort of the RCWP to justify the role of the Russian bourgeois class and the bourgeois state.

2. You claim that the attitude of the KKE was not comradely as we sent our letter on 28/4 and the next day we published the article of the International Relations Section of the KKE, without waiting for your answer. However, the RCWP was the one who started the attacks, publicly criticizing the positions of KKE with successive reports in early April, without consulting us, something that forces exonerating anti-communist Putin and the Russian capitalism in Greece sought to exploit in their inter-imperialist conflict with the US and NATO imperialists. For this reason, in the letter we sent you, we noted that we do not waive the right to respond to the attacks of the RCWP.

3. You note that you informed us about the exploitation of title of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Union (Bolsheviks) - RKSM (b), from a group that left the RCWP and that we incorrectly included it in the 30 Communist Youth Organizations, which together with the 42 CPs, supported the Joint Statement on the imperialist war. However, the RKSM (b) in communication with the KNE and other youth organizations, presents the developments differently, supports the Joint Statement of the CPs and claims that  actually a group has left the RKSM (b) and supports the positions of the RCWP.

In any case, we inform you that according to the Statutes of the KNE and the KKE, KNE is a political organization of the KKE, based on the Programme and Resolutions of its congresses, and at the same time it maintains its organizational independence. The same is true for the international relations it develops with other communist and anti-imperialist youth organizations around the world.

4. You are wrongly mentioning that the KKE intervenes in the internal affairs of the RCWP because in the article by the IRS of the CC of the KKE, there is a reference to the internal struggle within the RCWP. However, the article by the IRS of the CC of the KKE doesn’t make any mention of a secret or safeguarded issue, but of strife that took on publicity, in the media, on the websites, and was also reflected in the official statements of your Party.

5. You are mentioning the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP), the International Communist Review (ICR), and the European Communist Initiative (ECI) as “concrete steps for the establishment of a communist pole in the international communist movement”. While you recognize in theory that these forms of inter-party cooperation are steps towards the establishment of a communist pole in the international communist movement and not the pole itself, in the following lines, you are accusing the KKE that “it didn’t ensure the basic joint coordinated actions among the parties of the communist pole”, and, in fact, that the KKE did that deliberately to maintain the formal unity of the IMCWP, conspiring with the right-wing opportunist forces of the European left.

This position reflects the great confusion within the RCWP regarding the forms of multilateral cooperation among the CPs. The fact that a number of parties agreed on specific founding documents of the ICR or the ECI and decided to work together based on these documents doesn’t mean that a communist Marxist-Leninist pole was ipso facto formed. Rather, specific steps were made towards this direction in the midst of different ideological and political positions on a number of issues. Much more political, ideological, and organizational steps are needed and will be taken in this direction. Something that, as we read, you mistakenly interpret as an attempt by the KKE “to turn the ICR and the ECI into support bodies of its line”. We are saddened by such an assessment that undermines the significant collective efforts of many parties participating in the ICR and the ECI within the framework of the necessary ideological and political regroupment of the ICM in a revolutionary direction, which, as it seems, cannot be followed by the RCWP.

Lastly, regarding the accusations made that the KKE does everything in its power to preserve the unity of the IMCWP, we should note that ideological-political and organizational unity among all the forces participating in the IMCWP, such as the forces of Eurocommunism —to which you deliberately refer in your article—, cannot exist, due to the diametrically opposed positions on strategically important issues. However, we seek to maintain the IMCWP as a space for the exchange of views and ideological struggle with parties that consider themselves Communist and Workers’ Parties resulting in some joint or converging anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist actions by also safeguarding any of their communist characteristics.

Our Party will continue to work in the above directions both within the IMCWP and within the ICR and ECI, which are forms of multilateral cooperation among CPs and were all started on the initiative of the KKE. Of course, our party will also undertake new initiatives based on the directions set by our 21^st Congress and the developments marked by the imperialist war, the need for a revolutionary regroupment of the international communist and workers' movement on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, the struggle against capitalist barbarity, the timeliness of its overthrow and the construction of a new socialist-communist society.

International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE