The Massive Rebellion Of The Greek Communists In Tashkent Against The Khrushchevian Revisionism

Movement for the Reorganisation of the Communist Party of Greece 1918-1955

50 years since the massive rebellion of the Greek communists in Tashkent against the Khrushchevite revisionism The open intervention of the Khrushchevite revisionists in KKE and the rebellion of the Greek communists against Khrushchevite revisionism The “Tashkent events” and the pogrom against the communists September of this year marked the 50th year since the open, barbarous intervention by the treacherous Khrushchevite clique in the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the massive rebellion of the Greek communists, political refuges in Tashkent against Khrushchevite revisionism. These events - the so called “Tashkent events” - are virtually unknown to the communists, the working class and the people of our country and mark the beginning of the liquidation of the revolutionary KKE 1918-1955, the heroic party of the proletariat. At the end of August 1949, after a three-and-a-half-year armed struggle against the indigenous monarchist-fascist reaction and the Anglo-American imperialism, when there were no any prospects of victory because of the titoist treason (Tito’s joining the imperialist camp) that disrupted the balance of power at the expense of our struggle, following a decision by the Central Committee of the KKE headed by Nikos Zachariades, the partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece (DA) left behind the glorified and legendary heights of Grammos, Vitsi and the other mountains of our country to pass to Albania and from there, in their majority, to the faraway Tashkent, the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan, then part of Stalin’s socialist Soviet Union. The Greek communists spent their first years in exile trying to adjust to the new life conditions with all the expected problems, but they were living in peace and were also, with great enthusiasm, actively participating in the socialist construction and party life supporting the revolutionary line of KKE, headed by Nikos Zacahriades, and the line of the international communist movement, guided by the great communist leader and Marxist [classic], Joseph Stalin. In October (10-14.10) 1950, the 3rd Conference of KKE took place. This body almost completely purged the opportunists from the party. For the first time in the decade of 1940-1950, a heavy blow was dealt to the right opportunism, to all opportunists who had betrayed the popular movement during the time of the Nazi occupation by signining the agreements in Lebanon (20.5.1944), Gazerta (26.9.1944) and Varkiza (12.2.1945) and who, moreover, had sabotaged the development and enlargement of the DA during the Civil War. The DA partisans had, on one hand, the luck to witness for a few years the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union in Stalin’s time but, on the other hand, for many decades following his murder in March 1953, they had also the great misfortune to experience the abolition of socialism and the gradual restoration of capitalism. The latter process started in the Hruchev-Brezhnev period in the mid 1950’s after the prevalence of the Khrushchevite revisionist counter-revolution, and finished with the collapse of the restored capitalism, and finally, with the break-up of the capitalist Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, in Gorbachev’s time. The socialist society in the Soviet Union was a class society – consisting of workers,

farmers and intellectuals – but without exploitation. Nevertheless, the construction of socialism was advancing in the midst of fierce class struggle since the counterrevolutionary forces never ceased to exist and act against the Soviet power. Despite the establishment of proletarian dictatorship these forces attempted from early on, through various means to undermine the unity of the Greek communist political refugees. However, after the death/murder of Stalin and the prevalence of the revisionist group of Hruchev-Mikoyan-Brezhnev et al. when the latter found out that the KKE leadership headed by Nikos Zachariades is not going to abandon the revolutionary marxist-leninist-stalinist course and to follow the anti-stalinist revisionist course, it sought to form a right opportunist faction in the largest KKE Party Organisation abroad, the Tashkent Party Organisation (KOT), and to push this faction right up to the Organisation’s leadership. However, the revolutionary KKE leadership headed by Nikos Zachariades immediately took measures removing fraction’s cadres from the leadership of KOT. After the removal of the faction from the KOT leadership, high-ranking members of the Khrushchevite group in the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, following Hruchev’s orders, organised and guided an assault on the Organisation’s offices. They assembled around 200 opportunists headed by Ypsilantis, Himaros, Barbalias and others who, under the guidance of Saakof, attacked the offices with the intention to capture them: “at 4 pm, on the 9th of September, around 200 people gathered in the courtyard of 7th Politeia together with the faction leaders who were bracing their followers with vodka, beer and wine” (K.D. Karanikola: “Mia lefki selida tou KKE”, p. 53). The assault on the KOT offices was preceded by faction’s provocations in various Politeies: “In those Politeies where the factionists had some support, like in the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 9th and 11th, they started looting the local libraries and burning books, especially those written by Zachariades, Bartziotas and those about the struggle of the DA” (ibid, p. 46). Now the social-democratic leadership of Aleka Papariga pretends to support the struggle of the DA. The assault on the KOT offices did not have the expected result - the opportunists did not manage to capture them. Vagelis Zoulis, former DA partisan, made the following ironic comment on their failure: “Now I realised why we didn’t seize Konitsa with at least a thousand houses since our leaders with 200 men didn’t manage to seize a single house!!” (Ibid, p. 54). When the assault on the KOT offices was made known, thousands of enraged communists rushed into their defence. Clashes and beatings followed with the factionists until police and cadet detachments came to their rescue. Many of the injured had to be transported to the hospital while hundreds of Greek communists were arrested, mainly high-ranking DA officers, thrown in jail and tried for “hooliganism”(!). Despite this open provocation by the Khrushchevite clique against KKE, Saakof and Safayef, the principal perpetrators of the pogrom, circulated the rumour that “the KKE leadership and Nikos Zachariades unleashed a bloody terror without a precedent”!!! (Ibid, p. 55). All the political refuges in Tashkent knew that the instigators of the provocative “Tashkent events” were the Khrushchevite revisionists who aimed at the liquidation of KKE. Everybody knew that the handful of Greek opportunists were in permanent contact with and under the direct guidance of the treacherous Khrushchevite revisionist group. One of the noted opportunists, Kostas Gritzonas, confesses: “One evening, during the time when the Tashkent events reached their climax, as I was

on my way from the 7th to the 9th Politeia together with the secretary of KOT, Aristotelis Hatouras, he confided to me that the anti-zachariadist movemement enjoyed the support from the Soviets. He left me with the understanding that they were having private talks with the Khrushchevites from the CC of the CP of Uzbekistan” (K.Gritzonas: “Meta to Grammo”, p.18-19). The overwhelming majority of the Greek communists, 95% of the KOT members, condemned the Khrushchevite revisionists’ intervention in KKE and they rallied around their Party headed by Nikos Zachariades. This attitude was most clearly expressed in the historic 5th Plenum of the CC of KKE convened at the end of December 1955. In the Plenum’s decision, among other things, it is mentioned that: “the faction would have achieved nothing at all had it not received the support by certain soviet comrades, who were convinced that the faction is the strongest and the most pro-soviet part of KOT which they must support and help”. The “Tashkent events”, the open and anti-communist intervention of Khrushchevites in KKE, has been concealed by every right opportunist leadership of the socialdemocratic “K”KE since 1956 and they are still concealed by the A. Papariga leadership. The decision of the 5th Plenum (December 1955) concerning the situation in KOT was published for the first time in 1995, after 40 years. In February of 1956, during the counter-revolutionary 20th Congress of CPSU, the show trials of the Greek communists, political refugees, started. In these trials they were sentenced under “hooligan” laws and exiled to prison camps (Giorgos Kalianesis, general of DA, Dimitris Vyssios, lieutenant-kernel, commissar of the 103rd Brigade, Nikos Fragos, major of DAG, Giorgos Makris captain of DA and others). In the 20th Congress of CPSU, the Khrushchevites formed the infamous “International Committee” consisting of cadres from the Soviet, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Czechoslovak and Bulgarian parties. The president of the International Committee was, formally, Georgiu Dez – Khrushchev’s puppet – but essentially Otto Kuusinen, well-known social democrat, and member of the Politburo of CPSU. The International Committee openly and without pretexts intervened in KKE by arbitrarily summoning the infamous 6th Plenum (March 1956). In this illicit meeting the report was read not by a Greek, but by the Romanian opportunist Dez. Former cadres and expelled members participated, but not the lawfully elected General Secretary of the Party Nikos Zachariades. The 6th Plenum illegally and forcibly removed the elected revolutionary leadership of KKE, including the Party’s General Secretary Nikos Zachariades, who was arrested and isolated, and appointed a right opportunistic puppet leadership. The 6th Plenum adopted the counter-revolutionary social-democratic line promulgated in the 20th Congress of CPSU (peaceful transition to socialism, etc). The great majority of the Greek communists (85-95%) rejected and vehemently opposed the treacherous social-democratic anti-Stalinist line of the 20th Congress/6th Plenum and defended marxism-leninism-stalinism as well as Stalin-Zachariades. In the following years, thousands of communists were expelled by the appointed right opportunist Kolligianis-Partsalidis-Vafiades leadership, while others broke away from the new opportunist bourgeois party that shamelessly usurped the title-name “K”KE – a title that bears until nowadays - while it is guided by the counter-revolutionary trend of Khrushchevite revisionism. The decades after 1956 was a time of fascist persecutions of all the Greek communists, who remained faithful to Stalin and Zachariades by the Soviet and Greek Khrushchevite revisionists. These persecutions took various forms: surveillance, spying, arrests, imprisonments, exiles to Siberia, etc. Many party cadres were exiled to Siberia and among them the Party’s General

Secretary, Nikos Zachariades, who, after 17 years of exile, was murdered in Sorgut by the treacherous Brezhnev-Florakis clique so that he wouldn’t return alive to Greece and upset their plans. Every single right opportunist leadership of the social democratic “K”KE, including the Florakis-Tsolakis and the contemporary Papariga leadership, have passed over the fascist persecutions against the Greek communists in silence. Moreover, they have made no reference to the intervention in the KKE internal affairs carried out by the infamous “International Committee” for 40 years. They published the relevant documents just in 1997.

TASHKENT September `55 – the beginning of the struggle of all the world communists against Krushchevian revisionism Movement for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece 1918-1955

Nobody could have ever imagined that in the middle of the `50s of the previous century, a small and unknown city was destined to go down in history of the world communist movement as the birthplace of resistance against the Krushchevian revisionism and the beginning of international struggle against this treacherous counter-revolutionary trend; this small city is Tashkent, the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan, “lost” in the depths of Asia, alien for the Greek and world proletariat. Nobody could have ever imagined that a handful of revolutionaries - members of a Communist Party of a small country - would be the first ones to stand up against Krushchevian revisionism. The party of this small country is the revolutionary KKE and the handful of revolutionaries were the heroic, battle-hardened partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece (DA), members of the Tashkent Party Organisation (KOT) living then in the faraway Asian city as guests of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Their struggle against Krushchevian revisionism passed into the history of the Greek and world communist movement as the “Tashkent events” (September 1955). Earlier - shortly after the prevalence and strengthening of his treacherous faction in CPSU – as the renegade and agent of imperialism, Nikita Hruchev, was making approaches to the secretaries of the Communist Parties, he found out that the Secretary of KKE, Nikos Zachariades was not willing to abandon the revolutionary Stalinist line. He requested that he revise his attitude in three fundamental questions of the world communist movement: 1) to consider the capitalist Yugoslavia a “socialist” country, 2) to turn against Stalin by writing articles in Pravda on the “cult of personality” - the infamous, Krushchevian myth of idealist origin, and 3) to assent to the liquidation of Comniform. The reply given by the great and unwavering communist leader on all the above requests was negative.

When later the Krushchevian revisionist clique became sure that this kind of pressure will not have any effect, it proceeded with the formation of a faction in the Tashkent Party Organisation, but there a was a lack of support for it save for a few opportunists. The Party leadership unmasked the faction and removed the factionists.

Nikos Zachariades, delivering a speech in a Party cadres meeting in the theatre Mu Ki Mi in Tashkent, said the following among other things: “comrades, several speakers launched an attack on Demetriou and more or less they consider him the head of the revisionists. Demetriou, comrades, is only the end of the tail of a very clumsily camouflaged elephant. The serious and historic duty allotted to all of us is to pull this tail so that the whole world will see the elephant, that is, Hruchev” (K. Karanikola, Mia lefki selida tou KKE, p. 59).

When even the formation of a sizeable faction failed, the Krushchevian revisionist group, employing a few Greek opportunists, organised on the 9th of September 1955 “the open provocation against the delegation of the CC of KKE: the violent and gangster assault on the offices where the delegation was based and injury of three of its members” (5th Plenum, December 1955). On the 9th of September, about 200 opportunists, under the direct guidance of the soviet revisionists, headed by Ipsilantis, Demetriou, Barbalias and others, carried out an assault on the offices of the Tashkent Party Organisation, but they failed to capture them. This act raised an outcry among the thousands of party members who rushed immediately to defend the KOT offices. What followed were violent clashes with the factionists, the police and the army. Many hundreds of Greek communists were arrested and thrown into jail. At the end of December of `55 (26-28.12 1955) the 5th historic Plenum of the CC of the KKE was convened. It was historic because: 1) it condemned the anti-communist Krushchevian revisionist intervention in KKE and 2) it was the last convened body of our heroic party before its final liquidation. Next year, in the middle of February 1956, during the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the show trials of the Greek communists began in Tashkent. In this travesty of justice, battle-hardened DA veterans, like Giorgos Kalianesis (general), Demetres Vyssios (lieutenant-kernel) and others, were tried for hooliganism and vagrancy. Following their convictions, they were exiled to Siberia and, in fact, into concentration camps “that were intentionally adjacent to concentration camps of German war criminals sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment, the maximum period according to the Soviet criminal law. The Germans didn’t work because of their ‘prisoner of war’ status, and, apart from having the meals of a Soviet soldier, they received parcels of medicine and foodstuffs by the West German Red Cross every ten days. The sentenced refugees were fed with rotten potatoes and mouldy crushed grain. This “diet” was followed under conditions of heavy and exhausting labour” (D. Vyssios: “Open letter to M. N. Panomariof, former Head of the Department of International Relations of the CC of CPSU, January 1991). The opposition of the Greek communists to Krushchevian revisionism was expressed en masse. The overwhelming majority (95%) of the members of the Tashkent Party Organisation came out against the Krushchevian intervention in KKE and defended the revolutionary party line and the CC headed by Nikos Zachariades showing a stunning decisiveness and unparallel courage. The opposition of the captive communists in jails and concentration camps was similar. It was exactly this overwhelming opposition by the Greek communists (ranging from 85% to 95% in Tashkent and in the People’s Republics) that prevented KKE from being transformed into a bourgeois party of social democratic type. When, a few months later, the renegade Hruchev set up the infamous “International Committee”, Nikos Zachariades, addressing its “president” Georgiu Dez, said the following regarding his interference in KKE internal affairs: “who granted the right to examine the problems of heroic KKE to you, who slept in August of 1944 under fascism and woke up next day under People’s Republic, brought by the Red tankists from Stalingrad when they crashed the fascist Romanian Division and offered it to you as a present. What experience do you have to judge the struggle of Greek communists who, to their credit, through their struggle, did

not allow not even a single Greek citizen to fight in the Eastern Front against USSR” (K.Karanikola, p. 70-71). The revolutionary KKE is the only communist party of a capitalist country that was never transformed into a counter-revolutionary, bourgeois, social democratic party. This fact compelled the Krushchevian revisionists to create a completely new party that replaced the old liquidated one. They summoned an illicit party body, the so-called “6th Plenum”, that decreed the arbitrary removal of the lawfully elected Party’s leadership, the arrest of Nikos Zachariades and massive expulsions of dissident members. In ideological-political level, the 6th Plenum adopted the counter revolutionary, social democratic line of the 20th Congress (“peaceful” transition to socialism, etc). The new party took the false name of “K”KE (shamelessly usurping the name of the revolutionary KKE) and it has been, from the very beginning, a bourgeois social democratic party that bears no relation whatsoever with the revolutionary KKE because the latter was guided by the revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Leninism-Stalinism, while the former - by the counter-revolutionary trend of Krushchevian revisionism, a variant of bourgeois ideology. The overwhelming and militant opposition of the Greek communist political refugees, headed by Nikos Zachariades against the Krushchevian clique in September 1955 in Tashkent, was chronologically the first in the history of the international communist movement’s struggle against Krushchevian revisionism, and, also, a culmination of the revolutionary KKE (1918-1955) heroic struggle. If one takes into account the unheard-of disaster that inevitably followed the enforcement of Krushchevian revisionism to the communist parties (destruction of socialism and restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, breaking-up of the capitalist Soviet Union, liquidation of the communist parties), it can be said that it was not just a culmination of the long struggle of the stalinist-zachariadist KKE, but was at the same time a great and unique moment in the struggle of the international communist movement (Komintern-Komniform) against the new counter-revolutionary treacherous trend of Krushchevian revisionism which emerged in its lines in the mid-1950s: it was precisely this moment that marked the beginning of the most fierce ideologicalpolitical struggle against Krushchevian revisionism in international level, a struggle that has been going on for half a century now, is still going on and it will be going on in the future until its final victory. From the above, it becomes obvious that the “Tashkent events” of 1955 assume a triple historical importance: First, they constituted the first open and brutal intervention of the Krushchevian revisionists in KKE internal affairs aiming at its liquidation. Second, they marked the beginning of the resistance and struggle of the Greek communists against Krushchevian revisionism before its emergence as a complete ideological-political trend in the 20th Congress of CPSU (February 1956). Third, they raised the banner of struggle of the communists of all countries against this counter-revolutionary trend. The rising and battle of the Greek communists in Tashkent, in September of 1955, ushers in the period of struggle against Krushchevian revisionism on international level. But what is the reason for the resolute opposition of the Greek communist political refugees (95% in Tashkent and 85-90% in the other People’s Republics) against

Krushchevian revisionism, of people who had been brought up in a spirit of deep trust and devotion to the Socialist Soviet Union? First of all, it is the guiding and decisive role played, in this extremely difficult struggle, by the courageous, unyielding and uncompromising revolutionary Nikos Zachariades, in order KKE not to abandon its revolutionary line. Besides his opposition to the Krushchevian group, in the beginning of 1956, he replied thus to some Greek revisionists, members of the CC of KKE, when they asked him to resign: “I won’t grant you this favour now, I won’t allow you to convert KKE into a bourgeois party” (D. Votsika: Portreta koryfeon stelexon tou KKE”, Athens 1999, p.21) Secondly, it is the fact that the members of KKE were battle-hardened partisans who had given everything to the armed revolutionary struggle against the indigenous monarchist-fascist reactionary forces and the imperialism, having almost a decade (1940-1950) of armed struggle to their credit. This long revolutionary experience helped them to show the necessary political-ideological maturity, firmness, consistency and decisiveness in this critical moment. Comrade Nikos Zachariades had predicted the disaster that would come in case Krushchevian revisionism dominated, and it is this prediction that allows for his historical eminence as a great communist revolutionary leader to be assessed: “watch out comrades, these are international provocateurs, they are going to cause a great damage to the world’s communist movement and their Greek collaborators will cause great damage to our country” (Tashkent, September 1955). Not only did he predict the disaster, but he was the first in the world’s communist movement who stood up and fought against the counter-revolutionary trend of Krushchevian revisionism, a fight for which he paid with 17 years of exile and finally with his own life: he was murdered by the treacherous social-democratic clique of Brezhnev-Florakis in August of 1973 in Sorgut, Siberia, the place of his exile. Thus, without a doubt, Nikos Zachariades, through his revolutionary struggle, rises to eminence as a giant revolutionary, Bolshevik and great communist leader, as “one of the most important figures of the world’s communist movement” (Niyazof, Tashkent 1955) and remains until the end of his life a devoted disciple of Joseph Stalin who, during the proceedings of the 19th Congress of CPSU (1952), had said about him: “Do you see this one? He is a great leader. He will start the revolution not only in Greece but also in Europe” (P. Demetriou, “Ek vatheon”, Athens 1997, p. 202-203). The revisionist group of Hruchev-Brezhnev quite naturally saw him as a serious, capable, powerful and very dangerous ideological-political opponent whom therefore they had to forcefully remove from the leadership of KKE at all costs, and to destroy politically and physically; so dangerous was he considered, that one of Hruchev’s fervent supporters, the French poet Louis Aragon, saw fit to mention him in his two-volume “History of the Soviet Union”: “The charge for personality cult resulted in the removal of Nikos Zachariades from his post as General Secretary of KKE” (L. Aragon, “History of the Soviet Union”, v. 2, p. 268, Athens 1963). This article was first published in Newspaper “Anasintaxi” issue 214, 15-31 October, 2005 in Greek on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the “Tashkent events”.