Zimbabwe Communist Party says to the USA, NATO and their allies hands off Russia!

Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has challenged the right of the USA to implement regime change through the use of extremist groups, terrorism and media manipulation and then establish military bases in the territory of its newly acquired ‘ally'.

NATO, formed in 1949 to advance the Cold War, mainly at the instigation of the USA, has in recent years, distinguished itself by the destruction of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Libya and the terrorising of Afghan peasants in a bloody and fruitless war.

The USA has around 800 military bases around the world in some 80 countries. It has divided the world into military commands. No other country has, in the history of humanity, ever had such a worldwide military presence. Europe is under EUCOM (European Command) and Africa is under AFRICOM (Africa Command).

Already there are US bases in countries close to Russia such as Poland and Turkey. Russia does not have any bases next to the USA, and in fact when the Soviet Union started to put missile bases in Cuba in 1962, the USA threatened nuclear war.

That is the big picture.

Now let us study the historical relationship between Ukraine and Russia:

The Eastern Slavs were one people speaking one language up until 1000 years ago. And even today, there are people speaking dialects intermediate between Russian and Ukrainian. Towards the end of the 9th century Prince Oleg of Novgorod relocated to Kyiv/Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine and established a kingdom of East Slavic people. This stretched across the land of modern central Russia and Ukraine west of the Urals, the concept of Russia and Ukraine as separate countries was unknown.

Vladimir the Great, who was the first Russian Prince to make Orthodox Christianity the state religion, came to the throne in 980 and is recognised by Russians and Ukrainians alike.

Around 1240 came the Mongol invasion and the destruction of the old Rus, as it was known. It took another 200 years for new principalities to be formed as Mongol control weakened. In the 16th century, Prince Ivan III of Moscow, better known to history as Ivan the Terrible, united the Russian lands as the first Tsar.

There was no specific territory or people known as ‘Ukraine'. The Zaporzhian Cossacks, composed mostly of independent peasants who had run away from serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had settled around the Dnieper River are believed to have used the term ‘Ukraine' in the 16th century. It is generally agreed that ‘Ukraine' means ‘borderlands' — and it had no fixed boundaries.

Some people speaking the dialect which later became the Ukrainian language settled in Galicia, then in the Austrian Empire, and it was from this group that Ukrainian nationalism spread. During the 19th century, various nationalist movements grew up in Europe based on ethnicity. They challenged the rule of big nations, but could also could be cruel to others. This was a particular feature of the Ukrainian nationalists.

In 1917, during the chaos of the First World War, Symon Petlyura became a military leader of the Ukrainian nationalists and later ruler of a large section of Ukraine until finally defeated in 1920 by the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. Petlyura's Army was known for ethnic cleansing and the slaughter of thousands of Jews who formed about 15% of the Ukrainian population then.

At the end of 1917, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was formed and eventually, as the Bolsheviks expanded their power during the Civil War, by 1920 had secured its rule over the whole of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic then joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the time of its formation at the end of December 1922.

Now we need to deal with one of the biggest slanders made against the Soviet government by the Ukrainian Nazis and their western backers. This is the often repeated lie that in 1932, the Soviet Union deliberately engineered a famine which killed 4 million Ukrainians. The formulators of falsified history refer to this as the ‘Holodomor' and this idea is used to create hatred against Russians and against Communists among young Ukrainians. This lie was perpetuated in the West by the British disinformation specialist Robert Conquest in his book HARVEST OF THORNS and was taken apart in the book FRAUD, FAMINE AND FASCISM by Douglas Tottle.

What are the facts?

1. Ukraine and Russia was subject to drought and famine every 8 to 10 years due to erratic rainfall patterns. The majority of peasants throughout the Russian Empire had suffered poverty, malnutrition and occasional starvation for hundreds of years.

2. V.I. Lenin, on 26th October 1917, the day after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, announced that all land belonged to those who worked on it. They no longer had to pay any form of rent to the landowners.

3. The Russian Empire as a whole had been a place of primitive agricultural methods. With industrialisation under the Soviet Union came a growing urban population which needed to be fed.

4. The rich peasants known as the kulaks (fists), found it profitable to hoard grain in order to put up prices. They were holding the USSR to ransom.

5. In 1927, as part of the first 5-year plan, it was decided to mechanise and collectivise agriculture. The growing population of the USSR could not be fed by small-scale peasant production.

6. Landless peasants, poor peasants and many middle peasants were happy to sign up for the collective farms. The kulaks, who in Ukraine supported by Ukrainian nationalists, were unhappy with collectivisation.

7. At Kharkov/Kharkiv in Ukraine, enthusiastic workers established a tractor factory outside of the 5-year plan.

8. 1932 was a hot and dry year. There was little rain. Hot and dry conditions led to a typhoid epidemic. It was also a time of collectivisation. Kulaks and Ukrainian nationalists destroyed livestock and burnt cops and boasted about it.

9. Realistic estimates show that around 1 million people died during this period, the majority from typhoid, and not all of them were in Ukraine as the drought affected surrounding areas of Russia.

10. Due to collectivisation and improved agricultural techniques there was no famine anywhere in the Soviet Union after 1932, (Save during the Nazi occupation 1941-1944).

11. Written reports by German officers during the occupation show that although the Nazis asked the peasants to de-collectivise, they refused saying that they were better off under the collective.

12. Most of the stories about the ‘Holodomor' used by Conquest in HARVEST OF THORNS come from the Hearst press and from reporters who it can be shown, never visited Ukraine. William Randolph Hearst is known as the ‘Father of Yellow Journalism' in the USA.

13. Most of the photos used in HARVEST OF THORNS are actually stills made from a Soviet Famine Relief film made for the 1921-1922 Volga Famine which occurred in an area which had only come under Soviet control in 1920 at the end of the Civil War. None of the photos is actually of the 1932 famine.

It is important to go through this in a little detail as these lies are still being perpetrated inside Ukraine and in the West and have been an important factor in the war of falsification.

When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, many Ukrainians in the extreme west of Ukraine joined the Nazis, and some 200,000 joined various Nazi formations, some directly under the German SS. The Ukrainian divisions were noted for their extreme cruelty massacring not only Jews but more than 100,000 Poles. They were also used as concentration camp guards.

It should be noted that around 250,000 Ukrainians fought bravely in Soviet partisan units and 41⁄2 million in the Red Army.

As the Nazis were being defeated in 1944, Ukrainian Nazis, including wanted war criminals fled towards the American lines where they were welcomed in preparation for the coming Cold War. In fact as soon as the war was over, the followers of Stepan Bandera began an anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign which lasted until 1955, they were assisted by the USA and Britain.

The Communist hero, Kim Philby, a Soviet agent working for British intelligence became head of MI.6. Philby never in fact spied against Britain. In fact his job was to parachute Ukrainian Nazis into the Soviet Union, where of course, they were immediately picked up.

In 1991 came the betrayal by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Despite everything, the independence of Ukraine was recognised. The problem then came in 2014. Because President Yanukovych of Ukraine had agreed to make closer links with Russia than with the European Union, demonstrations broke out led by CIA-backed Nazi groups. There was a continuous link with the followers of Stepan Bandera, the Banderovtsy. In addition, the CIA formed the Azov Battalion with the assistance of Blackwater, the US private security company which does undercover work for the US State Department. The Azov Battalion is openly racist and openly Nazi.

In 2014, the first targets were trade union buildings which were burnt down with trade unionists still inside. Those trying to leave the burning buildings were shot by Nazis. This happened both in Kyiv and Odessa. The Communist Party of Ukraine was driven underground and soon after made illegal, as it had been in apartheid South Africa.

Parts of eastern Ukraine had never been Ukrainian-speaking historically and there was immediate rejection of the coup government, even in some areas of western Ukraine initially.

The Crimea had never been part of Ukraine historically and under the Soviet Union had only been transferred from the Russian Federation to Ukraine in 1954 for purely administrative reasons. In 2014the population had no interest in remaining as part of fascist Ukraine. Similarly, Lugansk and Donetsk established independent republics but came under constant attack from the Azov Battalion and other fascists. That war and associated atrocities have been continuing for the past 8 years and had accelerated under the Biden administration.

Since the time of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton there was an aggressive foreign policy against Russia which was softened under Donald Trump. Joe Biden is from the Clintonite camp of liberal fascists. That is those in the Democratic Party who while mouthing ‘Human Rights' are involved in the funding of terror groups and using those for aggressive military expansion. Biden pushed Ukraine towards more violence against Lugansk and Donetsk and to push for entry into NATO.

Had Ukraine became a member of NATO, it had the right to ask other NATO countries to intervene in case of problems with Russia. With attacks on the Russian-speaking population of Donetsk and Lugansk increasing, the Russian government had little option but to intervene against the hostile terrorist state on its doorstep.

In Africa we should remember that the biggest war ever on African soil, the Congo War of 1998-2003 was funded and directed by the USA and initiated by Bill Clinton. The destruction of Africa's most advanced country, Libya, was carried out by NATO under the presidency of Barrack Obama.

Having persuaded the Ukrainian government to ask to join NATO, the USA and EU has now refused to send troops against the might of the Russian army and has simply put sanctions against Russia, introducing censorship and blocking news from RT and Sputnik. Blocking Russia from the Swift clearing system has merely ensured that it joins the Chinese clearing system. Putin has called their bluff. As the Hungarian Workers' Party has said in its statement:
 
"Russia has been dragged into this war by NATO, the US and the EU. The war was provoked by the West, prepared by the West, and now the West wants to shift responsibility to Russia.

"It was not Russia that sent soldiers to Mexico, but the United States to Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States...

"We support the assessment of events by the Communists of Russia and Belarus. The NATO war is directed against their peoples, against the independence of their countries."
 
The Zimbabwe Communist Party looks forward to a speedy victory and deNazification of Ukraine.

We would remind people that across Ukraine, all war memorials commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany have been removed and replaced by memorials to Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators and murderers; that Nazi gangs, including racist thugs from across Europe, are the ones in real control, not the clown President Volodomyr Zelensky.

Some Communists have condemned Russia, and in particular President Putin, for taking military action, pointing out that Russia is no longer a socialist country and that Putin is anti-Communist.

To this we reply: Because Russia is no longer socialist, is it acceptable for a NATO base to be established on its border by a country ruled by Nazi thugs?

We cannot, in a dogmatic fashion, look at the current world in the same way that Lenin looked at the world in 1916 in which there were two evenly balanced opposing imperialist blocs fighting each other.

"The living soul of Marxism is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions." V.I. Lenin

Today the USA and its NATO allies have an overwhelming military presence throughout the world and are still trying to push that even further. They have the whole world divided into military commands. They have funded extremists everywhere, jihadists in the Middle East, Nazis in Ukraine. To call Russia imperialist' in the present world order and under present conditions is to objectively support the continuation of NATO domination.

Forward with the deNazification of Ukraine !! Forward with Reconstruction of Ukraine !! HANDS OFF RUSSIA !!

The ZCP further calls for the rolling back of NATO and US domination everywhere and especially on our continent, Africa. We call for the removal of all foreign bases from African soil.

Down with AFRICOM !! Down with the French occupation !!

HANDS OFF AFRICA !!