Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War
Representatives from over 50 countries took part in an international anti-fascist forum held at the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War in Minsk on 22 April.
Speaking at the Extraordinary 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Belarus held the day before, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Aleksei Sokol underlined, “The results of WWII and the Great Patriotic War vividly showed that only under the leadership of the Communists, by fighting on the fronts and in the rear, in partisan detachments and in underground organisations, can fascism be defeated. Today the Communists are once again obliged to lead this struggle. Evidence of this is the holding of the International anti-Fascist forum on April 22nd.”
One of the main participants of the anti-fascist forum, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Head of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma of Russia, Gennady Zyuganov, who has been in Minsk since yesterday, announcing today’s forum, noted, “Representatives will gather there, everyone will be involved, from Beijing to Havana. And this forum is being held by left-wing patriotic forces. We will hold it on Lenin’s birthday, because the Leninist-Stalinist modernisation helped us defeat fascism then and we will defeat it today.”
Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary of the Russian President, is also convinced that the Anti-Fascist Forum in Minsk will become another direction in the fight against neo-Nazism. TASS quotes his comment at a briefing held on April 19th, “Of course, this is a very important area of work. The theme of the fight against neo-Nazism, with any manifestations of Nazism in our modern history, which we see in different countries and which, of course, flourished in Ukraine, the fight against these manifestations is extremely important.”
He expressed hope that the forum in Belarus would become another significant event in the overall context of this struggle, TASS added.
As the Communist Party of the Russian Federation informed the sb.by portal, from the Russian side, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov, Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Dmitry Novikov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Council of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP–CPSU), First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Kazbek Taysaev, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Alexander Yushchenko, Deputy Chairman of the Central Council of the UPC-CPSU Igor Makarov, State Duma Deputy Denis Parfyonov and other representatives will take part in the Anti-Fascist Forum in Minsk.
The leaders of the Communist parties of Armenia – Yerjanik Ghazaryan, of Georgia – Temur Pipia, of Abkhazia – Bakur Bebiya, alongside representatives of the communists of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Portugal, Germany and Hungary arrived in Minsk from the foreign side.
Communists of Moldova, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Turkmenistan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other communist parties from Europe, Asia and America will take part in the forum via videoconference.
“All the left-wing patriotic forces of the world have gathered today on Belarusian land, every inch of which is abundantly watered with the blood of millions of victims of fascism, to say their firm NO to war and fascism,” the Communist Party of the Russian Federation stressed.
Petr Simonenko, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine:
By the example of Ukraine, all comrades in the communist movement, all progressive humanity must understand the evil we face today in the new dimension. We must learn lessons from our history, because thanks and only under the leadership of the Communists, wherever we were – at the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, in partisan units, underground, in Gestapo cells, leading the Resistance movement in Europe – it was under the leadership of the Communists that fascism was defeated.
“The time for action has come. We at the anti-fascist forum will consider as a political manifesto that appeal to the peoples of the world, which clearly speaks of the nature of fascism, speaks of the evil they brought to the world community,” Simonenko said.
The place of the forum – Minsk – was not chosen by chance. Belarus is one of the most affected by the fight against the Nazis. Our country lost every third man in the Great Patriotic War.
The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko sent his greetings to the participants of the anti-fascist forum. “The voice of the supporters of communist ideas in the struggle for the right of every person to peace and creative labor should sound persistently and uncompromisingly,” said the head of state.