132

p GEORGES COGNIOT

p PRESIDENT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
OF THE MAURICE THOREZ INSTITUTE, CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY

p Dear comrades, it is with a feeling of deep satisfaction and joy that I convey to you who have gathered here and through you to the Soviet people warm, fraternal congratulations from your French friends on the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which is a holiday for all the working people of the world. Directed by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party the great revolution, whose jubilee we are celebrating, represented not only a decisive turning point in modern history, but one of the most extraordinary events whose influence will be felt for many millennia.

p The glory of the Soviet Union is the glory of the first socialist country in history, a country which ushered in a new, more advanced era in mankind’s development and which raised hopes of freedom and justice for all peoples. The USSR began and carried on for many years, in conditions of unprecedented difficulties, gigantic transformations. And today neither its friends nor its enemies doubt that this work has radically changed the world.

p Speaking from this rostrum I recall those distant days when I first set foot on Soviet soil. Half a century has passed since that time. Everything I saw then convinced me that the working people of the Soviet Union were indeed learning the art of government and were already 133 governing the country. On every visit to the Soviet Union I noticed new successes of your country’s economy which was developing at unprecedented rates and was free of crises, and also a steady rise in the people’s living standards. I was amazed, too, at the rapid progress achieved in such important fields as education, science, and culture. Sixty years after 1917, we are witness to the great strength of the world socialist system which extends to all parts of the world, from Vietnam to Cuba; we are witness to the growing prosperity of this system and its increasing ability to impose upon imperialism a respect for peace and to link the humanisation of social relations in each country with the humanisation of international relations.

p At the same time, history bears witness to the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism and successes of the workers’ and general democratic movement in the capitalist countries, particularly the strengthening of Communist parties in the advanced capitalist states of Europe. Without the October Revolution none of these developments would have been possiblePermit me as a Frenchman to draw a brief comparison with what took place sixty years after the bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. At the time of its 60th anniversary, my country and the whole of Europe was swept by a wave of ruthless reaction that had set in following an upsurge of popular struggle in 1848. Soon France was to experience the oppression and disgrace resulting from the personal power of Napoleon III whose rule ended in a humiliating national tragedy.

p Why is there such a contrast between the two anniversaries? The point is that the 1789 revolution had merely replaced one form of exploitation and oppression by another. It brought to power the bourgeoisie which became counterrevolutionary by 1848, the time when the working class began to act as an independent political force and proclaimed what Marx called the “secret” of modern revolution-the emancipation of the proletariat. The October 134 Revolution, on the other hand, put an end to the exploitation of man by man, and emancipated labour.

p Thanks to the salvoes of the Aurora and thanks to Lenin, revolutionaries of my country belonging to three generations-the generation of fighters before 1914, such as Marcel Cachin, that of the soldiers who fought in the war, such as Paul Vaillant-Couturier, and that of young workers, such as Maurice Thorez-united to form the French Communist Party in 1920. The Land of Soviets was regarded by the working people of France as a fortress of the international working class, and during the war of intervention against revolutionary Russia French sailors, soldiers, and dock workers proclaimed the slogan "Hands off Soviet Russia!”

p The young Communist Party of France, as is known, passed through a long and difficult school. It is long since impossible to speak of French history without mentioning the role of the French Communist Party.

p This Party is fighting today to bring about, on the basis of the unity of the people of France, radical political and social changes for which conditions have matured. The task is to build under the direction of the working class a broad, stable, and continuously expanding mass movement and to forge and strengthen an alliance of the workers with other working classes and sections of the population, with all those who suffer from monopoly pressures. Only such an alliance can put an end to the current crisis, and this will be a step forward towards true democracy and socialism. It alone will make it possible to implement, by peaceful means, the strategy of the socialist transformation of society-

p For French Communists freedom is both a means of achieving socialism and the aim of socialism. We intend to establish a socialist system with the "national colours of France" in our country, excluding any mechanical copying of various models and patterns. This means that prime attention should be paid to the tasks of democracy and 135 people’s participation and control and of establishing vital dialectical links between government officials and the masses. Back in 1946, Maurice Thorez reminded us that history offers diverse ways of achieving socialism and confronts each nation with the necessity of going its own way independently. Thus, it follows that there may be different points of view on some issues among the parties.

p But is it not obvious that the emergence of a broad range of new opportunities is, to a decisive degree, connected with the changes in the correlation of world forces that have their roots in the October Revolution and its effects? Likewise, the October Revolution is a source of what, in July this year, a popular Catholic magazine in France has regretfully called "the fascination with Marxism"- It is a fact that particularly during the last 20 years Marxism has captured the attention of many French intellectuals and has permeated all aspects of intellectual and social life.

p The ideologues of the ruling classes try in vain to resist this trend by reviving the outworn idea about the death of Marxism. What Ernest Labrousse, a historian, and not a Communist Party member, said on this subject in 1961 holds true today: "The obituaries of Marxism could be an interesting subject for a thesis. How many times a tomb of Marxism of impressive size has been shown to us in the cemetery of dead theories! But gods can rescue the dead out of their graves, and Marxism has outlined its spiritual frontiers in the world of the living. It has penetrated economics, history, philosophy, and all scientific and literary thought.”

p Frenchmen have been taught by history that implementation of Marxist-Leninist ideas gives strength to fight and win not only to classes and individuals, but also to whole nations. My compatriots have not forgotten to whom they chiefly owed their salvation in the Second World War. They remember that the superhuman war efforts of the Soviet state and the unprecedented sacrifices made by the Soviet 136 people were decisive in the fight against nazism which had made many European states crumble like houses of cards.

p Without the heroes of the battles for Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin, France would have been erased from history.

p Sixty years ago Soviet power appeared before the world proclaiming the word “peace”. For the first time the ageold desire for peace of great masses of people found real expression in Lenin’s Decree on Peace. The idea of peace was embodied in a state and a society for which the abolition of war is the condition for rapid progress in its great creative undertakings. Even the Second World War could not stop this progress.

p It is an undeniable fact that up to now all important initiatives aimed at achieving peaceful coexistence, security, and arms limitation have come from the socialist community. We understand the vital importance of these salutary actions; they are fighting to make detente irreversible and to spread it from the diplomatic to the military field in order to bring about disarmament, the cardinal issue of our time.

p The growing economic, political, and moral crisis in our country also urgently calls for new solutions. The fact that capitalism is a society without a future, a society that has exhausted its possibilities of growth, is more and more clearly understood by those who are daily faced by the deep-going social contradictions of this system-unemployment, insecurity, the dire consequences of inflation, and the decline in living standards. All who reject poverty, inequality, and injustice aspire to socialism which brings liberation, the era of which began with the October Revolution 60 years ago, and which gave the working class and the people of France powerful historical impetus for modern development and advance towards a superior form of social relations.

p May the ideas of the October Revolution live forever!

p Long live the 60th anniversary of the Land of Soviets!

Long live the invincible cause of communism!