p I will answer a question mat was addressed amongst others, to me. I think that we are all utmost concerned, of how was it possible that the glorious Soviet Union established through the Great October Revolution by Lenin could collapse? Revolution and the socialist revolutions inspired us so much and still continues to do. If we do not believe that Gods or Demons are behind it, we cannot but search for the policies that led to the collapse. And more particularly, that we all confirm that the socialist revolution was a major victory and that socialism in the Soviet Union was during a long time a very successful experiment. Then we have to search for the changes in policies, the changes in orientation that eventually led to the collapse. We cannot but assess this if we really want to draw lessons from the past in order to make our revolutions and our socialism more successful in the future. It is our standpoint It need not to be shared by everybody. The central question concerns the dictatorship of the proletariat and the and the continuing class struggle under socialism. This encompasses the need for the working class and its allies to crush the state machinery of the oppressing class and the building of a new state machine of a totally different kind as Marx and Engels discovered and taught. This means the establishing of the hegemony of the working class under the leadership of its revolutionary vanguard party and maintaining it during the whole period of transition between capitalism and communism.

p It is a basic Marxist idea that democracy for the oppressive classes goes hand with hand with their dictatorship over the old and new exploiters and bourgeoisie. As we well know ai a certairt moment in history, these principles were abandoned and as coirirades do not like names, I wont mention them. But it was said at a 362 certain moment that classes no longer exist in the Soviet Union, hence there was no longer need for maintaining die hegemony of the working class and the strange concept of the state of the whole people was introduced. Other changes in policies pertaining to the path towards socialism in the capitalist countries and the path to the liberation of the oppressed nations were also formulated at the same time. These new policies and ideas constitute what we call revisionism. And note, communism was certainly not born without revisionism. On the contrary it grew up and became strong in the struggle against that sort of ideas. So we have all the responsibility to assess these changes in orientation, in the glorious socialist country that we all cherish. Assessment requires from all of us the openness for each other’s opinion and a spirit of self-criticism. We also have to conform with our own concrete analysis and arguments for one or other theses and study each others findings with the greatest honesty and seriousness. This unavoidable assessment will not only benefit the unity of the international communist movement but also in the other way the unity of the international movement is required in order to make an assessment that is as balanced and correct as possible. It will certainly take a lot of time. Only through patient exchanges of point of views to which we conclude through our analysis we will get a correct insight into the process that led to the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the other former socialist countries.

p Our party wishes to contribute to that assessment with the book written by our Chairman Ludo Martins The Velvet Counterrevolution. A new book is prepared by our parry to come up with an analysis of some important questions in defence of Stalin. Let me restress the need to unite again all parties and organisations who claim to be Marxist-Leninists, who claim that the glorious past of the Soviet Union and the glorious past of international communist movement from 1920 till its formal dissolutions is theirs. We strongly believe that the defeats are temporary. And the future more than ever belongs to socialism and communism. Let us overcome all the allergy inherited from the past 30-40 years.

p To conclude, we all agree here that the contradictions in the world are sharpening and several delegates had even pointed that they sharpened quite fast and dramatically. That is another reason to strengthen our unity. Because an analysis means that all of us will 363 come under stronger attacks of the enemy and on the other hand that all of us fully commit ourselves to resist these attacks and wherever possible we defeat our enemies. There is no reason why we should not join our forces and fully support each other in the heavy struggles to come. I agree with those parties who expressed the concrete fields in which we concretely can strengthen our collaboration.

p Our party has emerged from the solidarity movement with the Vietnamese Liberation War and from the beginning waged continuously anti-imperialist campaigns and campaigns in solidarity with the third world liberation movements and socialist countries. Our Party has an important task to fulfill today in the struggle against upcoming fascism and racism. I read papers of the parties that expressed their concern about the gains obtained by fascist parties in our country. Indeed racism is growing very fast in our country and its a concrete field in which we should be able to collaborate with all the parties who face the same challenge.

I think that through these kinds of seminars we will reach more openness for each other, more understanding, more unity and we are really willing with each party represented here to look for concrete fields in which we can concretely collaborate.