57 years ago, in the early hours of April 21, 1967, many pioneers of the labor-popular struggles were arrested, in order to prevent any reaction to the ongoing coup. Not long after, most woke up to the sounds of crawlers, military marches and dictatorship sermons.
Since then, April 21 has always reminded the Greek people that capitalist power does not hesitate to change its political forms, from bourgeois parliamentary democracy to political or military dictatorship and vice versa, always with a view to better serving capitalist interests, to remain the dictatorship of capital untouched.
The dictatorship of April 21 was the result of the unresolved intra-urban contradictions and rivalries in the functioning of the urban political system, as it had been formed after the armed and harsh confrontation with the DSE. Its main dysfunction was the strengthened role of the monarchy in the control of the army and the formation of governments, but also the outdated methods of controlling the labor-popular movement, the problems in the foreign policy of the bourgeois state centered on the Cyprus issue. Intra-urban antagonisms became entangled with intra-imperial ones, at a time when the powerful capitalist states of Europe were forming their own distinct imperialist center and south-eastern Europe was a field of global capitalism-socialism confrontation and clash of rival capitalist interests.
The protagonists of the dictatorship of the colonels were persons who served the mechanisms of the bourgeois state, the army and the KYP, the constitution of 1952 voted by all bourgeois parties and the anti-communist ideological arsenal. The colonels embedded in this capitalist edifice had developed multifaceted ties with domestic capitalists, publishers, politicians, diplomats and representatives of foreign intelligence services, especially those of the US.
For all the previous reasons, the dictatorship of the colonels in a general direction was a continuation of the internal and foreign policy, supporting big capital and maintaining its international alliances (EEC, NATO), serving their plans at the expense of the countries of socialist construction. Also, the foreign policy of the dictatorship served the interests of the USA, NATO and the European capitalist states in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa, but also led to the tragedy of Cyprus.
The April 21st dictatorship continued and intensified legislative measures against the KKE, imposed mass persecutions, disbanded trade unions and other mass organizations, and carried out torture and murder. Although he took some repressive measures and at the expense of the functioning of bourgeois parties, he maintained channels of communication and consultation for the restoration of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
From the first moment, the communists and other radical fighters stood against the designs of the bourgeois military dictatorship, paying a heavy price for their stance in favor of the working-people’s interests.
Despite the conditions of long and deep illegality, the KKE was able in time to separate itself from the opportunistic forces within it during the 12th Plenary Session (1968), to fight for the establishment of illegal Party Organizations, to establish the KNE, to take the lead in the enlightenment of the workers – popular forces. He gave all his strength to the organization of the anti-dictatorship struggle from the first day, when in conditions of brutal repression “everything was overshadowed by the horror”. He had a special contribution to the development of the labor-popular struggles, from the first mobilizations with union demands to the student takeover of the Faculty of Law and the youth and labor-popular uprising of the Polytechnic University (November 1973). Against bourgeois and opportunist political forces, he rejected the so-called “liberalization”, i.e. the disguise of dictatorship.
The fall of the dictatorship in July 1974, as a result of its “crimes”, especially of Cyprus, the exhaustion of its role and the struggle against it culminating in the Polytechnic, was accompanied by the so-called period of the so-called “post-colonization”.
After the restoration of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, the capitalist state with any government continued to serve the profitability of business groups, suppress labor-people struggles, participate in transnational capitalist alliances, and engage in imperialist rivalries and wars.
And today the character of the state ultimately remains the same, capitalist and anti-people. In this context and often with the agreement of all civil parties, the involvement in the plans of the NATO bloc deepens more and more, as is currently happening with the war in Ukraine, and with every way support for Israel, the “killer state” of the Palestinian people. The commercialization of health is progressing with the last act being the evening clinics, private universities are being legislated. Mixtures of restrictive or expansionary policies are alternated, given in any case the reduction of people’s income, the privatization and degradation of transport is concealed, there are no social protection structures for women, immigrants and refugees,
A debt to those who fought against the dictatorship and at the same time a response to today’s anti-popular reality, is the building of the social alliance of the working class, the subsistence farmers, the self-employed, the increasingly massive and decisive strike and worker-popular struggles, the student and student mobilizations, the multifaceted activity of women’s organizations, the decisive change of association in the labor-popular movement.
The strengthening of the KKE, in all battles and in the upcoming European elections, is a guarantee of a workers’-people’s counterattack against any version of an anti-people’s government. Every step to strengthen the Party constitutes a step to strengthen the labor-people’s action, the only one capable of stopping the plans of the capitalist class, the state and its international allies, to disengage the country from imperialist plans, to open a way for perspective, the truly promising organization of the economy and society, socialism-communism.
With a strong KKE, we break the bonds of the EU, for Greece and the Europe of socialism, of workers, farmers, and peoples.
Tags: Announcement KKE black anniversary imposition dictatorship April
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