The undersigned Communist Youth Organisations after the 16th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organisations (MECYO), which was held in Belgrade on 25-27 November 2022, declare during these crucial moments, as the slogan of our Meeting: “Hope lies in the struggle of the peoples – Against capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars – For Socialism!”
We warmly thank the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) for hosting the 16th MECYO. We salute the completion of 30 years of life and action of SKOJ in 2022, which gives more impetus to the communist youth movement in Serbia and Eastern Europe.
The young communists send a strong message for peace and against imperialist wars!
Serbia and the territory of the former Yugoslavia were victims of Euro-Atlantic imperialism and affected by the military interventions of USA-NATO-EU that bombed FR Yugoslavia in 1999, underpinned and supported conflicts among ethnicities as a pretext, which they had already significantly reignited during the previous years. After that, NATO occupied Kosovo and Metohija and created protectorates with the largest military base of the USA in Europe, Bondsteel, to set foot in a region that already constituted a field of great profit for the US and EU imperialists.
After our Meeting in Belgrade, Serbia, whose people bled from the imperialist war of the USA – NATO – EU, we send a message of solidarity and support to all peoples who are suffering from capitalist barbarity and imperialist wars.
We especially express our solidarity with the Ukrainian and Russian people, who have lived for decades in brotherhood and comradery constructing socialism. Today in Ukraine, these people have become the victims of the competition among the bourgeois classes, which use fascist, nationalist, reactionary ideas and forces to turn the people against each other, so as to build support for the bourgeois classes in each respective country. Once again, we are witnessing the painful consequences of the overthrow of Socialism in the USSR and other countries and the restoration of capitalism that brought back class exploitationand undermines the rights, dreams and aspirations of youth.
Today, the danger of a more generalised war confrontation is more visible than ever. New hotspots of tension and competitions due to the impasse of clashing interests are added between and within the Euro-Atlantic (US-NATO-EU) and the emerging Euro-Asian (Russia – China) centers. The danger of further escalation of the conflict between the imperialists is becoming evident by the increases in military spending, mutual threats of nuclear strikes, militaristic decisions made in the recent NATO summit, new waves of mobilisation of those liable for military service in the countries that are directly involved in the conflict. There are the increased recruitment campaigns in the other countries that are not directly involved in the conflict. Victory of any imperialists will only bring new suffering and further tightening of exploitation to the peoples of Europe and the whole world.
We call on the peoples of our countries not to take sides with any national bourgeoisie, to turn their struggle against the exploiters and to lead an independent struggle against capitalism and its wars. We call on the peoples of our countries to fight for peace and against war, for the immediate ceasefire and for the end of economic sanctions, for the closing of the military bases, for the expulsion of all foreign military forces, for the return of the military forces located outside the borders, for the strengthening of the struggle for the disengagement of our countries from all imperialist plans and alliances.
The answer is the joint struggle of the peoples of the world against the causes that generate war, poverty, and refugees!
Today, the youth of Europe is facing even greater difficulties in its efforts to become fully educated, to work with rights, and to live on the basis of the contemporary possibilities shaped by the progress of science and technology, by the evolution of the productive forces as a whole.
These difficulties are underlined by high prices, the soaring prices of basic consumer goods, and energy poverty. All this is the result of the anti-people’s policy of the EU and the bourgeois governments of all shades – conservative, far-right, liberal, and social-democratic – in favor of capital, for the formation of new fields of capitalist profitability. This demonstrates the narrow margin of manoeuvre that different governments have within capitalism. One of the examples is the policy of the “European Green Deal”, which is one of the main agenda of the European monopolies and has nothing to do with environmental protection. At the same time we are being deprived of our perspectives, by the systematic destruction of our livelihoods while global warming still keeps destroying our planet. This can only be combated by the development of socialism.
An increasing number of young workers feel that the system in which they live does not meet their needs. In the era of the so-called “4th industrial revolution”, the difference between the contemporary potential of humanity and the real conditions in which those who build the entire society live is becoming more and more obvious.
Communist Youth Organisations call young people to fight against NATO and EU; against every imperialist alliance and their imperialist plans; against the bourgeois governments, their war propaganda and anti-people policies; for the fundamental reorganisation of the society. They call on the youth to struggle for public and free education and healthcare, high-quality and cheap housing, work with rights, against unemployment and precariousness, as well as for access to culture and sports, for quality leisure time. Communists demand real protection of the environment from the barbarity of capitalist development! The real way out for the people and youth of our countries is to turn the justified anger of the youth into organised struggle for our needs and rights, against our exploiters and the owners of capital, on the path of the overthrow of bourgeois power, for the new socialist society.
Our future is Socialism!
Anticommunism will not pass!
We denounce the cowardly attack by Nazi-fascist groups against the offices of the Central Committee of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) in Belgrade, as well as the provocative tolerance of the state authorities, who are not taking any action. The Serbian government bears a heavy responsibility for emboldening fascist criminals since it has proceeded to the rehabilitation of over three thousand Nazi collaborators. This policy is also being pursued with the support of the EU. Once again, we express our solidarity with the NKPJ and SKOJ.
The European Union, the bourgeois parties, and their governments are escalating the anti-communist hysteria in order to shield the exploitative capitalist system against the growing workers’ – people’s indignation, against the rage that is accumulating.
The various capitalist institutions are constantly trying to equalise communism and fascism by forging history. The EU makes anti-communism its official policy, promoting the ban on the activity of CPs, communist symbols and communist ideology, and the persecution of communists and popular forces that are fighting. At the same time, it feeds far-right parties, fascist groups, and Nazi gangs that declare loyalty to “EU values”, such as anti-communism. The resolution of the European Parliament from 2019 is just one example. In fact, they shoot the past in order to kill the future. All bourgeois states increasingly promote the tendency of repression against the workers movement in order to shield their power. Their bourgeois democracy or the fascist governments are the tools of the dictatorship of capital.
The history books are full of propaganda against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. The convicted collaborators of Nazi Germany are now rehabilitated under the firm of “correcting the verdicts of ideological courts”. The destruction and vandalism of antifascist and Soviet cultural monuments in a number of European countries are intensifying, often accompanied by their replacement by Nazi constructions. As this anti-Soviet hate unfolds across Europe, the Russian government leads a duplicitous campaign by using soviet heritage as a legitimacy tool while aggressively pushing anti-communist propaganda, slandering the invaluable contribution of Lenin and the great October Socialist Revolution, the achievements of the building socialism. In Ukraine, we face the biggest tragedy of rehabilitation and legalisation of Nazi ideology by the state, where communists, progressive people, and the people of Ukraine are victims of such policies since 2014.
Communist Youth Organisations express solidarity with our comrades Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich members of the Communist Party of Ukraine and League of Communist Youth of Ukraine who were kidnapped by the Security Services of the reactionary Ukrainian regime.
On the other hand, the state authorities in Russia manipulate the public opinion in order to whitewash Krasnov and other collaborators of the Nazis and to popularize the philosophy of the apologists of fascism. Moreover, in Russia, streets are getting renamed after anti-Soviet historical personalities on a large scale and the labour activists face repressions, like, for example, the leader of trade union “Courier”, left activist Kirill Ukraintsev who has been imprisoned for his trade union activity.
Socialism is the one that crushed fascism and the only one that makes it possible to overcome the contradictions generated by capitalism and that opens the door to the construction of a society truly free of all exploitation. That is why – no matter what the mechanisms of the system do – socialism remains the future and the only real way out for the people. The future cannot be banned.
The people will be victorious!
The Communist Youth Organisations of Europe continue our efforts for the development and coordination of our joint struggle. Because “Hope lies in the struggle of the peoples – Against capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars – For Socialism!”
