The CPGB-ML encourages all it’s branches and groups to engage in study and to learn from the study each one of us undertakes in the spirit of the Red Youth motto each one, teach one! Across the country our members make presentations to modest sized meetings of Party comrades, Proletarian subscribers and friends to open up discussion about the history of our movement and the lessons for today. Unlike the Troto-revisionist parties, we have no “big-guns” on full time salaries who tour the country promoting their latest academic work on some obscure philosophical issue. Our comrades are all encouraged to be free-thinkers, enquring and studious and to work together to come to a Marxist understanding on important issues which have practical implications for our work today. Many comrades are enrolled on a cadre development programme which guides their study in the basics of Marxism-Leninism and gives them practical support in learning to make presentations and lead study circles.
Last weekend, Manchester communists held a seminar to discuss the history of the GDR and it’s importance to our understanding of modern-day Europe. The meeting was addressed by CPGB-ML comrade Adam who led the discussion. Speaking after the meeting comrade Gary from Wigan said,
“The truth behind who split up Germany is often placed on the head of Stalin and the Soviet Union. However this is false history, it was at the Potsdam Conference of 17 July-2 August 1945 the USA, now represented by President Truman went to Potsdam to put forward a proposal which would permanently divide Germany into three parts, and also, to treat Austria and Hungary as part of this divided Germany.This new plan however by the US contradicted an agreement reached in Moscow in 1943 that both Austria and Hungary would be restored to the status of independent states. The Soviet Union wanted a unified Germany after de-nazification. It was Stalin who famously said “we enter Berlin as liberators not conquerors”.
The end of the war against fascism in which the Soviet people made the largest sacrifice saw the beginning of Anglo-American-imperialisms renewed war against communism. The US imperialists carried on the work of the Nazi’s and their agents.
Years of sabotage and misinformation were coupled with efforts to encircle the USSR and keep her under the constant threat of a new war. The FGR being brought into Nato in 1954 was just one example.
Understanding the history of imperialism’s attitude towards the USSR and Peoples Democracies, also helps us today better understand their aims in the Ukraine and the fierce resistance Russians and anti-fascists are prepared to put up to EU, British and American imperialist interference in the region. We study our history so as to wage a fight today against the same enemy which our forefathers and the first socialist countries fought so hard to defeat – imperialism.”
If you’d like to take part in future meetings, enroll on a programme of Marxist-Leninist education and join the fight for socialism, don’t sit in dull meetings being told what to think. Make your own independent study, join a study circle and discuss and argue your ideas with comrades in a comradely manner. Join Red Youth or get in touch via info@redyouth.org.