11th May 2020 was the 6th anniversary of the referendum through which the People’s Republic of Donetsk was founded in the wake of the coup d’Etat engineered by the United States and the European Union in 2014 in Ukraine. This day is celebrated as Republic Day in the Donetsk People’s Republic. This year there were no mass celebrations because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead an international online conference was held. Savvas Mikhail-Matsas participated on behalf of the EEK of Greece (Workers Revolutionary Party) to address the meeting and celebrate this important day in the struggle against imperialism. We publish below a summary of his intervention at that meeting.
To the people of the People’s Republic of Donetsk
Dear Comrades and friends
On behalf of our Party, the Workers Revolutionary Party-EEK of Greece, on behalf of the workers and of our people, we send our congratulations and fraternal greetings to the people of the People’s Republic of Donetsk and of the entire Donbas!
Last Saturday, on May 9, all the peoples of the world celebrated the glorious Day of the Victory against fascism, 75 years ago – a Victory for which millions of Soviet people and antifascist fighters all over Europe, including Greece, gave their life. Today, on May 11, we celebrate another day of the revival of struggle against fascism; the Day when your popular masses have risen against the new fascists in Kiev, the heirs of the bands of Bandera, of the collaborators of Hitler’s Nazis.
In a period when the far right and fascist groups, like the infamous “Golden Dawn” in Greece, return again threatening all the workers, migrants and oppressed people in Europe, the working people of Donetsk, as well as of the entire Donbas region, have risen at the front lines of the international struggle against the fascist menace.
Our Party in Greece, the EEK, as a founding member of the International Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky,” had hosted in Athens, successfully, a special Euro-Mediterranean Conference of the Center, in March 2014 in solidarity to your people.
The fascist menace has its sources in the insoluble global crisis of capitalism, which today is further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This system shows its total inability to meet the most urgent and immediate needs of Life itself. The interaction between the global health and economic crises, now, make the imperialist West even more aggressive, driving its destructive, colonizing and war tendencies.
The case of Ukraine is a warning for all of us. Already in 2014, the putsch in Kiev clearly showed the US led imperialist drive to re-colonize Ukraine, but also Russia and all the former Soviet space – a menace which was and is confronted with the strong resistance, despite all the great sacrifices, of your people in Donetsk, in Lugansk, in the entire Donbass region.
This menace is still here and rises again with the current global crisis and all its economic, political and geopolitical severe implications. The new loan by the IMF to the Kiev’s rulers signals a deepening of the colonization of this country by global finance capital and Western imperialism. To promote these ultra-reactionary plans, a well-known corrupt agent at the service of the interests of the imperialist and of the oligarchs, Mikhail Saakashvili, is now appointed at the top of the so-called “National Reform Council”. His despicable role first in Georgia and later in Odessa is well known. For dirty jobs, dirty Mafia people are needed.
The menace can and should be defeated by a united struggle of all the peoples of the entire region, supported by the international solidarity of the workers and peoples of the world. Global problems need global struggle for global solutions.
Down with fascism and imperialism!
Down with all oligarchs!
All power to the Soviets! For peace, bread and Socialism!
May 11, 2020