Friendship News

Proposal for a Change in the Policy of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People

In the Vol. 12 #6, April 2004, of Northstar Compass, the Editorial Board had the kindness to publish my letter in answer to the Open Letter published in the former number of this periodic, taking into consideration the perspectives of the future accomplishment of the 2nd World Congress of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. In that letter, among other things, I asserted:

"Indeed, since my participation in the preparatory Conference in year 2000 and the 1^st World Congress in year 2001, in Toronto, I had doubts about the best way to be engaged in a movement with the goal to establish and develop friendship and solidarity with the Soviet people". The question was, if it was the best idea for this. Our task should be a struggle for the revival of the international communist friendship and solidarity movements, with an exclusive focus on the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People.

Despite large distances between all of those movements around the world and, more closely the experiences of my country Brazil, I already perceived that the international communist friendship and solidarity is more and more necessary, not only in relation to the ex-Soviet Union, but also for other countries and all the movements that are oriented towards socialism and/or communism.

Such ideas led me on that occasion to submit to the Executive Committee of the International Council, a suggestion that in this 2nd World Congress, there should include an item on the agenda to discuss a proposal of change of the International Council’s orientation and consequently a name change, from the International Council of Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People to the "International Council of Friendship and Solidarity among the Peoples and Movements Oriented towards Communism."

In this article I reaffirm that conviction and the respective proposal, with support to this change for the following reasons:

(a) the former socialist nations must analyze their disappearance and fight their present ransom position. Today they border the ex Soviet Union, but they must analyze their previous position of their "actual socialism" such as existed in Rumania, Poland and also Czechoslovakia.

(b) support and help other countries that are led by communists, for instance Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, experimenting in practice towards the socialist path. We must help all of these countries as well as the ex-USSR since they require dedicated communists, friendship and solidarity;

(c) besides these countries, led before by "socialists", there are certainly in all of the ex- socialist countries and in that other countries, movements that are orientated towards communism.

(d) the Imperialist globalization, the intensive internalization of capital today requires the resistance of fighters to counter the real configuration of events of more and more global imperialism – meaning the need for growth of anti-imperialist forces - together with closer union of this struggle.

(e) we must defend and adopt the ideas defended in the articles by Nina Andreeva (All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), Tamara Yakubovska (Ukraine) and also of Professor Vladimir Herasymchuk, (Ukraine-Canada Society) and others, published in the same Vol.12 # 8, Apr. 3004, of NSC, This appears to me, in some dimension, to come nearer the ideas that I defend here.

When the Korean people stood at the crossroads of life and death, President Kim Il Sung held high the banner of national liberation.

After the national liberation of the country from Japanese occupiers, he founded the Worker’s Party of Korea and then the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was established.

The whole period of his leadership, he adhered to the Juche idea that occupied a special place in the life of the people.

Deeply realizing the importance of economic independence, the President advanced the line of building an independent national economy and led the efforts to carry it out. Because of the war deterrent of North Korea, the country would have by now suffered the horrors of war again due to America’s reckless policy of hostility to North Korea.

Because the President worked hard all of his life for the independence and prosperity of the country and the welfare of the people the Korean people reverently look up to him as the "father leader" and the "eternal President."

The policy known as "Songun" means giving top national priority to military affairs and making the Korean People’s Army the backbone of the revolution, so as to beef up the driving force of revolution and vigorously promote national defense and socialist construction as a whole.

Dear comrades:

We are writing to you on behalf of the political prisoners of the PCE(r), who are serving prison terms in the jail of Sevilla, Spain. We wish to ask you for information about the campaign to free the political prisoners in former Soviet Union. We have been told that due to the Spanish post office negligence, the information has not arrived. The policy of isolation by the Spanish government towards political prisoners affects us in many ways, and one of them is not receiving information we ask for, in time.

In the Vol. 13, #3 of Northstar Compass 2004, there was some information about the political prisoners in ex-USSR - however, we have not received the status of this campaign as yet.

We await your response, so that we can keep in touch.

Please accept our fraternal greetings.

Luis Che Vigo Galicia