First of all, let me thank the organizers for the invitation to participate in the congress. We truly appreciate the activity of the Executive Committee of the "International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with the Soviet People" as an expression of international solidarity of left organizations with the struggle of the oppressed masses in the former Soviet Union.

Your Executive Committee has the goal of helping the Soviet Peoples to restore the USSR. What kind of USSR do we need to restore and how? I will try to convey to you the opinion of our Marxist-Leninist organization.

What USSR do we want to restore: the USSR of Lenin-Stalin or the USSR of Khrushchev-Brezhnev? The period in which our country moved towards the construction of communism is linked to the names of Lenin-Stalin and the period of regression towards the restoration of capitalism is linked to the names of Khrushchev-Brezhnev. It is not relevant that Khrushchev-Brezhnev made use of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and that they regarded themselves as communists. They were revisionists and they represented the interests of the petty and large bourgeoisie and acted according to their interests. Some organizations, which call themselves communist, still believe that the main reason for the defeat of socialism and the collapse of the USSR was the treason of Gorbachev and the hostile activity of Western secret services during the 1980s. All this actually took place, but they are not the main reason. We believe that socialism was defeated in the 1950s, when the working class lost power in the course of a concealed class struggle.

The regular Soviet citizen during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was relatively well off and enjoyed stable social benefits. The ruling bourgeois elite concealed themselves under the Marxist-Leninist rhetoric in order to provide social stability. In the USSR during the 1970s the system of state capitalism was strengthened and the USSR transformed itself into a social-imperialist country, which actively exploited its working class, the various nationalities, dominated other former socialist countries and other underdeveloped countries and actively participated in dividing the world into spheres of influence. According to the latest estimates, Canada enjoys the fourth best standard of living in the world. Nobody believes that countries like Canada, Australia or Norway have socialism. Massive nostalgia about the USSR among the petty-bourgeois masses occurs as a result of the fact that they lost the standard of living they enjoyed during the revisionist period, which was a result of the revolutionary class struggle led by our grandparents and was not a result of a conscious struggle for socialism by the petty-bourgeois masses of that time. The defeat of the working class in the 1950s led initially to an unstable situation. The victory of petty-bourgeois forces unavoidably led to the liquidation of the socialist development and to the restoration of capitalism. Gorbachev’s "Perestroika" was only a natural concluding stage, a logical continuation of the evolution of the revisionist society, which led to the final liquidation of any formal attributes of socialism. "Perestroika" was an inevitable result of the correlation of class forces.

The collapse of the USSR did not lead to serious social conflict among the exploited masses because the petty-bourgeois masses had the illusion of making profit from the privatization of state property, which had been created as a result of the labor of past generations.

What prevents the organization of the class struggle and the communist movement is the lack of Marxist-Leninist understanding of the genuine reason for the counterrevolution and the establishment of the social-imperialist character of the USSR.

We have to admit that the former republics of the USSR have become independent bourgeois states, although they are still linked to each other economically. We are not in favor of strengthening the Russian bourgeoisie by encouraging the adhesion of new territories. The political independence of these new states does not prevent the establishment of relations of economic dependence on foreign capital, including Russian capital. It is important to note that the interests of the national and foreign capital are closely interrelated. Therefore the people of each country are bound to fight against their own bourgeoisie and to uphold internationalist positions. This applies fully to Russia. If the bourgeoisie of the former republics of the USSR decide to unite, this will not prevent the proletariat from uniting its forces in the class struggle.

Today society in the countries of the former USSR, as in any other capitalist country, is divided into the proletariat, and petty, medium and large bourgeoisie. In the present state of affairs the concept of Soviet people no longer holds. The people of a nation are not united under capitalism, since they are divided by antagonistic class contradictions. The call to restore the CPSU as the "party of the Soviet people" is equivalent to creating a political classless organization in a class society, where the bourgeoisie is ruling; hence the restoration of the CPSU will be a pro-bourgeois party, which will not differ substantially from the CPRF, "Rodina" and others.

We stand for the resurrection of the Soviet Union, but as a voluntary union of socialist republics after socialist revolutions triumph. The response of the working class to class oppression by both the national and international bourgeoisies is the class struggle, the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the union of socialist states on a voluntary basis. The working class, which is now divided by frontiers, is bound to fight mainly against its "own" bourgeoisie and at the same time has to support the struggle of the working class of the former republics of the USSR and other countries.

In order for the socialist revolution to occur, and not the replacement of one bourgeois group by another, as happened in George, the Ukraine and Kirghizia, it is necessary that the working class enter the class struggle in an organized way while being led by its political vanguard. A lower stage of the organization of the working class is the trade union. Today there exists in Russia an organized workers movement. However, this movement is still under the influence of anarcho-syndicalist unionism. For instance, in the Leningrad port the trade union of dockers has been fighting for almost a year to sign a collective contract proposed by them. But they are fighting solely for their own interests and therefore they are alone. Other unions show almost no support for their struggle.

It is the real practical work and the enhancement of political consciousness that forces the unions to unite at an inter-industrial level. This creates the conditions for a conscious class struggle against the bourgeois system, i.e. political struggle. We have to remember that the union is not a political organization, but that real struggle against the exploiting classes reinforces the political character of the struggle of the unions. The activity and agitation of various political forces within the union is not forbidden by the status of our union. Therefore various tendencies ranging from petty-bourgeois to proletarian are fighting for political influence within our union. In our union there exists a genuine proletarian nucleus, which is considerably authoritative. "Proletarskaya Gazeta" is the organ of the proletarian positions within the union.

These days, parallel to this congress, the Interregional Association of workers unions of Russia "Zaschita Truda" is holding a congress in the city of Arzamas. The membership of our union is not very big, about 15 thousand workers, but it became one of the organizers of the all-Russian workers struggle against the adoption of the reactionary Labor code, which has seriously affected the interests of the working masses. Many of the leading and rank-and-file members of our union have been subject to criminal attacks by the security services hired by factory owners and some of our comrades have died in this struggle. The state exerts all kinds of pressure on the union via the judicial system. This makes clear the fact that the Russian bourgeoisie considers "Zaschita Truda" a threat to its interests.

One major characteristic of our union is the fact that the union statutes categorically deny membership to employers or their representatives.