Christmas: A Celebration of Light, Family, Peace, Love, and Joy

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To His Holiness Kirill

Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias

Dear friends and comrades, my brothers and sisters!

From the Pacific Ocean to the icebound White Sea, our entire state is ready to celebrate Christmas… a beloved traditional holiday, the first in the new 2019. I’d like the feeling of joy, togetherness, and love to last for the whole coming year. Traditionally, we celebrate Christmas with the people most dear and close to us… our parents, children, grandchildren, workmates, friends, colleagues, and those with whom we share our joys and trials. However, according to ancient tradition, our thoughts turn these days to those treated badly by life, those who even on these joyful days are cold, hungry, uncomfortable, and anxious, and to those who vigilantly carry out their duty to protect the Motherland, to those who look after our health and safety. Mercy and gratitude figure largely in the Russian national character, in Russian people, in all those who live on our blessed land. Therefore, first of all, I want to give Christmas greetings to our servicemen, border guards, police, rescue workers, doctors, and volunteers, as well as to all those sick, weak, afflicted, orphaned, and homeless.

On this bright holiday, we look back as we gather around the festive table as if starting a new beginning in life. We evaluate our achievements; we blame ourselves for our errors, we make wishes, we give each other gifts, and we make plans for the coming year. On such days, we more than ever feel the unity of the past and the future. We can particularly clearly feel during the Christmas holidays the unity and interdependence of the world, of peoples, of countries, and of continents. Today, it’s more and more obvious that the formula of the “end of history” is fallen. The West actively imposed this on us immediately after the destruction of the USSR, when it seemed to many in the West that they defeated the ideals of social equality. Current events show that it isn’t so, history hasn’t reached a conclusion. The struggle for the interests of the working people, for justice, which is trampled upon by self-lovers, exploiters, and rapists, is only growing.  The confrontation between labour and capital, between rich and poor, is growing, becoming ever more acute and spilling over into open protests of the disadvantaged. We give them our sympathy and special support during these Christmas days.

Our great state is now a target for continuous attacks by its traditional opponents and detractors. A siege is coming for our country, when the base of the “approach” is almost along its entire perimeter… not only to intimidate us but also for possible aggression. The goal is to grasp the gigantic resources of Russia, to take our open spaces connecting East and West. They want to make our people forget their dignity and great history. We, as heirs of a mighty state and its glorious past, are particularly concerned about the process of alienation of the fraternal Ukraine from the Russian Federation, which they are trying to strike at the very heart, to knock out the canonical Orthodox Church, which is the support of the people. When the new government banned the activities of the Communist Party of the Ukraine in 2015, when they subjected its headquarters, newspapers, and offices to pogroms, when they defamed its leaders and activists, we warned that the process of destruction wouldn’t stop there. Indeed, such happened. In the Ukraine, not only do we see a revival of Nazi madness, but also a dangerous church schism, conceived far from the Dnieper and implemented with Byzantine cunning and American-English perfidy.

The schismatics don’t heed the words of the Fathers:

Making divisions in the Church is no less evil than to fall into heresy … even the blood of martyrdom doesn’t wash away the sin of schism.

St John Chrysostom Interpretation to Ephesians: 65, 11 

They don’t hear the witness of Orthodoxy:

The division of the churches is the work of the devil.

St Ioann Kronshtadtsky My Life in Christ Part II, 9

They don’t attend to the sayings of righteous elders:

Fear division and schism in the Church! Fear to fall away from the Mother Church, for only it alone holds back the lava of anti-Christian revelry in the world now! … Our task is to protect the Church from schism and heresies.

Archimandrite Ioann Krestyankin

In these hard times, we wish steadfastness for all Orthodox, not only those in the fraternal Ukraine. We all need to be firm and faithful. We hope that the cup of trials and torment would pass us by. We hope that the lava of bitterness won’t cover the Ukrainian land and that a hopeless “St Bartholomew’s Night” wouldn’t fall on it. We still believe that we can admonish the misguided, sober those intoxicated with anger, to reach out to our disoriented brethren, addressing them with the message of the poem Slavs by Fyodor Tyutchyov:

Hello, from us to all of you!

On the feast of peace and love …

Although hostile destiny

Separated us,

We’re still one people,

Sons of the same mother

Finally, we wish our beloved Russia to overcome inertia and embark on creative transformations in the interests of the majority, without imitating others, without the camouflage of showy festivities. It’s very important for us to return to the main achievements of the Soviet period… affordable education for all, truly free healthcare, and high-quality social security. The past year dealt a severe blow to whole generations of our citizens, who now have to work even longer, rolling up their sleeves in order to receive their expected and deserved reward from the state in the form of pensions. It’s become ever clearer to those able to see and hear that the course imposed on our country is a course going nowhere. As promised, we’ll continue to strive to achieve the creation of a socially responsible government focused on the national interests of the country, which would take care of the workers, overcome poverty and corruption, and wouldn’t serve the oligarchic clans who illegally appropriated gigantic resources for themselves. We can and should invest the national wealth in science, education, culture, and sports… in real modernisation, not its ostentatious imitation.

The quality of any policy is determined by the welfare and well-being of our people, by their life expectancy and education, and by its respect for our country and people. To realise our national interests, we need new objectives, another way of thinking, and a new socio-political culture. In this Christmas holiday season, the KPRF and other popular patriotic forces once again affirm that we’d actively struggle with all the situations facing our people, for the creation of social justice, to implant a creative and honest moral-political situation in the country and in the authorities. We must turn away from the course of destruction and return to the path of goodness and creativity. Otherwise, we’d spiral finally into the funnel of the crisis.

My dear compatriots, I greet all of you on the holiday, I hope that together we’d be able to prevent adversity and protect our fellow citizens, as we see in the All-Night Vigil:

Preserve us from hunger, destruction, fear, fire, sword, foreign invasion, internecine strife, and from all enemies, visible and invisible.

I believe that every malice and pride in everyday life, despondency, and negligence in our hearts will come to an end, and love, humanity and brotherly love would strengthen them.

С Праздником! С Рождеством Христовым!

To the feast! To the Nativity of Christ!

6 January 2019

G A Zyuganov

Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma

Chairman of the TsK KPRF

KPRF.ru

KPRF official website

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/181627.html?fbclid=IwAR2o3HmR-bT1T649Q9O3tAmHFznylGgJTCKsvzMMlvi72ILvS3sdpB7YNK4

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The Bright Resurrection Brings Us a Day of Hope, Solidarity, the Affirmation of Eternal Values, and the Triumph of Justice

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Dear brothers and sisters, my comrades and friends!

We celebrate the Bright Resurrection of Christ, when life triumphed over the tragedy of death. During the upcoming Bright Week, we ever more clearly feel the unity of our citizens, so different, yet equally and passionately lovers of our Motherland, our history, our traditions, and our culture. Let us be united in joy and in sorrow, patient in trials, and persevering in our noble aspirations.

Recent events revealed the essence of all that accompanies us on the ascent towards Truth and the affirmation of the Good. Russia’s return to its mission as a great power sparked fierce opposition from our long-time enemies, whose weapons are lies, threats, defamation, and slander. However, we’ve already gone through that. One hundred years ago, 14 countries launched an intervention against young Soviet Russia. At that time, the new country issued a “Decree on Peace”, which was a call for all countries participating in the brutal war to begin peace talks immediately. The answer to this was intervention, an iron fist punched at our country. The ultimate goal of the intervention was to tear the country into pieces and have the forces of the interventionist countries control the remainder. However, from the taiga to the sea, the Red Army proved to be stronger than its foes were. Moreover, it was a new workers and peasants army, inspired by ideals of equality and social justice. The victory came not only from members of the oppressed strata of society, but tens of thousands of former tsarist officers, honest representatives of the once-well-to-do classes, and many foreigners united under the slogan “Hands off Soviet Russia!”

Furthermore, the solidarity of the working people and their love for the oppressed and besieged Fatherland prevailed over the interventionists. We stood and we won. In less than two decades, a new aggression leapt against our country, with most of the states of so-called “civilised” Europe taking part, whose leaders cowardly indulged the forces of evil, leading many to march under the banner of Hitler’s fascism. Again, we didn’t bow to their diktat, and as the great Pushkin said about the Napoleonic era in Europe, “our blood redeemed Europe with liberty, honour and peace”. Three-quarters of a century ago, at the Great Victory, again our state called for peace… “peace” was the first word written by Soviet children in their notebooks. The biggest sin is betrayal, but unrepentant sinners are even worse. Forgetting about their sins during the fascist era, our neighbours now trample on the past in hatred and insult the glory of their heroic compatriots who wiped absolute evil off the face of the earth at the cost of their blood. This is what F M Dostoyevsky said, who wrote about our nearest neighbours in The Diary of a Writer in 1877:

Maybe, for a whole century, or even more, they’ll tremble for their freedom and fear the power of Russia; they’ll curry favour with European states, they’ll slander Russia, gossip about it and intrigue against it … Of course, in a moment of serious misfortune, they’ll all certainly turn to Russia for help. No matter how they hate, gossip, and slander us in Europe, flirting with her and assuring her of love, but they’ll always instinctively feel something for us (of course, in a moment of trouble, but not before), that Europe is the natural enemy of their unity, it has and always will remain such, and if they exist in the world, then, of course, it’s because of the fact that Russia acts as a magnet, drawing them all to itself, which constrains their integrity and unity.

In our history, we aren’t the first to face furious pressure from our neighbours to our country. Moreover, we usually didn’t have to fight off the dark forces alone. Now, we don’t feel any support from the working people of those countries under the thumb of financial and oligarchic capital. The people remain silent, victims of social engineering and sophisticated methods of controlling the mass consciousness. Political technology replaces politics, information replaces knowledge; naked calculation and profit, not conscience, measures the actions of individuals and peoples. In such a situation, it isn’t easy to stop the procession of evil in the world. Being in the ring with multinational ill-wishers, as Russia’s philosopher Ilyin pointed up, the individual Russian and the Russian nation rallies and thus answers the challenges of the time. We are fully satisfied that the ideas of equality and social justice are at the forefront of our struggle and that the people’s expectations increasingly push the authorities to implement measures that facilitate the implementation of these requirements. We should say that the authorities try to respond to the urgent demands of the people. However, these are piecemeal measures; we need a long-term strategy.

We understand that half-hearted, partial, “cosmetic” measures won’t help us to transform the State into a truly socialist people’s state, when decision-makers aspire only, as Mayakovsky said, “to protect the safety of their familiar places”. It requires a hard-nosed attitude towards those who neglect the interests of the people and the state, which hinder the development of the country, which condone the plunder of its riches. We’ll continue to seek relentlessly to bring forward a humanistic view, to demand the implementation of the equality of all citizens of our state, to fight for equal access to its wealth, and to make those in power answer to the people for everything that happens in the country. Again, Russia needs to focus itself. For the sake of the good of the country, we must unite all our efforts and thoughts.

Congratulations on the Bright Resurrection to the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church, all Orthodox Christians, and to all people of goodwill! I wish peace to the peoples, happiness and family harmony to all citizens of our country, and new achievements on our path to revive our Motherland! Let the bright ideals of goodness, equality, justice, solidarity, and dignity, the eternal values of the Christian faith, become our communist ideal.

To the Resurrection of Christ!

7 April 2018

G A Zyuganov

Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma

Chairman of the TsK KPRF

KPRF.ru

KPRF official website

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/174630.html 

G A Zyuganov: “Their Cow Can Moo, But Yours Must Be Silent”

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On 7 November 2017, the administration of the US President issued a statement with the lurid title “National Day of Victims of Communism”. However, it was unclear whether the “national day” was American or Russian. Nevertheless, it was very significant that the White House couldn’t ignore the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which the entire planet observed over the past few days. At the same time, it seems that American politicians still have a weak knowledge of history and geography. In Washington, they live in an artificial world, in which America represents everything good, and Russia is the embodiment of evil.

Outrageous unsubstantiated allegations and outright lies fill this document. Full of the baleful spirit of the Cold War, the White House talked about “the dark decades of oppressive communism, a political philosophy incompatible with freedom, prosperity, and respect for human life”. Meanwhile, even Russia’s enemies recognise that the seven decades of Soviet power were the period of the greatest prosperity of our country. Even the harshest critic would have to erect a monument for the victory over fascism, the pioneering steps into space, and the creation of nuclear parity. As the ardent opponent of communism Winston Churchill put it figuratively, “Stalin took over Russia with a plough and left it with an atomic bomb”. This followed tremendous breakthroughs in the development of education, science, and industry.

Once again, the participation of 132 delegations from all over the world in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution proves once more that the world assesses the Russian Revolution in a completely different light than Washington does. Through their historical experience, the peoples of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America know that the Great October brought them real liberation and social progress. The outstanding achievements of the Soviet state, such as free education and healthcare, affordable housing and the absence of unemployment, and low prices for food and medicine, are still an unattainable dream for most of the world’s population. By the way, the USA and Europe largely copied their social policies on the experience of the USSR… to forestall an “October” in the countries of the West. Meanwhile, White House officials, without batting an eye, claim:

In the last century, communist totalitarian régimes destroyed millions of people and subjected countless people to exploitation, violence, and unprecedented impoverishment.

There’s nothing new in this kind of statement. As Nazi propaganda honcho Goebbels claimed, the bigger the lie, the more willingly they believe it. It creates the feeling that the White House took an anti-Soviet Russophobic drug and completely lost the sense of reality. Everybody knows that if you use such a pill, even in small doses, it takes away your ability to think. As for their assertions about the “victims of communism”, as our ancestors rightly said:

You can’t blame the mirror if the reflection is crooked.

It’s no secret that the USA hasn’t shown much mercy or regard for human rights since its inception. The wholesale extermination of entire nations, if they stood in the way of the greedy American ruling class, has long been a notorious phenomenon. They began with the destruction of the Native American peoples and the ruthless exploitation of African slaves. Then, they went on to the genocide of multitudes of Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Serbs, Libyans, and Syrians. The list goes just on and on. Moreover, remember the atomic nightmare they brought down on the heads of the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

Today, American troops occupy three sovereign states, take part in 20 bloody conflicts, and have more than 700 bases in dozens of countries around the world. Of course, all this, as the White House claims, is a manifestation of “a firm determination to bear the light of freedom for all who aspire to a brighter and free future”. In general, all know that the Americans carry the “light of freedom” with bombers, assisted by bloody terrorists and endless provocations. As they say, “Save us, O God, from such friends; we can handle our enemies ourselves!”

I’d like to remind the White House gentlemen that one of their great predecessors, President Franklin D Roosevelt, during the war, always congratulated I V Stalin, the head of the Soviet state, on the anniversaries of the October Revolution and the birthday of the Red Army. Such genuinely statesmanlike thinking is clearly not characteristic of the present inept American establishment. Learn history, gentlemen! It’s useful…

G A Zyuganov

Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma

Chairman of the TsK KPRF

10 November 2017

KPRF.ru

KPRF official website

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/170545.html

G A Zyuganov: The Bright Resurrection is a Celebration of Unity in Hope; It Calls Attention to Eternal Ideals and the Meaning of Life

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Dear brothers and sisters, comrades and friends!

Easter Sunday is a day of triumph of life over corruption; it’s a festival of hope, unity, and spirituality. In our hearts, we have faith in the triumph of the forces of good over evil and light over darkness. We have love for our families, friends, co-workers, and neighbours, and we have hope for a better future for them. On this beloved national holiday, we again think of Russia in the context of the future for every family, of the world’s history, and of Holy Tradition.

A century ago, we preached equality and justice in Russia, striving for the highest ideals, creating a like-minded fraternity dedicated to sacrificial service to high ideals. It bore fruit, which allowed our country to become a world superpower, it allowed working people to live in a more just society, ruled by the equality, conscience, honour, and dignity of those whose sweat and blood created all the Earth’s wealth. However, there were those like Pilate and Judas and those who retreated when the rooster crew. We had our own “Holy Week” and frigid February; we had Pharisees, hypocrites, and frauds. No matter how hard crafty and nimble scribes pervert and defame what happened a century ago in Russia, history itself suggests that the Great October Socialist Revolution was the people’s choice; it soared through the thorns to the stars. It carried out the greatest transformation of society in the world, crushing injustice and exploitation, bringing in a society of equality and dignity. The Great October Revolution gave the world an example of what happens when the people make history. It was a triumph, an all-Russian celebration, a worldwide aspiration and regeneration of mankind. Today, some complain that the Leninist “struggle of the oppressed class to create heaven on earth” didn’t succeed. However, in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the state we eventually created not only existed “to create a paradise on earth but to keep society from becoming a living hell”.

Seven decades of the life of the new society proved the correctness of the choice made in October 1917. Our revived state created a high science, advanced industry, humane art, and gave equal access to everyone to health and education. It enabled every citizen to develop their talents and vocation, wherever they lived, uniting all the peoples into a single family, honouring tradition, venerating elders, respecting motherhood, and caring for children. The working-class became the bulwark of society, and honest and inspired labour became its pride and honour. As St John Chrysostom once said:

Hard work isn’t punishment or torture; it’s a salutary correction against injuries from sin.

Soon, we’ll celebrate the anniversary of the Great Victory of our people over the forces of evil in the world. We’ll return to the streets and squares with portraits of our unforgettable fathers and grandfathers, who, trampling down death by death, put their lives on the altar of victory, enabling our future. They live forever, forever young, next to us, and we, along with the heroes of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, let us remember them all as if in prayer:

Remember us, in retreat,

Fighting, by hour and by year,

Fallen, the Missing,

With whom we saw at least once,

Earlier Mourners, we meet again,

Those who we gave a drink of water,

Pray for us.

In that memorable epoch, the Workers and Peasants Red Army was the mightiest force from the taiga to the British seas. Thanks to Russian spirit and Soviet patriotism, our country not only survived, it won over an unprecedented attack of the forces of evil, from fascism, bringing liberation to the peoples of Europe, and by their example and support helped to break the chains of colonialism and the ruthless exploitation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The fact that the UN had 50 member-states at its establishment and now there are almost 200 is evidence that the victory won in 1945 strengthened the authority of the Soviet state and contributed to the liberation of peoples and the establishment of independent sovereign states.

Then, there came temptation, betrayal, the “thirty pieces of silver”, unbridled aggression against our historical memory, wild Russophobia, and anti-Sovietism. Home-grown Maidans sprang up amidst unbridled dancing on the remains of the Union. Cold-blooded shifters came to power, “putrefied men”, as early Christians called those sorts, people who talked, but did nothing, and “base rulers… who did bad things in the name of good… who deceived people, to bind them to evil”. They used sly substitution, permissiveness became “freedom”, disorder became “legality”, and mob rule became “democracy”. Honour and conscience became anachronisms; patriotism became a dirty word. Democracy morphed to into plutocracy; their ideal of life was profit and enrichment at any cost, they worshipped the “golden calf”, “in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not” (Second Epistle of Apostle St Paul to the Corinthians 4.4), drying up all-too-many hearts and souls.

Nevertheless, there comes a sobering-up. Moreover, the battle continues for the eternal ideals of goodness and justice. The voices of those who aren’t willing to put up with unbridled injustice, unrighteousness, and a law only for the élite grow louder. More and more people realise that the way out of the crisis is to return our country to the path of building a just and equitable society and carry out constructive policies in favour of the working majority. We believe that the triune life-giving formula for the revival of power proposed by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill… Holy Rus, Great Russian statehood, and Soviet justice… is correct! That’s what can unite and gather us in the name of unity, in the hope of a happy future.

We consider it extremely important to convey the ideas of friendship, fraternity, and high culture in the unique Soviet experience to the broadest number of people, especially our youth, to revive the “red gene”, to combine the best traditions of Russian statehood and Soviet patriotism. We’re confident that, as in October 1917, a resurrection of hope and deeds in the name of the people will come, in the name of honour and justice, for peace, true democracy, and a harmonious world order, with the dignity of our citizens coming with the revival. This is the essence of our time. We believe in it. Moreover, our cause is just and fair. Therefore, the victory will be for all of us. The poet Aleksei Khomyakov outlined our global vocation:

Your light gave it Destiny:

A store for world heritage

High sacrifice and pure affairs;

Preserving for us Holy Brotherhood,

A life-giving vessel of Love

And the flaming treasure of Faith

And the truth, in the even-handed court.

Holy brotherhood and pure affairs, ardent faith and truth, justice and equality, solidarity and humanity… these great values and high goals traditionally lie at the basis of both the Christian faith and the Communist ideal. In the name of them, we must combine all our efforts and thoughts. Yes, decent elements that believe in the timeless ideals of justice, equality, and dignity must fulfil our hopes for a just world order, brotherhood and peace for all peoples, and true democracy! Greetings on this Easter Sunday to the clergy and believers of the Russian Orthodox Church and all Orthodox Christians! I wish you peace, joy, and new achievements on the path of the revival of our Motherland.

15 April 2017

G A Zyuganov

Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma

Chairman of the TsK KPRF

KPRF.ru

KPRF official website

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/164285.html