Speech from Revolutionary Unification (Greece) for the 2nd Session “Ideological Struggles Against Historical Revisionism and Opportunism Today” of the International Colloquium in Belgrade on June 29
Dimitris Patelis
Contents
Institutions and Propaganda of ‘Totalitarianism’ in the EU
‘Equal Distances Between Two Totalitarianisms’ as a facade for Anti-Communism
Why are they bringing anti-communism back to the spotlight?
What is ‘totalitarianism’, and where did it originate?
A methodological and ideological-political critique of ‘totalitarianism’
The Ideological constructions of totalitarianism, and the left
Is there any trace of a rational core?
Some conclusions
Institutions and Propaganda of ‘Totalitarianism’ in the EU
In the years following the ‘end of communism’ (i.e. the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the early socialist countries of Europe), in the bourgeois rhetoric, especially in the planetary superpower, ‘threats and challenges’ seemed to stem from a peculiar form of ‘totalitarianism’: terrorism.
However, with the not-so-glorious outcome of the first phase of the ongoing WWIII and the effects of the unprecedented global structural crisis of capitalism, the emphasis is shifting. On the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, and following the despicable anti-communist ‘memorandum’ of July 2006, there has been an attempt to resurrect the reactionary Cold War falsification of history in order to further smear communism as supposedly identical with Nazism.
On 2 April 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution declaring 23 August a European Day of Remembrance ‘for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes’. Why are they so afraid of even the historical memory of the otherwise ‘non-existent’ early socialism?[1]
‘Equal Distances Between Two Totalitarianisms’ as a facade for Anti-Communism
In the EU, “Every 23 August, we honour the memory of the millions of victims of all totalitarian regimes. The signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on this day in 1939 opened a dark chapter in European history. A time during which citizens were neither free to make their own decisions nor had a say on political choices. A Europe in which freedom and democracy were not more than a dream. Tens of millions of victims were deported, tortured and murdered under totalitarian regimes in Europe. Because of this cruelty, lack of freedom and disrespect for fundamental rights, in parts of Europe several generations never had the chance to enjoy freedom and democracy. This year we also mark the 30 years of events in 1989 when citizens of Central and Eastern Europe stood up and broke through the Iron Curtain and accelerated its fall. The courageous actions of citizens brought back freedom and democracy to all of Europe. They helped overcome divisions and unify Europe. This then is a collective European legacy that we all must cherish, nourish, and defend. 80 years have now passed since 1939 and the generation that has witnessed the scourge of totalitarianism is almost no longer with us; living history is turning into written history. We must therefore keep those memories alive to inspire and guide new generations in defending fundamental rights, the rule of law and democracy. It is what makes us who we are. We firmly stand together against totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of all kinds. A Free Europe is not a given but a choice, every day.’[2]
From these statements, it is clear that fascism is not mentioned at all! It is a miserable sleight of hand and a brutal revision of history in an irrational narrative where the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is presented as the fateful alliance between two totalitarian regimes that caused World War II and enslaved the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR until the fall of the “Iron Curtain”. The latter supposedly liberated them from authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Even the crushing of the anti-Comintern axis, in which the USSR played a crucial and decisive role, is practically nullified and presented as a defeat for the rule of law, democracy and Free Europe itself. This is an unabashed, de facto revanchist lament for the anti-fascist victory by the ideological instruments of the EU!
The European Parliament resolution of 23 January 2025 ‘expresses its support for the building of a pan-European memorial in Brussels for the victims of the 20th century totalitarian regimes; regrets the continued use of symbols of totalitarian regimes in public spaces and calls for an EU-wide ban on the use of both Nazi and Soviet communist symbols as well as symbols of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine’.[3]
On 30 May 2025, the Czech Parliament approved an amendment to the Criminal Code that makes the ‘promotion of communism’ punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. The amendment equates the glorification of communist ideology and the use of communist symbols with the promotion of Nazism.
Official EU documents promote crude historical revisionism based on the ideological construction of ‘totalitarianism’, which is gradually being adopted by member states at the institutional and legal level. A common theme is the gradual association of long-standing anti-Sovietism and anti-communism with racist Russophobia and Sinophobia.
Through this narrative, a crude anti-Soviet and anti-communist campaign is clearly being launched under the pretext of “equal distances” between the “two totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and ideologies”. This example of “equal distances” is a mask for crude anti-communism, as the authors of the official texts are clearly biased in favour of fascism and Nazism while vehemently opposing socialism.
Based on this narrative, any opposition to the EU – an imperialist prison of peoples – and its military arm, NATO, is immediately characterised as “authoritarian and totalitarian” so that it can be stamped out through “anti-terrorism laws” and “hate speech” provisions!
Why are they bringing anti-communism back to the spotlight?
The gradual re-emergence of anti-communism as the mainstay of bourgeois ideology and propaganda has multiple connotations.
First and foremost, it indicates that de facto anti-imperialism and the prospect of revolution are being brought back onto the agenda, albeit slowly. Those for whom this prospect is existentially threatening – the agents of the global and local bourgeoisie – are particularly aware of this. For decades, they have therefore been unleashing fierce ‘pre-emptive’ ideological and institutional blows against the impending revolutionary threat.
Moreover, it indicates the deep economic, social, political and ideological crisis of the global capitalist system. It clearly shows that the ruthless victors of the Cold War, the agents of capital, are unable to offer an attractive, positive social ideal or outlook for humanity, especially for the youth.
In violation even of the laws of the animal kingdom, the leaders of this system are systematically implementing policies that will make the next generation, our children, live in conditions of insecurity and risk (‘Flexicurity’![4]) that are clearly worse than those experienced by the previous generation. They are presenting their neoliberal strategy as a one-way road towards progress!
The reactionary market utopia of the capitalist ‘end of history’ has collapsed, as have a plethora of its ‘postmodern’ ‘left leaning’ irrationalist fallacies (such as the thesis of M. Hardt and A. Negri on ‘Empire’)[5].
Bourgeois social science and philosophy, in the grip of an existential crisis, are unable to offer a positive outlook.
Therefore, de facto, bourgeois ideology and propaganda are forced to define themselves against the nightmarish future that their agents dread: the prospect of communism and any historical experience of the revolutionary movement. Since it is unable to propose a positive ideal, bourgeois ideology at least strives to shape ‘public opinion’ with negative, anti-communist attitudes and irrational stereotypes.
In today’s context of global dictatorship by international monopoly groups and their institutions, with WWIII escalating and the bourgeoisie recognising the danger not of passive nostalgia for the achievements of early socialism, but of militant re-establishment of revolution and communism, an attempt is being made to institutionally establish anti-communism based on these ‘theories’, cementing the prejudice that communism is a “criminal worldview” (in the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, etc.).
The main vehicle for this campaign is the ideological constructions of ‘totalitarianism’.
What is ‘totalitarianism’, and where did it originate?
K. Marx made a clear distinction between genuine scientific research and the apologetics of the “the ideological component parts of the ruling class”, [6] the pseudo-scientific cloak over bourgeois market interests, and the corresponding ideology. The latter changes historically in line with social changes and the shifting composition, position and role of the bourgeoisie.
Following the consolidation of the rising bourgeoisie’s power, classical liberalism degenerates into ritualistic formalist declarations in a feedback relationship with various versions of conservatism and reaction. This culminates in the practical identification of neoliberalism and neoconservatism from the 1980s to the 1990s, combined with anti-communism and the complete renunciation of bourgeois humanism.
One of the most important contributions of Marxist theory is its rejection of the notion that ideas exist independently of time and space (‘eternal values’, etc.). Instead, Marxist theory considers ideas within the specific historical conditions and limits of their genesis, formation, diffusion, reception, practical functionality, and transcendence. This principle is particularly pertinent when the proponents of certain ideas claim that their ideas are objective and scientific. Do views on ‘totalitarianism’ satisfy this principle?
The term ‘totalitarianism’ refers to a specific type of political system and regime, and to the concepts that attempt to describe and explain it. Italian and German fascist theorists (G. Gentile, E. Jünger, C. Schmitt, etc.) gave the term a positive political meaning, equating it with ‘totalitarian mobilisation’, the ‘totalitarian state’ as the embodiment of the moral spirit of the people, the ‘totalitarian will to power’, the diffusion of individuality within the political structures of a ‘totalitarian dictatorship’, and ‘totalitarian war’.
From the mid-1930s to the 1940s, representatives of the Frankfurt School (T. Adorno, H. Marcuse and E. Fromm) criticised fascism and developed a critical conception of totalitarianism. This aimed to reveal the sources, mechanisms and basic features of fascism. Totalitarianism also became the central theme of the anti-utopia literary genre.
A. Huxley, for example, describes the totalitarian regime in his novel “Brave New World” (1932) as a closed, rational/technocratic, inhuman society that treats people as cogs in a machine. This society is based on psychophysiological engineering and the destruction of morality, love, religion, authentic art, and science.
During the Cold War, there were paid intellectuals as well as many ‘volunteers’ (‘theorists’, journalists and artists, preferably of left-wing tendencies or backgrounds, but always anti-Soviet and ‘anti-Stalinist’). I. Berlin, H. Arendt, A. Koestle, R. Aron, Z. Brzezinski, G. Orwell, etc.) modified the concept of totalitarianism based on new ideological needs, shifting the emphasis to communism and the “communist system” of the “iron curtain”.
These works and their translations into many languages were systematically coordinated and lavishly remunerated by the CIA[7]. The horrors of Nazism and war were equated with “Stalinism/communism” to erode the prestige of the USSR as the power that made the greatest contribution to the anti-fascist victory, and to control pro-communist sentiments among the general population, which had been revived by the resistance and victory.
In F. Hayek’s work, The Road to Serfdom (1944), any opposition to unbridled market forces is equated with a ‘road to subjugation’. Here, the genesis of totalitarianism is linked to anti-liberal and socialist political currents of the second half of the 19th century which reject the absolute value of individuality and view humanity as a means to a collective end.
H. Arendt, a student of K. Jaspers and M. Heidegger, considers the ‘private space’ associated with private property an indispensable condition of human freedom, and associates any deprivation of it with totalitarianism. Since 1951, in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, she has identified the Nazi and Stalinist systems as two versions of one and the same political model, the constituent elements of which are ‘ideology’, understood as the absolute key to the perception of history (whether racist or classist), ‘terrorism’ (the true ‘essence of totalitarian power’, which targets not only dissenters, but also ‘innocents’), and the ‘single party’ (one-party system). In order to substantiate this model, Arendt does not hesitate to distort the facts. For example, she accuses the USSR of ‘world domination’, while ignoring the multinational imperialist intervention against the revolution, the blockade, the constant threat from coalitions of the most powerful capitalist countries, its 27 million victims during the Second World War, the arms race and the US monopoly on atomic weapons. Furthermore, to ‘substantiate’ the arbitrariness of the scheme, it draws on blatant nonsense that any connoisseur of the history of ideas would recognise as such: it presents Bolshevism (the most consistent internationalist movement of the time) as a supposed ‘continuation of Pan-Slavism’!
After Stalin’s death, when the invocation of ‘Stalinist terrorism’ stopped being a root component of this ‘theory’, other ‘independent thinkers’ (Friedrich & Brzezinski, 1956) added ‘centralised management of the economy’ to the traits of totalitarianism.
K. Popper, in ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ identifies the philosophical ideas of Plato, Hegel, and Marx as sources of totalitarianism (the ‘closed society’).
A common tenet of totalitarian ideologies is the assumed capacity of market mechanisms to self-regulate, any violation of which inevitably leads to authoritarian ideologies and practices and the movement of society towards totalitarianism! Thus, the unbridled action of the ‘free market’, i.e. capital, and the liberal bourgeois democracy of imperialist metropolises are proclaimed as the undeniable model of an ideal society and economy. Any deviation from this model is, by definition, authoritarian and totalitarian in character. In this version of vulgar imperialist apologetics, capital is idealised and elevated to a sacred cow.
In bourgeois philosophy, the evolution of positivism from the analytic of representation to the analytic of language (which reduces everything to ‘language games’), the march of post-positivism towards irrationalism and the decline of structuralism into post-structuralism opened the way to ‘postmodern’ deconstruction and the dissolution of everything into ‘intertextuality’. Under this prism, the ‘objective fact’ itself is eliminated.
Adherents of ‘postmodernism’ not only reject rationalism and the pursuit of a holistic perception, but, in the spirit of ideological constructions of totalitarianism, they are also quick to blame rationalism itself and any ‘grand narrative’ for the ‘horrors of totalitarianism’. These views have not left left-wing intellectual circles (even those on the ‘radical left’) unaffected.
A methodological and ideological-political critique of ‘totalitarianism’
In science, and particularly in social theory, every abstraction and generalisation must be specific and historical in order to constitute an upgrade of the knowledge of the object and a springboard for its further expansion and deepening. It must operate within a system of dialectical concepts and categories and ultimately refer to the whole as a unity of multiple determinations. This must not be anchored in a fragmentary fashion to external similarities between fundamentally different social, economic, political and historical phenomena.
In medicine, for example, difficulty with bipedal gait can characterise different phases and situations, such as infancy, old age, vertigo and drunkenness.
In contrast, the entire concept of totalitarian ideologies lacks any scientific or methodological basis. The fundamental pseudo-concept of ‘totalitarianism’ is presented here without any historical or structural context or limitations.
Centralised power can characterise completely different phenomena, such as the city-states of ancient Sparta and Syracuse, the monarchy of the late Middle Ages, a military coup, a state of emergency, a counter-revolution or a revolution.
Through easy reference to oversimplified Manichaean dichotomies, it alludes to powerful stereotypes and conditioned reflexes of everyday capitalist conscience and the vulgar ‘common mind’ in order to cement the following stereotype:
Nazism = “Stalinism” = Socialism = Communism = Crime.
In the discourse of bourgeois political propaganda, there are no concepts/upgrades of knowledge; rather, there are three types of symbolic tools for propaganda manipulation: taxonomic, descriptive, and ideal. The latter are particularly based on the exaggeration of the desired view through a patchwork of different phenomena in order to establish the obvious and self-evident aspects of the presented ideologies.
The primitivism of such ‘arguments’ is directly proportional to the scale of their propagandistic appeal, combined with the establishment of inverted forms of conscience through the revival and reinforcement of mythological forms and representations of archaic structures (sometimes pre-dating speech and logic) of conscience and the subconscious.
Propagandists are not concerned with convincing people rationally, but with activating the ‘affect’, ‘feeling’ at the level of conditioned reflexes to form the desired attitude towards life. Literal brainwashing and the repetition of varied messages and innuendos by the media, on every occasion and without occasion, gradually transforms the ideology into a mass stereotype of references.
Metaphysical and ahistorical dichotomies – aphoristic Manichean dipoles – are presented in such a way that one pole, the ‘positive’ one, is associatively identified with the idealised liberal image of ‘pluralistic’ capitalist models, and the other, the ‘negative’ one, with the ‘horror’ of ‘totalitarianism/communism’: Freedom versus unfreedom, individualism versus collectivism, democracy versus dictatorship, voluntary participation versus compulsion and conformity, spontaneous diversity versus forced uniformity, open society versus closed society, diffusion of power versus concentration of power, cradle of democracy versus ‘empire of evil’, and so on.
Thus, the easily understood ideological constructions of ‘totalitarianism’, which pretend to be obvious and self-evident, are disseminated and reinforced as the “taste” of the establishment’s desired “average consensual person” of capitalism: the “proper” conformist attitudes of the petty bourgeoisie; the person who is “timid and always reserved”; the person who rejects “extremes”. The “far right” and the “far left”, finding a flexible and convenient refuge in “equal distances”.
Consensual passivity is achieved by fostering confusion equating progress with reaction, revolution with counter-revolution and rationalism with irrationalism.
The Ideological constructions of totalitarianism, and the left
Such is the power of this stereotype that left-wing circles, having defined themselves negatively, have not only blindly accepted this manipulation, but have gone further still by proclaiming ‘Stalinism’ (another ideological/irrational, pseudo-concept of a bourgeois, idealist, and essentially ahistorical take on early socialism) to be a phenomenon ‘worse than Nazism’. They have even gone so far as to suggest that any failure to denounce ‘Stalinism’ with abhorrence i.e. practically all 20th-century socialist projects and their offshoots – would be seen as an offence against the highest authority and proof of identification with the moustachioed incarnation of Satan!
It is worth exploring the degree to which these bourgeois-idealistic ideological constructions have permeated certain attitudes towards projects of early socialism and interpretations of their defeat, probably unconsciously, positively or negatively.
Here, too, Manichean dichotomies oscillate between sanctification and demonisation. Based on ‘anti-Stalinist’ or ‘Stalinist’ dogmas, for example, the causes of every defeat and failure, as well as every victory and success, are attributed wholesale to the political and administrative choices of leaders, bearing a positive or negative connotation depending on the case. The indisputable wisdom, or conversely the cunning or incompetence, of any historical leader of the revolutionary movement or revolutionary power/bureaucracy; wise management or the usurping of power/dictatorship; a model of socialist democracy or a ‘Thermidorian coup’; loyalty or betrayal; the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ line; belief in unshakeable principles or revisionism/opportunism; authoritarianism or lack of democracy; workers’ control or direct democracy; and so on.
These dogmas are usually accompanied by psychological baggage that is inversely proportional to their scientific validity, and as such they are exploited by bourgeois propaganda. This is not a random symptom; ‘left-wing anti-communism’ is a similar phenomenon (see Parenti’s analysis, 1997, ch. 3)[8]. Regardless of intentions, dogmatic insistence on these models precludes any theoretical understanding of the reality under consideration as long as they function as pseudoscientific substitutes for the latter.
The ahistorical, formalistic character of the initial abstraction, and the reactionary ideological baggage of the pseudo-concept of ‘totalitarianism’, raise questions about whether it is even appropriate to use the term, even as an adjective, in a completely different conceptual context. For example, using it to highlight characteristics of the contemporary stage of capitalism as ‘totalitarian capitalism’ (especially when, in Greek, there is confusion in distinguishing between the Latin origin terms totalitarian –“ολοκληρωτικός” and integration– “ολοκλήρωση”).
Is there any trace of a rational core?
If we seek a rational core in views of ‘totalitarianism’, which reflect people’s genuine concerns about social becoming (beyond the ideological constructs of paid agents or naive ‘volunteers’) we will identify a significant theoretical and practical question with methodological implications relating to the core of the communist prospect. This question concerns the position and role of individuals in society during different historical periods and is a matter of emancipation and freedom.
This problem will remain unchallenged as long as people reproduce mutually exclusive rigidities by either reducing it to fetishised idealisations of an ahistorically perceived bourgeois democracy or considering it as a non-existent ‘pseudo-problem’ in a supposedly revolutionary manner.
‘The organic whole presupposes that its parts, although internally unified, are at the same time also relatively independent. Therefore, with regard to society, this means that man within society, which constitutes an organic whole, is internally interlinked with society, with other people, and at the same time is relatively independent, autonomous, and retains freedom of choice within the framework of his relative independence. Totalitarianism, from a methodological point of view, is the denial of man’s relative independence in relation to society, the denial of freedom of choice. He does not have arbitrary choices, but he is not deprived of freedom of choice.’[9]
Some conclusions
Central to WWIII are the ideological dogmas and laws on ‘totalitarianism’, as well as the corresponding propaganda in the EU, where ‘equal distances between two totalitarianisms’ is a convenient cover for the anti-communism necessary for imperialism at the state and interstate levels. Traditional anti-Sovietism and anti-communism are linked to racist Russophobia and Sinophobia, as well as hostility towards any popular anti-imperialist and anti-neocolonialist movement.
We examined historical sources to provide a methodological and ideological/political critique of the ways in which ideological constructions of ‘totalitarianism’ have been used, including on the ‘left’. Similar ideological constructions presented as ‘philosophies’ and ‘social theories’ are fundamentally ahistorical, irrational and anti-scientific. As such, they exclusively function as apologetic tools of the rotten imperialist system and as means of manipulating and deceiving people.
We have seen that if and where there is a trace of a rational core in the concerns of ordinary people expressed through versions of questioning on totalitarianism, these concerns relate to the place and role of human beings in the historical becoming, and to the prospect of freedom of choice and liberation from exploitation and oppression.
The hypocrisy now enshrined in NATO and EU institutions is becoming increasingly evident in WWIII.
- They are escalating the aggression of the imperialist axis under the pretext of the “struggle against authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and ideologies”, unambiguously identifying the enemy as the forces of early socialism, anti-imperialism, and the global progressive and communist movements.
- At the same time, they present their criminal instruments, the strike forces of the imperialist axis, as “models of democracy and commitment to common values”. These forces are committing genocides, including the Zionist regime of Israel, the Nazi puppet regime of Ukraine, and the regimes of the Baltic ‘democracies’ (where apartheid is institutionalised and the Russian/’Russian-speaking’ population is given the status of ‘non-citizen’), the regimes of Taiwan and South Korea, and so on.
At the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (WAP), our three main goals are:
- The victory of the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism, and the defeat of the US-NATO-EU axis of aggression in all fields of the conflict, including the ideological field.
- The theoretical unmasking of manipulative bourgeois and opportunist/revisionist ideological constructions and dogmas that cause confusion and prevent the realisation of the need for, and practical steps towards the formation of the collective subject of the victorious anti-imperialist struggle.
- The theoretical and practical strengthening and unification of all consistent communist forces on an internationalist basis, so they can fulfil their vanguard role in the victorious frontal struggle with the prospect of socialist revolution and communism.
The ideological constructions of ‘totalitarianism’, a reactionary evolution of the traditional bourgeois liberal parliamentary positioning of political forces (‘far right – centre – far left’), were the first aggressive version of “equal distance between two totalitarianisms” to conveniently mask the necessary anti-communism at state and interstate levels.
These ideological constructions had become entrenched as prejudices over decades and provided the initial framework for mass manipulation, presenting alignment with imperialist strategic choices as a supposedly “moderate, prudent choice of equal distances between two harmful extremes”.
Some bureaucratic ideological mechanisms of once-great historical communist parties are now tasked with focusing mass manipulation on people, committed to traditions of the revolutionary left and with corresponding receptive perceptions. In this way, they are reproducing the metaphysical “methodology” of the above-tested model/scheme of “equal distances”by extending it as a stereotypical arrangement of all coalitions of countries (all of which, without exception are “imperialist”) in WWIII.
Since they are incapable of innovation, they use the same format to establish the stereotype of “equal distances”. All they do is this: in place of the dogmas of “totalitarianism” they put the miserable irrational dogma of the “imperialist pyramid”! Their aim and “special mission” is to undermine the consolidation of the forces of the pole of socialism and anti-imperialism. Anyway, the imperialist regime is not concerned with an abstract and vague rhetoric of ‘communism’ targeting an indeterminate eschatological future. The ideological wrapping of ‘left-wing’ manipulation undermines the axis’s number one enemy in WWIII: the real, concrete forces of socialism and anti-imperialism!
Achieving the goals of the WAP requires an in-depth understanding of the history, “theory” and the reactionary nature of the ideological constructions of “totalitarianism” and of every scheme, and stereotype of “equal distances”. These dogmatic constructs for manipulative purposes can be crushed only through systematic efforts in scientific and ideological-political confrontations with their proponents.
[1] See D. Patelis, ‘Revolutionary situation, Early Socialism and the Logic of History in Russia’, N°186 Juin 2008, RII’s Working Papers, 2008: N 186
[2] Statement by First Vice-President Timmermans and Commissioner Jourová ahead of the Europe-Wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
[3] European Parliament resolution of 23 January 2025.
[4]Flexicurity, EU employment policies of the European Commission
[5] Michael Hardt. Antonio Negri. EMPIRE. HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS. Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, England. 2000.
[6] K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter IV, Theories of Productive and Unproductive Labour
[7] Petras, J. (1999) The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited. Monthly Review, November
[8] Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
[9] V. A. Vaziulin, ‘Only a workers’ movement equipped with the new revolutionary theory will ensure the inevitable victory of communism’, ‘Platform’, 2024 September
