Greek Cops Hospitalize Manolis Glezos WWII Anti-Nazi Veteran

I hope that 87 year old comrade Manolis Glezos is recovering from his ordeal at the hands of the Greek anti-riot police. The veteran hero of the fight against nazi occupation of Greece

(who in 1959 had a Soviet postage stamp issued to commemorate his actions see below)

received a direct spray of tear gas in to his eyes in the recent anti-government austerity protests in Athen. One Greek commentator pithily observed

The point is that Glezos , fell wounded in front of [the Monument of] the Unknown Soldier, struck by a greek employee of the Greek State, at the same time that the Head of [that] State was begging in Germany

On May 30, 1941, he and Apostolos Santas climbed on the Acropolis and tore down the Swastika, which had been there since April 27, 1941, when the Nazi forces had entered Athens. That was the first resistance act that took place in Greece, and probably among the very first ones in Europe. It inspired not only the Greeks, but all subjected people, to resist against the occupation, and established them both as two international anti-Nazi heroes.
The Nazi regime responded by sentencing Glezos and Santas to death in absentia. Glezos was arrested by the German occupation forces on March 24, 1942, and he was subjected to imprisonment and torture. As a result of this treatment, he was gravely affected by tuberculosis. He was arrested on April 21, 1943 by the Italian occupation forces and spent three months in jail. In February 7, 1944 he was arrested again, this time by Greek Nazi collaborators. He spent another seven and a half months in jail, until he finally escaped on September 21 of the same year.

I only hope that Manolis recovers from his ordeal, and sincerely hope that every one of us are able to display such vim and vitality when we reach our 87th year!

Edward Upward's Complete Works Now Available for Electronic Download

I was delighted to see that relatives of the late Marxist writer Edward Upward have put together a superb commemorative website, which provides a definitive source of data and information connected to Edward Upward.

The writer fully acknowledges with gratitude material provided in the piece below derived from the Edward Upward website described. I wrote earlier at the time of Edward death about my connection with him and my great regard for his work HERE

Of particular interest to readers of 'Unrepentant Communist' will be the opportunity to download in its entirety 'the Spiral Ascent' dialectical triad of novels, set in the period of the 1930's, 1940's, and the 1950's and early 1960s. Charting the developments both artistically and politically surrounding the Communist teacher and writer Alan Sebbrill. Picture above the Battle of Cable street, antifascist activity is described in wonderful detail in the first section of the triad, 'In the Thirties'.

You can access the Spiral Ascent and download in its entirety electronically here

Edward Upward was a writer of novels and short stories from the 1920s until into the present century. His literary associates included Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Upward's early and late stories often involve a fantastical element, whilst his trilogy of novels The Spiral Ascent recalls the events and atmosphere of his overlapping literary, political and educational worlds. The question of how art should relate to real life and, more specifically, how a socialist can combine artistic creativity with political commitment, is central to his mature work.

Although The Spiral Ascent is not strictly autobiographical, most of the characters and incidents in it are very similar to real-life counterparts, with Alan and Elsie being based on Upward and his wife Hilda, and Richard on Isherwood. One of the obvious divergences from reality is that Alan is a poet in the book rather than a writer of prose.

In the Thirties recounts Alan Sebrill's attempts to write and find love, his personal crisis, and then his involvement in the Communist Party, his job as a teacher and his marriage to Elsie. The opening chapter by the seaside sees the young writers Alan and Richard glorying in language and nature but also deliberately making contact with 'the so-called lower classes'. This may seem strange until the reader realises that they have had the same isolated, privileged upbringing as the 'poshocrats' they despise. Later in the book we find Alan sometimes fighting to suppress some lingering snobbish attitudes, but he doesn't waver in his commitment to the side of the workers.

Later chapters give a vivid picture of the activities of CP members, including opposition to Oswald Mosley's blackshirts and routine leafleting. Upward is not afraid to put the opinions of the time into Alan's mouth without the benefit of hindsight, including those showing his ignorance of the extent of Stalin's crimes. He thus provides a truthful account of the events, atmosphere and his own feelings of the 1930s. This is one of the most notable achievements of the trilogy, and one which is partly a result of Upward retaining his revolutionary politics. Many writers about the period who were on the left in the thirties moved to the right during the Cold War and easily fell into cynicism or opposition to their earlier ideas, whereas Upward is still able to recognize the genuine motivations and positive results of the actions of ordinary CP members despite the effects of Stalinism on the Party. The final chapter closes shortly before the war begins, with comrades on a walk in the country, and includes what is effectively a prose ode to trees, reflecting Upward's own love of the natural world as well as his observational and descriptive powers.

Whereas In the Thirties has Alan and Elsie going along with the Party's condemnation of a dissident member, the subject of The Rotten Elements is their own disagreement with the Party's post-war policy in Britain, which they believe is a reformist betrayal of Leninism. This involves them in a theoretical confrontation with the Party leadership in which their reasoned arguments are arrogantly dismissed. The novel soon begins to take on some of the colouring of a political thriller. There is good cause for paranoia given both the hostility of the Party leadership and state surveillance, although Elsie has a more level-headed reaction to events than Alan, who has a tendency to emphasize the ominous.

Upward's intermittent discussion of religion in the trilogy features strongly in The Rotten Elements, where Alan and Elsie are shown having conversations with their children about Christianity and a Communist ex-minister plays a prominent part. Whilst Alan sometimes compares his attitudes to those of a religious person, he has long been an atheist and does not impute any religious aspect to Marxism itself.

In the final volume of the trilogy, No Home But the Struggle, Alan (like Upward as he was writing) has retired from teaching and is able to write full-time. The narration is now in the first person and the book is full of reminiscences of Alan's childhood and university days, told in a relaxed, Proustian manner. These are interspersed with accounts of Alan and Elsie's political activities in the post-war decades, particularly as members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. But the dominant thread, as throughout The Spiral Ascent, is Alan's ongoing struggle to write poetry which will be both artistically truthful and contribute to the fight for a better world.

Snow, Ice, Listowel, Crashed Almeras, A Bought 1.9 Skoda Fabia, a Conversion to Hats...ALL Conspire to Delay Unrepentant Communist Postings....

Apologies to all the regular readers of Unrepentant Communist for an absence of posts since my wildly optimistic January posting, ah that wonderful space rocket and that progressive wish list...We embarked upon the hardest winter that we have seen in Ireland for at least 40 years and this had a huge impact upon me. I thoroughly enjoyed the sharpness of the air and the extremity of the weather. Something about those sub zero temperatures were much more ascetic than that kind of drab rainy nothingness we have been experiencing in recent years. We are all encouraged to put this down to 'global warming' but this wonderful hard old fashioned winter has hardened my scepticism about this whole global warming concept. In fact my scepticism about many 'Green' issues have been growing in direct proportion to the length of time that the utterly laughable Irish Green Party, led by the hapless careerist John Gormley, continues to prop up this horrendously incompetent Fianna Fail government. Basically Ireland is governed by a kleptocratic majority party acting in the interests of the very well feather bedded Irish rich, that bunch of Fianna Fáil gangsters, have been loyally supported through thin and thinner by a crowd of carrot crunchers, the 'Green Party', who have sold out any principles they once held for the taste of power and the tasty prospect of the lavish ministerial pensions dished out to all ex-ministers here, Martin Cullen the recently resigned Minister and TD for Waterford, will receive a €140,000 payoff and an annual ministerial pension of €110,000 per annum for life, thats going to buy him an awful lot of Ralgex for the old back pain.
Despite my liking of the winter weather I paid the price for the love affair, writing off the trusty Nissan Almera in a spectacular ice derived overturning in West Limerick. I was rescued by some local neighbours who were the epitome of good grace and hospitality. Martin, the man whose land I crashed onto, not only provided me with tea, but also pulled the car out of the field and kindly transported me back to my home about 17 miles away. Events like this confim in me my belief that fundamentally people are hard wired to be helpful and kind to each other, and that it is only the capitalist system that sustains and nurtures that selfish side we all possess.
The outcome of Nissan destruction day was
a) the purchase of a Skoda Fabia,which delightfully still retains something of the old Lada about it I think...ha ha... Whether that is true or not I must say that the 1.9 Skoda Fabia diesel is a better car than the Nissan 1.4 Almera, it is saving me A FORTUNE in running costs, I would estimate, a pproximately 35% cheaper per month.
b) a delayed reaction in terms of the fact, that although not physically damaged, I think that the whole incident shook me up FAR more than I first thought. Everything became a struggle and I think that I was suffering from a bit of shock. This culminated in a day or two of gloomy and negative thoughts a full week and a half after the accident.
c) A kind of scaling down of activities of all sorts and a period of just kind of hibernating, this involved sadly, a failure to post on the old 'Unrepentant Communist' blog. My belief systems were not altered in the slightest, just I could not summon up the energies to be posting as normal. I hummed the Soviet national anthem a few times in a desultory way and even tried to force motivation by a rousing chorus of Eisler and Brechts Einheitsfrontlied but the energy would not come...
d) last but not least I have discovered that if it is cold, minus 4 and 5 on a regular basis, then ones head gets cold, for this there is an old fashioned and rather pleasingly sartorially distinctive remedy, namely, the wearing of a hat. I find that wearing a hat is now as natural to me as putting on a coat. It is distinctive and above all it keeps your head warm. A further aspect of it, is that once you have grown used to wearing a hat, it is difficult to go out without one, without feeling somewhat exposed and naked...

I suppose the very fact that this post has appeared is self evidence of the fact that I am at last returning to my old form...I hope that we will share many more posts together in 2010, now that we are almost entering something akin to Spring, even though it is still regularly registering minus 4 every night by 8pm in South West Ireland....As for Global Warming???...My John Gormley!

A PROGESSIVE 2010...TO ALL OUR READERS.

Here at Unrepentant Communist we are extending to you our warmest New Year greetings, and we continue to hope for a Progressive 2010.... What could that mean...

1) The USA will resist the growing internal neo-con lobby within the military industrial complex for a conflict with Iran or Venezuela

2) The forces of progress will continue to hold firm and hopefully advance in Latin America

3) The onslaught against public and private sector wages here in the Republic of Ireland will be resisted by a united trade union and labour movement.

4) In the UK the coming onslaught against the Public sector will be stymied by a united resistance from the labour movement.

5) Some progress will be made to resolve the continued scandal of the occupation of the lands of the Palestinian people by the Zionist state.

6) Russia will maintain its autonomous foreign policy and hopefully progressive forces will advance in the former USSR in the wake of the deepening economic crisis.

7) In the wake of a deepening capitalist crisis, the alternative as proposed by socialists throughout the world will be increasingly heard as being relevant by new generations. The burgeoning anti-democratic power of the EU in our everyday lives will be tempered by resistance led by progressives such as Irish MEP Joe Higgins and others of a similar perceptive viewpoint.

8) Cuba will retain its socialist identity and resist pressure for 'reform' which is an ill disguised code for the dismantling of the socialist state. Many greedy eyes in the USA are eying Cuba with undisguised relish. The reversal of socialist power in Cuba would be a major set back

9) The USA and the UK and the other 'allied powers' will withdraw from Afghanistan and save the shedding of any more wasted young lives in a futile attempt to prop up the the thoroughly corrupt Karzai regime.

10) China will recognize that its 'great experiment' with capitalism has been an unmitigated disaster for its people, its environment, and the hopes of the people of the world for social and economic progress in China.

Me? A Leftist Authoritarian- Like it says on the tin.- My response to the endless celebrations of 20 years since the Iron curtain came down etc etc...

Some days you are just sitting there in the throes of a nasty flu, having just been informed that the ruling class in this country are cutting public sector wages again, that they are cutting payments to the blind, single mothers and the unemployed.

That the bankers and the various scumbags who run capitalism here and elsewhere are getting away with blue murder once again...all over the world...

And you know what you just don't feel like being democratic or 'right on' anymore. You just think of what really used to scare the capitalists of the world, what really used to get under their skin and make them wet their right wing pants.

Then you see a video like this and suddenly that flu doesnt seem so bad after all, you are empowered and you know what? I am going to be brutally honest here, I don't care if you don't like it and find it 'disturbing' or 'authoritarian' ....
This was the real deal guys, this was what the capitalists and imperialists were shit scared of ....and I would'nt have  the slightest problem at all about this particular boot being donned by the oppressed and workers of the world, who have been  getting it in the ass since the demise of the USSR.

That is my considered reaction to the endless round the clock 'celebrations' of the end of socialism which are being pumped out on the media all over the capitalist world day and night.

No wonder they are celebrating, it was the biggest let-off that the collective kleptocracy of global capitalism ever got, when they fooled the people of the socialist world into entering the hall of mirrors of capitalism.....Somehow, however, I feel certain that capitalism's reprieve is only in the long run scheme of things only temporary.

THE RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IS " NEITHER DEFINITE NOR IRREVERSIBLE...."

A powerful statement issued by the impressive Aleka Papariga, General Secretary of the CC of KKE ( Communist Party of Greece)

On November 9, 2009, in the rifle range of Kesariani, KKE honoured the communists and other militants who gave their life for the cause of Socialism, as a response to the anticommunist events that take place in Berlin.

With a simple event, filled with messages and symbolisms, KKE honoured in the rifle range of Kesariani the 200 communists and other militants who withstood the forces of fascism, recognizing in their example the heroism of all those who were not frightened, did not retreat, did not relent in view of the difficulties and the setbacks of the confrontation with imperialism.

The time and place of the event has its own symbolism and has been chosen as people’s response to the anticommunist events of lies and calumniation that take place these days on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of the socialism in the German Democratic Republic.

The course of history cannot be stopped

Shortly afterwards, the General Secretary in her statement regarding the anticommunist events in Berlin noted:

“We felt the need to be here today, in this sacred place for our people, where Greeks turned in to the Germans, unrepentant communists loyal to the struggle for the liberation of their homeland, knowing that they would be executed, or that they would be sent to the known camps in Germany. They preferred the unrepentant and fighting communists to be dead than alive struggling for freedom.

We felt the need to be here because today in Berlin the elite of the imperialists and their second class executives and allies, among whom the Greek prime minister, have met for the celebration of the Fall of the Wall.

In reality they are celebrating the capitalist restoration, the overthrow of socialism, because they believe that this overthrow is final and irreversible. However they understand that the course of history cannot be stopped and that sooner or later the timeliness of socialism will become reality. We do not forget the great contribution of socialism nor its achievements that benefited the humanity as a whole. No one can erase the fact that the overthrow of socialism made imperialism even more aggressive against peoples.

Freedom has class content

They celebrate and we understand why. They celebrate because freedom and democracy for them are consolidated in an exploitative class society; freedom and democracy for them means to violate people’s rights, plunder the working class, divide peoples, fragment and forcibly annex states. Freedom and democracy for them, are synonymous with the war of the capital, with the war of arms. All those who gathered in Berlin have forgotten their responsibilities and obligations regarding the wall raised by the Israelis in Palestine.

However, I would like to remind some facts in order to make it clear for the people and particularly the youth: Both West and East Berlin were in the centre of the German Democratic Republic. The erection of the Wall was imposed by imperialism when the NATO troops threatened to invade Berlin, especially the East part, in the territory of the German Democratic Republic. So I’m asking you: don’t the people, the workers’ power or any government have the right to respect their borders and erect a wall in their territories? For example, if there were 3 or 4 municipalities in Athens that belonged to the occupation army would people be free to come and go? At that time West Germany, with NATO and the Americans, was like an occupation army. On one hand it was responsible for the division of Germany and on the other it tried to forcibly annex it.

We will never abandon the struggle for Socialism

Once more we underline that we are on the side of socialism. We defend socialism we have known due to its great contribution to the people who experienced it and for the humanity as a whole and we have the courage and boldness to deepen and highlight the causes that led to the restoration of capitalism. That’s what we are fighting with all our strength and we won’t give up struggling for socialism. Socialism in Greece will include the contribution of socialism we have known and the lessons learned from the negative experience.

If those who gather today in Berlin think that the peoples will reconcile with the imperialist reality they are mistaken. Sooner or later people will rise even higher than in the 20th century.”

Majority of Eastern Germans Believe that 'Life was better" in the German Democratic Republic.By Julia Bonstein

This article from Der Spiegel, no friend of socialism, existing , past , or future, makes fascinating reading and as someone who had some familiarity with some of the many positive aspects of life in the DDR, as well as the undoubted problems, I can only add that the sentiments being expressed come as little or no surprise to me personally ....


Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.
The life of Birger, a native of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northeastern Germany, could read as an all-German success story. The Berlin Wall came down when he was 10. After graduating from high school, he studied economics and business administration in Hamburg, lived in India and South Africa, and eventually got a job with a company in the western German city of Duisburg. Today Birger, 30, is planning a sailing trip in the Mediterranean. He isn't using his real name for this story, because he doesn't want it to be associated with the former East Germany, which he sees as "a label with negative connotations."
And yet Birger is sitting in a Hamburg cafe, defending the former communist country. "Most East German citizens had a nice life," he says. "I certainly don't think that it's better here." By "here," he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. "In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble -- or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany's public broadcasting institutions) -- are collecting information about us." In Birger's opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. "The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel."
Birger is by no means an uneducated young man. He is aware of the spying and repression that went on in the former East Germany, and, as he says, it was "not a good thing that people couldn't leave the country and many were oppressed." He is no fan of what he characterizes as contemptible nostalgia for the former East Germany. "I haven't erected a shrine to Spreewald pickles in my house," he says, referring to a snack that was part of a the East German identity. Nevertheless, he is quick to argue with those who would criticize the place his parents called home: "You can't say that the GDR was an illegitimate state, and that everything is fine today."
As an apologist for the former East German dictatorship, the young Mecklenburg native shares a majority view of people from eastern Germany. Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 57 percent, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there," say 49 percent of those polled. Eight percent of eastern Germans flatly oppose all criticism of their former home and agree with the statement: "The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today."
These poll results, released last Friday in Berlin, reveal that glorification of the former East Germany has reached the center of society. Today, it is no longer merely the eternally nostalgic who mourn the loss of the GDR. "A new form of Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former GDR) has taken shape," says historian Stefan Wolle. "The yearning for the ideal world of the dictatorship goes well beyond former government officials." Even young people who had almost no experiences with the GDR are idealizing it today. "The value of their own history is at stake," says Wolle.
People are whitewashing the dictatorship, as if reproaching the state meant calling their own past into question. "Many eastern Germans perceive all criticism of the system as a personal attack," says political scientist Klaus Schroeder, 59, director of an institute at Berlin's Free University that studies the former communist state. He warns against efforts to downplay the SED dictatorship by young people whose knowledge about the GDR is derived mainly from family conversations, and not as much from what they have learned in school. "Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service," Schroeder concluded in a 2008 study of school students. "These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark sides of the GDR."
"Driven Out of Paradise"
Schroeder has made enemies with statements like these. He received more than 4,000 letters, some of them furious, in reaction to reporting on his study. The 30-year-old Birger also sent an e-mail to Schroeder. The political scientist has now compiled a selection of typical letters to document the climate of opinion in which the GDR and unified Germany are discussed in eastern Germany. Some of the material gives a shocking insight into the thoughts of disappointed and angry citizens. "From today's perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down," one person writes, and a 38-year-old man "thanks God" that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn't until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.
Today's Germany is described as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic. Schroeder finds such statements alarming. "I am afraid that a majority of eastern Germans do not identify with the current sociopolitical system."
Many of the letter writers are either people who did not benefit from German reunification or those who prefer to live in the past. But they also include people like Thorsten Schön.
After 1989 Schön, a master craftsman from Stralsund, a city on the Baltic Sea, initially racked up one success after the next. Although he no longer owns the Porsche he bought after reunification, the lion skin rug he bought on a vacation trip to South Africa -- one of many overseas trips he has made in the past 20 years -- is still lying on his living room floor. "There's no doubt it: I've been fortunate," says the 51-year-old today. A major contract he scored during the period following reunification made it easier for Schön to start his own business. Today he has a clear view of the Strelasund sound from the window of his terraced house.
'People Lie and Cheat Everywhere Today'
Wall decorations from Bali decorate his living room, and a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty stands next to the DVD player. All the same, Schön sits on his sofa and rhapsodizes about the good old days in East Germany. "In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together," he says. What he misses most today is "that feeling of companionship and solidarity." The economy of scarcity, complete with barter transactions, was "more like a hobby." Does he have a Stasi file? "I'm not interested in that," says Schön. "Besides, it would be too disappointing."
His verdict on the GDR is clear: "As far as I'm concerned, what we had in those days was less of a dictatorship than what we have today." He wants to see equal wages and equal pensions for residents of the former East Germany. And when Schön starts to complain about unified Germany, his voice contains an element of self-satisfaction. People lie and cheat everywhere today, he says, and today's injustices are simply perpetrated in a more cunning way than in the GDR, where starvation wages and slashed car tires were unheard of. Schön cannot offer any accounts of his own bad experiences in present-day Germany. "I'm better off today than I was before," he says, "but I am not more satisfied."
Schön's reasoning is less about cool logic than it is about settling scores. What makes him particularly dissatisfied is "the false picture of the East that the West is painting today." The GDR, he says, was "not an unjust state," but "my home, where my achievements were recognized." Schön doggedly repeats the story of how it took him years of hard work before starting his own business in 1989 -- before reunification, he is quick to add. "Those who worked hard were also able to do well for themselves in the GDR." This, he says, is one of the truths that are persistently denied on talk shows, when western Germans act "as if eastern Germans were all a little stupid and should still be falling to their knees today in gratitude for reunification." What exactly is there to celebrate, Schön asks himself?
"Rose-tinted memories are stronger than the statistics about people trying to escape and applications for exit visas, and even stronger than the files about killings at the Wall and unjust political sentences," says historian Wolle.
These are memories of people whose families were not persecuted and victimized in East Germany, of people like 30-year-old Birger, who says today: "If reunification hadn't happened, I would also have had a good life."
Life as a GDR Citizen
After completing his university degree, he says, he would undoubtedly have accepted a "management position in some business enterprise," perhaps not unlike his father, who was the chairman of a farmers' collective. "The GDR played no role in the life of a GDR citizen," Birger concludes. This view is shared by his friends, all of them college-educated children of the former East Germany who were born in 1978. "Reunification or not," the group of friends recently concluded, it really makes no difference to them. Without reunification, their travel destinations simply would have been Moscow and Prague, instead of London and Brussels. And the friend who is a government official in Mecklenburg today would probably have been a loyal party official in the GDR.
The young man expresses his views levelheadedly and with few words, although he looks slightly defiant at times, like when he says: "I know, what I'm telling you isn't all that interesting. The stories of victims are easier to tell."
Birger doesn't usually mention his origins. In Duisburg, where he works, hardly anyone knows that he is originally from East Germany. But on this afternoon, Birger is adamant about contradicting the "victors' writing of history." "In the public's perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside."
This is someone who feels personally affected when Stasi terror and repression are mentioned. He is an academic who knows "that one cannot sanction the killings at the Berlin Wall." However, when it comes to the border guards' orders to shoot would-be escapees, he says: "If there is a big sign there, you shouldn't go there. It was completely negligent."
This brings up an old question once again: Did a real life exist in the midst of a sham? Downplaying the dictatorship is seen as the price people pay to preserve their self-respect. "People are defending their own lives," writes political scientist Schroeder, describing the tragedy of a divided country.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.