“57 years ago, in the early hours of April 21, 1967, many pioneers of the labor-popular struggles were arrested, in order to prevent any reaction to the ongoing coup. Not long after, most woke up to the sounds of crawlers, military marches and dictatorship sermons.

Since then, April 21 has always reminded the Greek people that capitalist power does not hesitate to change its political forms, from bourgeois parliamentary democracy to political or military dictatorship and vice versa, always with the aim of better serving capitalist interests, to the dictatorship of capital remains untouched” points out the KKE in its statement “on the ‘black’ anniversary of the imposition of the dictatorship of April 21, 1967”.

In the announcement of the party, reference is made to the causes and protagonists of the dictatorship and it is noted that “the dictatorship of the colonels in a general direction was a continuation of internal and foreign policy, supporting big capital and maintaining its international alliances (EEC, NATO), serving their designs against the countries of socialist construction. Also, the foreign policy of the dictatorship served the interests of the USA, NATO and the European capitalist states in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa, but also led to the tragedy of Cyprus”.

“The April 21st dictatorship continued and intensified legislative measures against the KKE, imposed mass persecutions, dismantled trade unions and other mass organizations, and carried out torture and murder. Although he took some repressive measures and at the expense of the functioning of bourgeois parties, he maintained channels of communication and consultation for the restoration of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

From the first moment, the communists and other radical fighters stood against the plans of the bourgeois military dictatorship, paying a heavy price for their stance in favor of the working-people’s interests.

Despite the conditions of long-standing and deep illegality, the KKE he was able to separate in time from the opportunist forces within it during the 12th Plenum (1968), to fight for the formation of illegal Party Organizations, to establish the KNE, to take the lead in the enlightenment of the labor-popular forces. He gave all his strength to the organization of the anti-dictatorship struggle from the first day, when in conditions of brutal repression “everything was overshadowed by the horror”. He had a special contribution to the development of the labor-popular struggles, from the first mobilizations with union demands to the student takeover of the Faculty of Law and the youth and labor-popular uprising of the Polytechnic University (November 1973). Against bourgeois and opportunist political forces, he rejected the so-called “liberalization”, that is, the masquerading of the dictatorship,” emphasizes the KKE.

“The fall of the dictatorship in July 1974, as a result of its “crimes”, especially of Cyprus, the exhaustion of its role and the struggle against it, culminating in the Polytechnic, was accompanied by the so-called period of the so-called “post-colonization”.

After the restoration of the bourgeois parliamentary democracy, the capitalist state with any government continued to serve the profitability of business groups, to suppress labor-people struggles, to participate in transnational capitalist alliances and to be involved in imperialist rivalries and wars,” the KKE states. He notes that “even today, the character of the state ultimately remains the same, capitalist and anti-people. In this context and often with the agreement of all civil parties, the involvement in the plans of the NATO bloc deepens more and more, as is currently happening with the war in Ukraine, and in every way supporting Israel, the ‘killer state’ of the Palestinian people. The commercialization of health is progressing with the last act being the evening clinics, private universities are being legislated. Mixtures of restrictive or expansionary policies alternate, given in any case the reduction of public income, the privatization and degradation of transport is concealed, there are no social protection structures for women, immigrants and refugees”.

“A debt to those who fought against the dictatorship and at the same time a response to today’s anti-popular reality, is the building of the social alliance of the working class, the subsistence farmers, the self-employed, the increasingly massive and decisive strike and worker-popular struggles, the student and student mobilizations, the diverse activity of women’s organizations, the decisive change of association in the labor-people’s movement” emphasizes the KKE in its announcement and concludes:

“Strengthening the KKE, in all battles and in the coming European elections, is a guarantee of a worker-popular counterattack against any version of an anti-popular government. Every step to strengthen the Party constitutes a step to strengthen the labor-people’s action, the only one capable of stopping the plans of the capitalist class, the state and its international allies, to disengage the country from imperialist plans, to open a way for perspective, the truly promising organization of the economy and society, socialism-communism.

With a strong KKE, we break the bonds of the EU, for Greece and the Europe of socialism, of workers, farmers, and peoples.”