Κυπριακό Κινηματικό Αρχείο
Cyprus Movements Archive
Kıbrıs Sosyal Hareket Arşivi

THE SEVEN YEARS OF ITS ACTIVITY PROVE IT

A RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE OF ZIARTIDES IN THE “THEORETICAL DEMOCRAT” [THEORITIKO DIMOKRATI]

By comrade A. PERDIOU

Seven years ago, at a time when the World Imperialist War was at its peak, and when the international proletariat, under the counter-revolutionary reformist leadership of the Third International, was paralyzed in a confusion unprecedented in world history, it was founded in Skarinou, after much preparatory work, by old Communist and Trade Union elements, the first post-October [referring to the October insurrection of 1931] mass proletarian party in Cyprus, “for the enlightenment of the working masses”, which took the name “Progressive Party of Working People”.

In the first months following its founding convention in Skarinou, although it was intended to serve the workers and peasants, and in sharp contrast to its declarations, it received within its ranks many large bourgeois and petit bourgeois elements who were lurking for the opportunity to take over the leadership of the working masses of the country, with a purely specific purpose: to win the confidence of the workers and peasants, to soften the growing revolutionary spirit of the proletariat, to divert its attention from Socialism, by constant propaganda in favour of the imperialist war, and the development of nationalist tendencies within the masses to such an extent as to subvert any previous internationalist tendency, and to ensure all the necessary conditions for the transition of the Cypriot workers' movement into a first-rate right-wing deviation.

Under these purely anti-class and anti-worker calculations, all the opportunist reformist elements of the right entered AKEL and worked actively, taking advantage of the ignorance of the working masses and the incompetence of the trade union leadership, were promoted to the upper Party hierarchy, acting from the safety of the Party, drawing the Party's policy from above, far from any contact with the proletariat, and outside the decisive line drawn by Marxism-Leninism for any proletarian movement.

The main characteristic feature of AKEL's internal party politics throughout its seven-year life was the abandonment of democratic centralism from the top of the party, the establishment of party authoritarianism expressed by the internal iron discipline that chains the bottom to the top, the abandonment of the basic principle of Critique and Self-Criticism, and the factionalist activity of both the party and the trade union organisations under the party's leadership.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)