On 12^th January 1945, the Soviet Red Army launched its final offensive along a 1,200-kilometre front extending from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathians. The offensive developed at a rapid pace but there remained fierce battles to be fought before the world was liberated from the fascist imperialist Axis of Germany–Italy–Japan and their allies.

On 1^st May 1945 the red banner of victory was hoisted over the Reichstag in Berlin and a few days later Germany officially acknowledged defeat. On 9^th May Soviet forces defeated Nazis encircling Prague.

9th May is a landmark of the Great Anti-fascist Victory of the Peoples. Millions of people from across the world lost their lives in the struggle against German fascism and Japanese militarism. Their sacrifices and contribution must never be forgotten.

At a time when the European Union, with its anti-communist rhetoric, falsifications and actions,attempts to disguise and distort the real meaning of 9^th Maywith its feeble and anaemic celebration of “Europe Day”, the Workers Party of Ireland remembers and celebrates the immense contribution of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, which suffered 20 million casualties, and the invaluable role of the Communist Parties and partisans that led the national liberation and anti-fascist movements around the world.

Today, we are confronted with the continuing threat and reality of imperialist war. The production of the means of mass destruction has assumed shocking proportions. The accumulation and technological refinement of nuclear weapons continues. Tens of billions of dollars are spent by the imperialist powers on weapons of war while public services such as health, education, housing and environmental protection are disregarded. The expansion of foreign military basescontinues to pose a threat to peace. The US alone controls some 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Imperialism poses an ongoing threat to the peoples of the world through subversion, coercion, intervention, occupation and war.

Several decades after the counter-revolution and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the peoples of the world are now confronted with economic crises, militarism, capitalist exploitation, the growth of fascism and war.

That is why it is vital to expose and condemn the efforts of the bourgeois parties to downgrade the heroic struggle against fascism and to reassert and commemorate the importance of the Great Anti-fascist Victory and the staunchness and fortitude of the socialist forces who were key to that victory.

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland