Italian Communist Party 1953
Source: L'Unita, March 7, 1953;
Translated for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor.
Fellow citizens, comrades!
A grave, irreparable disaster has stuck us all. Joseph Stalin, the man upon whom millions of Italian workers, peasants, and intellectuals looked with trust and affection as their leader and their hope, is dead. Our sorrow is deep. The powerful of the earth bowed before Stalin’s immortal genius. The people cry for him as they'd cry for the loss of a father.
Stalin is the man who, more than anyone, worked and fought to break the chains of exploitation and oppression. It was to this cause that He dedicated His entire heroic existence.
Along with Lenin, He was the maker of the greatest revolution that history has ever recorded, that revolution that for the first time broke the chains of the exploitation of man by other men, that pointed out to all people the road to becoming masters of their own destiny, that sanctioned the right of the human person to free himself from all forms of slavery.
Stalin — brilliant continuer of Lenin — victoriously realized the hopes of the oppressed, of the children of need, of work and of struggle, indestructibly built the first socialist state, laid down the foundations for that communist society in which every man, finally free, will be master to give according to his capacities, and will receive according to his needs.
When a new era of despotism and barbarism seemed certain to discourage forever the entire world , wiping out in blood all the century-long conquests of human civilization, Stalin raised the banner of struggle against fascism that showed how the common enemy must be struck down in order to save the freedom and independence of the people.
Around Stalin, around the invincible force of the Soviet Union and its armies, gathered the free people of the entire world, closing ranks with all the forces determined to repel the monster in his lair.
Stalingrad, the city that bears His name, and that had once already seen retreat in flight the enemies of freedom and progress, was fascism’s grave. This signaled the beginning of our liberation, too.
Animated by the friendly and fraternal smile of Joseph Stalin millions and millions of men, soldiers at the front, on the seas, in the skies; partisans in the mountains, patriots in the jails, deportees in the extermination camps found the certainty of victory, the strength for the supreme sacrifice in the name of peace and civilization.
Italians!
Fascism’s defeat was the beginning of our national redemption.
The friendship of Stalin and the peoples of the Soviet Union for our people, for the Italian nation, is of long date and has never faltered.
Even when, forced by the folly of fascist leaders, Italian soldiers suffered the tragic fate of attacking the independence and peace of the Soviet peoples, there came from Stalin the wise and admonishing distinction between the criminal blows of the leaders and the responsibility of the people.
And in the moment when, after the collapse of September 8, 1943, there seemed to loom before our country a future of servitude and national dismemberment, Stalin was the first and only one in the world to remain faithful to his promises, and to recognize the existence of an Italian national government and the right of the Italian people not to be considered a defeated people.
When amidst the butchery, the struggles, the indiscriminate reprisals of the Nazi-Fascists our people knew how to light the flame of Resistance and national unity, there came from Stalin the first concrete act of friendship, the first offer of mutual trust.
No honest Italian can have forgotten these decisive facts. It is for this that we denounce to all good citizens the disgraceful conduct of the president of the council De Gasperi. Not even when confronted with the solemnity of death and the sorrow unanimously expressed by all throughout the world, has this man known how to silence the hatred and spite of his reactionary soul, enemy of brotherhood and friendship among the peoples.
Workers!
The fall of fascism, which we above all owe to the unity in struggle proposed and desired by Stalin, has given the people the hope for a new era founded on the peaceful coexistence of nations, on freedom, on independence, and on peace.
Stalin is the symbol of this hope. Humanity owes Him the affirmation of the possibility of peaceful coexistence among different political and economic systems, and thus the concrete possibility of peace. Humanity owes Him the continuous and concrete acts of a wise and far-seeing policy, which unmasks the war provocateurs and calls on all men of good will to make victorious the cause of peace. Humanity owes Him the certainty that the cause of peace is and will be defended up to the end by the socialist state, which he carried to its highest level of strength.
The thought of Stalin, inspired by great and immortal doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, has left a mark in the development of the sciences, in arts and letters, that the centuries will not be able to efface. Stalin’s teaching uncovers to human thought the road for the conquest of socialism, of wellbeing and of progress. For many years His writings have been the fundamental texts in the education of all workers, of all conscious laborers, of all intellectuals who take up their pledge in the service of progress and civilization.
Italians.
Stalin is dead, but His work and His example are immortal. He has left an invincible instrument — the Communist Party — to carry forward the banner of freedom, of independence, of peace and of socialism, which is already victorious on a third of the earth’s surface. Rally around this Party, reinforce it, defend it, make it become the Party of all good fighters for socialism and peace.
To Joseph Stalin, to the great Party which He guided with a sure hand, to the people of the USSR who, under His leadership have scaled the heavens, building the first society of men truly free, go in these sad and solemn moments, the thoughts of all honest Italians, regardless of any difference in beliefs or ideas.
In the name of Stalin, the Italian Communists rally around their Party, their Central Committee, and cCmrade Palmiro Togliatti, the man who, in the Stalin school, has done the most for the national and social liberation of our country. They call on all Italians to rally in ever greater numbers around their banner, symbol of the highest ideals of humanity, to which Stalin consecrated all of his prodigious, legendary existence.
Eternal glory to Joseph Stalin!
Long Live the Communist party of the Soviet Union!
Long live the Italian Communist party!
Long live the indestructible friendship of the Italian and Soviet peoples!
The Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party.