The unveiling of a special monument, worthy of the sacrifice of the fighters of the DSE who fell in the battle of Florina in February 1949, took place on Sunday 14th of February during a special event organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece in Florina. This event was held in the framework of the celebrations of the KKE's 100th anniversary.

The monument was erected at a location where over 700 partisans of the DSE, men and women, are buried. It was designed by Memos Makris.

Thousands of people responded to the call of the KKE. They took part in a march that began in the centre of the town of Florina and reached the place where the unveiling of the monument took place.

The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, spoke at the event and stressed amongst other things:

"It is our duty and task to project the contribution of the heroic people's army, the Democratic Army of Greece in its harsh, unequal, bloody but just struggle. The battle of Florina was one of the most difficult and deadly battles that the DSE participated in. The bourgeois army had understood the intentions of the DSE in good time due to the major concentration of its forces in the area and its intensive exercises with live ammunition. The fact that the bourgeois army was prepared for this battle and having the balance of forces in its favour, made this military confrontation unequal for the DSE from the very beginning, as the DSE had lost the advantage of surprise, which resulted in it having a disadvantageous position from the outset. However, the partisans of the DSE fought with incomparable heroism and self-sacrifice in this battle, fully aware of their mission and duty. As in many other instances, they bravely attempted in unbelievably difficult conditions, with their unbending will and dedication to their just cause as their main weapons, to reverse the unequal balance of forces and to do the impossible.

Despite the defeat and heavy losses (over 800 were killed and 1,000 wounded), the moral and political superiority and indomitable courage of the DSE were clearly demonstrated.

After the end of the fighting, the bourgeois army committed an outrage. It gathered the dead fighters of the DSE and many wounded and buried them, both the dead and living, with bulldozers in a pit that it had dug in a field on the south east side of the city, in the area known as Agios Giorgos, i.e. where we are standing today.

The KKE bought this field in 2009 in order to erect a monument to the heroic and honoured dead of Florina, which we are unveiling today.

The monument was designed by the important artist, Memos Makris. His daughter, Kleio Makris, granted us the rights to this work."

As was stressed by D.Koutsoumpas "in the framework of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of our party, the projection of the DSE's struggle is enormously important. We honour the DSE, its contribution and we are inspired by its titanic struggle. We study, we learn, we continue. This is the best and greatest way to honour the thousands of fighting men and women of the DSE who "fell in an unequal battle and struggle.

The struggle of the DSE was a just one. It was mass popular armed response to the ruthless attempt of the bourgeoisie to subjugate or exterminate the great EAM movement in order to consolidate its anti-people power. In order to achieve this goal, it used all means available, with murderous violence and naked mass terror as its main weapons, decisively supported militarily and economically initial by British and then later by US imperialism.

Almost a year after the heroic December of 1944 and the unacceptable "Varkiza Agreement", which imposed the disarming and dissolution of the people's liberation army, ELAS, the following against the EAM movement and the KKE :1,289 murders, 6,671 wounded, 31,632 acts of torture, 18,767 acts of looting and imprisonment, 84,931 arrests, 509 attempted murders, 265 rapes.

The stark choice for the party and movement: Submission or a new uprising. It chose, even if in a delayed way, to march on the path of conflict and not that of submission and humiliation. So, the mass armed popular struggle confronted the armed violence of the bourgeois state directed by the governments of the bourgeois parties and supported by the USA and G. Britain, which sought to secure their barbaric system of exploitation and to integrate the country into imperialist alliances.

The military conflict was harsh and year by year became even more unequal for the popular class forces. The "Truman Doctrine" and the "Marshall Plan" contributed decisively to the bourgeoisie's victory. The USA's napalm bombs were first used and testes against the DSE' partisans.

The DSE may have been defeated militarily, but despite the atrocities, bigotry and anti-communist vehemence of the bourgeois state after the civil war, which manifested itself through the savage terror of executions, mass persecution, imprisonments and exiles, they were not able to erase the magnificence of its struggle, it moral and political superiority.

For this reason, the mechanisms of the bourgeoisie never ceased their distortions and slanders against the struggle of the DSE and KKE. Opportunism has made its contribution to these efforts, as it characterizes the sacrifices as being in vain and the armed people's struggle as adventurism.

No struggle of the labour-people's movement and of the communists, no sacrifice was in vain. This is the lesson of the history of the peoples and the revolutionary movement. Through small and great victories, painful defeats and setbacks, the revolutionary movement of the working class learns, regroups and advances, becoming more capable and powerful in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and with more impetus drives forwards for the victory of the peoples.

The struggle of the DSE honoured the previous struggles of the people's movement and was the major inspiration for the struggles of the following generations. It continues to inspire and teach.

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We hold firmly in our hands the flag that represents the greatest and most human ideals in whose service they fell. We raise it up high. So that we can put an end to the exploitation of man by man, wars, poverty. For socialism-communism.

No conciliation with the class enemy. The completely opposed and hostile worlds which confronted each other at that time, remain as hostile and irreconcilable today.

The working class, the poor popular strata, the youth suffer from the continuous assault against their most basic rights that aims to safeguard the highest level of profitability for the monopolies.

The SYRIZA-ANEL government continues its anti-people political line, picking up from where the ND-PASOK governments had left off. It is attempting to finish the dirty work at the expense of our people, with the support of domestic capital and the EU. The promises it gave to the people proved to be false, while the ideological constructs that "there is a political line which increases the profits of the capitalists and improves the lives of the workers", "that the EU can change" and other big talk have been proved to be traps in order to disarm the people's radicalization and indignation.

The capitalist system and its state bring only disaster to the people, regardless of who is in government. It is now historically obsolete, obstructs social progress, gives rise only to poverty, economic crises and wars.

The only way for the people to put an end to poverty, unemployment and ensure their own prosperity, peace and sovereign rights, is that of the people's alliance for the overthrow of the monopolies' power and the disengagement of the country from the imperialist organizations, with workers'-people's power.

And this path can be opened by a strong KKE and an emancipated people, who know their history and learn from and are inspired by it.

Every working man and woman, who are the victims of relentless exploitation, every young person who start their lives in this jungle, where the injustice of the powerful prevails, is in a position to understand the cause and aim of this ideological offensive.

The exploiters, their hangers on, the warmongers and their unions attack the ideology of class struggle, precisely because they worry about the future of their class's domination. They fear the working class, the poor farmers, the toiling self-employed. They take preemptive measures so that the working class cannot become conscious of its social position and historical mission. Their fear about the future is what makes them focus their ideological offensive on the youth. They want to assimilate their liveliness, creativity and militant stance into their plans. They will not succeed in this! The social contradictions cannot be controlled by the ideological constructs concerning so-called national unity and the alleged abolition of the dividing lines in society, which are propagandized by the SYRIZA government and the official opposition ND, with the chorus of approval of the eager servants of the system.

As history demonstrates, the great bourgeois revolutions, like the French Revolution in 1789, and the proletarian revolutions, above all the great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, brought humanity forwards. The decisive contribution of the Soviet Union to crushing fascist imperialism during the 2nd World War and to the national liberation movements, the struggle of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Cuba and Palestine brought the world forwards.

We are in solidarity with all the peoples that struggle for their rights. We fight to strengthen the mass political struggle in Greece. We know that the path is very difficult, and that the most difficult obstacles lie in front of us. But we have deep faith in the working class, in the radical popular forces.

The political line of the KKE can rally many more thousands of workers, unemployed people, pensioners, youth, women, small and medium farmers, self-employed, tradesmen, intellectuals.

The correlation of forces will change. What is needed is for this to happen as rapidly as possible. And for this manifest itself now everywhere.

In the everyday struggles, in the labour unions, the farmers' associations, the associations of the self-employed, in the schools, in the higher education institutions, in the local elections, in the parliamentary elections, whenever they are held.

This must be expressed through the weakening of all the bourgeois and opportunist parties, their memoranda, anti-people laws and their imperialist predatory alliances.

We must make the KKE as strong as possible, to raise it up ideologically, politically and organizationally so that is capable of rallying even more forces and strengthening the conditions for the creation of a new great social anti-capitalist anti-monopoly alliance for workers'-people's power.

There is no other way out for the people. The representatives of social-democracy and political adventurism, who trumpet the need for another "European model" as an alternative solution, are deceiving the workers.

We got to know the "middle way" through such governments in the past and present, in Italy, France, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, today in Greece, in other European countries and all over the world.

In every instance hopes and expectations were disappointed, pro-capital measures were taken, the people were disillusioned, the people's-labour movement retreated or collapsed.

The allegedly realistic "third way" is capital's way, the path for the defeat of the people and the ridiculing of their ideals and dreams.

Together with the KKE, in the furnace of the class struggles of the people

Some apologists of the system and of the victors' hatred, who exorcise the civil war as if it were a curse, do this in order to justify the barbarity of capitalism that organizes and wages a civil war every day against the working class and popular strata.

Their goal is to denounce the legitimate right of the peoples to defend their rights, using all the forms of struggle available to them, and above all their right to and their struggle for a better life without the exploitation of man by man.

We are fully conscious that you must examine history objectively. That you must study the positive and negative aspects, with the mistakes and shortcomings. There is enormous experience from the class struggles, in particular from the struggle of the DSE. There must be no class hatred towards the children of the working class, the farmers, towards the people, Greek men and women, who were conscripted and fought, brother against brother, in the civil war in the ranks of the bourgeois army. The class hatred and the dividing lines are not aimed against the working people, regardless of whether they vote for "leftwing" or "rightwing" parties, or how they define themselves ideologically. There must be class hatred and indeed an intensification of it towards a system, a class, a state and their imperialist warmongering predatory alliances which massacre the peoples.

The workers, employees, popular strata that follow the social-democracy of SYRIZA, the neo-liberal ND, as well as other parties of the so-called centre-left or centre or right, in reality have no place in these formations. All of them, the ordinary people, have a place here: In the KKE and together with the KKE.

The attempts to blacken and to distort the historical contribution, as well as the current activity of the KKE, take on many different forms. One of them is the blatant slander that the KKE allegedly is not interested in the pressing problems of the people, in their demands, and that it refers everything to a distant socialist future. The relationship of a party, however, with the labour and people's movement cannot be formed on a contingent basis, or in an adventurist opportunistic way. The relationship of the KKE with the people was built on the fact that the KKE and KNE were always in the frontline of the struggle concerning all the social needs as they were expressed in each historical period.

And so today, we are in the frontline of the struggle, together with the people as a whole, so that the monstrous draft law which will destroy social security does not pass, so that there are no tax burdens, so that all the anti-worker anti-people laws are abolished. We are the first in the strike battles, the demonstrations and rallies, in the farmers' roadblocks, in the struggles of the self-employed, professionals and scientists, in the struggles of the students and school students, pensioners and women from the popular strata. The heart of our future beats here. This how the struggles and sacrifices for a better future will be vindicated. Here with the KKE in the furnace of the class struggles of the people, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

In the run up to the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of our party, in 2018, we swear in the memory of the hundreds of thousands of our people's heroes that we will continue along the same class-oriented line of struggle for the just cause of the salaried worker, employee and their families.

We are committed to struggling, in alliance with the farmers and self-employed, for the defense of the needs of the workers, unemployed, pensioners, refugees and immigrants.

We are committed to intensifying our initiatives to coordinate the communist line of struggle at a European and international level, in the struggle against exploitation, oppression and wars.

We are committed, with our Marxist education, historical understanding of the class struggle and the experience from the struggles as our weapons, to free the historical truth from the obfuscation created by capital to serve its class interests. We fight against the defeatist fake left adaption to the system as well.

HONOUR AND GLORY TO THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC ARMY OF GREECE.

HONOUR AND GLORY TO THE PARTISANS OF THE DSE WHO FELL HEROICALLY IN THE BATTLE OF FLORINA IN 1949.

HONOUR AND GLORY TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREECE.





19.02.2016