The Communist Front (Italy) denounces and condemns without appeal the despicable decision of the President and the government of Kazakhstan to rehabilitate the Kazakh war criminals belonging to the SS Legion “Türkestan”, symbolically made on June 22, the anniversary of the Nazi-fascist aggression against the Soviet Union.
This infamous gang of murderers, which gathered common criminals, defectors and traitors of the Soviet homeland, visceral anticommunists linked to the “Basmachi” and the old semi-feudal proprietary classes not fully wiped out by the Great Socialist October Revolution, operated on behalf of the Nazis in anti-partisan roundups in Russia, Belarus and Italy (where they were mistakenly called “Mongols”), committing atrocities, brutalities and war crimes mainly against defenseless civilians. After the war and the Nuremberg trial, which sanctioned the collegial responsibility of the SS for imprescriptible crimes against humankind, those who were caught by the Red Army were largely condemned by Soviet justice to death penalty or hard labor for treason, collaborationism and war crimes.
Unfortunately, the shameful decision of Kazakhstan bourgeois power, blinded by wild anticommunism, to rehabilitate the SS Legion “Türkestan” assassins, depicting them from a nationalistic-religious perspective as victims of the alleged “Soviet totalitarianism”, is not an isolated case, but it fits into a logic of falsification of history, promoted by the most reactionary and chauvinistic sectors of US and European Union imperialism. Similar rehabilitation processes are underway in other former Soviet republics of Central Asia, often putting forward religious reasons that weave together with Islamic fascism of the Middle East. In Ukraine, a partner of the EU and NATO, Stefan Bandera and the gangs of collaborationist butchers of their own people are glorified as national heroes. In Russia, ideological diversion finds expression in the so-called liberal opposition, which demands the rehabilitation of Vlasov, Krasnov and the other traitors who served the Nazi-fascist invader. Subversion in Belarus ideologically refers to the most radical, viscerally anti-Soviet and anti-communist nationalism, which also collaborated with the Nazi-fascists. Generalized anti-communism, which has now become the official ideology of the EU, can only lead to the rehabilitation of fascism, whose real crimes are justified as attempts to react to the alleged crimes of communism. One more step forward even in comparison with the already infamous resolution of the European Parliament which equated communism and fascism.
From this trend our country is not exempt either. The legitimacy of the fascists, after whom somebody now wants to name public places, has been carried out thanks to the very serious positions of some leaders of the Democratic Party, who theorized that dead are all equal and equated the partisans with the “Salò boys”, but used anti-fascism in words to try to set up electoral coalitions.
We, the Communists, restating that victims and butchers, liberators and oppressors, are not equal even after death, oppose with all our strength these attempts to falsify history. We strongly denounce this sordid operation by the Kazakh authorities, the same ones who do not hesitate to shoot at workers on strike for their wages, overdue for months, to be paid, who imprison union activists, who ban communist organization and propaganda and persecute militants. We state that this is an insult to all the Kazakhs who gave their lives fighting in the ranks of the Red Army to defend socialism and free their country and the humankind from Nazi-fascist barbarity. It is an insult to the memory of the helpless victims, including the Italian ones, murdered by the SS Legion “Türkestan” criminals.
We ask ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) and the other anti-fascist organizations for putting pressure on the Italian government and parliament for an official note of protest to be sent to the President and the government of Kazakhstan condemning the rehabilitation of those, whose hands are dripping with the blood of our people too.
We express our militant solidarity with the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan and all the antifascists who are struggling in that country in conditions of repression and persecution.
FASCISM WILL NOT PASS!
Rome, July 10, 2021
COMMUNIST FRONT (ITALY)
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee
