Humanity these days is marking an anniversary of the end of the Second World War which, contrary to common belief, ended not in Berlin but on the Pacific. Our country, together with the other members of the United Nations, took a jost active part in liquidating the cruel evil of German fascism and Japanese militarism.

Ever since the victorious month of May, and later in September of 1945, the Soviet Union has pursued a policy of solving all the major international problems by peaceful political means. But today we cannot say that our country’s policy enjoys support and that Russia itself commands as much respect in the world as it did formerly.

Contrary to the claims of Western propaganda and its Russian underlings to the effect that the USSR was one of the main sources of tensions in the world, the international situation has deteriorated in the years since the perfidious destruction of the USSR. The imperialist world as represented by the Western countries and Japan, is sinking into a crisis. Capitalist production in the foreseeable future will exhaust natural resources and bring about a global ecological catastrophe. The world is heading for a series of wars caused by the desire of the "golden billion" to legitimize the plunder of other peoples in order to prolong its own well-being. As a civilization, Western society is witnessing rapid degradation, disintegration of the family, renunciation of morality, the growth of violence and a cult of vice and perversion.

Capitalism in its globalist stage is fast approaching a point where it will exhaust itself. It has nothing more to tell the human race and nowhere to call or lead people. It is not by accident that it has declared itself to be the main goal of the world development and claims that the end of history has arrived.

But an end of history would mean the demise of mankind. For it to survive it has to see the light and arise against the fate that is being proffered by a handful of blind, criminal and greedy pretenders to world dominance. That uprising is already beginning. Attempts to establish a new world order — Pax Americana — meet with growing resistance on all the continents. Before our eyes a world war is unfolding between a gang of plunderers led by the US, and the rest of the world which rejects the prospect of death in the slavery of a handful of "elect" peoples. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Lebanon are the first thunderbolts of that war.

"The golden billion" under the guise of imposing democracy and civilization, is in a hurry to take advantage of its military, political and information superiority to get hold of key sources of raw materials, energy, the reserves of drinking water, and organic proteins and put in its service the intellect and labour resources of the whole mankind. The world elite hopes to prolong its existence at the expense of the suffering, privation and discrimination of the rest of mankind, reduction of the numbers and destruction of entire peoples and states.

World history has always been a history of battle between the rich and the poor, the oppressors and the oppressed. There is no other way. Hopes that the end of the Cold War and ideological confrontation would usher in a new "golden age" for the whole planet have vanished in thin air. The cleavage in the world is becoming ever deeper. On one side are the US and its minions who claim the role of rulers. On the other side are all those who refuse to bow, to renounce their future and put themselves in their service. The talk about the fight against international terrorism cannot conceal the fundamental fact and relieve us of the need to choose with whom to move into the future: with those who do not have a future or with those who refuse to follow the suicidal way of the globalists.

It is an error and a crime of the Russian elite that it is putting its stake on joining the march of the "golden billion" toward the abyss of history. joscow is being egged on in that direction by its semi-literate, sneaky "business elite" which is totally devoid of a feeling of patriotism, has cast in its lot with its Western masters and is ready to live and die for their good. For many years it has been sacrificing the interests of Russia to its principals feverishly stuffing its pockets with the billions it is pumping out of the country with Western help. It has in its keep the state and political leadership of the Russian Federation which obediently fulfils the will of the Russian new rich. The budget for 2007 promises nothing good to the country.

Meanwhile such a policy is beginning to misfire. It is not that joscow has suddenly become intransigent, but that the West is presenting Russia with ever more brazen demands. Openly seeks to seize our natural resources. Seeks to liquidate our science and agriculture, defense and any hi-tech industry and to dismantle what still remains of the social safety net. Next will come demands for the dismemberment of Russia, which should facilitate the appropriation of its resources and make it easier to push us out of international life. Russia is the largest and richest, but also one of the jost powerless and poorly managed states in the world. It increasingly attracts the covetous eye of international predators. This causes indignation not only among the broad masses of the people, but among part of the new Russian bourgeoisie. On occasion the Kremlin "bares its teeth", true, only to put its tail between its legs and backtrack.

To all intents and purposes, Russia has been moving backward and surrendering its positions in practically all areas for more than 15 years. The steamroller of NATO and the EU is moving relentlessly in the direction of our country. The Baltics have already been seized. Ukraine is in the gunsight. Preparation of a putsch in Byelorussia continues. Central Asia and Transcaucasia have been declared a zone of vital NATO interests. Russia is surrounded in the West and South by puppet states which have been included in the military-political and economic alliances where there is no room for Russia. This renders Russia’s treaties on friendship and cooperation with these states largely meaningless and steadily increases the real threat to our security.

In the East, Japan which has for more than half a century been backed on the issue by the US, is keeping up its pressure on our borders. We are interested in having good-neibhourly relations with China, but even though we have concluded a treaty on final demarcation of the eastern part of our border with it, the economic and demographic pressure of the PRC on the Russian Far East and Siberia is not diminishing because of joscow’s timid policy, its inability to build its relations with that great country in a way that would yield maximum benefits for Russia and strengthen its position in the world.

Russia’s negotiations on WTO accession have given added proof that in spite of joscow’s unprecedented readiness to make unilateral concessions, the West, above all the US, do not see Russia as a partner, but seek to discriminate against it, to bring about a collapse of its economy and turn it into a semi-colony. The G8 summits, meetings with the EU leadership and the patting of Kremlin leaders on the shoulder makes no difference to this unseemly picture. The flood of ultimatums presented to us is growing. Russia’s position is less and less reckoned with. This is obvious at the UN and other international organizations, in the cases of Iran, Afghanistan and in the course of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is felt in Europe and even on the spaces of the CIS, although the Kremlin has long resigned itself to the role of a second-rate partner of the West and the jost it can dare is to make timid comments on the aggressive policy of the US. Never in the whole of recent history has Russia’s international authority been so low as during the Yelstin-Putin era. Never has Russia been pushed around by other states so frequently, willingly and with such impunity.

The Kremlin’s present line is a road to more losses and humiliation. The CPRF and all the patriotic forces of Russia declare that it is high time to stop and stand up firmly in defense of our national interests. To this end it is necessary to make up our minds on the main issue: does Russia agree to continue to be an imperialist maidservant and passively follow the calamitous course of Washington and NATO, or will it at long last embark on the road of truly national policy. Will it seek to regain the trust and respect of the international community, make friends and allies who are ready together with us to defend the interests of peace, progress, legality, justice and equal cooperation?

Russia has no future in a world organized as a Pax Americana. In a multi-polar world Russia can regain its position of great power, the confidence and respect of the international community. These are the hard facts today.

Russia cannot go on subordinating its interests to the interests of external forces. It can no longer sacrifice the interests of 25 million Russians who, as a result of the Byelovezhskaya Pushcha crime, have found themselves outside their Motherland. It can no longer recognize the former union republics as an area where hostile forces can hold sway. Ukraine must not be a member of NATO. The Crimea and Sevastopol cannot be lost for Russia. The discrimination of the Russians and their language in Ukraine is incompatible with the Russian-Ukrainian Treaty on Friendship and Cooperation.

The CPRF is demanding a resolute turn towards unification with Byelorussia. Russia should lose no time in extending its political and military mantle of protection against attempts to impose on Byelorussia an alien power system and to make it yet another bridgehead for anti-Russian intrigues. It is also necessary to take decisive measures to stop the penetration of NATO and the EU into the Caucasus and into the Central Asian Republics, that soft underbelly of Russia.

Russian policy with regard to the CIS countries must at long last acquire a purposive and systemic character. It is time to put an end to ambiguities. Russia is a successor to the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. The Byelovezhskaya accords are illegal and criminal. Russia must consistently seek to overturn them by peaceful means and in full accordance with international law and on the basis of the agreements with those former territories and republics of the USSR which are ready to restore a fraternal union with Russia within a strong united state.

We should not be shy to say so openly. Let the US and their allies know that we will never give up the struggle for our national and state unity. For the reunification of the Russian people which has become the biggest divided people in the world. Let all our supporters in the "near abroad" know that Russia has not written them off and will never write them off, that we will be their support on which they can always fall back.

An active and robust foreign policy of Russia are impossible without restoring its potential — economic, defense, scientific-cultural and information. The CPRF program maps out a real path towards that goal: giving natural resources and basic sectors of the economy back to the people, an effective combination of the public and private sectors, restoration of the capability of the armed forces and modernization of the army, an end to destructive reforms in science and education, restoration of people’s trust in its rulers, removal from power and the punishment of all those who have devastated and plundered the country and plunged it into a state of feebleness, disarray and national disgrace. Implementing that program is the only possible way to regain for Russia the role of a great power, as it was for centuries.

The CPRF knows whereof it speaks. It does not throw words out easily. The communists have taken the country out of the morass of the First World War and turned a semi-literate peasant Rus into a mighty industrial and cultural power. They have ensured victory in the Second World War and went on to achieve a strategic parity with the superpower, the US. Having inherited a Russia with a hoe, they have given it the nuclear weapon and taken it into outer space. Communists are undoubtedly capable of extricating Russia from the wolf pit in which it finds itself and where it has been thrown by the self-styled Kremlin politicians. The CPRF has the will, the conviction, the traditions, the experience and the cadres capable of solving tasks on such a scale. Under the leadership of the communists and in alliance with all the healthy national patriotic forces Russia can be saved from further enslavement and lifted up from its knees.

Our geopolitical opponents are very well aware of it. That is why they are mounting ever new attacks on the CPRF seeking to discredit it and even have it banned. The recent attempt of the Council of Europe to pass an anti-communist resolution is one more evidence of that.

The CPRF is successfully beating off these attacks with the support of the fraternal communist parties and democratic movements in the whole world. The road toward which it is calling the country is not a utopia, nor it is a call to return to the past. On the contrary, we are the only political force in Russia which, backed by its thousand year history and unique achievements of the Soviet government, is showing a real road to a new future.

The successes of Red China where the communist party is effectively guiding the development in the context of a market economy and a combination of various forms of property give the jitters to modern globalists and neo-liberals. Venezuela and Bolivia have resolutely embarked on the road of confronting imperialist diktat, of nationalization of natural resources and protecting the rights of the working population. Cuba and Vietnam continue successful construction of socialism. The whole world is waiting for a resurgence of Russia pinning on it its hopes for an end to wars and attempts to create new colonial empires, economic and political blackmail and diktat. The world is waiting for healthy changes in our country.

It is time to start acting. It is important that the broad masses finally understand that this is an imperative. At stake is the salvation of Russia, restoration of its honour and destiny and its future.