Greeting for Paris
Existing translations
Dear comrades,
Warm greetings from the Bulgarian communists!
The Paris Commune as the first success in the struggle of the working class for social liberation has always been a model for us. The hero of our national liberation struggle and brilliant poet Christo Botev telegraphed the following greeting on Easter 1871:
Paris
Comite de la Commune
Salutation fraternel et cordiales de la part de la Commune Bulgare.
Vive la Commune!
Revolutionairs émigrants
Botiof, Popov
At that time our country was under foreign rule and the struggle for national liberation was in the foreground. Therefore, we have no direct information about the Commune and as a source we use the works of Karl Marx. The experience and the lessons of the Paris Commune as the first dictatorship of the proletariat are imperishable and still relevant today. From Marx's work "The Civil War in France" we derive the third task of the dictatorship of the proletariat: to protect socialist society from its own functionaries and to prevent them from becoming its lords and masters from servants of society. Very briefly, 3 principles belong to it:
1. all officials from the bottom to the top must not be employed but elected; they are accountable at any time and can be voted out at any time.
2. abolition forever of all material and spiritual privileges.
3. scientifically based remuneration for work. The highest salary in the Comite of the
Commune was no higher than that of a qualified worker.
Failure to fulfill this task of dictatorship of the proletariat was one of the causes of the degeneration of socialism after 1956 and ultimately of the counterevolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989. Therefore, we must not forget the lessons of the Commune and avoid such mistakes next time. Marx and Engels proved that the objective development of society leads to communism. However, it will not come alone, but, as the heroic example of the Commune shows, it requires a fierce struggle.
And today, like our forerunners 150 years ago, we must shout loudly:
Vive la Commune!
Document Actions
