FREEDOM TO ANTI-FASCIST HEROES!

LATVIA

Vasilii Kononov (Left)

    Vasilii Makarovitch was born in 1923 in Mali Bati, a Latvian village in the region of Latgalia. Latgalia was the poorest and backward region of bourgeois Latvia. The families of peasants starved. For this reason the peasants were forced to work for local kulaks or the kulaks of the regions of Kurzheme (to the west) and Vidzheme (in the center of Latvia). Eventually peasants would get odd, hard and poorly paid jobs. Vasilii Konov and his mates still a child had the chance to experience on themselves the hardships labor in the capitalist heaven. For them class struggle was not a concept brought to them by smart books. They learned about it by themselves in bourgeois Latvia.
    In 1940 there was no question for Vasilii Kononov and other poor peasants as to support the Soviet Power or fight against it. The Soviet Power showed in deeds that it is a power of the exploited and works for their interests. The land passed to the hands of the peasantry. The poor peasants had access for the fist time to schools and colleges. Illiteracy was finally liquidated.
    Therefore when the nazi occupants and their bloody collaborators recruited among local nationalists and former kulaks decided liquidate the rights and liberties of the working people Vasilii Kononov and his comrades fled to the woods with guns and started up a guerrilla warfare. They could not wait till the Red Army liberates them from the fascist oppression. Later the group of Vasilii Kononov joined the guerilla brigades of the region of Latgalsk. They hit hard on the positions of the fascist troops, disrupted railway communication, defended the civil population from the violence of the nazi occupants, saved many Jews and gypsies from extermination. The Latvia section of the SS recruited local youth, at the same time the resistance gained a lot of youth among those who refused to join the SS. Among those youth eventually there were elements who ashamed the integrity of the red partisans in their relations with the civil population. Few were the cases. Theses agents provocateurs were severely punished by the red partisans, personally be Kononv: some were expelled from the detachments, some were executed.
    The accusation drawn by the bourgeois authorities of Latvia to Vasilii Makarovitch Kononov is based on the falsification of facts and unforgivable calumnies. In the course of a military action of retaliation the detachment of Vasilii Kononov liquidated an armed group made of traitors, bloody assassins and criminals. Today's bourgeois authorities the accusations on these facts.
    In order to discredit the red partisans in the eyes of the population the hitlerites and local in conjunction with local traitors formed created fake detachments of partisans out of criminals who terrorized the under population under the name of red partisans. This kind of activities were developed by the hitlerites not only in the territory of Latvia. In time their criminal activities were exposed. These fake red detachments were a dirty trick played in the hands of the hitlerian SD. The bourgeois authorities of Latvia dared to resort to the same kind of fascist provocations in the proceedings against Vasilii Makarovitch Kononov. This red partisan has been accused for the crimes committed against the civil population by the fascist bands.
    The bourgeois-fascist authorities of Latvia have sentenced Vasilii Kononov to 6 years in jail, but the have failed to demoralize the fighter.
    Such dirty tricks are used by the bourgeois-fascist authorities of Latvia of today against many anti-fascist heroes. These tricks are used against former officials of the NKVD of the former Lavian Soviet Socialist Republic who in the forties-fifties cleaned up the land of Latvia of fascist bands who terrorized the civil population on behalf of the proletarian state.
    The obligation of the world proletariat and all honest people of the Planet is to stop the political class terror exerted by the bourgeois regime of Latvia against anti-fascist heroes who liberated Europe from the nazi occupation and oppression.

Independent union of the workers of Riga,
Latvia