Thousands of people and youth carried out on Monday the 17^th of November one of the biggest marches of recent years to the US Embassy in Athens. This was the climax of three days of events to honour and commemorate the 41^st anniversary of the heroic Polytechnic Uprising of 1973. Similar demonstrations took place at the initiative of the KKE, KNE, PAME and the militant organizations of the social alliance in all the country’s major cities.

This year, like all the previous years, the events to commemorate the Polytechnic were combined with serious issues of the class and political struggle. They were an opportunity to denounce the imperialist plans, the wave of persecutions at the expense of trade unionists and workers and the attempt to intimidate the students in the universities. The contingents of the KKE, KNE and also PAME, the Students Front of Struggle (MAS), the women of OGE etc were particularly large and had a mass character. Once again the contingent of the young conscripts that participated wearing their uniforms in the demonstration made a great impression.

The uprising of the people and students in November 1973 was a climactic moment of the anti-dictatorship struggle, with the leading contribution of KNE and the KKE. The uprising delivered a solid blow against fatalist attitudes and smashed the so-called “liberalization” of the Junta, and it left the eurocommunist forces-the only ones to welcome the Junta’s maneuver - completely exposed.

The KKE note the following in its statement : “The KKE is proud of its members and cadres, the members of KNE, its friends and supporters, the members of Anti-EFEE, who took part in the anti-dictatorship struggle and stood their ground in the detention centres of the security police, did not break in the torture chambers, the prisons, in exile and the court-martials, in every place of martyrdom.

The KKE calls on the young men and women, the workers to honour those who died in the Polytechnic in 1973 and the thousands of militants who struggled against the dictatorship. They must strengthen their struggle for rights, their just cause and the liberation of the working class, the people and the country from the shackles of the monopolies, the EU and NATO. This is the way for us today to impose measures to relieve the popular families that are shouldering the burdens of the crisis, to impede new measures promoted by capital and the permanent memoranda of the EU.”

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, noted the following in his statement to the media at the Polytechnic demonstration:

“Today’s anniversary of the Polytechnic calls on us to greater readiness, vigilance, mobilization and struggle in the difficult conditions of the capitalist economic crisis we are experiencing, as well as in the face of the impending developments in our region and more generally in Europe as a whole, the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East. The people must not expect anything from the governments, from the class that holds power. People’s sovereignty, the sovereign rights of our country can not be guaranteed by the participation in aggressive organizations, in alliances, like the EU and NATO.  40 years on now the message is this: Unity, the people’s alliance, the working class-people’s struggle against the class that holds power, against NATO, the EU and their anti-people war plans in the region”.

The major mobilizations of the 17^th of November were an important militant milestone after the large demonstration of PAME on the 1^st of November, and laid significant foundations for the success of the general strike that will take place on the 27^th of this month.