Six years before the Operation Barbarossa, Georgi Dimitrov, the general secretary of the Communist International, in his famous address to its seventh world congress on August 2, 1935, had reminded those present that since the 6th congress itself, it was getting clear that “…in a more developed form, fascist tendencies and the germs of a fascist movement are to be found everywhere.” It is true that fascism takes different cover for each of the country where it takes roots.

There are countries where there had been a great following for the fascist forces among the masses of petty bourgeoisie. There are also countries where fascism has hardly any mass base and within the fascist forces too there are contradictions. In such a situation, fascism does not immediately dare to abolish the Parliament. It allows for some time the bourgeois parties and social democratic parties to have at least a pretence of democratic status. Slowly it unleashes its reign of terror against the groups and the rival parties.

Fascism is not a form of state power, “standing above both classes, bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is not a power of the petty bourgeoisie over finance capital,” said Dimitrov.

It is the dictatorship of the extreme rightwing reactionary sections of finance capital itself. It acts in the interest of those imperialists that command the richest sections of the country and also the world. But it presents itself as the promoter of the suffering nations. It approaches the masses with an alluring appeal. In Germany, it said, “Our stand is not the welfare of the individual, but of the masses.”In Italy, it said, “Our state is not for the capitalists. It is for the corporate”. In Japan it was “For Japan, without exploitation.”

It was a world struck by severe depression as a consequence of deep imperialist crisis. A section among them opted for fascist onslaught to come out of the recession and the glut. Hitler had come to power in Germany in 1933. His main onslaught was against Soviet Union. He moved ahead to take control of the economic, military infrastructure and establish his puppet regimes in European countries, such as in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Denmark, Finland, France among others.

It was in fact spread in almost entire western and eastern parts of Europe that he had bombed into debris. The Second World War started on September 1, 1939, and by this time Hitler had taken over many countries as he moved forward. He had surrounded Soviet Union with all these military bases and after only with the preparations thus made, he attacked Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, along with support from Mussolini in Italy and the forces of occupied countries. It was the largest military invasion in history spreading over more than four thousand kms of ‘war front’ with 5.5 million troops, supported by aircraft and tanks. Aim was to crush Soviet Union within weeks.

They had captured its Western part by October but came to a screeching halt in the region of Leningrad in north, Moscow at the centre, and Stalingrad in south, where the war front was established as the Nazi troops had to halt there. They failed to advance further. So much so that the Soviet troops moved to war front from the Red Square itself in Moscow while taking part in the Seventh November parade. The siege of Leningrad had lasted for nine hundred days. Moscow Front was held during the entire period of war as Nazi forces failed to enter.

The decisive battle was actually fought in Stalingrad and Kursk, and also those where the battle of tanks etc was most intense, like in Kharkov, Minsk, Kiev, Donbas and Leningrad to name a few. By 1944, Soviet troops arrived at Russo-European borders and started defeating troops of Nazi Hitler and Fascist Mussolini in Eastern Europe. Soviet troops entered Germany. Hitler committed suicide, on April 30, 1945, and German troops surrendered to Soviet troops on May 8, 1945, and to the Allied forces, on May 9, the next day, thus ending the Second World War, in which five crore people died including two crore of the Soviet Union.

After more than half a century, India too is drifting towards a system ruled by finance capital. It appears to be losing its democratic indices on several grounds. The phase of enticing the masses has started showing chinks, and the brutal reality is coming in its form.

According to Watchdog Access Now, India leads the world in network shutdowns. India browbeats telecom and social media companies to take down content and threatens them with police action if they refuse to comply. The treatment of Muslims, with a share of 14 percent in the country’s population, has been bitterly biased. According to 2019 report of the Human Rights Watch, 44 murders (36 of them being Muslim) were committed by lynch mobs mostly on suspicion of possessing beef, consuming it, or trading cows. In the divisive strategy, majoritarianism is promoted at the cost of minorities. Finance capital needs as its ingredients the debris of a welfare society and complying masses. (IPA Service)