Translated "Avante!" article by Pedro Guerreiro, Member of the PCP Secretariat of the CC
The April Revolution – whose 40th anniversary is being commemorated this year – constitutes an impressive affirmation of the will of the Portuguese people, that deeply transformed the reality in Portugal, having important international repercussions.
Culminating almost 50 years of heroic resistance and struggle against the fascist dictatorship, the April Revolution annihilated fascism; installed ample liberties; ended the colonial war and recognized the right to independence of peoples in struggle against Portuguese colonialism; destroyed State monopoly capitalism; eliminated the monopolies, with nationalizations, and the latifundia, with the Agrarian Reform; promoted a rapid and significant improvement of the living conditions of workers and people; affirmed national sovereignty and independence and ended Portugal's international isolation and its submission to imperialism, establishing diplomatic relationships with socialist countries and opening the way towards a foreign policy of peace, cooperation and friendship with all the peoples of the world; installed a democratic regime that enshrined broad and deep political, economic, social and cultural achievements, defining as its objective and pointing the way towards building a socialist society.
The April Revolution – inserted in an international context favorable to the forces of peace, progress and socialism – had an extraordinary impact globally, by demonstrating that it was possible to eliminate the power of monopolies as a dominant class in a country in Western Europe and a member of NATO, and given its character of solidarity and anti-imperialism.
The Portuguese revolution – the significance and importance of the deep revolutionary transformations achieved between 1974 and 1976, the preceding prolonged and determined struggle, as well as the resistance to the counter-revolutionary process undertaken systematically since 1976 – encompasses a valuable experience in the more general framework of the struggle of peoples towards their emancipation.
Confirming the validity of the general laws of revolutionary transformation – not understood rigidly and dogmatically, but applied creatively to the Portuguese reality, considering its particularities, in order to correctly define and evaluate the stage and tasks, the correlation of forces, the system of alliances, as well as the real disposition of the masses for struggle – the Portuguese revolution underlines, among other aspects: the relationship between social and national emancipation; the importance of combining the more concrete and immediate objectives of struggle with the more general and strategic objectives, where the tasks for achieving the former already constitute the first steps towards achieving the latter, interconnecting the several stages of the revolutionary process; the immense strength, initiative and creativity of the popular masses and its determining role in the development of the struggle that, having as its driving force the working class, ensured the unity of broad social groups; the central role of the revolutionary party; or the fact that in a revolutionary situation the popular masses were able to hold and enshrine profound constitutional transformations, while not holding political power, confirming the question of power as central in a revolution.
Thirty seven years later, the situation in Portugal and the world has taken a deeply negative turn. However, reality demonstrates the relevance of the values of the April Revolution, and that while it may by hard and prolonged, the struggle of a determined people will conquer its emancipation.