The Russian Communist Party (Internationalists) (RCP(I)) | Aug. 31, 2025| Translated for the Red Phoenix by Maurice B.–
Our comrade has left us.
This summer, on June 19, Dmitry Fedorovich Pirozhkov, a permanent member of the editorial board of “Proletarskaya Gazeta” (“the Proletarian Newspaper”) and periodically the editor–in-chief, died. He is very familiar to many as the distributor of “Proletarskaya Gazeta ” near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt. Two or three times a week, on weekends or after work in any weather, he distributed the newspaper and other communist literature here. He could also be seen with a folding table and printed publications at most leftist rallies and demonstrations in Leningrad-Petersburg. He was constantly in the thick of social events, in communication with people, and did not lock himself in the silence of the office. In addition to communist literature, other literature was distributed near Gostiny Dvor, including nationalist and obscurantist literature. Although not physically strong, he was ideologically persistent, and in ideological disputes with opponents and passers-by, among whom there were obscurantists and aggressive citizens, he rebuffed the perversion of the communist idea, while sometimes he even had to fend off physical attacks. And even in those liberal days, he constantly had to deal with the police, and then with the police, and this was also not an easy matter, because in doing so he entered into a struggle with the state machine.
But Dmitry Fedorovich was not only the distributor, but together with Anatoly Vasilyevich Pyzhov, the creator of the newspaper. I started working with them in 1991 after the so-called “Putsch,” which exposed the rottenness of the CPSU and brought to the surface all the dirt of this already decayed organization that claimed to be “Communist.” They were the ones who forced me to reconsider my views and kept me from joining the “Communist Party”, that is, they did a competent pedagogical job. At first, we distributed various Communist publications in public places and on factory walkways, and then we came to the conclusion that it was necessary to publish our own newspaper, reflecting, as we believed, Lenin’s positions. So in 1994, with the assistance of V. N. Leonov, the first issue of the newspaper “Arguments and Counterarguments” was published from Gatchina, and since 1999 “Proletarskaya Gazeta” has been published. After the death of A. V. Pyzhov, Dmitry Fedorovich took over the burden of editing, printing, and distributing the newspaper entirely.
The newspaper was created by their joint work: every weekend they gathered in the editorial office and carefully, selecting every word, every sentence, considered the submitted materials, most of which were written by them. And so it goes from year to year. This made it possible to create an integrated issue, subordinated to a specific theme, in which all the materials were logically linked and promoted communist ideas. If you look up the issues of the newspaper, most of which were posted on the Internet, you can see that many ideas were put forward at that time, which are only now being confirmed and recognized. This is a statement about the defeat of the construction of communism in the USSR as a result of the class struggle, which did not stop even after October 1917 until the formal defeat of the working class in August 1991 (although sometimes comrades allowed too uncritical an attitude towards the activities of I. V. Stalin, denying the possibility of mistakes, and thereby separating these activities from the class struggle). In the early 2000s, on the basis of Lenin’s works and on the basis of the events of the economic crisis in Greece, a thesis was put forward about the collapse of the United States of Europe – the European Union. We see confirmation of some trends in this issue today. The analysis was based on the theoretical basis of Marxism, and Dmitry Fedorovich’s extensive knowledge was needed here.
Unfortunately, there is also a negative experience of this method of work, when a narrow circle of editorial board members rejected any criticism, information and materials from other members and from the outside. This lowered the theoretical level of the newspaper, and this should become a learned experience for communist groups.
The editorial board of “Proletarskaya Gazeta” has established contacts with many activists throughout Russia and with communist organizations abroad. The newspaper maintained contacts with organizations in Germany, Greece, Turkey, India, Iran, and Canada. Editorial board members, including D. F. Pirozhkov, were invited to congresses and conferences, where they were sometimes the only representatives from Russia.
D. F. Pirozhkov, along with the editorial staff, considered one of his main tasks to transfer the inertia of the communist movement to the young comrades who were replacing it, and one can see that this is his merit. Dmitry Fedorovich was never a member of the CPSU, but he was a true communist – a fighter not for the sake of privileges, but for the communist idea. In the context of the intensification of the imperialist confrontation to the level of an armed conflict, D. F. Pirozhkov took a consistent internationalist position and supported the comrades who had left the RCRP and OKP (OCP, United Communist Party) in their assessment of the leadership of these parties as social-chauvinistic. Recently, he has been actively cooperating with the Russian Communist Party (RCP) and has published materials from our comrades in the Proletarian Newspaper.
The time will come when power in Russia will be in the hands of the working people, and a monument will be created to those fighters who, in the troubled times of the counterrevolution, raised the scarlet banner of struggle for the cause of the working class. Dmitry Fedorovich Pirozhkov’s name will also be on it.
Vladimir Nikiforov, member of Proletarskaya Gazeta, member of the Russian Communist Party