Presentation by Albano Nunes at the Conference “100 years of the PCP” promoted by the Institute of Contemporary History of NOVA-FCSH [Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities – Lisbon New University], at the Municipal Library of Alcântara in Lisbon, on November 4, 5, 6, 2021.
The theme that I propose to address – “The Portuguese Communist Party and the general and particular in the Portuguese Revolution” – is, in my view, fundamental to objectively assess the role of the PCP in the life and struggle of the Portuguese people over the last one hundred years of Portuguese history.
The Portuguese Communist Party was the only party to organise itself underground and to resist the violence of repression (and hence it was simply called “the Party”), having asserted itself as the great driving force of the popular and anti-fascist struggle. This is a generally recognised fact. Not even the most hard-core anti-Communists dare to openly deny it.
This merit was not the result of chance. It was the result of the Party’s working-class origin and its founding ideals; the inspiring impact of the October Revolution; the ideological maturity and the methods of organisation and struggle adopted with Bento Gonçalves, General Secretary from 1929; the Party's connection to the working class and the popular masses, deepened with the 1940-41 reorganisation; the dedication and heroism of Communist militants, who paid with prison, torture and their lives their love for the cause of freedom, democracy and socialism. And it was, above all – a less known and valued, but decisive, aspect – the result of the correct analysis by the Party, particularly regarding the characteristics of Portuguese capitalism and the class nature of fascism and, consequently, regarding the character of the revolution in Portugal, making it clear that the central goal of conquering freedom could only be achieved with profound economic and social transformations.
It is on the analysis of the PCP and its confirmation by the process of the Portuguese Revolution that I will focus, using the criteria of Marxism-Leninism, the theoretical basis of the PCP.
Confirmation in the essential and not in the detail, of course. Incidentally, the very process of the Portuguese Revolution fully supported Lenin's warning that "History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes» (1).
Characteristics of a general nature of the Portuguese Revolution
Contrary to what took place with the republican revolution of 1910, the April Revolution was not a mere political, super-structural revolution, of change in the way in which the dominant classes exercised political power, keeping the capitalist mode of production practically intact, as the liberal and ‘socialist’ opposition currents wanted, currents which, for that very reason, soon turned against the revolutionary process. The April Revolution was a social revolution that profoundly transformed socio-economic structures, destroyed state monopoly capitalism, even put Portugal on the path to socialism and enshrined that path in the new Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.
The long process of struggle of almost half a century by the Portuguese people against the fascist regime, the revolutionary period of 1974-75 and, later on, the development of the counter-revolutionary process, contain valuable experiences and teachings for those who strive not only for a formal political democracy or to 'humanise' capitalism, but rather seek to achieve a real participatory democracy and overcome the system of exploitation of man by man. These experiences confirmed that revolutions are neither exported nor copied. As the PCP has always stated, there are no ‘models’ of revolution nor can there be. But, as the theory and practice of the international workers' and Communist movement have also shown, there are fundamental traits and general laws of universal value that are common to all authentic processes of revolutionary transformation.
When considering the one hundred years of the PCP's history, it is essential to point out that in its permanent confrontation of ideas within the field of democratic forces and in its struggle for a consistent anti-fascist unity, life has proved the PCP right in fundamental questions related not only to the specificities of the situation and of the Portuguese Revolution, but in key questions of the theory and practice of revolution, considered according to Marxist criteria. Among them, I will highlight four: 1) “Revolutionary crisis”, a necessary condition for a social revolution; 2) “The necessary intervention of the popular masses”, without which a vanguard, however advanced it may be, is doomed to defeat; 3) “The question of the State”, implying the destruction of the old and the construction of a new revolutionary power representative of the victorious classes; 4) “A people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free” and the intrinsic link between the liquidation of colonialism and the liberation from the domination of imperialism over Portugal.
Revolutionary crisis
A revolution is not a simple act of will. It does not happen just because more or less important and courageous political forces want to carry it out. It requires that the necessary objective and subjective conditions be met, commonly summarised in the expression “when those below no longer want, and those above no longer can” (2).
The process of the Portuguese Revolution in its different phases is marked by a permanent political and ideological struggle around this issue. For some, to the right within the democratic opposition, it was a problem that did not even arise, as they conceived the end of the dictatorship as a result of a simple “disintegration of the regime” or a “peaceful transition”, as happened in neighbouring Spain with the so-called “democratic transition”. For others, like the putschists and also the verbalists of the ‘left’, the conditions were always there, with the ‘spark’ ignited by a courageous ‘vanguard’ being sufficient to ‘set fire to the prairie’, with some even accusing the PCP of being an obstacle to the revolution.
Practice has answered this question by proving the PCP right. The 25th of April took place under the conditions of a deep crisis of the regime, accelerated and deepened byan upsurge in the popular struggle, by the liberation struggle of the peoples of the Portuguese colonies and by international isolation. And also because the sharpening of the class struggle forged the organised forces capable of undertaking the overthrow of the fascist government (the Armed Forces Movement-MFA) and of leading the popular uprising that immediately followed the military uprising (the PCP, other anti-fascist forces, the democratic movement and, above all, the labour and trade union movement), transforming the liberating action of 25th April into a revolution.
The necessary intervention of the popular masses
No authentic revolution can develop without the conscious, organised and creative intervention of the popular masses.
As the PCP has always defended, countering viewpoints that feared or devalued mass actions, the April Revolution was the work of an intense and diversified popular struggle, with the working class at the forefront. On the eve of the 25th of April, the struggle was in full upsurge and, significantly, the last clandestine issue of the Avante! (April/1974) headlined on the front page: “No truce to fascism” and “Ally the anti-fascist struggle with the patriots of the armed forces”.
It was the eruption in force, from the very first day, of popular participation and the resulting revolutionary dynamics that enabled the defeat of [General] Spínola's aims to preserve the essential of the fascist repression apparatus, imposing the immediate establishment of fundamental freedoms and profound democratic transformations, which exceeded the MFA [Armed Forces’ Movement] Programme’s initially limited goals.
Here, it is appropriate to underscore, in the context of this universal characteristic of a social revolution, a specific trait of the Portuguese Revolution. The great democratic transformations were achieved “from below”, through the initiative of the popular masses. Not by decisions of the political power, but even countering them, and forcing it to recognise and legalise what was already a reality in practice. This happened in relation to trade union freedom, the release of political prisoners, the legalisation of political parties, the democratisation of local government, the nationalisation of banking and other basic sectors of the economy, workers' control [of production], the Agrarian Reform.
Faced with the military uprising of 25th April that overthrew the fascist government, the Portuguese people did not limit themselves to supporting and demanding. They took the initiative and intervened with joy and enthusiasm in the transformation of society itself and played a decisive role in the defeat of successive counter-revolutionary attempts unleashed by forces lodged at the highest levels of political and military power.
In this process, prominent was the role of the working class both from the city and the countryside, with its class-oriented trade union movement led by the CGTP-Intersindical Nacional trade union central, whose unitary construction, still during the time of fascism (a particularity of the Portuguese Revolution), was the result of the PCP’s guidelines for the organisation of Unity Committees on the shopfloors and for the intervention within the National Fascist Unions themselves (in the framework of the orientations of the 7th Congress of the Communist International, which was held in 1935) and of the tireless work of the communist militants in the companies and workplaces.
The gigantic 1974 May Day has a profound historical significance, as it confirms a reality that the powerful strikes of the 1940s had already highlighted: the hegemony in the fight against the dictatorship passed from the liberal bourgeoisie to the working class, giving the anti-fascist revolution a strong classcharacter. The fact that it was precisely against the unity of the trade union movement that the reactionary and social democratic forces most openly allied themselves (the ‘Open Letter’ and its surrogates) only confirms the decisive role of the unity and struggle of the working masses in the process of the Portuguese Revolution.
It is a natural source of pride for the PCP, which in the revolutionary process itself strengthened its organisation and deepened its roots in the working masses, to have always been at the forefront of the organisation and popular struggle, making a decisive contribution to the unity and political affirmation of the working class, justifying the honoured recognition as “the party of the working class and of all workers”.
It was the strength of the popular movement – which, even after the 25th November [1975] coup, with the resulting defeat of the military left and divisions in the democratic field, took to the streets in defence of the revolution’s achievements – that made it possible to adopt the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, which enshrines the values and the great achievements of the April Revolution. Only the strength of the popular movement explains why it took so many years to destroy the great achievements of the revolution and restore the power of the big economic groups.
The question of the State
The revolutionary forces had the capacity to carry out profound democratic transformations, but they did not have the capacity to build a democratic State, a guarantee of paramount importance for safeguarding the revolution. This was the major and main shortcoming of the Portuguese Revolution. It was the convergence of very broad social and political forces that led to the weakening and isolation of fascist power to the point where it was overthrown almost without resistance. On the other hand, and for this very reason, the bodies of political-military power after the 25th of April were always very heterogeneous, and were from the beginning undermined by deep contradictions. Within them, forces hostile to the revolutionary process were always represented, forces that ended up decisively influencing the course of events, despite persistent and tenacious popular resistance. It is true that successive coup attempts (Palma Carlos coup [July 1974], September 28, March 11 [1974]) were defeated by the decisive popular mobilisation in alliance with the progressive military. It is also true that each of these defeats resulted in an advance in the revolutionary process. Despite this, the fascist state apparatus was not completely dismantled, and above all, a revolutionary power was not established.
In the PCP’s analysis, the fact that it was not possible to completely cut the ties to imperialism (despite the fact that the revolution in itself was a powerful assertion of national sovereignty), nor materialise the alliance of the working class with the peasantry of the Centre and North of the country (where the weight of half a century of obscurantism was most felt) were also important shortcomings of the revolution. But the main shortcoming lies in the question of political power.
It is important to remember that, according to the Party Programme, the establishment of democratic freedoms, the destruction of the fascist State and its replacement by a democratic State constituted a central objective of the democratic and national revolution and "a first and indispensable condition for the implementation of its other objectives”.
The process of the Portuguese revolution and counter-revolution confirmed the Marxist thesis according to which the State is the central question of the revolution (3).
A people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free
Portugal was both a colonialist country and a colonised country. Due to its content, the struggle of the Portuguese people against colonialism and against the colonial war was simultaneously a struggle against the domination of Portugal by imperialism. The Portuguese people and the peoples of the former Portuguese colonies in the struggle for their liberation became objectively allies in the struggle against a common enemy, Portuguese fascism and colonialism, a situation that Amílcar Cabral and other African revolutionaries often underlined.
In the continuous offensive of the reactionary forces to settle accounts with the April Revolution, the issues of colonialism, the colonial wars and the decolonisation process occupy a particularly prominent place, with attempts to erase the extreme violence of colonial exploitation, to deny and justify the crimes committed against African populations, to conceal the class nature of Portuguese fascism and colonialism. And also to conceal that colonialism, which benefited the big Portuguese and foreign economic groups, was a factor largely responsible for the backwardness of Portugal, one of the poorest countries in Europe on April 25, 1974.
As regards the colonial question, there were irreconcilable differences in the opposition movement to the fascist regime. The liberal sectors and the 'socialists' advocated colonialist or neo-colonial solutions and, when it became unavoidable for the democratic movement to take a clear position, they preferred to break unity, as happened in the 'elections' for the fascist National Assembly of 1969, in the face of CDE's courageous anti-colonial position. For many years, only the PCP took a principled anti-colonial position and defended the self-determination and independence of peoples subjected to Portuguese colonial rule. “Recognising and assuring the peoples of the Portuguese colonies the right to immediate independence” is one of the eight fundamental points inscribed in its Programme. It was not by chance that the PCP was invited to the regions liberated by the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and was the only Portuguese party that on 11 November 1975 was in Luanda, alongside the MPLA government, welcoming the proclamation of Angola's independence.
The April Revolution and the conquest of independence by the peoples of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe and, later, East Timor, are inseparable. The thesis adopted by the communist movement that a people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free was beautifully confirmed in the process of the Portuguese Revolution. The PCP, due to its everlasting position against colonialism and criminal colonial wars and its close ties of friendship and solidarity forged in the common struggle with the MPLA, FRELIMO, PAIGC, PAICV, MLSTP and FRETILIN is proud of its patriotic and internationalist contribution to the friendship between the Portuguese people and the peoples of the former Portuguese colonies.
Particularities of the Portuguese Revolution
Unique features of Portuguese capitalism
The PCP was often accused, and not just by the most reactionary and viscerally anti-communist forces, of copying and trying to impose foreign models on Portugal that did not correspond to the Portuguese reality. What happened was precisely the opposite.
The PCP is the offshoot of a historical epoch. A creation of the Portuguese working class, the birth of the PCP was hastened by the international repercussion of the October Revolution and its remarkable achievements, and its definition and programmatic goals, as was inevitable, were initially very marked by the experiences of the first victorious proletarian revolution. But its political line and its Programme evolved with its ideological maturity, its growing roots in the working class and in the people in general, the deepening of its knowledge of Portuguese society and its mastery of the instruments of Marxist-Leninist analysis for the correct definition of the different phases and stages of the struggle for socialism in Portugal. This is the explanation for what will go down in History as an extraordinary merit of the Portuguese communists: the April Revolution basically confirmed what was included in the PCP’s Programme.
The April Revolution was a unique revolution (as, by the way, are all true revolutions), because unique was the concrete reality of the country. In the case of Portugal, the capitalism of the 1960s and 1970s was marked by a set of traits that distinguished it from the prevailing reality in other European capitalist countries.
A backward capitalist country, but with a very high degree of monopolistic concentration, in such a way that only seven economic groups dominated the economy and political power; a colonising country, with the oldest colonial empire in the world, but, at the same time, a country colonised by the great imperialist powers; a country dominated by a fascist dictatorship with a highly centralised and purged apparatus, thus calling for the use of the force of guns to overthrow it; a country with a combative working class, both industrial and agricultural (which in the southern countryside represented over 80% of the active population); a country where the only real party was the PCP, which played a decisive role in the social and political struggle against fascism.
As Lenin said, “the concrete analysis of the concrete situation is the soul of Marxism.” The PCP studied Portuguese society in depth and, based on this concrete reality, drew its Programme, clearly defining the character and path of the anti-fascist revolution and its articulation with the struggle in Portugal for a socialist society, the PCP's ultimate objective.
The historic mission of the military coup of May 28, 1926, was to speed up the process of centralisation and concentration of capital, placing the State at the service of big capital and intensifying the exploitation of workers, liquidating democratic freedoms, banning political parties, curbing the labour and trade union movement. It was through the coercive intervention of the State that were created the monopoly groups that dominated the national economy and constituted fascism’s main base of social support.
The definition of the class nature and an understanding of the specificities of Portuguese fascism played a vital role in the theoretical elaboration and political practice of the PCP, decisively marking the Party's orientation and intervention. An orientation that the following passage from Rumo à Vitória [Road to Victory] summarises much better than I can: “The fascist government is the terrorist government of the monopolies associated with imperialism and large landowners. The national movement against the fascist dictatorship is an anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist movement. The overthrow of the fascist dictatorship must be accompanied by the liquidation of its social base and the implementation of a profound social transformation of Portuguese society that serves the interests of the people and ensures the country's independence. In the present national conditions, the revolution we are fighting for is a democratic revolution and a national revolution.” (4)
The Programme of the Democratic and National Revolution
The 6th PCP Congress, held in August 1965, following extensive consultation with the party collective despite the strict conditions of clandestinity, defined eight fundamental points or goals of the anti-fascist revolution that should be remembered here, to highlight how they were confirmed by the process of the revolution and in particular in its achievements and conquests: 1 – To destroy the fascist State and establish a democratic regime; 2 – To liquidate the power of monopolies and promote general economic development; 3 – Carry out the Agrarian Reform, handing over the land to those who work it; 4 – Raise the standard of living of the working classes and the people in general; 5 – Democratise education and culture; 6 – Free Portugal from imperialism; 7 – Recognise and ensure the people of the Portuguese colonies the right to immediate independence; 8 – Follow a policy of peace and friendship with all peoples.
The 6th Congress defined the stage of the anti-fascist revolution as Democratic and National. Democratic, by placing as a priority task the liquidation of the fascist regime and the establishment of fundamental democratic freedoms and rights. National, as it aims to put an end to colonialism and free Portugal from the domination of imperialism. A revolution neither 'bourgeois democratic', as the liberal democrats wanted, dreaming of the coexistence of freedom and monopolies as in capitalist Europe, nor 'socialist', as the petty-bourgeois radical sectors, clinging to dogmatic schemes, wanted.
A revolution in which some of its democratic goals are at the same time goals of the socialist revolution, so that, between the democratic and national stage and the socialist stage of the revolution, not only is there no ‘Wall of China’, but establishes a close connection between the two. The revolutionary process developed in our country in such a way that the Constitution itself, approved and promulgated on 2 April 1976, explicitly enshrined the socialist option of the Portuguese Revolution, truly opening the path to socialism for Portugal. During the revolutionary period, the slogan was the struggle for “democracy on the way to socialism”, a terminology that not even prominent protagonists of events of an openly counter-revolutionary nature, such as the November 25 coup, felt able to challenge.
However, the Programme itself warned: without the achievement of all its eight objectives, “the democratic and national revolution would not be finished and the democratic and independent development of Portuguese society would not be assured”. Regretfully, this is what happened with the development of the counter-revolution and the restoration of monopoly power and imperialist rule over Portugal.
The path of armed popular insurrection
The battle of opinions about the path to overthrow fascism and the conquest of freedom marked the entire history of the anti-fascist struggle. It was present in the definition of the forms of struggle (economic and political, legal, semi-legal and illegal), in the role of popular mass struggle (which the PCP always considered to be the “engine of the revolution”), in the use of force of arms, involving the adhesion and neutralisation of at least a part of the Armed Forces. Based on its analysis of the highly centralised and purged nature of the fascist state, the path advocated by the PCP was the path of a national uprising, of armed popular insurrection (the PCP was the only Communist party in Europe to defend it). And this against anarchist, putschist, legalist, ultra-leftist conceptions, conceptions that had in common the underestimation of the organisation and mass struggle, as well as the conspiratorial work within the Armed Forces, including in the front of the colonial wars, an issue that, by the way, generated misunderstandings regarding the PCP's position on the need to not abandon the mobilised military at the mercy of fascist and colonialist propaganda.
Also in this matter, it is impossible not to recognise that the overthrow of fascism and the conquest and consolidation of freedom basically corresponded to the perspectives indicated by the PCP. Not obviously in every detail, but in terms of content, that is, in terms of the interconnection of mass action and armed action, in a process in which the military uprising promoted by the MFA was immediately followed by the popular uprising. The very speed with which the military component of the process radicalised its programme resulted from the intervention of the masses, who not only refused the call to stay at home, but also flooded the streets giving voice to their deep yearning for freedom and social justice. The gigantic May Day of 1974, celebrated from the North to the South of the country, is the undeniable consecration of the irreplaceable role of the revolutionary intervention of the working class and the working masses.
I believe it can be said that the People-MFA Alliance, that remarkable feature of the Portuguese Revolution, reflects the reality and creativity of the insurrectionary process.
The achievements of the Revolution
With the bold intervention of the masses in alliance with the progressive military and the defeat of successive reactionary coups that functioned as accelerators of the revolutionary process, the political, economic and social face of the country was profoundly modified.
State monopoly capitalism was liquidated; with the nationalization of banking, insurance and the basic sectors of the economy, monopoly capital suffered deadly blows; the living conditions of workers and populations radically improved; the large land ownership of the fields of the South was expropriated and an Agrarian Reform of a socialist nature was carried out; a broad sector of the economy was created freed from private property and from the control of capitalism and in which the State and workers came to have the power of decision; in alliance with the liberation struggle of the peoples of the Portuguese colonies, colonialism and colonial wars were put to an end.
Contrary to what the opponents of the 25th of April intended and intend, such transformations (accused by the reactionary forces of sectarian ideological imposition, in such a way that even today it would be necessary to 'de-ideologize' the Constitution) not only corresponded to the demands of the economic and social development of the country, but were necessary to liquidate the social basis of fascism and defend democratic freedoms in the face of sabotage of the economy and successive counter-revolutionary attempts. If they corresponded to the fundamental lines of the PCP’s Programme, it was precisely because they met the development demands of Portuguese society and not because of any Machiavellian voluntarism by the Communists.
With these transformations, new relations of production were established in broad sectors of the economy: capitalist production relations, while still dominant, ceased to be determinant. If political power had been exercised by forces favourable to the revolutionary process, the very laws of economic development would lead Portugal in the direction of socialism.
This objective possibility was considered with great rigour by the PCP at its 8th Congress (November 1976), when, although a Constitution that enshrined the socialist orientation and objective of the Portuguese Revolution had already been adopted, Portugal found itself at a dangerous crossroads (5).If the development of the revolution did not take place in the direction of socialism, it was because the political power opposed it with the institutionalisation, beginning with the first Constitutional government, of the process of capitalist restoration, which, little by little, despite popular resistance, led to the reconstitution of the large economic groups and the very serious mutilations of national sovereignty, namely through participation in NATO and in the process of European capitalist integration, with submission to the European Union and the Euro.
An unfinished revolution
The Portuguese Revolution was an unfinished revolution. Not all the objectives pointed out by the PCP for its full realisation were achieved (in the case of breaking ties with imperialism, for example). Other objectives, which were fully or partially implemented (such as nationalisations, agrarian reform or workers' control), later suffered severe blows or were even destroyed.
The resistance of fascist and counter-revolutionary forces built up from day one. In large parts of the national territory, subject to anti-Communist local bosses and clerics, anti-democratic situations persisted that gave way to the wave of terrorism that reached its peak in the summer of 1975. The interference of imperialism, NATO and the US secret services, as well as the European Social Democracy of "Europe with us", is now widely documented (6). Breaking with the very programme with which it obtained great voter support, the PS [Socialist Party] not only 'put socialism in the drawer' but also allied itself with the far right against the revolutionary process.
The consequences are well known. The right-wing policy and submission to the dictates of European capitalist integration, led by the successive governments of the PS, PSD and CDS, worsened the country's structural problems, ruined a large part of the productive fabric, handed key sectors of the national economy to foreign capital, imposed a policy of low wages and incomes, deepened social injustices and inequalities, tied the country to the aggressive strategy of imperialism, compromised sovereignty and national independence. Portugal is not in the “front row”, but at the tail of Europe.
However, in the contemporary history of Portugal, there is a before and an after the 25th of April. The achievements of the revolutionary period of 1974-75 left a great imprint of achievements, experiences and values that the PCP integrates in its programme of struggle in defence of the interests of the workers and people and for the socialist future of Portugal, a Programme which, for that very reason, is called “An advanced democracy, the values of April in the future of Portugal”.
This democracy, in the PCP's conception, is simultaneously political, economic, social and cultural, within a framework of national sovereignty and independence, without which one cannot speak of true democracy.
A democracy that not only corresponds to the experiences and values of April, but also gives practical institutional expression to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, which contains, in itself, an entire programme capable of uniting all democratic and patriotic forces in the struggle for a break with decades of right-wing policies and for a patriotic and left-wing alternative that ensures a Portugal with a future.
Despite the seven revisions that have greatly impoverished the Constitution, it continues to enshrine principles and goals favourable to the workers and to those who have less and are less powerful, principles and objectives that make it the most progressive in Europe and which, for that very reason, it is necessary to defend . And the PCP calls for it to be defended against the new onslaught of those who continue to try to settle scores with the 25th of April.
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This contribution is perhaps too long and does not aim to do more than highlight, on the one hand, universal characteristics that the April Revolution confirmed and, on the other hand, specific, original traits that marked the Portuguese Revolution. Its correspondence, in essence, with the analyses and political intervention of the PCP is a greater expression of the irreplaceable role of the Communists in the struggle of the Portuguese workers and people for a better life over the last one hundred years.
Footnotes
(1) V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder in Selected Works in six volumes, Edições «Avante!»-Edições Progresso, Lisboa-Moscovo, v. 5, 1986, p. 151.↲
(2) The rigorous formulation that belongs to Lenin is "It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph". V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, in Selected Works in three volumes, Edições «Avante!»-Edições Progresso, Lisboa-Moscovo, v. 3, 1986, p. 325.↲
(3) V. I. Lenin, The State and the Revolution, Editions «Avante!», Lisbon, 4th ed., 2011; Álvaro Cunhal, The Question of the State, Central Question of every Revolution, Editions «Avante!», Lisbon, 2nd ed., 2007.↲
(4) Álvaro Cunhal, Rumo à Vitória, in Selected Works, «Avante!» Editions, Lisbon, v. III, 2010, p. 13. This work, included in the preparation of the 6th PCP Congress, contains an in-depth analysis of the Portuguese reality that defended the path and stage of the anti-fascist Revolution and defined it as «Democratic and national revolution».↲
(5) Álvaro Cunhal, The Portuguese Revolution, The Past and the Future (Report to the VIII Congress of the PCP), «Avante!» Editions, Lisbon, 1976.↲
(6) Álvaro Cunhal in, Truth and Lies in the April Revolution. (The counter-revolution confesses), Edições «Avante!», Lisbon, 1999.↲