Tribute to Comrade Tamila Yabrova, 1929-2021
A steadfast and lifelong fighter against revisionism in the USSR.
The following excerpts are taken from a tribute written by the Communist Front of Italy, which we reproduce with thanks.
It is with deep sorrow that we learned that, at 8.30am on 3 September 2021, the indomitable heart of comrade Tamila Yabrova stopped beating. She died at the age of 92 from Covid-19 in Kiev.
The international communist movement loses with her a legendary leader, a sincere revolutionary who dedicated her entire life to the cause of the working class and socialism-communism.
Tamila Yabrova’s knowledge of Marxism-Leninism was profound. She was a doctor of economics with a specialisation in political economy, the founder and editor-in-chief of the theoretical journal Marksizm i Sovremennost (Marxism and Modernity), president of the Union of Communists of Ukraine, a member of the central committee and political council of the RCWP-CPSU, as well as a member of the editorial board of the International Communist Review.
Despite her old age, Comrade Yabrova remained at her battle station until her last breath, making an invaluable contribution of theoretical elaboration and tireless active militancy to the entire international communist movement, with an energy enviable even by the youngest.
Born in Kiev in 1929, she graduated from the GV Plekhanov Institute of People’s Economics in Moscow (now the Russian Economic University, REU). From a very young age, she joined the ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), in which she was active all her life, going through the dramatic turbulence of history and engaging in the construction of the first socialist state in the world, always maintaining the enthusiasm and convictions of her youth.
In the 1980s, she vigorously opposed the liquidationist drift of the Gorbachev clique and the advocates of market economy, and joined the ‘Marxist Platform’ within the CPSU.
After the counter-revolutionary overthrow of Soviet power and the break-up of the USSR, Comrade Yabrova worked hard to restore the unity of Soviet communists and to restart the work of the dissolved CPSU.
Those of us who had the good fortune to meet her personally at international meetings, to work and debate with her in Rome and elsewhere, were able to appreciate her analytical insight, her inflexible ideological coherence, never dogmatic but always grounded in reality, supported by her vast culture, sharp critical spirit and in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.
These intellectual qualities, her political honesty and her unwavering support for communist ideas were the source of her unrelenting opposition to opportunism and any distortion of Marxism-Leninism.
We bow our flags in mourning in memory of Comrade Tamila!
