Last year we exchanged ideas on the situation in the world with the participants of International Leninist-Trotsky fraction. Now we have received new thoughts and questions from them and are trying to answer them.
The second anniversary of the criminal Russian invasion to Ukraine is around the corner. In the interview you gave us last year, we got to know more about your view and those of some of the comrades who claim to be from the anarchist movement in the East, who are fighting on the front line against Putin there. What can you tell us about these two years of war? What is the current moment?
We are forced to recognize that the situation has really remained unchanged. Russia has converted the entire economy to war, it has a huge advantage in manpower and continues to advance, constantly killing civilians far from the front. We lost several of our friends and comrades during the two years of the war, but we continue to support the anarchists at the front. We have not wavered one step from our views. Unfortunately, in Western Europe, the left-wing movement has remained divided over the war in Ukraine. We are called “anarcho-militarists” or “trench anarchists”, supposedly we support NATO, the Ukrainian government, etc. No, it is the Ukrainian people that we support and we consider the forced “alliance” with the Ukrainian state to be vital not only for our survival and the continuation of our struggle against Russian imperialism, but also for our movement to be credible. To be with the people, to defend the weak and to defend ourselves from total annihilation – this is the current moment.
We are close to some of the positions presented here https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/en/online-content/156#DC
The defense of any territory makes sense as long as the people feel that they have something to defend, fighting just for the interests of the elites is an unworthy cause. Now Ukrainians see the difference between their country and the occupants and defend their freedom. But any state at war pursues its own goals and does not trust the people. Ukrainian politicians and businessmen are getting richer while people are giving their lives at the front, draft boards are organizing a hunt for people with beatings, and the number of draft dodgers is not getting smaller, ideas of how to disable Telegram in Ukraine are being seriously discussed. All this may lead to the fact that either the armed people will take defense into their own hands, but this scenario is now unlikely, or a critical mass of people will feel that the war loses its meaning and purpose for them. We can only hope that the development won’t go this way.
From here we saw workers and “leftist” currents and leaders placing the fate of the subjugated nation in the hands of Zelensky and NATO’s “aid”. And we have seen how these countries, namely the US, Germany, France, England, etc., have indebted Ukraine in billions of dollars, granting weaponry that is not even enough to repel the invader. Today, these countries are denying even this defensive armament, while they are projecting the business of the reconstruction of Ukraine. What is your view about this?
No state or corporation is interested in Ukraine having a free, self-governing society. Even before the war there was not such a society, although compared to Russia and Belarus and even many Western countries, in Ukraine, where there have been several uprisings in recent decades and where the state power, although highly corrupt, is also weaker, people have much more opportunities for social experimentation.
Without the support of Western corporations, Ukraine cannot defeat the Russian army; in this sense, there is simply no choice for Ukrainians.
We, of course, realize Ukraine’s dependence on NATO and the West and believe that without their weapons, Ukraine, and later other countries in the region (Moldova, the Baltics, and later Poland, etc.) will become the Kremlin’s target. We are in favor of increasing the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Well, if NATO gives it to us, we should take it. But the West is afraid of Russia, some politicians are bought by Russia, they do not want a direct clash with Russia – but this is hypocrisy on their part. Russia understands only the language of force, today the AFU and NATO are the ones who can really fight back. And we think it is mean and stupid for Western workers and farmers to strike, block arms supplies to Ukraine and go on pacifist demonstrations.
On the other hand, we have also seen dozens of other currents claiming to be of the workers, saying that by the hand of the butcher Putin, Ukraine would be “liberated”. However, as we can see from here, it seems that the more Putin advances into the Ukrainian territory, the more he advances, together with his allies like Lukashenko, against his own people and workers in Russia and the region. In your opinion, what is the situation of the workers and exploited in Russia, with Putin preparing for a new farce of elections?
We fully agree with you that Putin and Lukashenko not only do not guarantee any social gains for the workers, but on the contrary, they are neo-Soviet-style dictators. For them neither the working class, nor the peasants, nor human life itself is worth anything. Oligarchy and the power of the siloviki is the image of modern Russia and Belarus. On the other hand, at the moment we also do not see any revolutionary potential in Russian workers or in Russian society as a whole.
After the first shock, at the beginning of the war, people in Russia saw that life goes on, enterprises work, unemployment is down, salaries are paid, theaters are open, you can see the latest movies in the cinema despite the sanctions. For many Russian ordinary people who lived poorly before the war, who have never been abroad, who do not know foreign languages, where real, militant trade unions are almost non-existent, life has not gotten worse. The war enriches not only the owners of defense factories, but also those who work at them, those who went to war for money and those who sent their families the looted items from Ukrainian homes.
The murder of Alexei Navalny (and previously Yevgeny Prigozhin) showed that the authorities get away with everything, and regardless of the dire economic situation of the proletariat, of the rampages of the security services and police, society is intimidated and inert. And even the army and the families of those killed at the front have virtually no material privileges. Russia is hard for Western society to understand. How can a man in rags, living in barracks, say, ” But we own 1/8 of the Earth’s landmass”? This is the mysterious Russian soul. There are billions of social problems in the Russian Federation, small economic protests (not anti-war) occur almost daily. There is no hot water, the gas is cut off, the house collapsed because it was not repaired, the wages were not paid… But there is a sense of imperial patriotism – Ukraine is being liberated from “Nazism”.
It should be noted that the rhetoric of the Russian authorities is completely devoid of any social aspects of the war in Ukraine. There is only fascism, the rotten collective West, LGBT+, etc. Also, we should not forget the fact that in the so-called people’s republics(Donetsk and Lugansk), which were actively supported by the leftists from all over the world, workers’ rights are not just absent, they are established military or more correctly gangster dictatorships. This is what Russia is bringing to the Ukrainian proletariat.
We have seen in Russia courageous protests against the war and also some sort of organizations set up by the relatives of conscripts demanding their return home. Are these actions still developing? What more can you tell us about this movement against the war?
People are very intimidated, the protests continue, but there are few participants. The protest against Putin is not primarily economic, but moral, it is a refusal to kill innocent people, a protest against dictatorship, arrests for wrong words or drawings, against the impossibility to engage in creative work, fear for children who may be sent to war. Added to this are all those affected by the de facto ban on abortion and homosexual relations, the pressure on members of ethnic minorities. Among the fighters against Putin’s regime are people of different ages, professions and classes. There are workers and businessmen.
The wives of those mobilized from the “Way Home” movement have neither support in society nor any significant power to oppose the authorities and mobilize other segments of the population. This is not like what the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia did in the 90s, bringing back their sons from Chechnya, organizing road blockades etc. Today the political situation is much worse and it is unlikely that they will be able to shake up Russian society. Besides, these actions are not pro-Ukrainian, but only require rotation of contingents and demobilization of those who spent six months at the front, as required by Russian military regulations. And let’s be honest – many relatives support the war against Ukraine. Even if the movement starts to radicalize, it will simply be crushed by the flywheel of repression. We need more mass protests and a systemic failure of the empire.
Few people are engaged in radical activities; they are mostly loners or small groups. Often they have no experience in conspiracy and are captured by the regime. There are several websites and Telegram channels that publish safety instructions, help to plan an action, and some offer money for the action. There are groups that help those who are persecuted by the authorities to leave Russia. There are groups that help Ukrainian refugees. Formally, this is not forbidden, but this activity also requires courage; it is very easy to be accused of sympathizing with Ukraine.
Currently, while weaponry is denied to Ukraine, we see how the various powers are arming to the teeth the fictitious state of Israel to massacre the Palestinian masses. How do you evaluate this fact? And what do you think about the fact that both Zelensky and Lavrov (and therefore Putin) openly support Netanyahu?
Now we will express a very unpopular thought in the leftist environment. If we follow the logic that Israel is a “fictitious state”, then we can say that Crimea has always been Russian. Israel has been a state for almost 100 years. The formation of any state is the result of violence and any state borders are artificial and violate someone’s rights. There are international norms. Either we try to abide by them, or we wage wars, occupy other territories, etc. Putin likes to repeat that Ukraine is also a fictitious state. In a similar way, he also once mentioned Kazakhstan. We are against states as an organization of social relations, but we cannot deny that they exist. Moreover, Arab forces were directly involved in the creation of Israel. And, by the way, the country was created also by leftist forces, and the kibbutz movement has a lot in common with anarchism. But this is a separate story, now forgotten by the Western left.
We do not agree at all that Russia supports Israel. The escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is in the Kremlin’s favor, because on the one hand – as you yourself pointed out – the West has switched to military aid to Jerusalem.
During the Soviet era, the USSR supported the Arabs of Palestine as opposed to Israel, with whom it had bad relations. Now Putin is continuing this trend by supporting the most radical Islamists in the Middle East, including Hamas. Putin is willing to seek allies against the West anywhere and is ready to trade with anybody.
As for Zelensky, there is nothing surprising here, his foreign policy cannot diverge from the NATO line. If there is a change of government and political course in Israel, he will cooperate with it.
Western leftists shout about helping Palestine, but they demand to stop arms supplies to Ukraine and “freeze” the conflict. We find this unacceptable. We see analogies when Western leftist intellectuals supported Stalin, and now they are actually doing it to Hamas. The Western left lack the intellectual courage to admit that their decolonizing ideology-laden assertions do not explain or attempt to resolve the conflict.
In an interview with Russian media, Ali Baraka, a member of the Hamas leadership, said that Russia has agreed to locally produce Kalashnikov assault rifles and ammunition. Along with the Russian Federation, Iran and China also armed Hamas. Putin blamed the US and the West, as well as Israel’s “settlement policy” for the October 7 tragedy.
The propagandists of the Russian Federation and Belarus were on the side of Hamas. And Russia has always treated Hamas as partners (just like, for example, the Taliban). Besides, we should not forget that the Islamic Chechnya and Ramzan Kadyrov, who openly accused Israel of genocide of Palestinians and fascism that is “not inferior to Hitler’s”, have a certain power in Russia.
After the massacre that Hamas carried out, by the way, with the support and sympathies of some Marxist organizations (e.g., The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Israel logically responded to them with force. Moreover, information has come to light that Hamas was sponsored by some European leftist parties. And it has long been known that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) also actively assisted Hamas. But mass raping women and children is what so-called revolutionaries are supposed to do? No, they are scumbags, not fighters against imperialism, colonialism or Zionism. This struggle is a myth, just like the fact that Russia is a symbol of anti-fascism.
We are against borders and dictating from above to other peoples how and where to live, but we are also against any religious fundamentalism, and that is what controls Palestine and many other Islamic states. What Hamas did in October 2023 is equal to what Russia did in March 2022 in Bucha and Irpen. Israel is only the first target for radical Islamist fanatics like Ukraine is for Russia. Yes, our opinion may seem unpopular, but we see the problem of Islamization (imposing their inhuman behavioral norms) in Europe under the cover of solidarity with Palestine, the fight against Zionism and other propaganda.The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are just a cover for Islamic radicals and a human shield. You know that one of the leaders of Hamas is hiding in Europe and has a huge fortune. Ismail Haniyeh is a billionaire. What kind of revolutionary struggle are we talking about?
Don’t get us wrong, but no matter how bad Israel is, for some reason you can have rave parties there, support LGBT+ and women’s rights, protest against the government… It’s like Ukraine, no matter how bad it is, it’s much freer to breathe there than in Russia.
Netanyahu is a right-wing politician who disgusts us, and Izrael is not a holy country and its authorities and security forces have a lot of blood on their hands, especially in the West Bank. But Arab countries are also responsible for the creation of the state of Israel. And on top of that, all these Arab “friends of Palestine” are playing their geopolitical game in the region, often hypocritically, like all other political forces in the world.
We realize that the conflict did not start yesterday and that it will not end so easily, but we do not agree with the European left, who blindly support Hamas to spread anti-Semitism. It’s a road to nowhere. What does Hamas have to offer Palestine? Radical Islamism? That is unacceptable to us. Last October, Hamas pushed the search for cospromise far back.
The only solution would have been to adopt Rojava solutions, that is, local self-government with the participation of all ethnic and religious groups (since not only Jews and Palestinians live there), with the cooperation and understanding of the neighbors. But right now, one can only dream of such a solution.
The agrarian crisis continues to deepen in Europe, and it has been revealed that while the EU states refuse to continue subsidizing the countryside -which has led to huge protests in Germany, France, Spain, etc.-, companies such as Cargill and Monsanto continue to earn great profits at the expense of the hunger of the Ukrainian people and flood Europe with the Ukrainian production at a much lower cost. On the border with Poland, this has led to sectors of the Polish agricultural sector to set fire to and block the Ukrainian agricultural production trying to enter the country. What is your opinion of these events?
As far as we know, the information that Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont corporations have bought up about 17 million hectares of arable land in Ukraine (about 52% of all agricultural land in the country) is fake news. It should be recalled that there is a strong Russian lobby for disinformation in Europe, as well as around the world. Until now, Russia Today (RT) influences the minds of millions of people who do not speak Russian and are not oriented in the Eastern European agenda. Although it should be recognized that foreign capital owns some Ukrainian territories and there are preconditions that in the future it will capture more and more lands, as we are gradually dealing with changes in the legislation of land purchase and sale to foreign investors under the pressure of the IMF. At the moment, as far as we know, the majority of land is in the hands of Ukrainians, and the part belonging to large agricultural holdings and oligarchs (such as Yuriy Kosyuk, Andriy Vereysky and Oleg Bakhmatyuk) is only 1/5 of all land.
As for Poland, we do not support these protests. Although right-wing radical parties, such as the Confederation, are trying to organize and coordinate them, this is an openly pro-Russian structure.
In general, the protests should be considered in two areas – dissatisfaction with the European Green Deal and the crisis related to the war. European farmers receive huge subsidies from the EU for their activities, but since most of them are conservative both in economic and social-political terms, they do not want to modernize and make their farms more environmentally friendly (according to the European Green Deal). For them only profit is important. They blame the EU and not Russia, because of which the war provokes inflation and import-export problems all over the world. It is Russia, having surpluses, that lowers grain prices in order to harm Ukraine.
It is important to realize that it is Russia that bypasses sanctions through Lithuania and Moldova and sells cheaper grain to the EU and further, while Ukraine sends about 95% of its grain, etc. by ships on the Black Sea. Of course, everyone has the right to defend their rights, including economic rights, but not at the cost of dead Ukrainian children. Let us recall that the port of Odessa is regularly shelled, and civilians are being killed in Odessa. While there is a problem of hunger in the world – Polish farmers dump tons of grain and corn at the border, forgetting that it is mostly transit through Poland. Moreover, Poland exports more products to Ukraine than it imports from there.
As we have seen, there will be new elections also in Belarus and a new fraud is aticipated, making Lukashenko remain in power. We have also seen that this dictator is preparing for this with a new wave of arrests and raids against those who oppose him, while he keeps more than 1500 fighters in prison. Can you tell us more about the life of the fighters and workers in Belarus, and the situation of the political prisoners?
The situation in Belarus looks like a kind of dystopia, in which it is getting worse every day. All power is held by Lukashenko’s family and law enforcers. Civil society does not exist, there are no independent mass media. Every day there are detentions of those who participated in the protests in 2020, relatives of political prisoners who remain loyal to them and donate to various initiatives, lawyers, teachers, architects, doctors, etc. are behind bars. The number of surveillance cameras in cities, forests, public transportation is growing. Prisoners are not given letters, medicines, food parcels. They are constantly thrown into punishment cells, deprived of visits and phone calls with their loved ones. Some political prisoners have not been heard from for more than a year. Some of them are subjected to a tougher regime – they are transferred from collonies to prisons or retried in detention centers. They are forbidden to communicate in the Belarusian language and read Belarusian books. Recently, another political prisoner died in the colony – this is the 5th death since 2020. Only in Minsk more than 7400 criminal cases for “extremism” have been initiated since August 2020. And, for example, only in February 2004, at least 194 criminal cases on political grounds were initiated. Lukashenko is also hunting for oppositionists in Russia and the EU. From time to time KGB agents are detected in Europe. Recently, in Russia, security services shot one of the participants of the Belarusian protests in 2020. People returning to Belarus from the EU are often detained, for example, to attend funerals of relatives or on other business. Phones are checked at the borders. It is increasingly difficult to transfer money to political prisoners, as bank transfers are controlled by the authorities, and those who are registered as “extremists” or “terrorists” in prisons are often not allowed to transfer any money at all. We can advise you to see the most complete and up-to-date information about Belarusian political prisoners here.
In recent statements, a top military chief of Great Britain announced that the people of Europe should prepare for a global dimension war with Russia, while Olaf Scholz called for arming Europe, and the Baltic countries signed an agreement to strengthen NATO’s line of defense in Europe against Russia. What is your view of these developments?
We think that nobody in their right mind wants a third world war – we certainly don’t. But there is indeed more and more talk about it in Europe, especially in the East. We cannot predict such a scenario – Russia is capable of anything. The fact that NATO is strengthening its defense is a logical step. We do not want war, but we are unable to stop the flywheel of hatred that has been set in motion. Just as the European proletariat failed to do in 1914, and even less so in 1939. At the same time, we fear that NATO and the so-called collective West will agree to territorial concessions to Ukraine and freeze the conflict, effectively putting the Ukrainians under Putin’s rule.
Macron’s recent statements suggest that a conflict is quite possible. If it happens, we will oppose Russia.
Among those who said that the hand of NATO would liberate Ukraine, or that the jackal Putin would do it, the working class of this tormented nation was isolated from the proletariat and the exploited of the world, besieged by war and imperialist plunder that only deepens. Thus, they made the greatest enemies of the masses pass as their allies, breaking the unity of the European and international working class and leaving the workers subjected to their executioners, a matter that the Ukrainian masses have paid dearly, as well as the Russian and European masses, on whom the governments unload the whole weight of the crisis. On the other hand, huge demonstrations against the massacre in Palestine have travelled the world, showing the enormous value of internationalism and the true allies of the exploited, revealing a path that is necessary today for Palestine as for Ukraine or Syria.Do you think it is possible to promote an appeal and actions to deepen this path?
Such common values as internationalism have not gone away, an example of which is the participation of volunteers from different countries in defence of Ukraine. Recently, a Ukrainian fighter told us, “This is in fact a civil war.
But these are rather anti-dictatorial, democratic values in the most general form, and very few people actually go to fight for them in a foreign country. The task is to make the values of self-governance, stateless society, collectivism such common values, but we have to go a very long and difficult way to this end.
We live in a global world, yet now even European societies are atomized and do not want to leave their comfort zone. Workers in different countries are forced to fight here and now for their piece of land, to defend their local interests and to draw attention to their problems. We support pockets of resistance around the world, but we simply do not have the resources to help physically and organizationally in countries as far away as Syria or Palestine. All our activities are focused on the countries of the BUR and Eastern Europe; it is important for us to help our Belarusian and Russian comrades in prison and our Ukrainian comrades at the front.
This does not mean that we should not show solidarity and establish contacts, on the contrary, we should always point out who is guilty of the current state of affairs. Imperialism, international capital, religious fundamentalism… in a word, those “values” that are alien to us, but according to which billions of people live. We would not idealize the revolutionary potential of the proletariat all over the world. We are forced to recognize the fact that the Ukrainians in their majority think only of their war and their victory. We think that you realize as well as we do that wars only destroy solidarity not only between the working masses, but also between nations.
Would you like to add anything else?
We wish all of us not to break under the pressure of the ongoing world catastrophes. Stay true to our ideals and continue every struggle against the injustices of our world.
