💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › praleski-a-very-long-winter.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:10:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: A Very Long Winter Author: praleski Date: February 28, 2022 Language: en Topics: Ukraine, Russia, war, fascism, anti-fascism Source: Retrieved on 14th March 2022 from https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/a-very-long-winter/ Notes: Introduction by Liasons for The New Inquiry.
War transforms everything – we are suddenly for or against armies,
revolutionaries become soldiers, coalitions monopolize politics,
patriotic fervor swells, and the party of order triumphs. When the
Russian army invaded Ukraine last week, Putin claimed it was in the name
of “denazification,” evoking the important role “anti-fascism” plays in
the ideology of the Russian state. In the following text, published in
Liaisons’ first book In the Name of the People, a friend from the region
offers an account of revolutionaries involved in the 2014 Maidan
uprising in Ukraine, along with considerations about the particular
history of Russian “anti-fascism.” Our friend has also recently put
together a site with writing on the ongoing events in Ukraine, with more
articles to come. While the following text does not address the current
invasion, it offers an important history of the present moment (the
Winter Uprising, Anti-Maidan, the annexation of Crimea) and imagines
other possible histories between Russian and Ukrainian people.
---
On a warm summer evening in Kiev, my friend told me a story about his
grandfather. The story takes place during World War II in Ukraine. As a
peasant, his grandfather found himself in German-occupied territory
after yet another German offensive. His grandfather wanted to fight
Nazis, but needed to figure out how. There were two options: he could
stay in occupied territory and look for a partisan unit, or could try to
join the Red Army. He decided to find the partisans, which is how he
stumbled upon a strange unit fighting the Germans. The story doesn’t
mention how, but he figured that these were Makhnovists.[1] My friend
told me how his grandfather would vividly recount how he decided to stay
as far away from them as he could, because those people would be crushed
by both the Nazis and the Reds. The chances of survival in such a
battalion were virtually non-existent.
Very little is known about this battalion today, but it was likely led
by Ossip Tsebry – a well-known Makhnovist who fled from the Bolsheviks
in 1921. In 1942, Tsebry returned to Ukraine in an attempt to build an
anarchist partisan movement to fight both Nazis and Bolsheviks. While
little is known about it, this unit did exist and was eventually
defeated by the Nazis. Tsebry was captured and ended up in a
concentration camp, then was liberated in 1945 by the Western Allies,
and subsequently managed to escape the Bolsheviks once again.
We remembered Tsebry at the dawn of the fall of 2014. Russia had already
annexed Crimea and was advancing troops in Donbass. At that moment, no
one would have been surprised to hear that Russian tanks were moving on
Kharkov, Odessa, or even Kiev. I had just arrived from Saint Petersburg,
where I had seen how Russian society would actually fully support the
invasion. There was no antiwar movement in sight, and as we exchanged
words of remembrance among friends, our emotions matched the intensity
of the situation.
In the time that followed, the discussions revolved almost entirely
around fascism and anti-fascism. All the other debates were overshadowed
by the question: who is fascist and who is anti-fascist? Since the
beginning of the Ukrainian uprising, Russian state propaganda stealthily
resurrected the old Soviet vocabulary, declaring that those who were
part of the movement were either fascists or Nazis, or were at least
manipulated by them. Anarchists and leftists from Ukraine responded by
noting that the Russian state is actually the region’s most fascist
state. “Fascist” volunteer battalions and the “fascist” Donetsk People’s
Republic (DNR) were all over the news. Anti-fascists from Belarus and
Ukraine, Spain and Italy, Brazil and God knows where else all went to
fight. Some ended up on one side and some on the other.
At first, Western leftists, seduced by images of Soviet Berkut[2] buses
ablaze on the icy streets of Kiev, largely supported Maidan. But when
they realized that the diagonal black and red flags were actually those
of the fascists, they had a sudden change of heart and started
supporting the “anti-fascist popular uprising” in the East. And then
they saw VICE’s feature about pro-Russian anti-fascists, who actually
turned out to be fascists. This was all a bit too complicated for them,
so they turned away from the Ukrainian situation all together. Yet the
West was not the only site of confusion. Anarchists and leftists from
Russia were arguing to death over who exactly was fascist and
anti-fascist in Ukraine, as if this could explain everything and
summarily resolve the matter at hand.
No one had any clear idea of what to do in fact, even on the ground. We
were all desperately looking for guidance, especially in stories from
the past. But the reality of war, and the general mobilization it
entails, was not an object of analysis for us. Most of us grew up with
the feeling that war wouldn’t happen here. We felt like these things
could only happen on the periphery – a space that we usually ignored or
to which we gave little attention.
The only war story we were familiar with was the story of the Great
Fatherland War.[3] That story, like all myths, was clear and
self-explanatory. There wasn’t much to debate, which made the war a
powerful tool for manufacturing unity. That is how my friend and I came
to remember the story of Ossip, today a story so neglected and
forgotten.
Our generation, which came into the world near the end of the Soviet
Union, still remembers the myth of the Great Fatherland War. When we
were children, we played at war – and it was always the same war. It was
a war between us and the bad guys, the German fascists. We knew our
enemy from the old Soviet movies. The new streets of my neighborhood,
built in the eighties, were named after Soviet war heroes, and in the
street you could never escape all the monuments of the great Red Army
and the martyrs of the war. Some of our cities were even considered
“heroic cities.” My grandfather was a veteran, and for big events, he
would proudly take out his medals to wear.
During the nineties, when the news was filled with strange camouflaged
men with guns, I couldn’t connect these images with the story of my
grandfather and the monuments to the heroes. That war – the war of all
the movies and the songs – was the sacred war. That war was full of
heroism and purity. What we saw on television just seemed like a
nameless bloodbath, a war full of confusion.
In “the country that defeated fascism,” oddly enough, no serious theory
of fascism ever emerged. For the common Soviet citizen, fascism just
meant the epitome of evil and abjection. But in the subculture of prison
gangs, for example, tattoos of swastikas and other Nazi insignia were
considered symbols of a radical denial of the state. These symbols did
not have the same meaning in the West, and in Russia, anti-fascism came
to mean something different.
This difference was a question of onomastics, established first through
the act of giving a name. In the Soviet Union, World War II was called
the Great Fatherland War, and was considered, in Soviet historiography,
as part of the eternal fight to defend the fatherland. The term
“Fatherland War” is a name that was already used during Napoleon’s
invasion of Russia. In the late thirties, and even more so during the
war, Stalin and his propagandists began to speak of Soviet history
within the wider historical context of the Russian Empire. This
propaganda constructed the narrative of an unending struggle against the
invaders from the West: from Alexander Nevsky in the thirteenth century
to the Napoleonic invasion in 1812. This glorification of feudal and
aristocratic heroes would have been impossible to imagine even a few
years before, but, for the purposes of mobilization, of course it
wouldn’t hurt to sacrifice a few principles. Because who, if not we, the
Great Russian People, could smash fascism and liberate Europe? As the
war dragged on, it became not only a fight against fascism, but a war
against that insistent invader, who arrived again and again to conquer
our sacred Russian land.
According to this logic, the enormous human losses during the war were
not due to the failures of the Soviet state, but were a martyrdom of
necessity. They were a sacrifice that fits comfortably within the old
story of the God-chosen Russian Nation, humbly taking on the burden of
others and saving Europe from eschatological disasters, again and again.
In the context of the repression of the thirties, ethnic deportations
were massive. As this trend continued during the war, the deportations
were justified through accusations of Nazi collaboration. Russian
ideologists love to mention collaborator units formed by Nazis during
the war, composed of different Soviet ethnic groups. By creating the
figure of Traitor-Nations, they are able to omit the fact that most
collaborators were actually ethnic Russians, in order to legitimate
colonial politics and ethnic repression.
Through this revisionism, the state has successfully created an
equivalency between the Soviet subject and the anti-fascist. By essence,
a Russian is anti-fascist, and thus being against Russians means being
fascist. Anybody standing against Moscow for any reason now became
fascist by default. In this framework, victory could only be achieved
through national unity, and being Russian meant being loyal. Now any
protest against central power could be easily reframed in these
simplistic terms.
While it has lost some momentum, in the 2000s, the Antifa movement was a
significant mobilizing force for Russian youth. While it was a very
heterogeneous movement, what its members held in common was the
beautiful but not always well-calibrated desire to smash Nazis. The more
this movement focused on the practical aspects of attacking the Right,
the less it could propose any kind of significant theoretical framework
to analyze fascism. What is worse is that its members often just ended
up naming “fascist” anything they didn’t like. This was the case for the
gangs of youth coming from the Caucasus. These gangs not only challenged
their hegemony in the streets, but also showed “a lack of will to
integrate” and accept the power of Russian culture in the “historically”
Russian cities. “Black racism” or “Caucasian fascism” became widespread
terms within the Antifa milieu. A significant part of the milieu even
had no problem calling themselves “patriots” and Nazis “spoiled
Russians” who forgot their roots. As one of the most popular songs of
the milieu proudly proclaimed: “I am the real Russian / You are just a
Nazi whore.”[4]
Consequently, these milieus could not produce any alternative vision of
history that could pose a challenge to that of the state. They just
repeated mindless mantras about the strange character of fascists and
Nazis in the “country that defeated fascism,” and bragged about having a
grandfather who went to war.
Elaborating other narratives and representations, they believed, could
undermine their reach and separate them from the “common people.” They
tried as much as possible to look and act ordinary. They wanted to
distance themselves from any form of marginality. Some even assumed an
avant-garde role among the “healthy” part of Russian society. Given the
commonplace of this populist strategy, it isn’t surprising that some of
them began to sympathize with imperialist ideas, or even went to fight
for the “Russian World” in Donbass.
The 2014 Winter Uprising in Ukraine was deep and long. When former
president Viktor Yanukovych ran away, the vast majority of those who
took part in the movement were ready to stay in the streets to expand
the Revolution of Dignity (the official Ukrainian name of the events).
Vladimir Putin’s regime was in a delicate position. It had been dealing
with a weak economy since 2012, and was still weakened by the protest
cycle of 2011–2012. A protest movement so close to Russia’s borders, and
a successful one at that, wasn’t a welcome event, but the regime had
managed to create an internal unity and delegitimize every uprising and
resistance. The Maidan events were not yet over when Russia annexed
Crimea, creating a de facto war where there was a “popular” uprising and
sending a message to neighbors that uprisings could weaken their country
and make it easy prey for annexation.
The annexation of Crimea was met with a spectacular wave of nationalist
euphoria. Since the independence of Ukraine in 1991, Crimea had been
first on the list of territories to reclaim for Russian nationalists.
After 2014, Krymnash, meaning “Crimea is ours,” became both a meme and
foundation for a new imperial consensus.
Two other important terms also appeared at that moment, although they
are now all but forgotten: “Russian Spring” and “Russian World.” Russian
Spring was a direct reference to the Arab Spring, which Russian
ideologists had declared, with the utmost seriousness, was nothing more
than a special CIA operation against legitimate leadership in the Arab
world. But the Russian Spring should have been the authentic uprising of
the Russian People, willing to reunite under their leader and state as a
part of the Russian World. As this potentially refers to any place and
land historically related to Russia or with a significant
Russian-speaking population, the scope of the so-called Russian World
has always been unclear.
As with every populist idea, the Russian World was presented as
something natural and self-evident – it was completely natural for
Russian speakers to want to be annexed by the Fatherland. Through this
discursive operation, it was not a question of the Russian Empire
(re)conquering territories, but of the Russian people liberating
themselves from the alienating rule of the West and coming back to the
homeland. Apparently it was just like World War II, when the Red Army
did not conquer new territories in Europe and Asia, but liberated these
people from the yoke of fascism.
Through this lens, the annexation of Crimea simply became a “reunion,” a
manifestation of the unanimous will of the Crimean people to return to
their homeland. Those who were not part of that consensus – like the
native Crimean Tatars, for instance, who were well-organized and
protested the annexation – were simply ignored or seen as traitors.
After the annexation, all the leftists, activists, and anarchists had to
escape. Those who remained either ended up in jail, or just disappeared
after a raid. Every public political activity became impossible. It’s
Russia, after all, and Russia means war.
Different tactics were used to give the occupation of Crimea and Donbass
the appearance of popular movements. In Crimea, where Russia has large
military bases, it was easy to fill the peninsula with soldiers in a few
days. These forces rapidly took over the most important infrastructural
points, such as the parliament and the airport, after which they adopted
an “observer” role to appear as a “peacekeeping” force to ensure that
the “people’s uprising” went smoothly, and that Russian-speaking
populations were not “attacked.”
In a disconcerting game of mirrors, pro-Russian forces started to copy
the tactics used at Maidan. In the first days of the annexation, the
“self-defense forces” of Crimea were created, copying the self-defense
forces of Maidan. Officially, they were created by locals who wanted to
defend their cities from the Nazi hordes allegedly arriving from Kiev.
Of course, it was quickly shown that these self-defense militias were
controlled by Russian officers. They were composed of Cossacks, local
petty criminals, pro-Russian right-wingers, and red-brown activists from
Russia. In reality, the self-defense groups and the Russian military
operated together. During the assaults, plainclothes self-defense
officers were performing all the actions, to portray for the media an
image of the people’s revolt. The soldiers were never far away, ready to
step in if the Ukrainian security services or army intervened. This
tactic contributed to creating the simulacrum of a peaceful and
voluntary annexation.
The foundations of this communications strategy were laid during Maidan,
while the Anti-Maidan movement grew in the eastern cities of Ukraine. At
the core of this movement were pro-Russian groups, already familiar with
Russian-imperial ideas. Anti-Maidan named itself an anti-fascist
movement and repeated Russian propaganda’s main clichés. Anti-Maidan’s
discourse was the inverse of Maidan: there were calls to join Russia,
reinstall Yanukovych to power, celebrate the Berkut, and invite Russian
troops to occupy the country. At the same time, there were also other
people participating in Anti-Maidan – people who genuinely believed that
a motley coalition of Nazis, homosexuals, and the American “deep state”
had joined forces and seized power in Kiev.
At the beginning, Anti-Maidan presented itself as another movement
against Maidan. One street demonstration against another street
demonstration, occupations of state buildings against other occupations,
one constitutive violence against another. On the ground, however, the
realities of the two movements could not be further apart. In Donetsk
and Luhansk, the Anti-Maidan movement acted with the support of local
bureaucrats, the police, and organized crime. While Maidan was
repressed, Anti-Maidan had free reign, and it helped the pro-Russians
gain a significant number of official buildings and arms. “People’s
Assemblies,” controlled by armed activists, elected “popular
representatives.” “People’s Republics” were proclaimed, calling on
Russian troops and holding referendums about joining the Russian
Federation. Like in Crimea, all the key positions in these so-called
republics were swiftly occupied by special officers and loyal activists
sent by Moscow. The so-called uprising was over at that point, and a new
life began in these “liberated” territories.
It is worth noting that when the clashes first started, when people were
facing each other at the barricades, they often realized they had more
in common than they thought. In Kharkiv, for instance, Anti-Maidan and
Maidan camps stood in front of each other on Freedom Square. Maidan
invited its opponents to come speak at the microphone to let them
explain what they stood for, and in many instances people changed their
minds and switched sides. This naturally upset radical nationalists from
either side, who sought an image of a people’s uprising, complete with
its sacrificial victims. All that was a far cry from the mundane
meetings, interminable conversations, and socializing that went on at
the square.
To demonstrate which movement was a real “people’s movement,” both sides
competed for hegemony in the street. This made clashes and provocations
inevitable and increasingly violent. After the events of May 2, 2014, in
Odessa, where more than 40 people died in a fire during clashes between
Anti-Maidan and Maidan, and the start of the war in the East, protests
in the streets stopped and many Anti-Maidan organizers went to Russia or
the new “People’s Republics.”
Nevertheless, the project of establishing Novorossiya, an old colonial
Russian name for some regions of Ukraine that were supposed to be
reunited with the fatherland, was soon abandoned. The attempts to
reproduce the “people’s uprising” coordinated in Luhansk and Donetsk
failed elsewhere, despite major Russian financial and media support.
What remained, however, and continued to circulate, was the narrative of
the popular uprising. With the help of the already familiar paradigm of
the Russian Spring, the Donbass uprising was declared to be
“anti-fascist.” It didn’t seem to bother anyone in Russia that the
leaders of this “people’s uprising” were composed of officers fresh from
Moscow. After all, they were pursuing the mission of the Red Army: save
the people from fascism and the machinations of the West.
Anti-fascism is the key idea that bridges the old monarchist empire, the
Bolshevik superpower, and the new Russian State: a world power that
keeps getting stronger despite the intrigues of its enemies.
In this context, it’s no wonder the war in Ukraine didn’t incite large
protests in Russia. On the contrary, the streets were filled with tents
of solidarity associations collecting goods and money for the people’s
militias of Donbass. May 9, known as the Day of Victory, became the main
state celebration in Russia. It consisted of parades, fireworks,
people’s marches, children who wore Red Army costumes and chanted
slogans like “To Berlin, To Kiev, to Washington!” and “Thank you grandpa
for the victory!” The conflict in Ukraine was seamlessly converted into
an element of the narrative of the new imperial consensus.
Like most contemporary insurrections, Maidan took political milieus by
surprise on both sides of the border. The Russian, Belarusian, and
Ukrainian activist networks have always been in close contact, and
though Ukraine was considered to have more liberty and less repression,
the social situation was no less difficult than elsewhere. Yanukovych
was trying to consolidate power and resources while at the same time
imposing neoliberal reforms. When comrades from different countries met,
we sadly joked that Ukraine would soon be like Russia, Russia soon like
Belarus, and Belarus soon like North Korea. It seemed like things could
do nothing but get worse. If somebody had proposed on New Year’s Eve of
2014 that Maidan would become one of the biggest uprisings of the last
decades in Eastern Europe, they would have been met with waves of
laughter.
In the beginning, leftists and anarchists did not really believe in the
perspectives opened by the movement. Some recalled the Orange Revolution
of 2004 as a fool’s trap that would only change the faces one sees on
television. Others wanted to avoid getting paralyzed by over-analysis,
and thought it important to take part in any popular initiative. And
effectively, this is what Maidan was. In its experience, aesthetics, and
composition, it consisted of a “popular” uprising.
Most of us, undecided, decided to wait. Our uneasiness came from strange
slogans about “Euro-association,” as well as the presence of the Far
Right and neo-Nazis. And while the Right was not setting the agenda of
the movement, it was better organized and was boldly trying to exclude
its enemies from the square. All leftist symbols were seen as a positive
reference to the Soviet Union, thus pro-Russian and pro-Yanukovych. As
for the anarchists and other radicals, they weren’t organized enough to
participate as a distinct group.
By the end of December, the movement had grown but did not present new
developments. It seemed condemned to be an endless encampment of cold
weather and boredom. But in mid-January, the regime decided to scale up
repression – emergency laws were adopted and the occupation was brutally
attacked, causing several casualties. After the attack, the situation
changed dramatically, becoming a struggle against a real dictatorship.
Leaving their doubts behind, the radical milieus joined the movement.
They were rapidly joined by comrades from neighboring countries. We saw
with our own eyes how Maidan’s “Russophobia” was an invention of the
Russian media. It didn’t really exist. It didn’t bother anyone to speak
Russian at the barricades, even with the strongest Moscow accent. Some
people joked that you might be a spy, but then usually added: “We will
meet at the barricades in Moscow chasing off Putin!”
Maidan grew by waves, adopting more radical methods as more and more
people got involved. From field kitchens to underground hospitals, fight
trainings to lectures and film screenings, and transportation to
distribution and supplies, a huge infrastructure was growing up around
the protests. There were even attempts to compose decision-making
structures, in the form of soviets or assemblies, but they didn’t have
time to take root. The Berkut started to openly shoot people in Kiev,
and in February the insurrection spread throughout the country. People
were occupying administrative buildings and everywhere blockading the
police. The regime attempted a last push, but overestimated its forces
and failed, and then Yanukovych was forced to flee to Russia.
In appearance, Maidan had won. An enormous amount of people in Ukraine
gained experience in autonomous organizing and street sensibility, and
sacrifice did not befall them in vain. People felt like the game had
changed, and they could now take hold of a common power.
But, in anarchist and leftist circles, this euphoria soon died. Thanks
to the efforts of the liberal and Russian media, however opposed they
were in their ends, the Right was able to portray the image that it was
the radical vanguard of Maidan. Among many of us, joy gave way to panic
as those whom one might have fought on the street the day earlier had
now suddenly gained official posts in the new structures of state power.
Something far more dreadful was on the way. Russia annexed Crimea and
started a war, which was an ambiguous gift for the new government. The
energy set free on Maidan was channeled into volunteer battalions and
support for the ruined Ukrainian army, which couldn’t do much against
Russia. From now on, defending the Revolution of Dignity didn’t mean
being on the barricades of Kiev, but on the front line. The movement
then disappeared, of course, as it is obviously wrong to protest when
your country is at war.
As for the Russian leftists, they found themselves on the side of
Russian propaganda, and began to increasingly criticize “Ukrainian
fascism.” Well-known figures like Boris Kagarlitsky started spreading
stories about an “anti-fascist proletarian popular uprising in Donbass.”
Some of these leftist personalities could be seen drinking tea with
Russian nationalists and imperial fascists at the next meeting for the
Russian World in Crimea. The young went to war as volunteers, if not to
bomb villages, then at least to take some selfies in camouflage,
Kalashnikov in hand. Others became war journalists, following battalions
like the Prizrak brigade in Donbass, whose leader, after rounding up a
few well-known neo-Nazis, became famous for defending the idea of raping
women who weren’t home after curfew. None of this seemed to bother the
Left, as long as the battalions kept waving red flags and singing songs
from that sacred war, complemented by stories about NATO soldiers on the
Ukrainian side and images of dead children. As for the older Western
leftists, they found themselves reliving the Cold War and started
support campaigns for the “anti-fascists of Donbass.”
After the shock of the first months, most of the Russian radical milieus
turned away from such a confusing situation. Either the issue of the war
did not concern them, or they felt there was nothing they could do.
There was also a new wave of repression in Russia, within a context of
unprecedented support for Putin. In this situation, there was
increasingly less public political activity, and more comrades turned to
infrastructural projects like cooperatives or publishing. Others decided
to immigrate, either within Russia or abroad.
In Ukraine, on the other hand, organizing was on the rise. Despite the
war, political life was blooming, but things were shifting fast. The
Antifa and punk milieus generally became patriotic right-wingers.
Anarchists weren’t spared from this dynamic, many of whom grew
sympathetic to the “autonomous nationalists” of Autonomous Resistance,
an ex-Nazi group from the barricades of Maidan that was now spreading a
mix of anti-imperialism and concepts taken from the new Right. Following
their logic, nationality was the same as class, and ethnic conflicts and
even cleansing could be understood as a form of class war. They saw the
war with Russia as an anti-imperialist struggle, supported the army, and
applauded their members who went to war as heroes. Others followed a
similar path. Though they started by unmasking the fascist character of
the Russian state, they ended up arguing that the only valid strategy
against the Russian invasion was to support the Ukrainian Army. By
evoking the history of World War II, they mirrored the logic of Russian
propaganda, accusing anyone who criticizes the Ukrainian government of
being pro-Russian or, of course, “fascist.”
Another part of the movement decided that, again in reference to World
War II, when faced with absolute evil, it was better to collaborate with
the devil. In today’s terms, Russia was the obvious evil, and therefore
collaboration came in the form of joining the Ukrainian Army or the
volunteer battalions – in the end, supporting the government
institutions. There were some of our now ex-comrades who went to war, or
at least supported such a decision. It is certain that no one wanted to
become cannon fodder for capitalists and the state. But, for some of
them, it seemed like the only option left to fight the Russian invasion
and the Russian machine. The most naive sincerely believed in the
revolutionary nature of the people, and for a moment really thought they
could agitate among the soldiers, convincing them to turn their guns
against the government. The most cynical spoke about the opportunity to
“gain war experience,” while others just felt pressure and the need to
do something. With their support of armed struggle against the military
invasion, part of the movement drifted toward a fascination for anything
military. They seemed hypnotized by a new world of Kalashnikovs and
camouflage, in contrast with which everything else just seemed to fade
from view.
The topic of war soon became dangerous to address. The propaganda was
working not only in Russia but also in Ukraine. While those who argued
against the war could quickly be labeled as Putin’s agents, it also
became illegal to make public statements against military mobilization.
A lot of people simply became tired of all the conflicts and left the
movement. The country’s economic crisis forced people to work more,
snatching away their time. While the energy of Maidan continued to
nourish autonomous projects, stagnation struck the heart of the movement
at the same time Ukrainian society was in crisis and the government
still hadn’t completely regained control of the situation.
In retrospect, it seems the movement failed to find a way to oppose the
rising populist imperialist consensus, both in Russia and in Ukraine.
And for this not only our weakness, but also the way we have defined
priorities in these last years, are to blame.
Too busy fighting fascists and Nazis in the street, we did not develop a
solid analysis of what fascism is, nor did we propose an alternative to
the official history of World War II, which seems to haunt us at every
turn. At the level of rituals and symbols, we finally followed the
version advanced by the Russian state – the myth of the unity of the
Soviet People against fascism. The narratives about other forces that
confronted both Stalinism and Nazism – like those of the partisan
movement that rejected the rule of the Red Army – have become marginal.
We have likewise paid too little attention to the conflicts of peasants
and workers against Stalinism, or to the Gulag insurrections during the
war.
On the other hand, we also must rethink the colonial character of the
Russian and Soviet empires. Armed conflicts in distant places have so
easily been forgotten. Even the war in Chechnya, which was important for
anarchists in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, was forgotten
by the next generation. We are in dire need of internal structures that
allow us to transmit such experiences and their lessons.
In this light, it’s not surprising that the explosion of war in Ukraine
took us by surprise. We have not fully taken account of the fact that
Russia is always at war somewhere, in some part of the world. And now
this war knocks at our own door, and threatens our comrades and
neighbors. It attacks our friends. We no longer know what common ground
can establish connections between our movements, especially at the
moment we need it most.
It seemed to us, as Russians and Ukrainians, that we almost lived in the
same space, with a close past and present. We shared our experiences and
resources in our struggle against common hardships. Yet when our states
plunged us into war, feeding off the myths of our common past, we didn’t
know how to resist. The more they try to mobilize the dead to divide us,
the more we should show that history can’t be reduced to what is written
by the victors. We ourselves have histories to tell – a story beyond
imperialist myths, however they’re assumed – because only revolutionary
history will keep us warm during this long winter.
[1] Followers of Nestor Makhno, the commander of the Revolutionary
Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, also known as the Anarchist Black Army,
who led a guerrilla campaign in southern Ukraine against other factions
seeking to exercise authority over the territory (Ukrainian nationalists
and German and Russian forces).
[2] Berkut is the most brutal unit of the Ukrainian riot police.
[3] Also referred to as the Great Patriotic War, the Great Fatherland
War is a literal translation of the name given to the part of World War
II that was fought in the Soviet Union.
[4] This song, “What We Feel,” was composed by the band Till the End,
and features the band Moscow Death Brigade.