Full original version: https://assembly.org.ua/ustalost-rozhdaet-zlost-pytki-harkovskogo-volontera-v-tczk-i-chto-o-nem-izvestno/
First published on Libcom: https://libcom.org/article/volunteer-kharkov-was-tortured-military-after-trying-leave-ukraine

---

News about the latest militaristic and repressive measures has been flowing in such a stream for weeks that it sometimes interrupts attention to events at the front. There is an increasing impression that the Kremlin and the Office of Zelensky are starting to fight not so much with each other, but with those who do not want to fulfill their “duty to their homeland.” The Ukrainian parliament will soon consider bill No. 10062 on a unified electronic register of conscripts and those liable for military service – modeled on the neighboring chamber, where summons will now be considered served from the moment they appear in it. The Ministry of Defense allowed to draft into the Armed Forces of Ukraine those who are of limited fitness due to hepatitis, cured tuberculosis, asymptomatic HIV, mental problems, etc. Bill No. 9672 proposes to cancel the deferment from the army for recipients of the second higher education, post-graduate students and those who first attended the university after 30 years. Doctors are being stormed with large-scale checks for trading in disability documents. Women from among medical staff and pharmacists will be registered with the military from October 1st, and those who have a military record will have to update their data; after the launch of the e-register, they can be screened out when trying to leave Ukraine. Threats of extradition and punishment to men who went abroad, deceiving the authorities (as the authorities themselves did to them all their lives). The Border Guard Service of Ukraine has already begun to publicly show “educational work” with violators of the western border, forcing them to listen to the anthem and the priest’s sermon, after which they are handed over to the enlistment officers. To detect such citizens in the bushes, the border patrols began using drones with thermal imaging cameras, supposedly so necessary for the front. Then, presumably, they will start to drop grenades or hunting nets on the migrants. In turn, the deputy head of the Russian Guard in Donetsk, former separatist field commander Alexander Khodakovsky called for the creation of barrier detachments for Russian soldiers – because “many are ready to wait from prison for their loved one, who threw away their weapons and refused to fight, just so as not to die.”

Against such an informational background, the story of a Kharkov resident at the military recruitment office of Staryi Sambir in the Lviv region received a huge resonance. This is not the first time that they tried to send into the army those captured trying to escape from the “country of dreams”, this time the mobilizers just did a little less work and video records were transferred to bloggers, instantly exploding social networks with anger. The inmate was kept there from September 12th to 19th, beaten on the head with a pistol, starved, not provided with medical care, threatened with death and that “the police would not look for him.” Even before this video, hardly many people doubted that the cops act in conjunction with the enlistment kidnappers, while the State Bureau of Investigation reported on the 19th that the deputy chief of one of the departments in the Sambir districtal recruitment center and its driver are detained. They face up to 10 years in prison under Part 3 of Art. 406 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (violation of statutory rules, relationships by military personnel using weapons). The Bureau requested that both be taken into custody without bail; the court in Lviv sent them under round-the-clock house arrest for 2 months. The National Agency on Corruption Prevention has found suspicious property worth 4.4 million hryvnias owned by the chief of the same facility. Of course, even if they are found guilty and imprisoned, it will not change anything systemically – power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The investigation established that the suspects illegally detained at least two men – residents of Kharkov and Krivoy Rog. After being detained by border guards during unauthorized crossing the border with Poland, they were taken to the enlistment office, where the servicemen tried to force them to go through the medical examination. One of these refusers was kept for 10 days, another one for 7 days.

The resident of Krivoy Rog says that his name is Roman Kuzmenko, born November 12, 1985. Our compatriot is 43 years old and he was hospitalized with a concussion; he introduces himself as Vadim Spokoynyi (Ukrainian spelling – Vadym Spokiynyi). “Vadym is an animator. His stage name is Max. The first weeks Vadym was in Kharkiv – he volunteered a lot, helped people, tried to entertain children in bomb shelters so that they would not be so sad and scared. Later, he moved to Staryi Sambir with his acquaintance Dina. They didn't have a home here, so they temporarily lived in a van near the river. I helped them find accommodation. Later, his father also moved in with Vadym, he has a disability, does not walk much, is practically bedridden. His father somehow found the strength to come to the Military Commissariat. But they didn't let him in. They didn't even let me see each other. It's terrible. He is not a criminal and is not in a pre-trial detention center”, his local comrade Sofia Ryzhenko told the LMN newsletter. She does not know whether Vadim has official guardianship over his father. “Can you imagine what it's like to be an animator and work with children? He is very kind, harmless. Well, how can you force a person to sign that he will go to war, if he is afraid of it or cannot?”, the girl asks a rhetorical question. The fact that he, with such a peaceful character, showed an iron will and managed to withstand many days of attempts to break him is what is most shocking in this situation.

Those living in Staryi Sambir note that this is not the first case of such imprisonment of citizens by the enlistment officers. And, as a Kharkov resident named Ivan shared with us on September 20th, hell was going on there long before the full-scale Russian aggression:

“I got into this recruitment center in 2016. I almost got beaten there too. Barely escaped. They even wanted to send me then to the ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation, the official name for hostilities in Donbass], despite the fact that I had a referral for a surgery in Kharkov. They said I didn't need surgery. I was registered there, went to sign up through the enlistment office, I had documents that I was undergoing surgery, and receipts for payment. Two drunk doctors came (like a medical commission). They said I didn't need surgery. They decided so without practically examining it. They said that the ATO would be just right for me, since I go to the gym and am in good physical shape. I said that I would probably refuse and am informed a little about my rights. They fucked my brain for a very long time and didn’t hand over the documents, and I also communicated in Russian. This really threw them up. Military commissars generally communicated as with cattle. Like you're pissing to go to the ATO, etc., etc. Although they themselves saw this ATO only on television. Something like this, in short.”

The Ukrainian public is more and more asking the question: how does this state with such everyday practices differ from the Russian one? In particular, Yevgenia, the wife of the Russian mobilized Yevgeniy P. from military unit 61899, turned to the Russian liberal pacifists ASTRA. For refusing to go to the assault with injuries, he and other soldiers were sent to the basement in Zaytsevo (a village controlled by the so-called “Lugansk People’s Republic” near the Kharkov region), where they are threatened and forced to continue fighting. The detainee told his wife about this on September 18th by phone, after which contact with him disappeared. In May, in Bakhmut, he received a fragment wound in the leg, due to which he was sent to the hospital. However, Yevgeniy was not given aid there; the fragment was not removed, his wife says. He was sent home for rehabilitation for a month. A month later, the commander changed, the new one sent a unit to Naro-Fominsk near Moscow. The entire company with wounds was locked in the barracks and kept there for a week. The surgeon then concluded that they could all continue to fight despite their injuries. They were taken in the direction of Svatovo and abandoned in the forest without any means of subsistence. “My relatives and I cut off all the hotlines, reached the head of the unit, but our requests and prayers for the salvation of the guys are simply ignored, citing the fact that, they say, there is a war, etc. This is just madness and absurdity, the boys with wounds were thrown just like cannon fodder!”, the woman told this media.

Ukraine is a prison of the people. Russia is a prison of the peoples. That's all the difference.

Ο εμφύλιος πόλεμος στη Ρωσία του 1917-1921 θεωρείται μια αντιπαράθεση μεταξύ του Λευκού και του Κόκκινου στρατού. Και τα δύο κινήματα προώθησαν αυταρχικές και κρατιστικές ιδέες, πραγματοποίησαν βίαιη κινητοποίηση, λεηλάτησαν, τρομοκρατούσαν και περιόρισαν την ελευθερία του πληθυσμού, που ανάγκασε τους αγρότες και εργάτες να ενωθούν σε αντάρτικες μονάδες για την αντίσταση τόσο της λευκής όσο και της κόκκινης δικτατορίας. Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι πήραν τα όπλα για να υπερασπιστούν την ελευθερία τους, έκαναν αναγκαστικές συμμαχίες τόσο με Μπολσεβίκους όσο και με μοναρχικούς, αλλά πάντα υπερασπίζονταν τα συμφέροντά τους και έκαναν πόλεμο «εναντίον όλων». Μιλάμε για τον λεγόμενο Πράσινο Στρατό, που ήταν ξεχωριστό, τρίτο μέρος στον εμφύλιο.

1920: Η εξέγερση του Tambov ενάντια στον μπολσεβικισμό

Ο εμφύλιος πόλεμος στη Ρωσία του 1917-1921 θεωρείται μια αντιπαράθεση μεταξύ του Λευκού και του Κόκκινου στρατού. Και τα δύο κινήματα προώθησαν αυταρχικές και κρατιστικές ιδέες, πραγματοποίησαν βίαιη κινητοποίηση, λεηλάτησαν, τρομοκρατούσαν και περιόρισαν την ελευθερία του πληθυσμού, που ανάγκασε τους αγρότες και εργάτες να ενωθούν σε αντάρτικες μονάδες για την αντίσταση τόσο της λευκής όσο και της κόκκινης δικτατορίας. Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι πήραν τα όπλα για να υπερασπιστούν την ελευθερία τους, έκαναν αναγκαστικές συμμαχίες τόσο με Μπολσεβίκους όσο και με μοναρχικούς, αλλά πάντα υπερασπίζονταν τα συμφέροντά τους και έκαναν πόλεμο «εναντίον όλων». Μιλάμε για τον λεγόμενο Πράσινο Στρατό, που ήταν ξεχωριστό, τρίτο μέρος στον εμφύλιο.

Το 1918-1921 οι Μπολσεβίκοι εφάρμοσαν την πολιτική του «στρατιωτικού κομμουνισμού» στα κατεχόμενα εδάφη. Στις κατεχόμενες περιοχές έγιναν εκλογές για τα αγροτικά συμβούλια, αλλά τα πολιτικά δικαιώματα των αγροτών ήταν περιορισμένα, σε κάποιους δεν επετράπη καν να συμμετάσχουν στις εκλογές. Όπως αναφέρεται σε επιστολή προς τον J. Stalin, μέλος του Μποροτιστικού Κόμματος, M. Poloz: «Στάλθηκαν διαταγές στις τοπικές αρχές να εκλέγονται μόνο κομμουνιστές στο συνέδριο, τα συνέδρια έγιναν σε ατμόσφαιρα στρατιωτικού τρόμου. Οι εκλογές για το συνέδριο γίνονται σύμφωνα με το πλειοψηφικό σύστημα, δηλαδή δημιουργείται τεχνητά πλειοψηφία πολλών ψήφων, πράγμα που σημαίνει ότι η μειοψηφία στερείται κάθε αντιπροσώπευσης... Ως αποτέλεσμα, καθαρά κομμουνιστικές εκλογές, αλλά έντονη συγκίνηση μεταξύ των πληθυσμού, που κάποτε ήταν ενθουσιασμένος με τους μπολσεβίκους». Επίσης, κατασχέθηκαν σιτηρά από αγρότες, έγινε βίαιη κολεκτιβοποίηση, και το κράτος πήρε τη γη υπό τον έλεγχό του αντί να τη μοιράσει στους αγρότες. Οι απλοί αγρότες δεν ήθελαν να χαρίσουν τους καρπούς της σκληρής δουλειάς τους για το τίποτα, γινόταν όλο και πιο δύσκολο για αυτούς να ταΐσουν τους εαυτούς τους και τις οικογένειές τους.

Τέτοιες ενέργειες των Μπολσεβίκων προκάλεσαν δυσαρέσκεια στον τοπικό πληθυσμό: ήδη από τα τέλη Ιανουαρίου 1919, στα εδάφη όπου σχηματίστηκε ο σοβιετικός μηχανισμός, έγινε αισθητή η αύξηση της πολιτικής έντασης και η σταδιακή απώλεια των θέσεων τους από τους Μπολσεβίκους, η οποία οδήγησε σε διώξεις της αντιπολίτευσης και συστηματικές «εκκαθαρίσεις» των Σοβιετικών. Σύντομα ξεκίνησαν οι εξεγέρσεις των αγροτών. Τέτοιοι επαναστάτες ονομάζονταν «Πράσινος Στρατός» γιατί συχνά χρησιμοποιούσαν το πράσινο χρώμα και διάφορους συνδυασμούς με αυτό στα πανό τους, καθώς και επειδή συχνά κρύβονταν στα δάση. Το πράσινο κίνημα έγινε πιο διαδεδομένο κατά τα έτη 1919-1921 ως αυθόρμητη αντίσταση της αγροτιάς στα φιλοτμήματα, που με όπλα άρπαξαν «πλεονάσματα» ψωμιού χωρίς αποζημίωση, στις καταστολές και τις μεθόδους διαχείρισης που ενστάλαξαν οι Μπολσεβίκοι στα χωριά.

Στους «πράσινους» περιλαμβάνονται και ο αντάρτικος στρατός του Μαχνό και οι αντάρτες του Ταμπόφ. Με μια ευρύτερη έννοια, οι ένοπλοι σχηματισμοί που δεν ήταν ούτε λευκοί ούτε κόκκινοι ονομάζονταν «Πράσινος Στρατός». Για παράδειγμα, ο Λευκορώσος στρατηγός Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovych, ο οποίος πολέμησε πρώτα στο πλευρό των κόκκινων και μετά στο πλευρό των λευκών, αποκαλούσε τον εαυτό του πράσινο. Ή ο Ουκρανός Ataman Zeleny (D.Terpylo), ο οποίος πολέμησε στο πλευρό του UNR ενάντια στο Hetmanate, μετά το οποίο προσπάθησε να ενωθεί με τους Μπολσεβίκους ενάντια στο UNR, αλλά στη συνέχεια άλλαξε γνώμη και άρχισε να διεξάγει ανταρτοπόλεμο ενάντια στους κόκκινους και του λευκούς. Ανάλογα με την τάση συγκεκριμένων πράσινων σχηματισμών να υποστηρίζουν τη μία ή την άλλη επίσημη πλευρά, εμφανίστηκαν λευκοπράσινο ή κόκκινο-πράσινο.

Αν και αυτοί οι χαρακτηρισμοί μπορούσαν να καταγράψουν μόνο μια προσωρινή, στιγμιαία τακτική γραμμή ή συμπεριφορά που υπαγορεύεται από τις περιστάσεις, και όχι μια σαφή πολιτική θέση.

Οι εξεγέρσεις των αγροτών είχαν έντονες εθνικές και περιφερειακές διαφορές, πολλές ιδεολογικές αποχρώσεις, αλλά προέβαλαν μια σειρά από τα ακόλουθα ενιαία αιτήματα:
1. Μαύρη αναδιανομή κοινοτικής γης.
2. Το τέλος της διανομής αγαθών και το μονοπώλιο του κράτους στα σιτηρά και άλλα τρόφιμα, επιστροφή στην ελεύθερη τοπική αγορά.
3. Ελεύθερα συμβούλια, δηλ. αυτοδιοίκηση. Αυτό σήμαινε συμβούλια χωρίς κομμουνιστές παντού.
4. Δεν επιβλήθηκαν άνωθεν κρατικές φάρμες και κομμούνες, που συχνά ταυτίζονταν με την εισαγωγή νέας δουλοπαροικίας.
5. Σεβασμός στη θρησκεία, στα τοπικά και εθνικά ήθη και έθιμα.
Τα βασικά συνθήματα των «πράσινων» ήταν:
- "Χτυπάμε τα κόκκινα μέχρι να ασπρίσουν, χτυπάμε τα άσπρα μέχρι να ροδοκοκκινίσουν"
- "Θέλουμε κομμουνισμό χωρίς μπολσεβίκους!"
- "Για Σοβιέτ χωρίς Μπολσεβίκους!"
"Μακριά η κομμούνα και υπέρ της διανομής!”

Οι αγροτικές μονάδες διοικούνταν από αταμάν, οι οποίοι ήταν κυρίως ντόπιοι αγρότες, αλλά είχαν στρατιωτική εμπειρία κατά τον Πρώτο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο. Τα ανταρτικά τμήματα συχνά μετανάστευαν από το μέτωπο στο χωριό και αντίστροφα, γίνονταν επιδρομές την άνοιξη-καλοκαίρι και το φθινόπωρο, για τον χειμώνα οι χωρικοί διασκορπίζονταν στα σπίτια τους. Γενικά, τα αποσπάσματα είχαν έναν μικρό μόνιμο πυρήνα από τους πιο έμπειρους επαναστάτες, στους οποίους ένας ή ο άλλος αριθμός αγροτών εντάχθηκε αν χρειαζόταν. Προϊόντα διατροφής και ζωοτροφές για άλογα αγοράζονταν από αγρότες σε τιμές αγοράς, χρήματα για αυτό ζητήθηκαν από τους Μπολσεβίκους. Τα σιτηρά και η ζάχαρη ανταλλάσσονταν ή δίνονταν δωρεάν στους αγρότες, τα κουρασμένα άλογα άλλαζαν δωρεάν και αρκετά συχνά, γεγονός που επέτρεπε στους «πράσινους» να παραμείνουν πολύ ευέλικτοι. Το 1919, υπήρχαν τουλάχιστον 20.000 στρατιώτες με 7 κανόνια και 95 πολυβόλα στις ανταρτικές μονάδες της Αριστερής Όχθης της Ουκρανίας. Το 1920, ο αριθμός των επαναστατών τριπλασιάστηκε. Όλοι οι σημαντικοί ηγέτες του επαναστατικού κινήματος έδρασαν ανεξάρτητα, δεν τους ένωνε ένα κοινό πρόγραμμα, σχέδιο ή τακτική.

Η ΕΞΕΓΕΡΣΗ ΤΟΥ TAMBOV

Χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα πράσινης αντίστασης είναι η εξέγερση των αγροτών στην επαρχία Tambov. Η περιοχή Tambov ήταν η πιο «αγροτική» επαρχία, οι κάτοικοι της πόλης αποτελούσαν μόνο το 8% του πληθυσμού και η βιομηχανία ήταν ελάχιστα ανεπτυγμένη. Ακόμη και στην αρχή της επανάστασης, η αγροτιά κατέλαβε τα κτήματα των γαιοκτημόνων και τα μοίρασε μεταξύ τους. Αλλά οι αγρότες δεν μπορούσαν να απολαύσουν τους καρπούς αυτής της γης, οι Μπολσεβίκοι πήραν το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του ψωμιού στο μέτωπο λόγω της έλλειψης. «Έδωσαν τη γη, μα εσύ αφαιρείς το ψωμί μέχρι το τελευταίο σιτάρι: να τραφείς με τέτοια γη! Ένας άνθρωπος έχει μόνο έναν ορίζοντα από τη γη», είπε ένας από τους αγρότες στον κομμουνιστή Ντβάνοφ. Η επαρχία Ταμπόφ ήταν «ψωμί», άρα υπέφερε όλο το βάρος της επισιτιστικής δικτατορίας.

Ήδη τον Οκτώβριο του 1918, 50 prodzagons (5.000 στρατιώτες) δρούσαν στην επαρχία, καμία άλλη επαρχία δεν γνώρισε τέτοια κλίμακα κατασχέσεων. Η περιοχή Tambov μετατράπηκε στο επίκεντρο της αγροτικής αναταραχής. Το 1920, η περιοχή Tambov επλήγη από ξηρασία και μαζεύτηκαν μόνο 12 εκατομμύρια λίβρες ψωμιού. Εν τω μεταξύ, η διανομή της παραγωγής δεν μειώθηκε, φτάνοντας τα 11,5 εκατομμύρια poods. Ήδη τον Αύγουστο ξεκίνησε εξέγερση στο χωριό Καμιάνκα, όταν οι χωρικοί αρνήθηκαν να δώσουν ψωμί. Αφοπλίστηκαν 65 «πρόδρομοι».

Η φωτιά της εξέγερσης εξαπλώθηκε σε όλη την επαρχία με μια ευκινησία ακατανόητη για τις τοπικές αρχές, γιατί πίστευαν ότι είχαν να κάνουν με συμμορίες ληστών, και όχι με λαϊκή αγανάκτηση. Ήδη τον Σεπτέμβριο, ο αριθμός των επαναστατών έφτασε τους 4.000 ένοπλους αγρότες και άλλους 10.000 αγρότες με δίκρανα και δρεπάνια. Την εξέγερση ηγήθηκε ο πρώην αρχηγός της αστυνομίας Α. Αντόνοφ. Οι αντάρτες επιτέθηκαν σε μονάδες των Μπολσεβίκων, συνέλαβαν στρατιώτες του Κόκκινου Στρατού, αφαίρεσαν τουφέκια, πολυβόλα, κανόνια και άλογα. Μερικοί Κόκκινοι αρνήθηκαν να επιτεθούν στους χωρικούς και πήγαν στο πλευρό τους, άλλοι αιχμαλωτίστηκαν.

Εν τω μεταξύ, ήδη τον Νοέμβριο, οι αντάρτες του Tambov ένωσαν όλες τις δυνάμεις τους υπό μια ενιαία διοίκηση και δημιούργησαν τον Ενωμένο Παρτιζικό Στρατό της Περιφέρειας Tambov, ανέπτυξαν το σύνταγμά τους, τη στρατιωτική τους στολή και τα διακριτικά τους. Δημιουργήθηκε επίσης η «Ένωση Εργαζομένων Αγροτών», η οποία ασχολήθηκε με την ταραχή άλλων αγροτών. Η εξέγερση έφτασε στο μέγιστο εύρος της μέχρι τον Ιανουάριο-Φεβρουάριο του 1921, όταν ο αριθμός των ανταρτών έφτασε τις 50 χιλιάδες άτομα, ενωμένοι σε δύο στρατούς (αποτελούμενοι από 14 πεζούς, 5 συντάγματα ιππικού και 1 ξεχωριστή ταξιαρχία με 25 πολυβόλα και 5 κανόνια).

Οι αντάρτες κατέστρεψαν 60 κρατικές φάρμες, πήραν τον έλεγχο σχεδόν ολόκληρης της επαρχίας Tambov (μόνο οι πόλεις παρέμειναν στα χέρια των Μπολσεβίκων), παρέλυσαν την κυκλοφορία στον σιδηρόδρομο Ryazan-Ural και απέκρουσαν επιτυχώς τις προσπάθειες των μπολσεβίκων στρατευμάτων να εισβάλουν στο έδαφος της εξέγερση, προκαλώντας τους βαριές απώλειες. Τέτοιες ενέργειες των αγροτών ανάγκασαν την κομμουνιστική ηγεσία να σκεφτεί την ακύρωση της πολιτικής του «στρατιωτικού κομμουνισμού» και τη μετάβαση στην ΝΕΠ.

Στις 12 Φεβρουαρίου 1921, με βάση την απόφαση του Λαϊκού Επιτροπείου Τροφίμων, η εφαρμογή της διανομής τροφίμων σταμάτησε στην επικράτεια της επαρχίας Tambov και τον Μάρτιο του 1921, το 10ο Συνέδριο του RCP (b) αποφάσισε να να ακυρώσει τη διανομή τροφίμων στη χώρα, αντί της οποίας θεσπίστηκε πάγιος φόρος τροφίμων. Αυτό στέρησε από τους αγρότες το κίνητρο να συνεχίσουν τον αγώνα, γεγονός που έκανε τους εξεγερμένους ευάλωτους.

Στις 20 Μαΐου 1921, η Προσωρινή Λαϊκή Δημοκρατία της Παρτιζάνικης Επικράτειας του Ταμπόφ (με το δικαίωμα σύγκλησης Συντακτικής Συνέλευσης) ανακηρύχθηκε από τον Τοκμάκοφ, ο οποίος ηγήθηκε της διοίκησης των παρτιζάνων και του STS και του τοπικού πληθυσμού σε μια συγκέντρωση στο χωριό του Karai-Saltykov, στην περιοχή Kirsanovsky. Ένα από τα πιο ενεργά μέλη της αντίστασης, ο αγρότης Shendyapin, ορίστηκε ως επικεφαλής της δημοκρατίας. Όμως οι μάχες με τους Κόκκινους συνεχίστηκαν, η επαρχία είχε μεγάλη αξία «ψωμιού», οπότε οι Μπολσεβίκοι δεν επρόκειτο να την αφήσουν ήσυχη. Πυροβολικό, αεροπορία, τεθωρακισμένα οχήματα και χημικά όπλα - χλώριο E56 χρησιμοποιήθηκαν κατά των ανταρτών. Η απόφαση να χρησιμοποιηθούν αέρια για να «καπνίσουν» τα αποσπάσματα των ανταρτών από τα δάση ελήφθη στις 9 Ιουνίου 1921 σε συνεδρίαση της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής υπό την προεδρία του V. A. Antonov-Ovsienko. Παράλληλα, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν βλήματα με δακρυγόνο χλωροπικρίνη. Η απόφαση να χρησιμοποιηθούν αέρια για να «καπνίσουν» τα αποσπάσματα των ανταρτών από τα δάση ελήφθη στις 9 Ιουνίου 1921 σε συνεδρίαση της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής υπό την προεδρία του V. A. Antonov-Ovsienko. Παράλληλα, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν βλήματα με δακρυγόνο χλωροπικρίνη. Η απόφαση να χρησιμοποιηθούν αέρια για να «καπνίσουν» τα αποσπάσματα των ανταρτών από τα δάση ελήφθη στις 9 Ιουνίου 1921 σε συνεδρίαση της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής της Κεντρικής Επιτροπής υπό την προεδρία του V. A. Antonov-Ovsienko. Παράλληλα, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν βλήματα με δακρυγόνο χλωροπικρίνη.

Έχουν καταγραφεί τρεις περιπτώσεις χρήσης τους. Ειδικότερα, στο ημερολόγιο μάχης της μεραρχίας πυροβολικού της ταξιαρχίας της Στρατιωτικής Περιφέρειας Zavolga, καταγράφεται ότι στις 13 Ιουλίου 1921, δαπανήθηκαν στη μάχη: χειροβομβίδες τριών ιντσών – 160, σκάγια – 69, χημικές χειροβομβίδες. – 47. Στις 3 Αυγούστου, ο διοικητής της μπαταρίας του Πυροβολικού Πυροβολικού του Μπέλγκοροντ ανέφερε στον αρχηγό πυροβολικού του 6ου τμήματος μάχης, ότι κατά τη διάρκεια του βομβαρδισμού του νησιού στη λίμνη Κίπετς, εκτοξεύτηκαν 65 σκάγια, 49 χειροβομβίδες και 59 χημικές οβίδες. Σύμφωνα με ορισμένες μελέτες που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν από τους Μπολσεβίκους τον Μάιο-Ιούνιο του 1921, οι χημικές οβίδες οδήγησαν στο θάνατο όχι μόνο των ανταρτών, αλλά και του άμαχου πληθυσμού. Μέχρι το καλοκαίρι του 1921, οι κύριες δυνάμεις των ανταρτών ηττήθηκαν. Στις αρχές Ιουλίου, η ηγεσία της εξέγερσης εξέδωσε διαταγή, σύμφωνα με την οποία οι μάχιμες μονάδες προτάθηκαν να χωριστούν σε ομάδες, κρυφτείτε στα δάση και πηγαίνετε σε κομματικές ενέργειες ή σκορπίστε στα σπίτια. Η εξέγερση διαλύθηκε σε μια σειρά από μικρά απομονωμένα κελιά και οι αντάρτες επέστρεψαν στις τακτικές των ανταρτών, που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν ενεργά μέχρι τον Αύγουστο του 1921. Οι χωριστές αψιμαχίες στην περιοχή Tambov συνεχίστηκαν μέχρι το καλοκαίρι του 1922, σταδιακά να μηδενίζονται.

Δυστυχώς, οι αγροτικές μονάδες διαλύθηκαν, άρχισαν να αλληλεπιδρούν ενεργά μόνο στο τέλος του εμφυλίου πολέμου. Το πράσινο κίνημα ήταν πρώτα απ' όλα μια απάντηση, μια προσπάθεια προσαρμογής της ζωής του σε συνθήκες κρατικής επιθετικότητας. Οι μαζικές πράσινες διαδηλώσεις ήταν μια ισχυρή δύναμη, αλλά είχαν αδύναμες οργανωτικές δυνατότητες. Οι αντάρτες ήταν επίσης ελάχιστα οπλισμένοι, χωρίς συχνά τουφέκια και πυρομαχικά. Αυτό οδήγησε στην τελική καταστολή των αντισοβιετικών αγροτικών διαδηλώσεων από τους Μπολσεβίκους. Αλλά δεν συνέβη αμέσως, οι αγρότες αντιστάθηκαν και ο Πράσινος Στρατός καταπνίγηκε εντελώς μόνο το 1924, αν και ορισμένες περιοχές άντεξαν μέχρι τα τέλη της δεκαετίας του ’20.

Το αντάρτικο κίνημα των «πράσινων» ήταν μια σημαντική δύναμη που μπορούσε να αντιταχθεί στους μπολσεβίκους, οι αντάρτες μπόρεσαν να υπονομεύσουν σημαντικά τις δυνάμεις τους και επιπλέον να νικήσουν το κίνημα των λευκών και τους ξένους επεμβατικούς.

*Το κείμενο πάρθηκε από τη σελίδα του συντρόφου Παναγιώτη Γιαννικάκη στο Facebook.

This is a response to a challenge by Tridni Valka, a Czech anarchist group. They denounced an article of mine. I had defended anarchists who support the Ukrainian people in the Ukraine-Russian war.

Bakunin and other anarchists have supported oppressed nations and national self-determination, as part of their revolutionary program, as I demonstrate.

The Debate Goes On

Alex Alder wrote an article, “British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever.” (Alder 2023) He was unhappy that many British, Eastern European, and other anarchists were supporting the Ukrainian people against the imperialist Russian invasion. I argued against his view in, “Are Anarchists Giving in to War Fever? In Defense of Anarchists Who Support the Ukrainian People.” (Price 2023)

My article was republished on the website of the Czech Anarchist Federation. Then Tridni Valka (Class War), another Czech anarchist grouping, wrote an angry response, denouncing my (and the Anarchist Federation’s) support for the Ukrainian people’s resistance. (Tridni Valka 2023) “The delay in our brief response can only be explained by the fact that it took us a long time to recover from [Wayne Price’s] text…” This is my response, in which I will try to cover key aspects of their argument.

Bakunin’s Views on National Self-Determination

Central to T.V.’s argument is a denial that anarchists might support any oppressed people or nation. “That ‘anarchists’ operate with the concept of nation is new to us! … Anarchists are opposed to nationhood and its material consequences such as the nation-state [and] national self-determination….Revolutionary anarchists have always held anti-national positions….”

This statement is factually untrue. It confuses the nation (community, people, country) and the nation-state (national government, with its ideology of nationalism) which anarchists have indeed always opposed. I have previously written an article on the anarchist Errico Malatesta, comrade of Bakunin and Kropotkin. (Price 2022) I demonstrated that he had supported the national rebellions and self-determination of oppressed peoples, even as he opposed wars between imperialist states (particularly World War I). But what was the opinion of Michael Bakunin, among the first revolutionary anarchists?

In his selection of Bakunin’s writings, Sam Dolgoff writes, "Bakunin argues that the nation-state is not a natural community. He defines the contrast between Nationality, ones natural love for the place and the people...and Patriotism, the absolute power of the state over its native subjects and conquered national minorities." (1980; p. 401)

Then he quotes Bakunin: “Nationality, like individuality, is a natural fact. It denotes the inalienable right of individuals, groups, associations, and regions to their own way of life. And this way of life is the product of a long historical development [a confluence of human beings with a common history, language, and a common cultural background]. And this is why *I will always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities struggling to liberate themselves* from the domination of the state.” (Dolgoff, 1980, p. 401. My emphasis.)

By “the state” in this passage, he refers to the foreign state which dominates the oppressed nationality. By “nationality...is a natural fact,” he means, not that nationality is a biological fact, but that it is created mostly by unplanned, unpurposive, social history.
Bakunin also wrote, “Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principle of freedom.” (quoted in Bonanno 1990, pp. 20–21)

Also, "Each individual, each association, commune, or province, each region and nation, has the absolute right to determine its own fate, to associate with others or not, to ally itself with whomever it will, or break any alliance....The right to unite freely and [to] separate with the same freedom is the most important of all political rights, without which confederation will always be disguised centralization.” (quoted in Guerin, Anarchism, 1970, p. 67)

In his book on anarchism, Daniel Guerin interpreted this statement: “True internationalism rests on self-determination, which implies the right of secession..” (p. 67) Guerin goes so far as to suggest that “Lenin… adopted this concept from Bakunin.” This is unlikely, since Lenin had little regard for anarchist theory. The concept was already widely known by that time.

As T.V. recognizes, the right of national self-determination was a bourgeois-democratic demand, created by capitalism, along with such demands as free speech, freedom of association, land to the peasants, the right to bear arms, election of officials, and so on. However, capitalism never fully granted these demands, especially now in its epoch of decline. They can only be consistently won through a revolution of the workers and oppressed. Therefore the fight for bourgeois-democratic demands has revolutionary implications in our time.

“For Bakunin, then, the achievement of national liberation had to be linked to the broader struggle for an international revolution. If nationality was separate from the state…it did not need the state for emancipation….” (van den Walt & Schmidt 2009; p. 64)

Nor was Lenin’s concept of national self-determination exactly the same as that of anarchists. Lenin argued that self-determination would result in voluntary merger into a world state which was homogeneous, integrated, and centralized. Anarchists aim for a decentralized, regionalized, and pluralistic world, with peoples connecting through networks and federations.

It should be clear that Bakunin (also Malatesta, and Dolgoff and Guerin) would not have agreed with T.V. that all “Anarchists are opposed to nationhood and…have always held anti-national positions…,” including opposition to national self-determination. Opposition to nationhood and anti-nationality is the opinion of T.V., but it is not the “anarchist” tradition.

This is summarized in Zoe Barker’s recent overview of anarchism: “For anarchists, this commitment to universal human solidarity entailed an opposition to imperialism and colonialism and the support of anti-colonial national liberation movements, such as those in Cuba, India, and Ireland. According to Maximoff, ‘the anarchists demand the liberation of all colonies and support every struggle for national independence….’ “ (2023; pp. 109-110)

She follows with the important addition, “This support included the belief that the main goal of national liberation movements—emancipation—could only be achieved through the methods of anarchism, rather than the establishment of a new state.” (same)

That is, the program of “nationalism” could lead to a formally independent state (as it did in Cuba, India, and Ireland), with its own flag, its own currency and postage stamps, its own president, army, police, and capitalists. The nation’s workers are still being exploited. True emancipation from the imperialist-dominated world market and great-power politics, will require an international working class revolution. Anarchists participate in national liberation struggles in order to spread this awareness and work toward this goal. As Lucien van der Walt writes, many anarchists seek

“…to participate in national liberation struggles in order to shape them, win the battle of ideas, [and] displace nationalism with a politics of national liberation through class struggle….Nationalism is only one current in national liberation or anti-imperialist struggles…National liberation struggles could develop into a variety of outcomes.” (van den Walt & Schmidt 2009; pp. 310-11)

I present all these quotations and citations, not because I think that Bakunin and other anarchists were always correct—which I do not. I am trying to refute the smugly ignorant claim that all “Anarchists are opposed to nationhood and…national self-determination.”

During the War

In summary, (1) revolutionary anarchists support the wars of oppressed nations against imperialists. These are not the same as wars where both sides are imperialist. (2) revolutionary anarchists are always in opposition to states, even including the states of oppressed nations, advocating popular revolutions against them.

This raises the question of what anarchists should be doing when a national war is raging (as in Ukraine versus Russian imperialist aggression) but they are too weak as yet for there to be a revolution against the state.

In my paper (the one which T.V. took so long to “recover from”), I used the example of the Spanish Civil War/Revolution (1936-39). The issue was not national self-determination but a fascist-military attempt to overthrow the established bourgeois-democratic government. The government was run by a “Popular Front” coalition of Socialists, Stalinists, liberal politicians, and the main anarcho-syndicalist organizations (the CNT union and the FAI anarchist federation). While fighting the fascist armies, the Popular Front proceded to re-build the weakened democratic capitalist state.

This policy was opposed by a revolutionary wing of the anarchists and syndicalists. (Evans 2020) One part of this wing was the Friends of Durruti Group. They called on the anarchist organizations to quit the government, to promote federations of self-managed industries and farms, to expropriate the capitalists and big landholders, and to federate workers and farmers councils and unions into a central body to run the war. Meanwhile by propaganda and action, they sought to persuade the majority of the working class to overturn the Popular Front regime and to make a revolution which could effectively defeat the fascist forces.

But they did not call on the workers to quit the armed forces which were fighting the fascist armies. After all, they criticized the Popular Front government for many things, but not for fighting the fascist military! (Similarly, anarchists should condemn the Ukrainian state for many things, but not for resisting the Russian invasion.)

Nor would the workers have understood a call for abandoning the army. They would have seen it as proposing surrender. (Similarly today, if anarchists told the Ukrainian workers to stop fighting because the Ukrainian army was organized by a bourgeois national state, the workers would rightly see this as a call to surrender to the Russians.)

The Friends of Durruti wrote, “There must be no collaboration with capitalism whether outside the bourgeois state or from within the government itself. As producers our place is in the unions….[But] class struggle is no obstacle to fight on in the battlefields and working in the war factories.

“….Revolutionary workers must not shoulder official posts nor establish themselves in the ministries. For as long as the war lasts, collaboration is permissible—on the battlefield, in the trenches, on the parapets, and in productive labor in the rearguard.” (Friends of Durruti Group 1978; pp. 35 & 38)

In fact, none of the Ukrainian anarchists, most of whom support the war effort, have joined the government, joined Zelensky’s party, called for votes for his party, or participated in the government in any other way.

T.V. disputes my understanding of the Friends of Durruti (FoD). “Wayne Price…didn’t understand their critique of the united front in the least.” (Actually the FoD did not critique the “united front”—a coalition of workers’ organizations. They advocated an alliance of revolutionary organizations. What they opposed was the “Popular Front”, the coalition of workers’ parties with capitalist parties as well as Stalinists.) T.V. points out that the FoD did not only oppose governmental collaboration of anarchists with political parties. They also opposed anarchists working outside of government to further capitalist aims—the effort to rebuild the bourgeois democratic Spanish state. I did not say otherwise.

But T.V. goes on to criticize the FoD themselves. “The Friends of Durruti did not demand the withdrawal of the anarchists from the front, but this proved to be a decisive error….” But the FoD did not advocate that anarchist fighters passively carry out the program of the collaborationists. They tried to create a revolutionary strategy of action to lead to revolution. Their “decisive error” was in not organizing soon enough to build a revolutionary alternative to the reformist leadership of the anarchists and socialists.
Class Reductionism

The basic method of T.V. is that of class reductionism, a crude (and illegitimate) version of Marxism. I take the essence of anarchism to be opposition to all forms of domination. Exploitation of the modern working class by the bourgeoisie, integrated with the state, is central to all oppression. It supports all non-class forms of oppression, and is, in turn, supported by them. This includes the oppression of women, African-Americans and other People of Color, LGBTQ people, people with “disabilities,” youth, as well as (our topic) national oppression. But while class exploitation overlaps with all other oppressions, they are not reducible to class exploitation. They also have their own dynamics.

But to T.V., the only oppression worth considering is the proletariat’s exploitation by capitalism. All others are distractions. T.V. and I agree that the working class needs to overcome its divisions into women and men, African Americans and Euro-Americans, straights and LGBTQ people, Czechs and Slovaks, Ukrainians and Russians, etc. These divisions cannot be overcome by ignoring them but only by defending the needs and freedoms of everyone, especially the most oppressed, the most exploited, including peoples facing the terror of imperialist aggression.

T.V. accuses the Czech Anarchist Federation and myself as being partially “in the camp of the warmongers who support the mutual massacre of proletarians in Ukraine.” This shows how far they have deviated from reality, in the service of their schematic abstractions. One side has chosen to make war. That is the imperialist state of Russia. It has invaded and occupied Ukraine, blown up its villages and cities, massacred its inhabitants, raped its women, tortured soldiers and civilians, kidnapped children, risked nuclear accidents at reactors, and sought to wipe out the Ukrainians as a culturally distinct people. The Ukrainian people have had the temerity to resist, which I suppose makes them “mutual warmongers” to T.V.—and to the Russian state. There is a French saying, “The animal is vicious. When attacked it defends itself.”

The anarchist-communists have not (yet?) persuaded the Ukrainian workers to overthrow capitalism and the state. So (unfortunately) the nationwide resistance is organized and led by the bourgeois state—although there is much bottom-up voluntary organizing. Lacking its own arms, the state has gotten military aid from Western imperialists. These do not really care about such things as democracy or national self-determination. They are out to expand their influence and weaken their Russian rival. But the Ukrainians have the right to take arms from whomever will offer them, rather than be crushed. Yet they should not be too trusting of the US and NATO, which would betray them in a breath, if it seemed to be in the imperialists’ interests.

I would not advise Ukrainian anarchists on their immediate tactics. But their overall strategy should have two interconnected goals. One is to drive out the Russians and defend the independence of the Ukrainians. The other is to spread the program of anarchism among the workers, soldiers, and other Ukrainians, with the eventual goal of an anti-state, anti-capitalist, revolution—by the working class and all oppressed, internationally. Even now, there is a need to oppose the government’s neo-liberal austerity and union-busting and to oppose nationalism in general and the far-right in particular.

The left, and not just anarchists, is deeply divided over the Ukraine-Russian war. The fundamental issue is whether to be on the side of the workers and other Ukrainians who are fighting for their very lives and independence, or whether to side with imperial elites offering only domination and destruction.

References

Alder, Alex (2023). “British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever.”
https://anarchistnews.org/comment/51586#comment-51586
;

Baker, Zoe (2023). Means and Ends; The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States. Chico CA: AK Press.

Bonanno (1990). Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle.

Dolgoff, Sam (ed.) (1980) Bakunin On Anarchism. Montreal CAN: Black Rose Books.

Evans, Danny (2020). Revolution and the State; Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War 1936—1939. Chico CA: AK Press.

Friends of Durruti Group (1978/1935). Towards a Fresh Revolution.
Sanday Orkney: Cienfuegos Press.

Guerin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism. NY: Monthly Review Press.

Price, Wayne (2022). “Malatesta on War and National Self-Determination” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32666 search_text=Wayne+Price

Price, Wayne (2023). “Are Anarchists Giving in to War Fever? In Defense of Anarchists Who Support the Ukrainian People.”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32731

Tridni Valka (May 2023) “What’s New in ‘Anarchism’? National Self-determination and the Coincidence of Interests with Capital?!”
https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/whats-new-in-anarchism-national-self-determination-and-the-coincidence-of-interests-with-capital/

van der Walt, Lucien, & Schmidt, Michael (2009). Black Flame; The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. Oakland CA: AK Press.

*written for Anarkismo.net

In this conversation with Joe Scheip, coordinator of Anarchist Political Ecology, Javier Sethness Castro, author of Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography, provides a new exploration of the life and art of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. This book, just published on Routledge Mental Health, considers how the artist’s underappreciated bisexuality influenced his anarchist and anti-militarist politics. The conversation contemplates queerness as a concept, based in part on Freudian psychoanalysis, and reviews Tolstoy’s same-sex attachments, from childhood to old age. Lev Nikolaevich’s contradictions and hypocrisy, as a landlord, a sexist, and a difficult husband to Sofia Tolstaya, are covered. In terms of current affairs, Tolstoy’s vision of free love and universal peace is contrasted with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fascist crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community and genocidal wars on Syria and Ukraine.

From an online conversation hosted by the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 22 March 2023

Lev Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy, Count Tolstoy, or any other of the many names and titles of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, was as diverse in being as in his many names. Complex and sometimes hypocritical, Lev was not just known in his time as a great author and poet, but also as a visionary and a revolutionary in ethics and politics: a believer in Christian anarchism. He challenged power, in all its forms.

Lev Tolstoy lived from 1828 to 1910. He was contemporaneous in his own country with Russian Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III, and later in life, with Nicholas II. He was born into some wealth and rank. Russia at the time was a quasi-feudal capitalist society, with deep disparity in social classes, the scourge of imperial rule, and the horrors of serfdom.

Tolstoy’s life has many epochs: first, a young adulthood that included eventful and traumatizing experiences in the military; then, Tolstoy the great author, writing best sellers even in his own time. Also, Tolstoy the social experimenter: using his homebase Yasnaya Polyana as a springboard for radical experimentation in education, eating, and social ranking. This was a place where holy fools, mystics, seekers and the like would come and stay, to attempt to creat new worlds—much to his wife Sofia Tolstaya's chagrin.

And we shouldn’t leave out Sofia here—as Tolstoy did, deciding to meditate amongst the honeybees during the pregnancy of their first child. Sofia should be credited, amongst many other things, with the countless hours spent copywriting and editing Tolstoy’s work—invisible labor, much like the labor of mothering their 13 children.

And Tolstoy’s hypocrisies and contradictions only continue from there. Yet he seemed to be fully aware. He writes in The Kingdom of God is Within You:

“We are all brothers—yet every morning a brother or sister must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them… We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself belief in, and which only serves to hinder men from understanding true Christianity… The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency. The more delicate a man’s conscience is, the more painful this contradiction is to him.”

And while there are many things to examine in Lev’s life, Javier’s project—Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (2023)—focuses on uncovering the both overt and subliminal queerness in Tolstoy’s life and work, and to link his erotic dissidence with his anarchist politics.

Was Tolstoy queer? In the sense of his lack of integration with mainstream society, the answer can only be a resounding yes. Was Tolstoy homosexual? The answer is more complicated. There are, however, many things that point to Tolstoy’s homosexual and homosocial gravitations, including his own words in his diary and Sofia’s later words, asking forgiveness for being the barrier to his encounters with other men.

Along with Javier’s historical, psychological, and social commentary, the book includes a queer reading of War and Peace, which unveils homosexual and double entendres galore.

On queer and queerness: what drove your interest in studying this under-researched area of Tolstoy’s life?

My mother María Castro, who is an art historian, would often tell me in childhood that art is usually autobiographical. The filmmaker Federico Fellini agreed. Take Ernest Hemingway or George Orwell’s volunteering in the Spanish Civil War, which yielded such classic books as For Whom the Bell Tolls and Homage to Catalonia. Or consider Steven Spielberg’s films—Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan—and Octavia Butler’s novels, The Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. In much the same way, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s art is highly autobiographical. The count drew from personal and family experiences to create most of his best-known artworks, from the “Sevastopol Sketches” to The Cossacks, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” and Hadji Murat, among others. So when I write that queerness permeates Tolstoyan art, I am also suggesting that this artistic queerness represents autobiographical disclosure, as I engage in a kind of self-analysis—to see how queerness influences my own life, along with Tolstoy’s biography and artworks, plus the human condition.

Initially, I had simply planned to analyze Tolstoy’s artistic critique of war and militarism, which is realistic, humanistic, and anti-authoritarian, while considering some of the implications for left-wing internationalism today, especially in light of the resurgence of fascism and neo-Stalinism. But I was struck in my readings by the palpable homoeroticism that pervades Tolstoyan art, so I refocused the project into a psychoanalytical examination of the links between the artist's erotic dissidence and his anarchist politics: in other words, of his queer anarchism.

Besides Tolstoy’s writings and biographies, this journey led me to research, among others, Bruce Perry’s findings about Malcolm X’s youthful gay relationships, Edward Carpenter’s progressive studies of homosexuality, Russian and Ukrainian LGBTQ history, the lesbian attractions that Tolstoy’s wife Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya includes in her own art, the lesbian and bisexual women’s participation in the Easter Rising of 1916, comrade-love in the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution, and what the late Chris Chitty describes as the “ancient association of same-sex eroticism with the hatred of tyranny,” which dates back at least to classical Greece.

With time, I noticed that intimate emotional bonds with other men were constants in Tolstoy’s “psychogeography,” both in terms of his life and his imagination, as expressed artistically. Besides including a brief review, in Perry’s style, of the subject’s homoerotic life, Queer Tolstoy features Freudian, Frommian, and Marcusean lenses, in the sense that I apply Sigmund Freud’s concepts of infantile sexuality, universal bisexuality, and polymorphous perversity; Erich Fromm’s critique of necrophilia and authoritarianism and simultaneous promotion of meaning and freedom; and Herbert Marcuse’s championing of Eros, or the life drive, to interpret Tolstoy’s life and art within its political and historical context.

Of these concepts, let me briefly explain Freud’s ideas about universal bisexuality and polymorphous perversity. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, hypothesized that we are all bisexual, in the sense of both integrating male and female elements, and having pansexual attractions. (By the way, Charles Darwin would appear to agree with the former point, considering his view that “every man & woman is hermaphrodite.”) In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Freud proposes that human beings are sexual from birth, and that our libido (or sex-drive) expresses itself in “polymorphous-perverse” ways. I for one believe that our attachments and attractions manifest in wide-ranging, kaleidoscopic, and, yes, polymorphous fashion. So, while Freud and many of his followers were not necessarily friendly with the LGBTQ community—two of the notable exceptions here being Marcuse and the anarchist psychiatrist Otto Gross—I believe that some Freudian concepts can still be useful to us.

Moreover, by writing Queer Tolstoy, I sought to resist the heterosexist presumption that LGBTQ people and experience should remain invisible, together with the Russian State’s aggressive homonegativity. This is despite its official boosting and opportunistic use of some of Tolstoy’s lyricism, regardless of his excommunication by Russian Orthodox Church. President Vladimir Putin’s queerphobia is crystallized in the criminalization of “non-traditional” sexual relations and gender presentations—previously limited to minors, but now extended to the entire population. The Russian LGBT Network has been officially branded a “foreign agent.” This is not to mention genocidal crimes committed against the LGBTQ community in Chechnya, under Putin's satrap Ramzan Kadyrov.

I struggle with the word queer, with its history as a pejorative, but preserving the word queer seems crucial in counter balancing the weaponization of terms like traditional family values, and other, related terms that used to suppress sensuality, art, love, and new ways of being. Tell me about your reaction to the term queer? Why do you think it is fitting word to describe Tolstoy?

I hear that concern, although I suspect that there might be a generational gap here. A recent letter to the editors of the Guardian, apparently written by a 55-year old gay man, requested that the paper not use the “Q-word” because he found it “insulting and derogatory.” By contrast, the queer identity resonates more among younger people from the LGBTQ community, of which I am a part.

In the book, I use “queer” to refer both to “sexual deviance and freely chosen LGBTQ+ desire and experience,” as well as the intersection of LGBT experience and political radicalism. Going back to Freud and Marcuse, I believe “queerness” to be a synonym for “polymorphous perversity” and Eros. Along these lines, I emphasize the “lesbian continuum” hypothesized by Adrienne Rich, together with Freud’s ideas about a parallel gay continuum tying together the homosocial, homophilic, and homosexual worlds, while remaining critical of the toxic masculinity often exhibited by gay, bisexual, and straight men—Tolstoy not excluded!

As you rightly pointed out in your introductory comments, Joe, Tolstoy was not homosexual per se. By no means do I mean to erase his long marriage with Sofia Andreevna, who gave birth to thirteen of their children, much less his sexual relationships with other women. If I had to classify the count, I would say he was bisexual (in keeping, indeed, with Freudian theory). With this in mind, plus considering his dikost—a Russian word which means “daring,” “wildness,” or “iconoclasm”—I thought the title Queer Tolstoy was fitting.

In the introduction to my book, which is now available open-access, I briefly review nineteen same-sex relationships that I could glean from Tolstoy’s homoerotic biography. These include bonds with the Chechen Sado Miserbiyev, the revolutionary Russian youth Vasily Alexeev, the Ukrainian Jewish peasant Itzhak Feinermann, the Russo-Ukrainian composer Peter Tchaikovsky, the Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, and the self-aggrandizing Tolstoyan proprietor Vladimir Chertkov, among others. Lev Nikolaevich himself admits to eight other gay attachments early on in his diaries. Considering the artist’s hyper-sexual impulses, these likely only represent the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” for Tolstoy’s same-sex experiences.

Nina Nikitina, senior researcher at Yasnaya Polyana, writes that Tolstoy “read love signs all the time and was in their power.” He certainly sought love as mutual recognition and connection, as is emphasized by humanistic psychoanalysts like Jessica Benjamin. Such themes feature especially in War and Peace, a canvas on which Tolstoy’s alter egos discover spontaneous same-sex attractions on the battlefields and behind the front lines as comrades collectively resisting Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s onslaught. These include platonic, deeply felt lesbian and gay bonds between Princess Marya Bolkonskaya and Julie Karagina on the one hand, and between Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Captain Tushin on the other. Plus, as during World War I, soldiers will fraternize homoerotically and agree to cease-fires across the lines of control.

Tolstoy is known for bringing the realities of war and imperialism home to Russians. He was critical of the idea of the strong man, the leader who will bring his people glory. This seems to be very fitting, given the current tragedy of Ukraine and the despotism of Putin. What would Tolstoy say today about the current situation?

As Piro Subrat explains in Invertidos y Rompepatrias (2019), a history of the Spanish LGBTQ community, Tolstoy supported the mission of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which was founded by the German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897. This committee, the first LGBT rights organization in history, sought to repeal Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which was used to criminalize male homosexuality from 1871 to 1994. In this light, Tolstoy would likely have been horrified by Putin’s war on the queer community, which has resonated with Republicans in the US.

Both of these conservative-authoritarian power-groups are dehumanizing and inciting violence against us, with the Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles even calling at this year’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) for trans* people to be “eradicated from public life entirely.” The state of Tennessee has now criminalized drag. Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has sought to cast Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as retribution for the LGBTQ pride marches the country has hosted—just as Putin’s forces have wielded wanton sexual violence against the LGBT+ community in occupied Ukraine. I believe that Lev Nikolaevich would have spoken out against such queerphobic hatred and ultra-violence.

Although some of his descendants, like the “United Russia” representative Pëtr Tolstoy or Putin’s cultural adviser Vladimir Tolstoy are undoubtedly reactionaries, Lev Nikolaevich, were he alive today, would most likely be condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine and standing in solidarity with Ukrainian defenders and Russian protesters. Concretely, I imagine that he would also be involved with journalistic efforts to uncover the brutal realities of the war, in defiance of State media narratives, official censorship, and Putin’s megalomania, and that he would support war resistance, such as the sabotage taken up by the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), plus conscientious objection and desertion from the battlefield. He might have highlighted the disproportionate utilization of soldiers from Russia’s ethnic and indigenous communities as cannon fodder, or circulated news about all the land mines planted by the invaders in Ukraine’s agricultural fields. Like his great grand-daughter Maria Albertini, he would likely be involved in directly supporting Ukrainian refugees.

You may have seen that Putin’s regime has cynically used Tolstoy’s face to adorn a high fence set up around the Mariupol Drama Theatre in occupied Ukraine. This was the site of a horrific massacre perpetrated last March by the invading Russians. Up to six hundred Ukrainian civilians were killed as they took shelter there from the ruthless assault. The same month, in Mariupol, a Russian airstrike destroyed the Arkhip Kuindzhi Art Museum, which had hosted paintings by this renowned artist, born in the same city. (His “Rainbow” painting is included in my book.) Needless to say, Tolstoy, who inspired the Revolution so despised by Putin, and who remains excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church, would not conceivably have consented to such use of his image.

Considering the fate of Alexei Navalny, the main leader of the anti-Putin opposition, whose views are much more conservative than Tolstoy’s, and who is currently a political prisoner in a maximum-security facility outside Moscow (as Daniel Roher, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary about his poisoning, reminds us), Tolstoy probably would have been imprisoned or assassinated under Putin’s regime—as the critic Boris Nemstov and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, among many others, have been. Indeed, as I discuss in the book, Tolstoy very nearly was imprisoned and executed when the translation of an openly anarchist essay of his appeared in the English press in 1891. It was really only thanks to the intervention of his high-ranking cousin, courtier Alexandrine Tolstaya, that Lev Nikolaevich survived this incident.

It is crucial that Ukraine win this war against Russia, and liberate its occupied territories. As the Russian Socialist Movement points out, “Russian history is replete with examples of military setbacks abroad that have led to major change at home.” Tsar Nicholas I’s death from stress and/or suicide in 1855 as his Empire suffered setbacks in the Crimean War brought Alexander II’s formal abolition of serfdom closer, just as it opened up new possibilities for radical struggle from below. During World War I, Russian casualties, poor morale, and mass-desertion (blamed, in part, on Tolstoy’s ideas) contributed to the coming of the Revolution. Rather than continue to blackmail the world with nuclear weapons and mobilize lies about “Ukrainian Nazis” to rationalize his atrocities, Putin must be thoroughly defeated on the battlefield, so that his regime falls, too.

In his life and his works, Tolstoy points to history not being steered by leaders or great men, but by the people. His critical view on the idealization of the “strong man,” the leader who will bring his people glory, again has parallels to what we are witnessing today with Putin in Russia and the U.S. In contrast, he put his faith in “the People.”

Yes, that’s right. As he describes in A Confession (1882), it was the common people’s faith that saved him from taking his life during the spiritual crisis he experienced at the end of the 1870’s, after finishing Anna Karenina. When he was younger, as well, peasant women saved him from drowning in the Volga River, while his wet nurse was a serf woman named Avdotia Ziabreva. In reality, just before he passed away, Tolstoy was asking about the peasants.

In the book, I describe Tolstoy as a champion of anarcho-Populism, or the anarchist current of Narodnichestvo (also translated as Narodism). This was a revolutionary anti-Tsarist movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that envisioned an agrarian-socialist future for Russia. Besides Tolstoy, its main proponents were Herzen, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky, and Lavrov. (This was before Plekhanov and Lenin introduced Marxism to the Empire.) Some forerunners of anarcho-Populism included “men of 1812” like Tolstoy’s distant cousin, General Sergei Volkonsky. These “men of 1812” were veteran officers from the 1812 war against Napoleon. Known as a “peasant prince,” Volkonsky was exiled with his wife Marya to Siberian exile for three decades for spearheading the Decembrist conspiracy to overthrow Tsarism in 1825. This man, whose life was spared (in contrast to other Decembrist leaders) only owing to his family’s great prestige—specifically, his mother’s intercession—served as the model on which Tolstoy based Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in War and Peace. (As a side note, the support of Bakunin’s mother was crucial in convincing Tsar Alexander II to commute the rebel’s prison term to Siberian exile, thus facilitating his escape from the Empire.)

In contrast to direction by “great men,” like the Romanov Tsars, Bonaparte, Trump, or Putin, Tolstoy proposes that history is built from below through the collective action of the People. In War and Peace, he presents several examples of collective resistance to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia which have present-day echoes. These include the need to support Ukraine’s legitimate self-defense against the Russian onslaught; the imperative of unionizing and socializing the global economy; and the necessity of a worldwide transition to wind, water, and solar energy.

It’s interesting, reconciling Tolstoy’s heroization of the collective resistance of the Russian people to expel Napoleon with his transition to advocate of non resistance. And not just any advocate, but an influencer of peaceful resistance of historic proportions…

You’re right. It is quite the contradiction. Tolstoy espoused pacifism in the wake of his ‘conversion’ to rationalist Christianity after suffering a crisis of depression and suicidality in the 1870’s—mirroring the decline of the radical anti-Tsarist movement under Alexander II. Non-resistance follows from Jesus’ command, made during the Sermon on the Mount, to “resist not the evildoer” (Matthew 5:39). While this directive appears to demand servility and passivity, and thus reproduce abusive dynamics, the Unitarian Universalist Adin Ballou interpreted it as meaning that “we are not to resist evil with evil,” but “[e]vil is to be resisted by all just means.” Gandhi, who corresponded with Tolstoy at the end of his life about this very concept (and founded the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa in 1910), likewise promoted civil disobedience as non-violent resistance to abuse, or Satyagraha, in the struggle against British imperialism in India. In turn, Martin Luther King, Jr., preached Gandhian and Tolstoyan non-cooperation in his dream for the non-violent, anti-racist transformation of U.S. society.

Still, the theory of non-resistance has clear limits. If one takes the injunction not to “resist the evildoer” literally, then the Ukrainians would have to surrender to Putin; the Communards of Paris, the Kronstadt sailors, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Haitians, Syrians, and Palestinians should not have risen up; and workers and minorities should not complain or organize—but simply grin and bear everything. This is a self-defeating current in Tolstoy’s thought that amounts to a “betrayal of the cause of the oppressed,” in the words of the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, and “an enclosure of his own position,” as my comrade Shon Meckfessel writes. Indeed, this tension may speak to Tolstoy’s war trauma and fragmented sense of identity. After all, throughout his life, he resisted abuse, and admired and enshrined resistance to authority.

As you put aptly in your book, “Alienation is universal under capitalism.” I’m all too familiar with the feelings of alienation, and while Tolstoy wasn’t under modern capitalism's yoke per se, he lived under a system of extreme disparity and social restriction. In reaction to this, his life appeared to be a journey of seeking a better way, a kingdom of God here on earth. As such, he turned to an interesting form of spiritualism. Could you talk more about that?

Yes, of course. While fighting at the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, Tolstoy experienced an epiphany just after the death of Tsar Nicholas. He then proposed the “stupendous idea” of founding a new religion based on the actual teachings of Jesus the Nazarene, rather than established church dogmas or mysticism. This dream-state expressed the artist’s therapeutic desire to contest the death-dealing authority of Church and State by promoting union. It is reproduced in War and Peace during Prince Andrei’s trance, as he lies injured at the battle of Austerlitz, and affirms the utopian desire for peace, while experiencing a psychedelic “queerpiphany.” Tolstoy’s passionate engagement with Christianity is based in the evangelical message of the Gospels, not church rituals. His was a non-orthodox Christianity: Tolstoy’s “new translation” of the Gospels (1881) ends with Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha and excludes most mentions of miracles, including above all the resurrection.

Although Tolstoy became more openly didactic after his spiritual crisis, his Christian anarchism can also be gleaned from his earlier writings, including War and Peace. In this work, Pierre Bezukhov, another Tolstoyan alter ego, becomes a Freemason after separating from his first wife, Hélène. By introducing this radical homosocial association, which anticipates Pierre’s joining the Decembrists at the book’s end, Tolstoy presents an interpretation of Christianity “freed from the bonds of State and church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood, and love.” Along these lines, the anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin admired Freemasonry for advancing self-organization in Russia, while the Tsars feared precisely the freethinking and autonomy it stimulated.

In middle age, the count took up vegetarianism, renounced hunting, adopted strict pacifism, and condemned the libido—regardless of how unhappy this latter position would leave his wife Sofia Andreevna. Such ascetic changes may have resulted from Tolstoy’s encounters with death-anxiety as he aged; an intensification of underlying bipolar depression; a queer dissatisfaction with straight conventions; and/or the artist’s life-long attempt to observe his principles and so prefigure the Kingdom of God. While he did not succeed in meeting his goal of living simply and peacefully in an egalitarian community, much less of redistributing his lands and estates, these contradictions drove the tragic flight of this “proletarian lord” in October 1910.

You delve deeply into philosophy and psychology in Queer Tolstoy, as you have done in your other works, including in your previous work on Marcuse, Eros and Revolution. What gravitates you to these fields? And further, how can we connect Tolstoy’s philosophy to our own lives?

Like Lev Nikolaevich, I am a seeker: a Resident and Stranger. In my writings, I challenge the divisions that are often drawn between mind and body, idealism and materialism, and psychiatry and medicine. As Marcuse, Gross, and Tolstoy knew, these realms are actually connected.

I’m especially fascinated by Tolstoy as a “forerunner” of the Russian (and Mexican) Revolutions, the tragic experience of his followers in the Soviet Union (which confirms the counter-revolutionary nature of Leninism and Stalinism), and the ongoing relevance of Tolstoyan radicalism. I’m intrigued by the artist’s critiques of violence, hierarchy, and despotism; his work in popular education and famine relief; his engagements with Islam, Buddhism, and Daoism; his support for erotic, moral, and political self-determination; his existential emphasis on creating meaning in the face of death; his queerness (of course); and his inspiration of plant-based, pacifist communes guided by ideals of “peaceful revolution” and “universal brotherhood.”

Still, we must learn from Tolstoy’s mistakes: above all, his gross sexism, which is consistent with the toxic masculinity that is prevalent today in much of the gay community and beyond; his ambivalence sometimes expressed, particularly in War and Peace, about White-Russian chauvinism; his masochistic theory of non-resistance, which advises against resisting abuse; and, ironically, his gay timidity—notwithstanding the constraints imposed by Tsarism. The fates of Prince Andrei and Captain Tushin, and Princess Marya and Julie Karagina, reflect his ambivalence over the libido and queer desire. As Freud knew, this shyness only perpetuated his unhappiness!

Politically speaking, there are a myriad of ways that we can connect Tolstoy’s philosophy to the present day. In contrast to Pushkin and Lermontov’s poetry, Tolstoy’s writings about Transcaucasia—including “The Raid,” The Cossacks, Hadji Murat—are generally humanistic, internationalist, and critical of Tsarist regional expansionism. They can be read to highlight the historical continuum of White-Russian violence, which has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chechens since the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. In this vein, we must never forget that Tsarist imperialism annihilated the vast majority of the Circassian people, otherwise known as Adyghes, in the Caucasus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this light, we should channel Tolstoyan anti-war realism (but not dogmatic pacifism) to reject the left-right alliance that is converging against Ukraine. Trump, DeSantis, Fox News hosts, and MAGA extremists in the House all proclaim the fascist slogan “America First” in calling for Ukraine to be cut off, while neo-Stalinists and pseudo-anti-imperialists demand that Ukraine surrender to Russia.

History shows that Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War—which was achieved with the support of Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin’s betrayals, and the non-intervention policy of the Western democracies—set the stage for World War II. In much the same way, Putin’s “anti-humanitarian intervention” in 2015 to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship from being swept away by the Syrian Revolution prepared the ground for the ongoing full-scale attack on Ukraine. Given the pressing need to stop Putin, I welcome his recent indictment by the International Criminal Court.

We chose the title “seeking the anarchism of love” as the title of our discussion, so I thought it fitting to pull this quote from War and Peace:

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand. I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

But what about the anarchism of love? is love integral to anarchism? And is true love anarchic?

Certainly, love, connection, and attachment are integral to anarchism, understood as anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, anarcha-feminism, and Christian anarchism.

Throughout his life, beyond infancy, Lev Nikolaevich missed his mother, Princess Marya Volkonskaya, who passed away at the young age of thirty-nine. Still, he often yearned for her love, even as an old man, and it is evident how much her pro-social personality marked him. One of War and Peace’s main protagonists is based on her, and what is more, the real-life Marya’s unfinished family novel, Russian Pamela, deeply influenced the themes and characters Tolstoy features in his own prose poem. Akin to the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Princess Marya—who received a classical education at Yasnaya Polyana, thanks to her progressive father—was an “unlikely revolutionary.”

In turn, like Leonardo da Vinci, whose mother may have been, according to new research, a trafficked Circassian, Tolstoy identified with his mother and aunts, together with traditionally “feminine” virtues like care and compassion. Plus, as a cadet in the Caucasus, Tolstoy was intensely attracted to the “God of Love and Reason” that he discovered among the natural beauty there, and the social and sexual freedom practiced by his Cossack hosts, at least within their in-group. He was certainly repelled by Cossack violence against the Muslim Chechens. Your apt quote from War and Peace, which appears just after Prince Andrei’s death due to injuries sustained at the battle of Borodino, frames love in Marcusean terms as Eros, eternally struggling against archaic forces and Thanatos (or the death drive).

Many times in War and Peace, we encounter scenes that recall bell hooks’ concept of the anarchism of love, whereby arousal and attachment contest hierarchy and convention, challenge abuse, and tear down walls. Hence, the spontaneous comrade-love that develops on the battlefield between Prince Andrei and Tushin; Pierre’s homoerotic bonds with his Freemason and peasant mentors and serf-soldiers at Borodino; plus Natasha Rostova’s prayer for “one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united by brotherly love.” Likewise, if we think of Jessica Benjamin’s idea of love as mutual recognition, we can read War and Peace as an allegorical journey of transition and transformation—from the despotism and violence encoded by Tsarism and Bonapartism (reminiscent of biblical captivity in Egypt and Babylon), to a better future characterized by equality, peace, and freedom (that is to say, the Kingdom of God).

Such insurgent passions reverberated in the Russian Revolution, especially in the nearly 100 Tolstoyan communes and cooperatives founded soon after the fall of the Romanov dynasty, as well as in the Mexican Revolution, with the rebels Praxedis Guerrero, Ricardo Flores Magón, and General Emiliano Zapata looking to the Russian anarchist sage for inspiration.

Lastly, in the 1970’s, hippies from the Soviet counterculture rediscovered Tolstoy as a spiritual guide for their anti-authoritarian journeys and pilgrimages, experiments in pacifism and free love, and protests against the Soviet regime.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and please don’t forget to donate what you can to Solidarity Collectives.

Links

Queer Tolstoy: https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Tolstoy-A-Psychobiography/Sethness-Castro/p/book/9781032342559

Open-access introduction (chapter 2): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003328964/queer-tolstoy-javier-sethness-castro

YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTigXmfBeSw

Leo Tolstoy archive (English translations): https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/index.html

Bureau of General Services–Queer Division: https://www.bgsqd.com/

Michael Denner, "The 'proletarian lord': Leo Tolstoy's image during the Russian revolutionary period" (2010). doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511676246.012

Irina Gordeeva, "Tolstoyism in the Late-Socialist Cultural Underground: Soviet Youth in Search of Religion, Individual Autonomy and Nonviolence in the 1970s–1980s" (2017): https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opth-2017-0038/html?lang=en

---, "The Evolution of Tolstoyan Pacifism in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, 1900–1937" (2018): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315157344-7/evolution-tolstoyan-pacifism-russian-empire-soviet-union-1900%E2%80%931937-irina-...deeva

Michael Kazin, "Reject the Left-Right Alliance Against Ukraine" (2023): https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/reject-the-left-right-alliance-against-ukraine

Mark Mola, "The Circassian Genocide" (2016): https://medium.com/@markmola/the-circassian-genocide-e39aa41bbfdd

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine the AnarCom Network (UK) continues to argue that a new tendency is emerging - an internationalist revolutionary class struggle realignment, as a response to the reality of war and its existential threat. As Anarchist Communists we support the No War But The Class War position.

The following article originally written in 2014 by comrades in AnarCom marking the Russian occupation of Crimea in the 100th anniversary of the First World War.

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we continue to argue that a new, if historically familiar, tendency is emerging - an internationalist revolutionary class struggle realignment, as a response to the reality of war and its existential threat.

Our response is to continue building good relationships with revolutionary internationalist militants on this basis. War will not cease without it. This is not new, as the following article written in 2014 by comrades in AnarCom marking the Russian occupation of Crimea in the 100th anniversary of the First World War demonstrates:

1914-2014 - the Great War continues

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
― Edmund Burke

As the threat of war looms in Eastern Europe echoing the threat of a third World War yet to come, the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One looms more as a lesson for our time than merely an obsession of academic geeks.

In 1914, a violent act of Slav nationalism took the brakes off Europe's alliances and treaty systems driving rival power blocks into a devastating armed conflict that wracked Europe with its consequences for the century to come.

The current conflict is as much framed by treaties and timetables as then. Russia wants its share of Ukraine before it slides into the framework of the EU and NATO and the stakes would be higher.

Before the current fog over the Crimea there were those in Britain who sought to revise the First World War and claim it as a source of national pride and dress up the death of 13 million as a price worth paying in a 'just' war.

Were the millions of workers led into a war between ruling elites of bankers and aristocrats "lions led by donkeys" or true sons of freedom defending all that was good in Britain?

The debate is a smoke screen to hide one of the greatest mass murders in history. It's hardly surprising that those who want to celebrate the generals and spirit of Empire and claim the war as 'just', are the privileged great grandchildren of the 'donkeys'.

The current conflict has the same roots as its historical predecessor - a conflict between elites, the gangster capitalism of the Russian oligarchs versus the free market plunderers of the neoliberal European club. 'Just' or 'unjust' is the new smokescreen again.

International conflicts between or within states only have one lesson, and that is those of us with no real stake, workers on both sides, die, lead or driven by the donkeys, to preserve their power, profit and privilege.

The lessons now as then are the same - we die, they pillage, and their pride is our shame.