Lefteast
Note of LeftEast editors: we reprint the English version of the original (also below) manifesto of an informal group in Russia called ‘Socialists Against the War.’ This power was based on the promises of peace and stability, and eventually led the country to war and economic catastrophe. Like any other war in history, the current […]
LeftEast is reprinting this important analysis by Monika Mokre on the contradictions of the EU’s refugee policy, in light of the current Russian aggression in Ukraine. The piece originally appeared on the Refugee Outreach and Research Network (ROR-n) website. It was at the end of the 1990s when the EU once again realized that it […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared in Romanian in The Political Art Gazette and we publish it as part of the collaboration in the ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet network. On March 8th, 2022, responding to the invitation of Meduza Kolektiv and Rhythms of Resistance Cluj, the radical housing justice movement […]
After a long winter of the covid-19 pandemic, the first glimpses of a coming spring offer a vision of new bloodshed. We have now witnessed more than a week of Russian invasion and war on Ukraine, a stretch of time that will be seen as an undeniable rupture in international relations. Things are moving at […]
Oksana Dutchak is a researcher based in Ukraine and an activist of E.A.S.T. – Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational. She tells about the current ever-changing situation in Ukraine and local attempts of self-organization to cope with the war. The question of how to create a transnational politics of peace has no easy answer. Continuing to mobilize […]
Cihan Tuğal on the implications of US and Russian wars of aggression since the end of the Cold War, and their meaning for the rights of nations to self-determination.
The inter-imperialist conflicts we see between NATO and Russia (or the US and China, as well as many smaller conflicts) are ultimately rooted in national economic competition, which itself is an outgrowth of the competition inherent to capitalism. To finally wipe out the drive to war means ending capitalism altogether. But that is no excuse for an abstract position that the only thing we can do now is call for revolution, as some on the far left are doing. War enflames national divisions and is most damaging to working people. It needs to be resisted and ended immediately. It is the end of wars, especially when opposed from below, that can open space for continued class conflict and the further struggle for socialism in Ukraine and beyond.
Do not let half-baked political positions substitute an analysis of the situation. The injunction that the main enemy is in your country should not translate into a flawed analysis of the inter-imperialist struggle. At this stage appeals to dismantle NATO or, conversely, accepting anyone there, will not help those who suffer under the bombs in Ukraine, in jails in Russia or Belarus. Sloganeering is harmful as ever. Branding Ukrainians or Russian fascists only makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution. A new autonomous reality emerges around Russia, a reality of destruction and harsh repressions, a reality where a nuclear conflict is not unthinkable anymore. Many of us have missed the tendencies leading to this reality. In the fog of war, we do not see clearly the contours of the new. Neither do, as it seems, the American or European governments.
Based on all this, the ongoing conflict is between
– a richer (and of course very considerably larger) Russia that turns its economic performance into life spans of its population with relatively low efficiency (sort of like a state afflicted with what I would call a quasi-resource-curse), and
– a poorer (and, obviously, less gigantic–although by no means “small”–) Ukraine whose Life Expectancy figures are considerably higher than those of Russia, reflecting a less terrible linkage structure turning the country’s moderate per capita GDP into life spans for its population.
Translated from the Russian original in Moskvichmag.ru. Editorial note: In the absence of meaningful sociological data, it is difficult to know what ordinary Russians think of their country’s war on Ukraine. (In pro-Kremlin media, of course, it is not a war but “a special operation,” “the defense of Donbas,” etc., and the accompanying imagery reflects […]