Therefore, it is not enough to see the case of Ukraine only through the actions of a Russian authoritarian leader, nor through the prism of a violation of international law. This is for three reasons:

First, because we cannot ignore the presence of NATO, which after the fall of the USSR and in the context of the emerging “neoliberal consensus” became both a military vehicle of consolidation and a police institution against centrifugal forces. Thus, on the basis of the role of the US in this new phase of “globalisation”, NATO became essentially a mechanism for consolidating the US-led empire of capital. To put it in paradigmatic (and largely rhetorical) terms, what exactly did a supposed “defense alliance” do by bombing Yugoslavia without the approval of the Security Council, carrying out one of the largest military operations on European soil? How can it be denied that Yugoslavia was devastated by NATO for the interests of the US and its “New world order” doctrine? Did that event constitute war – at least some form of war – or a “special military operation”? Even if it is not just a powerful military instrument of the Americans, NATO cannot be conceived outside the imperialist policy of the USA. It is worth noting, in this context, that the inter-state relations between Russia and the US over the last 30 years have been largely structured by the initial assurances of the NATO alliance that they did not intend to expand the alliance eastwards and the gradual breaking of these promises. That these assurances, as Spinoza reminds us, have no substantive force outside of actual power relations and their historical unfolding points to the heart of the matter (something we will return to).

Second, war between states in its modern form tends to involve the clash, and therefore the intensification of two or more nationalisms. This is because nationalism is the ideology of the contemporary nation-state and therefore one of the inevitable languages of justification for a state of war. As a determinate historical form, the modern state relied on war for its birth and the organization of society on the scale it proposed: the boundaries of the state as a legal order of sovereignty to coincide with the geographical boundaries of the nation. It is truly an outrageous idea that continues to leave humanity blood-drenched, to produce cultural difference, and to systematically lead to tragedies and ethnic cleansing. Linking soil with blood: a genius German conception! Even the republican conception of the nation that draws on the American and French revolutions, and which admittedly provided the language for an entire revolutionary tradition, inevitably tends, after the consolidation of the state form, to become a language of legitimation of domination, exclusion, violence and expansion.

In the case of the Greek state, nationalism led to the tragedy of Smyrna with the help of the great fantasy – yet one with entirely material consequences – that we called the “Great Idea”. Nationalism is also responsible for the tragedy that Cypriot society has been experiencing for so many decades on both sides of the island. Rhetoric about living space was indeed used by Hitler and is now being used by Putin. But the difference is that the former was a Nazi and as such burned anyone who was not  ‘of aryan race’ in the crematoria, while the latter is the authoritarian leader of a country that sacrificed 20 million people to stop the Nazis. The difference is staggering. And it is a difference of content as much as of form: for all the autocracy, corruption and constant human rights violations that define the dysfunction of official institutions and the huge democratic deficit in the country, Russia is not a fascist state. This, of course, does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because whatever the context, it is an invasion. But we must be strict in the analogies and comparisons we make because they determine our perspective and therefore our political stance.

It is also worth pointing out that the identification of Russia with the USSR is untenable, at least in the ideological field. On the other hand, on the geopolitical and economic front, things are clearly more complex, since the USSR (from one point onwards) became to a considerable extent the continuation of the Russian state; thus the Russian Federation, together with its satellites, inherits the treaties left by the USSR. Putin’s rise to power is also the expression of this “continuity of the state”, against the aggressive (and destructive for the plebeian masses) disintegration that preceded it. Besides, apart from some fascists like Georgiades, who else considers “the communists” dangerous and still dreams of exile (really, “dangerous” for whom?). Despite the special symbolic weight of communism in the construction of various identities and perceptions, all countries, in one way or another, move to the rhythm of the capitalist organisation of the economy and society. So does Russia. Within this global system, nationalisms continue to develop and the great powers continue to compete with each other in national terms, without reference to the political-ideological differences of the past. The competition today, similar to some extent to the imperialist competition before the First World War, is about power within the globalised capitalist system. But political-economic competition is always conducted through a multitude of ideological-cultural mediations, de facto historically determined.

Thus, it is difficult to abandon the idea that the cultural representation of Russia in the ‘West’ passes through the imaginative conception (and constitution) of difference. At the state level, the hostility towards Russia clearly has as an objective basis, Russia’s independent hegemonic geopolitical and economic role and ambition (the political expression of which is precisely ‘Putinism’). Also, in the social imaginary (as mediated, of course, by spectacular media representations) the emerging suspicion and hostility towards Russia is due to Putin’s current attempt to regain the country’s old imperial power. On both (related) levels, however, the hostility is fueled by the stereotypical construction of Russia as a threatening authoritarian power coming from the barabaric East. It is within this cultural construction of otherness that the reflexive and endemic anti-communism that some Western military officers and diplomats have long since internalized, finds its functional place.

In this intense interface between the political and economic aspirations of the hegemonic centres and their ideological investments, obsessions and prejudices, international law can only be respected on a case-by-case basis and according to the interests at stake – sometimes invoked and sometimes ignored. Liberals and social democrats of all stripes and tendencies will retort that there is a whole material system of rules, deliberations, agreements, decisions, institutions and bodies which produces what we call ‘international law’, and which has a regulative role; even when it is ignored by some states, its actuality allows us to criticise this attitude while at the same time giving to Right an institutional and therefore practical status (i.e. clearly defining what ‘ought to be done’ and ‘how’ it can be done).

This is certainly not the place for an extended discussion of international law, which de facto presupposes a broader analysis of law in general. Its violation, however, as a fact systematically carried out by the powerful, makes the interpretation of reality on the basis of international law alone a symptom of a normative formalism that does not help explain a complex situation and the dynamics it contains. Founded on the liberal legalist logic that systematized it, international law is utterly incapable of both regulating the actual relations of states and providing a theoretical basis for understanding them. The same can be said differently: vis-à-vis ‘powerful players’, international law is a weak tool and therefore, especially in times of crisis, it is not sufficient either to dictate and organise the practical activity of the powerful, or to take it as the main unit of analysis in understanding complex historical processes, that shape inter-state rivalries and international balances. Unless we want to become the unhappy consciousness of this world, along with liberals and a significant part of the Left. 

The third reason why we need to be careful in our perspective is related to the collective self-identifications and the character of Ukrainian nationalism. It helps us to understand the complexity of Ukrainians’ perception of the Russian invasion, i.e. ultimately how they perceive the ethnic ‘self’ and the ethnic ‘other’ in this particular case. This clearly makes the way in which the invasion of Ukraine is presented by Western officials and the ‘Western’ media very problematic, i.e. as an attack by a foreign power on a fully distinct ethnic society. The empirical data that anyone who knows anything about Ukrainian society can cite suggests something quite different.

Between Russia and Ukraine there is a strong cultural affinity, with deep historical roots, reaching back to the very constitution of Tsarist Russia as the hegemonic political form of the Slavic ethnic group. Even today a large percentage of families in both Ukraine and Russia are mixed, and kinships spread beyond their borders. To this significant part of the population, this particular war seems rather like a civil war. Especially in the east, where there has been secession, a large percentage of Ukrainians have no particular problem with the political attachment to ‘Mother Russia’, which is why Russian forces initially met little resistance by advancing into the country.

On the other hand, colonial control and inequality has been a key index in this complex historical relation. Naturally, the Ukrainian nation-state de facto established its identity in against Russian domination, of which the USSR period was considered a part. This “anti-Russian” national narrative intensified after the events of 2014 in the country, when the balance was disturbed by the violent political shift towards the West and therefore NATO. In this context of geopolitical and economic restructuring, Ukrainian nationalism is becoming radicalized and seems to be gaining traction in the social sphere. Even so, until recently it is doubtful whether, outside the extreme nationalist circles, of which the neo-Nazis of the so-called ‘Right Sector’ (Pravyy Sektor) with their black and red flags or the even broader and more diverse ‘Azov Battalion’, which is part of the Ukrainian national army, most Ukrainians wanted to fight against Russia (which is also true in reverse). This is precisely what Russian expansionism is now decisively reversing, further fomenting Ukrainian nationalism.

In ‘Western’ media and in the mainstream discourse in general there is a deafening silence about the internal political balances and collective identity in Ukraine. In fact, the attack on Ukraine strikes at the pan-Slavic narrative – a central feature of ethnoromanticism there – replacing it with nationalist hatred. Is this not contradictory to the fact that Russia appears to be the main political exponent of this ethno-romantisism? But also, the hybrid character of the collective, national identity in Ukraine, or the fact that it is presented as ambivalent in terms of the distinction between ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ nation and the related sense of collective belonging, is a catalyst for the attack. If, in terms of ethno-cultural relations and collective identities, similarity and affinity rather than ethnic difference prevail, without one group necessarily identifying or assimilating the other, the attack from Russia’s perspective ceases to be seen as an invasion. If, even more than in other countries of the former Soviet Union, Ukrainians are, in a sense, in an identity transition, since the process of Ukrainian nation-state building is unstable and ongoing, the attack on Ukraine may have had as an intrinsic purpose to radically interfere in the process. And the instability of the Ukrainian political system and the dysfunction of its democratic institutions actually contributes to this attempted rapprochement with Russia (for a country whose president is a former actor who played the president in a Ukrainian T.V series [!]). Therefore, in the face of the project of stabilising Ukrainian institutions and democracy within the EU. -which seems to have been the main claim of the 2014 protests and which necessarily took the form of anti-Russianism, thus opening up space even for nationalism drawn from the collaborators of the Nazi invasion- Russian imperialism, faced with the very real danger of Ukrainian attachment to NATO (i.e. the expansion of the latter), responded with an operation to strengthen the link with Russia. Of course, since the Russian surprise didn’t last long and the war drags on, it’s hard to see how a regime change could bring anything but instability.

Here it rather seems that we have two sides – Russia and the ‘West’ – that fear and perceive each other as a threat in terms shaped on the one hand by the history of conflicting expansionist nationalisms-imperialisms and on the other hand by the reality shaped by the capitalist economy in its modern globalised version. We will therefore support neither of them! A further reason for not supporting either one is evident from the fact that within the framework of once – but no longer – fringe theories like those of the 4th political theory, we are faced with the possibility of the creation of a deeply authoritarian informal coalition of disparate countries (from North Korea to Iran and China) on an ascending trajectory of conflict with the whole of a distinct civilization now defined in their eyes as “the West”.

Neutrality, by highlighting the community of those from below, with class characteristics and our dynamic peace-promoting practices is, in our opinion, the appropriate attitude in this case and therefore has nothing to do with an abstract refusal of war. This is all the more true since the consequences of such a war will affect us all. In this light, the revival of the international anti-war movement, which has been extinct for over 15 years (better proof of its total absence during the Syrian civil war) could perhaps have some positive influence on developments. However, judging by the content of public discourse, the low dynamics of collective action today and, above all, the proxy nature of the conflict between NATO and Russia, this possibility should not be considered particularly likely. Nevertheless, the anti-war demand for global nuclear disarmament is proving to be extremely necessary today.

Under the weight of developments in Ukraine there is no doubt that this is a moment of paramount historical importance. We are witnessing a direct violent challenge to the balance of power of the hegemonic centres, which is very interestingly linked to the economic challenge being waged by China. Something that has been discussed for a long time may be happening, but the outcome is really uncertain, especially since the ‘first move’ was made by the Russian military state. At a time when many people, while realising the role of planetary domination in the ongoing social and environmental decline, no longer have the courage to speak out, the conflict in Ukraine paints an extremely contradictory picture that has emerged particularly strong in the pandemic and is of immense value both for the left libertarian forces of our time and for radical forces in general. On the one hand we seem to not know how to survive without some kind of state organization, on the other hand the state leads us to social, health, economic and environmental destruction. How do we pragmatically manage such a complex reality?

The dystopia of a nuclear holocaust or a large-scale ecological (hence social) collapse may still seem distant (?), but we cannot ignore the fact that the forces that gave birth to these prospects as a technical possibility and political-military possibility are precisely the dominant forces today: capital, technocracy and all kinds of military-industrial complexes, nationalism and the modern state.

We conclude with some observations which will shed more light on the rationale that leads us to consider the neutrality stance in this war as the only appropriate option from the point of view of social emancipation. Like any authoritarian leader who wages war, Putin, by attacking Ukraine, is undermining, or at any rate endangering, his own power. However, its end will hopefully come with an internal uprising of the Russian people, especially the most oppressed social groups. Ukraine may of course be the occasion for this, but the battle for its downfall cannot be fought on Ukrainian soil. Among other things, because in this case national war and multilateral conflict signify not only the death of soldiers and civilians who have never supported Russia’s authoritarian regime, but also the nuclear threat. This, of course, implies that the phenomenon of Putin’s authoritarian rule cannot be reduced to the realm of individual psychology and personality, as the liberal position, that presents anti-democrats as ‘madmen’, deliberately and with artificial levity tries to sustain. The problem is not that Putin is “insane”. The problem is that the very juxtaposition of democracy and authoritarianism is now losing the formal validity it once had (which historically has always been more complex, of course).

Democratic political systems and their institutions all over the world, regardless of their specifically national versions, are subjected with undiminished intensity to the web of relations and practices that we call ‘capitalism’. So while states continue to be active forces, the contemporary globalised and interconnected world of transnational relations and antagonisms is regulated by the active presence of capital and the imperatives of accumulation and value valorization that define it. So along with a contradiction – transnational competition tends to undermine the capitalist totality that allows it to exist – there is also a truth that the adherents of liberal discourse cannot bear to hear, as it is a truth that calls for political displacement and personal engagement but also for the questioning of multiple cultural constants and perceptions. The configuration of democratic institutions and their articulation with the legal order and the economy allows for the simultaneous and perpetual reproduction, that is, the permanent co-existence, of representation, authoritarianism and inequality in many social fields and in decision-making. It is also a dynamic relationship that today is increasingly unable to take the formal form of democracy. Modern liberal democracies are technocratic oligarchies separated simply by the presence of a social liberalism (which is also challenged by the neo-right reaction).

The pacified societies of the ‘developed’ world in Europe and America are more likely to abandon Ukraine to the expansionist ambitions of a rising Russia than to fight for it. It is not only the experience of two world wars that is, fortunately, frightening. Material affluence, the ideology of producing and consuming infinite objects, the complete commodification of the world and the trivialization of multiple aspects of life by advertising – all of it, that is, which describe the hegemonic conception of ‘growth’ – guarantee (apart from ecological destruction) that war is removed from the range of culturally available options, not only for the sterile upper classes of ‘Western’ societies, but also for the lower classes and subordinate social groups.

And while we could not rule out the resurgence of European and US nationalisms in the face of a common antagonist, we can hardly imagine European citizens sacrificing themselves on the battlefields fighting against the Russians. Especially when everyone knows that the new ‘cold war’ we have already entered is exclusively a game of the powerful for the control of resources and wealth.

But unfortunately, it is even more difficult, to imagine the oppressed fighting an internationalist, anti-nationalist and anti-colonial battle for the equality of people in all corners of this world. This is despite the fact that from the pandemic and the impending ecological collapse to the devastating war in Ukraine, the great issue at stake is the power of the modern state and of capital, the complete inability to control and be controlled.

The question then becomes more crucial than ever and is this: at the dawn of a new ‘cold war’ and in the era of ecological crisis, will the left libertarian forces of our time be able to present a culturally convincing vision to make people believe again in a different way of organizing collective life that includes as its central point the symbiosis of all beings? Or will they forever distance themselves from people by adhering to simplistic rhetorical schemes that are of little interest to anyone? The questions, though theoretically profound, are primarily practical.

Active neutrality in the war raging in Ukraine is our position, the continuation of the global social war against all those who destroy life and freedom is our promise.

Solidarity with the antifascist anarchists in Ukraine and Russia.

DEATH TO TYRANTS –

LONG LIVE ANARCHY- FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM

VOID NETWORK – http://voidnetwork.gr

The post The State, Nationalism and the War in Ukraine appeared first on Void Network.

Liaisons- more than a collective, less than a world, is an inclination, a tangent, a crossroads of confrontations, encounters, and links, with authors from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Mexico, Quebec, Russia, and Spain.

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, 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). 

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.

Troubled Waters

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.

Berkut is the most brutal unit of the Ukrainian riot police. At first, Western leftists, seduced by images of Soviet Berkut 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, 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. 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.

The Grandfather’s War

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.

Russian Antifa and State Anti-fascism

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.” This song, “What We Feel,” was composed by the band Till the End, and features the band Moscow Death Brigade.

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 Russian Spring vs. Maidan

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.

The People’s Anti-Fascist Uprising

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.

After 2014

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.

Other Histories

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.

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source: https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/a-very-long-winter

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