Internationalism - a guide to action or an excuse for inaction? ----
Welcome speech to the Week of Action in Prague ---- 9 points for further
discussion from the anarchist portal from Kharkov. In some very, very
eastern geography of the country, which until 2022 many would not even
find on the map ---- Program and list of participants of the event ----
1. First of all, these theses will only talk about the war in Ukraine.
No regional egoism. Before Kharkov was close to the front, there were
many students from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa; now we have
no opportunity to learn about what is happening there through personal
communication. Therefore, we will limit ourselves only to what is
visible from our bell tower.
2. The situation in recent months in Ukraine fully confirms the thoughts
from our English-language interviews dated February 24 and the review
article dated March 31. Ukraine is turning from a concentration camp
into a death camp. Yesterday, the law on total mobilization No. 10449,
adopted on April 11, came into force, contrary to all forecasts that
deputies would be afraid to do this. Now, during any street check of
documents and reconciliation with the electronic register of persons
liable for military service, cops will have the right to detain a man
and take him to the TCC if his data is not in the system after the
expiration of the 60-day submission period. For not having a military ID
card with you, you are also subject to detention and busification to
establish data. A day earlier, the Supreme Recycler signed Law No. 10379
increasing absentee fines for evaders. According to it, for refusal to
appear on a subpoena or to update credentials, an absentee fine of 17 to
25.5 thousand hryvnia will be imposed with the prospect of blocking
accounts in case of non-payment (the minimum salary in Ukraine is 8
thousand hryvnia). Estimates of the number of citizens planned to be
drafted into the army vary from 150,000 to 500,000; in the second case,
this will mean the mobilization of every tenth man of the corresponding
age. In other words, the totality of mobilization is limited only by the
financial capabilities of the budget.
In recent days, the editors of our media have prepared detailed analyzes
of the butcher law and the reaction to it at the grassroots, as well as
how its adoption affected the flight from Ukraine. They talked about a
project for free mutual assistance of Ukrainians in unauthorized border
crossings and about the Russian military man Yuri Galushko from Kharkov,
who killed six artillery commanders for his mother, who was injured
during the Russian shelling of Kharkov, and then fled with weapons. For
the International Day of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service on
May 15, we wrote about the spring increase in desertion from Russian
troops and talked with a deserter from the Ukrainian border service.
The disintegration of the Ukrainian army over these couple of months
began to be discussed at the highest level. According to one of the most
famous lawyers in the country, Rostislav Kravets, during the war, more
than 100 thousand military personnel left their units without
permission; parliamentarian from the ruling party Yuri Kamelchuk
announced 15 thousand military personnel who received disciplinary
sanctions for failure to comply with orders or desertion. Very often
those who escaped from units are not punished in any way, otherwise
there will be no one to fight at all. Demoralization in the Armed Forces
of Ukraine is facilitated by a lack of understanding of the prospects of
war, the attitude towards soldiers as meat and the failure of parliament
to fulfill its promise to set a demobilization period when adopting bill
No. 10449. The shortage of personnel in the army is even more acute than
that of weapons and ammunition. The repressive bodies are afraid of
being sent to the front and turn a blind eye to any violence of
territorial recruitment centers against civilians, just so as not to go
to fight themselves.
3. Calls to unite against uniformed sadists who imagine that they have
the right to decide who lives and who dies are as ubiquitous among the
masses as the willingness to organize together to change life is weak.
More and more of those who have nothing to protect are trying to leave
Ukraine, without choosing between life under the Kremlin and death for
the wallets of scum at the trough. On May 17, a sad anniversary was
reached: 30 men had already officially died trying to cross the Tisza
River bordering EU countries. Those who do not flee are forced to
survive under virtual house arrest (many have been doing this for more
than a year, but now this practice is becoming widespread). Talk about
the imminent end of Ukraine as a state, especially in the front-line
areas, also does not contribute to protest activity: from this point of
view, there is no point in risking criminal liability if it will end
soon anyway and you will have to think about what to do in the new
reality. "It is better to possibly die in the Russian occupation than to
definitely die now for the internal occupation," such is the logic of
this gloomy apathy.
4. However, episodic examples of social resistance are regular. April 6,
Desnyansky district of Kyiv: during a conversation between the TCC
patrol and a certain passer-by, Timofey Molderf, born in 1972,
approached one of them from behind. and struck him on the head, after
which he took a knife from his bag and tried to stab another raid
participant with it. April 20, near the village of Chornoguzy,
Chernivtsi region: two civilians knocked a TCC employee to the ground
during an alert. The vehicle was blocked, he fired a pistol into the
ground, but for some time he was not allowed to enter the car. On the
evening of May 3, in the town of Vinogradov in Transcarpathia, about 10
people of Roma nationality gathered at the entrance to the TCC and tried
to open the gates by force, protesting against the mobilization of two
of their fellow villagers. The officers fired into the air; the next
day, video footage was published with apologies from the women who took
part in the assault. The evening of the same May 3 in Zaporozhye: at the
call of the wife of Evgeniy Butenko, who was detained by the cops at
home that day because of allegedly being wanted, a crowd of residents
came to the TCC. There they shouted: "Let all the people out of the
basement!", "You should protect us, not kidnap us!" Police surrounded
the building to prevent people from entering. The three-hour rally was
broadcast by the YouTube channel of local activists of the "living
people" movement. On the night of May 12, in the same Zaporozhye,
someone (according to rumors) threw two Molotov cocktails into the
building of the Shevchenko TCC, they did not catch fire. On May 14, cops
announced the detention in this city of an organized group of "living
people" of five people who are accused of spreading disinformation about
the mobilization: activists talked about its illegality and filmed the
abductions. At least one of the detainees was severely beaten.
Sinelnikovo in the Dnepropetrovsk region: yesterday, TCC officers were
transporting private security officer Alexander Sadovsky, born in 1975.
in the back seat of a car; During transportation, he took out a knife
and put it to the throat of one of the employees. Another began to take
the knife and received a stab wound in the arm. The same day in the
regional center, Dnieper: unknown people in black attacked a military
medic sitting in a camouflage minivan with the words "faggot TTSKshny",
blew gas from a can through an open window, broke his face and glasses.
And how many videos every day of how passers-by help fight off those
kidnapped on the streets!
Also on May 18, in the afternoon, in the village of Bolgan, Vinnytsia
region, border guards noticed a man trying to cross the
Ukrainian-Moldovan border outside the checkpoint. When detained, a
resident of Kyiv born in 1990. hit one of them, then used a gas spray
and tried to take away his service weapon. One of the border guards
fired two warning shots and then shot him in the legs; he was hospitalized.
5. Parallels in internationalist circles between the Russian-Ukrainian
conflict and the First World War with calls for Russian and Ukrainian
workers to stop military production do not take into account the fact
that Ukraine is fighting on the economic base of its Western partners.
All critical goods, from ammunition and fuel to food and medicine, are
supplied from abroad. Ukraine's drone production and military equipment
repair bases do not play a key role in the war. The weak link is the
transport system. Ukrainian international carriers are sounding the
alarm: many truckers, having left Ukraine, abandon their trucks and
refuse to return; the logistics workers who remain in the country simply
quit or do not want to leave home, saying "let the TCC and the police
take it." Yesterday afternoon, about 100 trucks partially blocked the
Odessa-Kyiv highway, one of the busiest in the country. The traffic jam
at the exit from Odessa reached 5 km. Strikers from different regions
declared that "the country rests on us" and demanded reservations from
mobilization for their profession; They let cars and buses through. In
our Kharkov, transport companies are also on the verge of stopping;
trade is in danger of collapsing at the national level. This was
probably the maximum strike struggle that the working class is capable
of under existing conditions. By the way, this event attracted much less
public attention yesterday than the fight between Usik and Fury for the
title of absolute world heavyweight champion. A lot says something about
the environment in which the Assembly has to operate.
At the same time, this month marked in Ukraine the first public episode
of ordinary workplace struggles during the war. On the morning of May 1,
in Druzhkovka, due to a strike and rally, a plant supplying bread to the
north of the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region stopped.
The reason is many months of salary arrears; About 200 people work
there. However, for the reasons described above, such protests are
unlikely to have a critical impact on military operations. Castles don't
worry about whether their slaves are starving.
6. While foreign comrades continue to ignore our calls to campaign among
Ukrainian refugees, the state does not leave them alone. The moribund
regime is desperate to recapture the fugitive serfs, whether through
refusing to grant consular services to men without military records or
directly negotiating to prevent European authorities from enforcing the
integration of Ukrainians. Amid the silence of internationalists, this
month migrants began to speak out for their rights. As you can read,
with a liberal democratic agenda rather than a class one:
It is noteworthy that they sent a photo of the picket to a conservative
anti-Maidan blogger from Kyiv, who also provided informational support
for the protests in Zaporozhye. The forecast from the winter interview
with the Assembly that, given the passivity of the international
anarchist movement, the anti-war theme will be used by right-wing
conspiracy theorists can be considered confirmed. And we believe that
this happens not only in Ukraine.
7. This can only be changed by going to the Ukrainian embassies and
consulates with demands to release those who do not want to fight. We
have no illusions that the regime will take such a step - this
ridiculous hybrid of the American Confederation with North Korea is
ready to quickly send the majority of the country's population to
mincemeat, just to gain at least a little more time to plunder what has
not yet been stolen. Even if Ukraine opens its borders, European
countries may already close entry. Therefore, if such actions get into
the major media, they will first of all show anti-war people in Ukraine
that our community really stands on their side. Without concrete
practical steps, any slogans about "no war other than class" will be
perceived as an empty abstraction for everything good and against
everything bad.
8. Although proponents of the war sadly acknowledge that
internationalist positions are gaining strength in foreign anarchism, it
still devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to denouncing
social chauvinists and a disproportionate amount to discussing what is
actually happening on the ground. For our collective, even before the
war, it was self-evident that anarchism is about "no borders, no
nations" instead of "borders and nation above all"; proving such basic
things in the third year of the war is even less interesting.
Organizations of Ukrainian former anarchists may have significant
influence in Western countries, but in Ukraine they are unlikely to be
known by more than a few hundred people, and wasting such effort on
criticizing them looks like free advertising from here. As Elon Musk
says, let's not be too hard on NPCs.
9. And yet, all of the problems listed do not negate the historical
significance of the upcoming Week of Action. The whole history of Europe
1918-1923. is a history of social revolutions that failed or were lost
due to the unpreparedness of revolutionaries, resulting in even greater
global carnage. This history must not be repeated. We hope that the
upcoming event will be only the beginning of great anti-war activity,
for which a permanent structure will be created from comrades from
different countries. For our part, we are ready to provide assistance
and support to this cause as much as we can now.
Our readers are well aware that we try not to quote classics in order to
avoid a cult of personality, but it seems that this is exactly the case
when it is worth ending with the words of Bakunin from a letter to Nechaev:
"...This passion is only valid and salutary when both sides are equally
and closely connected in it - negative and positive. One negative
passion, hatred, creates nothing; does not even create the force
necessary for destruction, and therefore will not destroy anything; the
positive alone will not destroy anything, and since the creation of the
new is impossible without the destruction of the old, it also does not
create anything, always remaining a doctrinaire dream or dreamy
doctrinaire."
Let's remember this in our future work.
https://aitrus.info/node/6219
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Welcome speech to the Week of Action in Prague ---- 9 points for further
discussion from the anarchist portal from Kharkov. In some very, very
eastern geography of the country, which until 2022 many would not even
find on the map ---- Program and list of participants of the event ----
1. First of all, these theses will only talk about the war in Ukraine.
No regional egoism. Before Kharkov was close to the front, there were
many students from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa; now we have
no opportunity to learn about what is happening there through personal
communication. Therefore, we will limit ourselves only to what is
visible from our bell tower.
2. The situation in recent months in Ukraine fully confirms the thoughts
from our English-language interviews dated February 24 and the review
article dated March 31. Ukraine is turning from a concentration camp
into a death camp. Yesterday, the law on total mobilization No. 10449,
adopted on April 11, came into force, contrary to all forecasts that
deputies would be afraid to do this. Now, during any street check of
documents and reconciliation with the electronic register of persons
liable for military service, cops will have the right to detain a man
and take him to the TCC if his data is not in the system after the
expiration of the 60-day submission period. For not having a military ID
card with you, you are also subject to detention and busification to
establish data. A day earlier, the Supreme Recycler signed Law No. 10379
increasing absentee fines for evaders. According to it, for refusal to
appear on a subpoena or to update credentials, an absentee fine of 17 to
25.5 thousand hryvnia will be imposed with the prospect of blocking
accounts in case of non-payment (the minimum salary in Ukraine is 8
thousand hryvnia). Estimates of the number of citizens planned to be
drafted into the army vary from 150,000 to 500,000; in the second case,
this will mean the mobilization of every tenth man of the corresponding
age. In other words, the totality of mobilization is limited only by the
financial capabilities of the budget.
In recent days, the editors of our media have prepared detailed analyzes
of the butcher law and the reaction to it at the grassroots, as well as
how its adoption affected the flight from Ukraine. They talked about a
project for free mutual assistance of Ukrainians in unauthorized border
crossings and about the Russian military man Yuri Galushko from Kharkov,
who killed six artillery commanders for his mother, who was injured
during the Russian shelling of Kharkov, and then fled with weapons. For
the International Day of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service on
May 15, we wrote about the spring increase in desertion from Russian
troops and talked with a deserter from the Ukrainian border service.
The disintegration of the Ukrainian army over these couple of months
began to be discussed at the highest level. According to one of the most
famous lawyers in the country, Rostislav Kravets, during the war, more
than 100 thousand military personnel left their units without
permission; parliamentarian from the ruling party Yuri Kamelchuk
announced 15 thousand military personnel who received disciplinary
sanctions for failure to comply with orders or desertion. Very often
those who escaped from units are not punished in any way, otherwise
there will be no one to fight at all. Demoralization in the Armed Forces
of Ukraine is facilitated by a lack of understanding of the prospects of
war, the attitude towards soldiers as meat and the failure of parliament
to fulfill its promise to set a demobilization period when adopting bill
No. 10449. The shortage of personnel in the army is even more acute than
that of weapons and ammunition. The repressive bodies are afraid of
being sent to the front and turn a blind eye to any violence of
territorial recruitment centers against civilians, just so as not to go
to fight themselves.
3. Calls to unite against uniformed sadists who imagine that they have
the right to decide who lives and who dies are as ubiquitous among the
masses as the willingness to organize together to change life is weak.
More and more of those who have nothing to protect are trying to leave
Ukraine, without choosing between life under the Kremlin and death for
the wallets of scum at the trough. On May 17, a sad anniversary was
reached: 30 men had already officially died trying to cross the Tisza
River bordering EU countries. Those who do not flee are forced to
survive under virtual house arrest (many have been doing this for more
than a year, but now this practice is becoming widespread). Talk about
the imminent end of Ukraine as a state, especially in the front-line
areas, also does not contribute to protest activity: from this point of
view, there is no point in risking criminal liability if it will end
soon anyway and you will have to think about what to do in the new
reality. "It is better to possibly die in the Russian occupation than to
definitely die now for the internal occupation," such is the logic of
this gloomy apathy.
4. However, episodic examples of social resistance are regular. April 6,
Desnyansky district of Kyiv: during a conversation between the TCC
patrol and a certain passer-by, Timofey Molderf, born in 1972,
approached one of them from behind. and struck him on the head, after
which he took a knife from his bag and tried to stab another raid
participant with it. April 20, near the village of Chornoguzy,
Chernivtsi region: two civilians knocked a TCC employee to the ground
during an alert. The vehicle was blocked, he fired a pistol into the
ground, but for some time he was not allowed to enter the car. On the
evening of May 3, in the town of Vinogradov in Transcarpathia, about 10
people of Roma nationality gathered at the entrance to the TCC and tried
to open the gates by force, protesting against the mobilization of two
of their fellow villagers. The officers fired into the air; the next
day, video footage was published with apologies from the women who took
part in the assault. The evening of the same May 3 in Zaporozhye: at the
call of the wife of Evgeniy Butenko, who was detained by the cops at
home that day because of allegedly being wanted, a crowd of residents
came to the TCC. There they shouted: "Let all the people out of the
basement!", "You should protect us, not kidnap us!" Police surrounded
the building to prevent people from entering. The three-hour rally was
broadcast by the YouTube channel of local activists of the "living
people" movement. On the night of May 12, in the same Zaporozhye,
someone (according to rumors) threw two Molotov cocktails into the
building of the Shevchenko TCC, they did not catch fire. On May 14, cops
announced the detention in this city of an organized group of "living
people" of five people who are accused of spreading disinformation about
the mobilization: activists talked about its illegality and filmed the
abductions. At least one of the detainees was severely beaten.
Sinelnikovo in the Dnepropetrovsk region: yesterday, TCC officers were
transporting private security officer Alexander Sadovsky, born in 1975.
in the back seat of a car; During transportation, he took out a knife
and put it to the throat of one of the employees. Another began to take
the knife and received a stab wound in the arm. The same day in the
regional center, Dnieper: unknown people in black attacked a military
medic sitting in a camouflage minivan with the words "faggot TTSKshny",
blew gas from a can through an open window, broke his face and glasses.
And how many videos every day of how passers-by help fight off those
kidnapped on the streets!
Also on May 18, in the afternoon, in the village of Bolgan, Vinnytsia
region, border guards noticed a man trying to cross the
Ukrainian-Moldovan border outside the checkpoint. When detained, a
resident of Kyiv born in 1990. hit one of them, then used a gas spray
and tried to take away his service weapon. One of the border guards
fired two warning shots and then shot him in the legs; he was hospitalized.
5. Parallels in internationalist circles between the Russian-Ukrainian
conflict and the First World War with calls for Russian and Ukrainian
workers to stop military production do not take into account the fact
that Ukraine is fighting on the economic base of its Western partners.
All critical goods, from ammunition and fuel to food and medicine, are
supplied from abroad. Ukraine's drone production and military equipment
repair bases do not play a key role in the war. The weak link is the
transport system. Ukrainian international carriers are sounding the
alarm: many truckers, having left Ukraine, abandon their trucks and
refuse to return; the logistics workers who remain in the country simply
quit or do not want to leave home, saying "let the TCC and the police
take it." Yesterday afternoon, about 100 trucks partially blocked the
Odessa-Kyiv highway, one of the busiest in the country. The traffic jam
at the exit from Odessa reached 5 km. Strikers from different regions
declared that "the country rests on us" and demanded reservations from
mobilization for their profession; They let cars and buses through. In
our Kharkov, transport companies are also on the verge of stopping;
trade is in danger of collapsing at the national level. This was
probably the maximum strike struggle that the working class is capable
of under existing conditions. By the way, this event attracted much less
public attention yesterday than the fight between Usik and Fury for the
title of absolute world heavyweight champion. A lot says something about
the environment in which the Assembly has to operate.
At the same time, this month marked in Ukraine the first public episode
of ordinary workplace struggles during the war. On the morning of May 1,
in Druzhkovka, due to a strike and rally, a plant supplying bread to the
north of the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region stopped.
The reason is many months of salary arrears; About 200 people work
there. However, for the reasons described above, such protests are
unlikely to have a critical impact on military operations. Castles don't
worry about whether their slaves are starving.
6. While foreign comrades continue to ignore our calls to campaign among
Ukrainian refugees, the state does not leave them alone. The moribund
regime is desperate to recapture the fugitive serfs, whether through
refusing to grant consular services to men without military records or
directly negotiating to prevent European authorities from enforcing the
integration of Ukrainians. Amid the silence of internationalists, this
month migrants began to speak out for their rights. As you can read,
with a liberal democratic agenda rather than a class one:
It is noteworthy that they sent a photo of the picket to a conservative
anti-Maidan blogger from Kyiv, who also provided informational support
for the protests in Zaporozhye. The forecast from the winter interview
with the Assembly that, given the passivity of the international
anarchist movement, the anti-war theme will be used by right-wing
conspiracy theorists can be considered confirmed. And we believe that
this happens not only in Ukraine.
7. This can only be changed by going to the Ukrainian embassies and
consulates with demands to release those who do not want to fight. We
have no illusions that the regime will take such a step - this
ridiculous hybrid of the American Confederation with North Korea is
ready to quickly send the majority of the country's population to
mincemeat, just to gain at least a little more time to plunder what has
not yet been stolen. Even if Ukraine opens its borders, European
countries may already close entry. Therefore, if such actions get into
the major media, they will first of all show anti-war people in Ukraine
that our community really stands on their side. Without concrete
practical steps, any slogans about "no war other than class" will be
perceived as an empty abstraction for everything good and against
everything bad.
8. Although proponents of the war sadly acknowledge that
internationalist positions are gaining strength in foreign anarchism, it
still devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to denouncing
social chauvinists and a disproportionate amount to discussing what is
actually happening on the ground. For our collective, even before the
war, it was self-evident that anarchism is about "no borders, no
nations" instead of "borders and nation above all"; proving such basic
things in the third year of the war is even less interesting.
Organizations of Ukrainian former anarchists may have significant
influence in Western countries, but in Ukraine they are unlikely to be
known by more than a few hundred people, and wasting such effort on
criticizing them looks like free advertising from here. As Elon Musk
says, let's not be too hard on NPCs.
9. And yet, all of the problems listed do not negate the historical
significance of the upcoming Week of Action. The whole history of Europe
1918-1923. is a history of social revolutions that failed or were lost
due to the unpreparedness of revolutionaries, resulting in even greater
global carnage. This history must not be repeated. We hope that the
upcoming event will be only the beginning of great anti-war activity,
for which a permanent structure will be created from comrades from
different countries. For our part, we are ready to provide assistance
and support to this cause as much as we can now.
Our readers are well aware that we try not to quote classics in order to
avoid a cult of personality, but it seems that this is exactly the case
when it is worth ending with the words of Bakunin from a letter to Nechaev:
"...This passion is only valid and salutary when both sides are equally
and closely connected in it - negative and positive. One negative
passion, hatred, creates nothing; does not even create the force
necessary for destruction, and therefore will not destroy anything; the
positive alone will not destroy anything, and since the creation of the
new is impossible without the destruction of the old, it also does not
create anything, always remaining a doctrinaire dream or dreamy
doctrinaire."
Let's remember this in our future work.
https://aitrus.info/node/6219
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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