Imperialism: The Example of the Russian Federation

Article by the Revolutionary Communist Youth League of Russia (Bolsheviks) RKSM(b):

Introduction

The question of the role of the Russian Federation in the global imperialist system is important now more than ever. The ongoing war in Ukraine, the growing tensions between large capitalist powers and the ongoing crisis in the international communist movement bring the topic to the forefront of the discussion. Being only one aspect of a greater discussion on the nature of imperialism, it highlights how a flawed understanding of a given phenomenon can have far-reaching consequences for the political analysis of the global situation as a whole. This, in turn, can undermine the theoretical and practical work of entire organisations.

Multipolarity and BRICS, once more...

By Greg Godels

The debates over “multipolarity” and the significance of an allegedly multipolar BRICS grouping continue. In an opinion piece in People’s Voice (Canada) (“Multipolarity, BRICS+ and the struggle for peace, cooperation, and socialism today”, June 16-30, 2024) writer Garrett Halas mounts an earnest defense of multipolarity and the BRICS+ “as a positive step towards socialism.” 

Russia: On the campaign against the “scientific center” named after fascist Ivan Ilyin

Resolution of the Central Committee of Revolutionary Communist Youth League of Russia (Bolsheviks) RKSM(b):

In April 2024, another political scandal broke in our country. Students at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) have publicly opposed the ‘educational and research centre’ named after the philosopher Ivan Ilyin, which had opened at the university. 

This is the same man who lived for a long time in Hitler’s Germany, supported fascism and applauded the Nazi attack on our Motherland. 

Russia: Joseph Stalin's statue vandalized in Zvenigorod

Telegram/@ostorozhno_novosti

An unknown man wielding a sledgehammer has decapitated a statue honoring Soviet leader and architect of the 1945 Great Antifascist Victory, Joseph Stalin, in the city of Zvenigorod, near Moscow, Russian state media reported.

Video taken showed the suspect staggering around the statue before knocking its head off in what appeared to be one swoop and walking away.

"On Saturday, in one of Zvenigorod's parks, a man in an unwell state knocked the head off the bust of Joseph Stalin with a sledgehammer," a law enforcement source told the state-run RIA news agency.

Interview with the Workers' Front of Ukraine: Fascism, the Imperialist War and the perspective of Socialism

The Workers' Front of Ukraine-RFU (Робітничий Фронт України), is a clandestine Marxist-Leninist group founded in 2019. Below you can read the english version of an interview they gave to Karl Gunnarsson, International Secretary of the Communist Party of Sweden-SKP, which was published in SKP's official gazette "Riktpunkt". 

 

The interview provides interesting information about what Ukrainian communists think about the ongoing imperialist war and the suffering their country has been subjected to, but also  a background to the war and explains what was behind the so-called the Euromaidan revolution. 

 

Multipolaristas’ Dugin maneuvers through BRICS contradiction

By Charles Andrews

Aleksander Dugin, a propagandist for Putin’s great-Russian imperialism, has had to maneuver through one of the contradictions within the BRICS association – the unity and contention between China and Russia.

Supposedly a historian and philosopher, Dugin spews reactionary filth going back to feudal times.

“Russian society is very special and needs a ‘father’ type of leader (such as a Tsar) who must also provide security assurances to the whole society.”

 

Victory Day Parade: Lenin's Mausoleum... magically disappeared from the Red Square

Well, not so magically... 

 

While they attempt to appropriate the history of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, presenting themselves as the heirs of the People's Great Anti-fascist Victory, the authorities of capitalist Russia managed to... cover Lenin's Mausoleum during Thursday's Victory Day parade in Red Square.

Photos and videos from yesterday's impressive parade in Moscow shows the entrance of the Mausoleum being hidden behind giant scaffolding with banners. 

 

Ukraine's Zelensky regime continues the despicable policy of dismantling Soviet-era monuments

Another Soviet-era monument, which glorifies the friendship between Ukrainian and Russian people, is being dismantled on orders of the Kyiv city government in the latest stage of derussification (actually decommunization) promoted by the reactionary Zelensky government. 

 

Kyiv’s Department of Territorial Control announced the beginning of the removal of the Pereyaslav Rada monument on 30 April, stressing its massive size: “The sculptural composition is large, consists of about 20 elements weighing between 6,000kg and 7,000kg each. Due to the complexity of the design, dismantling may take a few days.” 

 

Russian university students launch petition against new research center named after fascist Ivan Ilyin

Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School? No, thanks! Students and academic staff at Moscow's Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) have launched a petition against the naming of the institution’s Higher Political School after 20th century fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin. 

The "Ivan Ilyin Higher Political School" at RGGU was created in July 2023. Earlier this month, Russian media reported that extreme-right philosopher and ideologue Alexander Dugin, who has served as a consultant to President Putin in recent years, was placed in charge of the school.

Katyn Massacre Revisited: Declassified archival evidence disputes the “Soviets did it” narrative

A fabrication of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Dr Joseph Goebbels, the “Soviets did it” version of the Katyn Massacre remains for decades a major weapon in the arsenal of anti-communist, anti-soviet propaganda throughout the world. 

Almost two months after the resounding defeat of the Nazis in Stalingrad, on 13 April 1943, a mass grave of Polish POWs was found in the Katyn Forrest, a few miles away from Smolensk. Under the guidance of Goebbels, the blame was cast against the Soviet leadership and this falsehood was eagerly adopted by the imperialists and bourgeois historiography in Europe and the United States. 

KKE on Moscow attack: "Who armed the hand of the murderers?"

In a statement concerning the horrific terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in Moscow on 22 March, which claimed the lives of at least 139 people, the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) points out (here in Greek): 

"The KKE condemns the heinous, criminal attack in Moscow that resulted in the death of dozens of people and the injury of many more.  The questions are many. 

The necessary search, arrest and punishment of the guilty cannot diminish the importance of the question "who armed the hand of the murderers" and what is their aim, in the conditions of imperialist war and the escalation of antagonisms that the peoples pay with their lives". 

Would Putin endorse a Pinochet-like dictatorship in Russia?

Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been re-elected for a fifth term with a  record 87% of the vote thus reaffirming his indisputable dominance in the country's political arena. 

 

The Russian elections took place in the midst of the imperialist war in Ukraine and while the government has silenced any political power that opposes the “Special Military Operation”. Therefore, there couldn't be any presidential candidate who would express a different view concerning the strategic choices of Putin's government. The President's “opponents”, including Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), were all lined up behind the Kremlin's strategy.

 

Was Stalin poisoned by the West? Communist Party in Russia calls for probe over Soviet leader's death

On the occasion of the 71st death anniversary of Joseph Stalin, the "Communists of Russia" party, appealed to the FSB and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation with a request to check the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of the great Soviet leader, RIA Novosti reported. 

“The party appealed with a request to check the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin,” says Sergey Malinkovich, chairman of the party.

10 years since the Euromaidan in Ukraine: Revolution or foreign-backed Coup?

By Nikos Mottas

This February marked the tenth anniversary since the so-called “Euromaidan” events in Ukraine and the subsequent coup d' etat which, backed by the US and the EU, led to the overthrow of the then pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. 

Apart from the rise of far-right, reactionary forces in Ukraine's political leadership, the 2014 coup became the starting point for the 2022 Russian military invasion and the ongoing imperialist war. 

KKE on EU Parliament's Resolution for Navalny's death

Concerning the European Parliament's resolution on the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny ("JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the murder of Alexei Navalny and the need for EU action in support of political prisoners and oppressed civil society in Russia"), the EU Parliament Group of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) underlines with particular concern “the fierce geo-political competition, the intentions and the evolving dangerous games surrounding Navalny's death”, part of which is the relevant resolution of the EU Parliament”. 

 

Revolutionary Komsomol: Statement on the second anniversary of the imperialist war in Ukraine

In a statement about the two years since the imperialist war in Ukraine, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Youth League of Russia (Bolsheviks) stresses out the following:

Two years ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) on the territory of Ukraine has begun. 

Since the beginning of the SMO, the RKSM(b) has issued a number of statements devoted to the problems of combat operations on the territory of Ukraine. We list them below:

Putin and the unbearable hypocrisy of the West

By Nikos Mottas

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, western imperialism always seeks for a “boogeyman” in order to justify its crimes: In 1991 and 2003 it was Saddam Hussein, in 1998 it was Slobodan Milosevic, in 2001 Osama Bin Laden, in 2011 Muamar Qaddafi, in 2013 Bashar Al-Ashad and so on. 

During the last two years, as a consequence of the imperialist war in Ukraine, the role of the villain in global politics has been given to Russia's President, Vladimir Putin. 

KKE: Two Years Since the Imperialist War in Ukraine — The Experience and Conclusions of the Communists

The contribution of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) at the European Communist Action's conference held in Istanbul on Saturday 17 February, on the occasion of the 2nd anniversary of the imperialist war in Ukraine, under the  title "Two Years Since the Imperialist War in Ukraine: The Experience and Conclusions of the Communists.

Two years of killing people “for the master’s dish to get filled”

Dear comrades,

Russians gather in Red Square to honor V. I. Lenin on his 100th death anniversary

Despite the freezing temperatures, hundreds of Russian working men and women of every age gathered today, Sunday 21 January, in Moscow's Red Square in order to mark the 100th death anniversary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. 

"I came here to honor the memory of Vladimir Lenin — our leader, the founder of the Soviet state," said 47-year-old Yulia, one of many admirers who gathered outside Lenin's mausoleum.

32 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Red Flag will rise again

By Nikos Mottas.

It was thirty-two years ago, on December 26, 1991, when the red flag with the sickle and hammer was lowered from the Kremlin.

It was then, during the cold days of December, when the first socialist state of the world, the homeland of the world's proletariat, bent under the weight of the counterrevolution. Four days before, on December 22nd, the leaderships of three of the largest Soviet republics had decided the dissolution of the USSR, while the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had been outlawed on summer of the same year.