VoxEurop has a nice piece about Ukraine’s Solidarity Collectives (anti-authoritarian brigades defending Ukraine from Russian aggression). Entitled “Anarchists in Wartime: The Experience of Ukraine’s Solidarity Collectives in Ukraine,” it covers the decimation of left-wing alternatives (to the Communist Party) in the Soviet Union and the revival of alternatives since 1991, as well as reflections on the 2014 Revolution of Dignity and what’s happened since then.
A few excerpts:
“We know what happens to people in Russian-controlled territories like Donetsk and Luhansk. There are investigations, documented cases of torture against those who are deemed even vaguely connected to political activism. We know that death for some of us is better than the prospect of finding ourselves in the hands of a regime of torturers. Faced with this situation, all of Ukrainian society – not just people on the left – comes to a realisation: from politicians to grassroots activists, to grandmothers who might just write a Facebook post supporting Ukraine, all are vulnerable to Russian aggression.”
[. . .]
“Ukraine isn’t perfect, but it’s the most democratic project that exists in the post-USSR territories,” Kseniia continues, calmly and gently reciting one of the mantras that Ukrainians often repeat for westerners. “We have rights. We have always fought for these rights. And it’s important for us to defend what we have, and to be able to continue to expand this project.”
[. . .]
“Ukraine, in recent decades, has undergone enormous existential events that impact the whole of society. And this goes beyond right or left. It’s bigger than politics. Maidan was a moment of self-identification for a society that had come together: thousands and thousands of people uniting to fight, demanding freedom, against the regime, against corruption. For a post-Soviet country like Ukraine, it was one of the most successful rebellions in this sense. This affirmation of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly was an immense success, because what we were heading towards with the president at the time [Viktor Yanukovych] was the Belarus of today”.
The entire article can be read here: https://voxeurop.eu/en/anarchist-war-ukraine-solidarity-collective/
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