Anarchists At War: Critical analysis of solidarity in context of war in Ukraine (RIA 2023)
The following is a presentation by anarchists from Ukraine and Belarus, alongside a question and answer portion with the audience, conducted in part via live translation services. This panel is facilitated in part by Nina of Anarchist Black Cross Dresden, and features presentations by Masha (Belarus) an anarchist in Warsaw, Nastya is a member of Solidarity Zone (not speaking on behalf of that group), Mira from Anarchist Black Cross Kyiv and Solidarity Collectives and Boris of Belarus Anarchist Black Cross.
The discussion, much like previous discussions by anarchists supporting anti-authoritarians joining the armed defense against the Russian invasion, was interrupted a number of times by pacifists or others who didn’t want a discussion of the complexities of joining the territorial defense forces to have space. Those interruptions were mostly not recorded as they happened off-mic, but you’ll hear the reactions to them. I felt like this audio was important to share here with the audience, particularly in spite of their silencing.
I recorded this at the 2023 St-Imier anarchist gathering on the 151st anniversary of the first anarchist and anti-authoritarian Workers International, following the purges by Marxists and Blanquists. Like the first one in 1872 hosted by the Jura Federation, this gathering was hosted in small village of St-Imier with a population of 4,000 being nearly doubled in size over the course of 5 days of workshops, concerts, discussions, food, film showings and tablings.
You can find reflections from some folks at crimethinc.com, alongside a link to recordings from the live, multi-lingual radio broadcast throughout the event and the website for the gathering where you’ll see lists of happenings from the week. Hopefully in the near future you’ll be able to find the recordings of the presentations that got recorded such as this one, some in video and some in audio.
I’ll be reflecting on some of this in an upcoming episode of the ItsGoingDown podcast while speaking with my friend and former co-host Scott Branson about how the bookfair here in Asheville went. Here’s an article (in French) about an Islamophobic scandal that occurred with members of the French Anarchist Federation (Kropotkin).
Past interviews on the subjects of:
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Transcription
Nina: Okay, thank you. And hello, and welcome to our event, I have a couple of pre announcements before we come to what we actually doing. First of all, there’s a live stream, it’s gonna be blurry, like, it’s this camera over there, but don’t panic, nobody’s going to be recognized. Then I would like to announce again that this is an anarchist camp, and it lives by all our solidarity, mutual aid and respect. So, everybody who did not yet sign in for a volunteer shift, please do so after the event. You can do this in the Espace Noir. Help to make the event happen in the way we all want. Because there are not enough people helping. And as anarchists, I think I don’t have to explain you what mutual aid and solidarity means.
Okay, then we have a mailing list for people who would like to support us and our struggle, it’s on the info table over there, and we kind of have a newsletter. So we can, you can sign up with your email, and you can get further information or join us in whatever way.
Before we start with our talk, we would like to commemorate one of our comrades who lost their lives in this war. But also, we would like to commemorate all people who suffered from Russian terror and lost their lives in battle, or were murdered and tortured by Russian imperialist occupiers. And for that, we would ask you all for a minute of silence.
[silence, punctuated by a quiet chuckle off mic]
Thank you, okay, my name is Nina. I’m active with ABC Dresden. I will try to moderate the first part of the event. First of all, we would like to thank everybody who supports our struggle since the very first day or joined later. We are really grateful for that. We will talk today about the critical points, so it was important for us to mention that whatever we say, of course, does not apply to everybody. So we would thank in the first place, all people who are supporting the people [who] are here right now on this podium (one person is coming back soon she needed a moment after this kind of incidents at the beginning) are people I’ve known quite [a] long [time] and we used to do solidarity work even before the war. They actually are awesome comrades and gave me the possibilities in the last year to learn a lot and see different perspectives.
We had the possibility to plan what we’re going to do before the war started, because it was clear the war will come it was kind of visible. We talked before how we would support our comrades in Ukraine. Out of this one and a half years [of work] now, we have worked together, we faced a lot of challenges in the solidarity work. Also among us, of course, I mean, there’s always things to discuss. The world is not white and black, rather than this [it’s] really complex and we have to figure it out. But we did and we are still together. I encourage everybody to discuss and we can shout but we also should listen to either each other.
Okay, I’m gonna start with introducing our podium and I gonna start with Masha to my right side. Masha is part of a group of Belarusian anarchists in Warsaw who tried to spread anarchist ideas among the Belarusian diaspora in Warsaw, which grew big after the uprising in 2020 in Belarus. Then next to Masha, there’s Nastya, a member of Solidarity Zone. This is an organization who is organizing prisoners support for people doing militant actions against the war machine in Russia, with anti-militaristic and anti-imperial views. Nastya is not talking on behalf of the organization, we just wanted to show where she’s organizing right now. Then I have on the left Mira, she’s an activist of ABC Kyiv, who is supporting political refugees from [the] neighboring country of Ukraine since 15 years, and she’s also an activist in the solidarity collectives who support fighting comrades and do humanitarian aid. On the left is Boris. He’s a member of ABC Belarus, who is supporting the group supporting prisoners since 2008, inside and outside of the country.
We will have different blocks of topics, and afterwards, we will open the discussion for the audience. We’re going to start with a more regional perspective. You all know that the war began in 2014. This beginning of the war in 2014, affected the relations between Russian and Ukrainian groups. So we want to dive at first in the question of solidarity between actually, these two places where the war is inflicted and happening. I would start with you, Mira, and ask you to give us your perspective on that.
Mira: Yeah, I can say that we were quite close with Russian collectives before and during 2014. Also after but less than this, I would say. There were there were several reasons [for this] between them. For sure it was the fact that it was much more difficult to travel between each other[‘s locations] after [the] war exploded, after what happened. But also, it was that, I would say that we both, on both sides, were more or less ignoring what is going on, we were concentrated on our usual like anarchist topics, and not really reacting to war much. I would say that we still had some connections, my group was also running a big anarcho-feminist festival with them to keep these connections. But it was getting more weak, less people in contact, losing common topics, losing common discussions.
I would say that it was also a couple of attempts to agree kind of anti-war actions on both sides. But we didn’t have interest from the groups on Russian side, to whom at least we tried to talk.
For the moment there are no [real] relations between [the] groups. It’s more like personnel relations with some exact comrades somewhere, like in Russia or outside Russia. And yeah, for a bit, it’s [been] like that.
I think one of the problems is also that for people who grew up in big empires, it’s kind of difficult to see that not everything is going around this, like, not everything connected to this empire is about this empire. I think people do a lot of work to some people, like many people do a lot of work to rethink about that because in Ukraine, we also never thought about this colonial experience. We didn’t ever have a kind of normal discussion in it. It just [now] popped up.
It’s now complicated, but I hope that maybe events like this will make more connections and more possibilities to work together and kind of go through this experience together.
Nina: Thank you, maybe Nastya, you want to hear your perspective?
Nastya: Yeah. My perspective is, on the one hand, this very similar and on another one, quite different because when the Russian invasion into Ukraine started in 2014 I wasn’t active yet as an anarchist. But I was and I still am an artist and I saw these connections in the art scene also. For me, there was a lack of interest, mostly from Russian side, [to] what exactly happens in the occupied territories. What is going on with our colleagues and with our friends. It was a lot of possibilities for us, for artists and activists to make a dialogue, but I can’t say that we used it every time we might have.
Masha: I wanted to share like an idea that recently popped up in my head about this, like, the connections that were actually destroyed by everything that happened after Maidan in 2014. Because I started being active in like 2008. Since then, I remember that there was always like camps organized either in Russia or Ukraine or in Belarus, where hundreds of comrades would come from the three countries. After the war, it was not anymore possible for the Russian comrades, especially males, to go to Ukraine. That’s why we kind of started going all to Russia. So it was more like your Russian Belarusian relationship from then on. After that, the Putin regime got more repressive, let’s say, so we started doing only underground camps. After some time, it just stopped at all. So for many years, and also like in Belarus, it was not even possible to organize, to invite comrades to be just arrested in the forest or something like this.
I think it’s important to mention that even though Belarus was not a part of this conflict back then, unlike now, we as the movement suffered the cost of it. We also, as a Belarusian movement, never speculated on how much the Russian movement is the opinion makers for the whole region. So, it’s like it’s we are only consuming rather than producing or putting knowledge together. This is why when there was repression in Russia, it also kind of reverberated on the Belarusian movement. Everything started being like less and less: less literature, less connections, less Russian activism, lost memberships. I would say that by the time of the war, the three countries were basically quite dispersed. So everybody was doing their own thing. There was not really big cooperation going on, like Mira said, on the group level just some people [that] know each other.
Nina: Okay, thank you. We would like now to look at a bit wider contexts and the question of solidarity between the region and Europe and the world. We had different challenges, we kind of figured out in our discussions we want to touch right now. One of the first topics which really often came up was the problem of subjectivity, which means that actually the perspectives of Ukrainians were often not taken into account. People tried to reach out even before the war to share the situation in Ukraine and about Ukrainian movement.
Yeah, and had different experiences for that. And maybe, Baris you want to start with yours?
Boris: Right. So if you heard our talk a couple of days ago, we were [saying] that information is very important and the questions of solidarity. The information is very important in understanding how things are working. And for us, we’ve seen the war basically brewing into something bigger in Russia and also on the Belarusian borders, we understood that we actually have to put a lot of effort into helping comrades in Ukraine to spread information and to spread our knowledge of what is happening there.
At that point, ABC Belarus was also part of the International Anarchist Federations. And we started , I think, weekly or something like bi-weekly calls with the people from the federations from around Europe mostly. The first calls, people were interested in knowing what things are happening. But slowly, like step by step with more aggression inside of the information sphere, we ended up actually with the people shouting at the person who was doing this calls from our side and so on, and also ended up into situations where people from Europe, European countries (Italy, like south of Europe, right) were basically reproducing the Russian propaganda in those calls. Like you’re basically sitting with the comrades and you’re saying, “Okay, this is the current situation,” and the comrades are just as if they are copy pasting Russia Today / RT.
That was very shocking. That’s kind of like a thing that showed that we are in this information warfare, where certain anarchist circles are ready to actually disregard their comrades from the region, in favor of their own perception of reality. They have certain narratives that they were fed in the last eight years, nine years since 2014. When those narratives were questioned by the comrades from the regions, it became very hard to find a common language. At the end of the day, those conversations stopped. We didn’t have enough energy and motivation to actually talk to the people who became a clear wall, closed, right? I think for me, this is an example of how people don’t want to hear. A lot of people are saying, who are have their perspective, strong perspectives towards Ukraine or many other regions, those people say, “Oh, we want to have a conversation, we really want to have a discussion.” I think some of you have seen how discussions went in the last days where people were shouting, and articulating and so on, and so forth. For us it became clear as well that certain groups of anarchists do not want to hear their comrades, they don’t want to hear the reality, they want to stick to a very simple version of the world that exists in this very nice place that is called Europe, Western Europe, Southern Europe, Northern Europe or whatever. This became a huge barrier in, in general in the work of solidarity. Because you can’t do solidarity based on false information. You can’t do solidarity on the false narrative. You cannot do solidarity work and raise solidarity based on a shaky platform that has nothing under it. That was actually the point where we got confronted to that, because for Belarusians, this was not a point for very long time as the Belarusian regime is not so strong in disinformation. Though we’ve heard that Belarus is socialist state from some comrades who never heard about Belarus before…
Disinformation is a very serious weapon against solidarity that is used by states a lot. Although we are [a] very small movement, and we might think Putin doesn’t think about anarchists in reality we are actually affected by that disinformation a lot.
Nina: I think we heard this actually yesterday, also on the talk about Iran, where our comrades were saying that there are certain narratives which perceive certain states or region as anti-imperialist, and then follow some kind of old narratives. I think face this here as well. Mira, I want to hear your experiences with these problems.
Mira: I think that for me, one of the worst points is that…I know how it happens, because I mean, we have collectives in Ukraine. We have [an] active scene, we have our websites, we have a resources, it’s possible to talk to us, wee are open to making speeches. From the beginning of [the] full scale invasion. I made almost 50 talks, when people were willing to listen, and one where they didn’t want to listen.
We are very open to sharing our experience and our position. But a lot of collectives, they just don’t need us, they don’t need any of our experience. They are experts themselves on our topic. We are not subjects, it would be like, I don’t know, like, as a feminist, I feel like if it would be men who would be making statements about feminism. Like cis male[s] without really any other people asking, that’s I feel the same when it’s some collective somewhere who-knows-where, like far away in Europe, they’re very privileged, in my opinion, because having a European passport for Ukraine, you know, it’s like, “wow.”
They’re having all the resources like internet, like [the] possibility to communicate, but they just don’t need us. I’m coming to events like this and people [are] knowing there are a few people from Ukraine here, they have discussions on the topics about Ukraine without us. Also, we have like really wide consensus on what to do in [the] Ukrainian movement. We are supported by [the] Russian movement, we are supported by [the] Belarusian movement, [the] Polish movement, people who are around and who are affected by the situation, really know about the situation, who go there, go to the frontline to bring water, to bring food, to bring suppliers to bring everything. They are, in their opinion, stupid, and have not enough expertise on the topic. But people who are far away and have no idea about how do we have this life there, they do. So for me, this is very strange, that they are not even asking. I think it’s really against all the principles, but for some part of [the] movement, it’s okay. That is very strange for me.
I’m sorry, I’m a bit shocked also, from [the] beginning of this, and yeah, I still feel strange. But I mean, yes, as an anarchist we want to have a word, we don’t want to be treated as just some small thing in geopolitical something, no, we exist, we fight. Other people die, that’s we who are there. And we want to have a voice without interrupting sometimes, really, like that’s….
[applause]
Nastya: I’d like to express solidarity with Mira. Because I also feel like ignorance [being ignored] of our voices from [a] Russian perspective also. Because when we try to say, what happens for us, we should very, very often validate that our experience is existing, that it’s true that our solidarity with Ukrainian comrades are fair and this is the thing that we should do, actually.
Also, I have a couple of words about occupied territories by Russia… I think a lot of us know something about the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, about occupied Crimea. But I see very little information about what has actually happened on this land, but for this eight years, Donetsk and Luhansk was like… [lawless], when murders and kidnapping of people happen every month and a lot of people were tortured, killed, raped there. This part of this war seems like quite an invisible for lots of people.
I will say bit later about Crimean people. I would like to ask you to be interested in voices from there. Because this occupied land is [the] land of certain people who live there, who love these territories, and they don’t want to leave it during all this years of war
Masha: I just wanted to expand what Boris was saying about the information and disinformation. I think I got an insight recently, when I was interviewing comrades from France, Germany, Greece, Finland, Poland, and our region, asking how their societies have reacted to the war, and how the anarchist movements reacted to the war there. I had an idea that actually the division between the countries that are in favor of supporting Ukrainian comrades and [those] against them, or balancing in the middle or wanting to be neutral…I think that sometimes it depends on how much (and I’m inviting you to think about it, wherever you’re coming from) how much the red, the authoritarian communist discourse, is still influencing our movement. Because this discourse, Russia being always right, being cool and wanting to create a socialist paradise on earth, and only the nationalists are against it, because they want to be part of the capitalist world. All these like, dual power thing, NATO, Russia, this kind of cold war, shit is still alive. Even in the countries where the movements, the communists and anarchists movement are divided, like they’re not cooperating or hating each other. I’m just inviting you to think about how much your movement even in this situation is influenced by their discourse, because this is not coming from the anarchist discourse.
It’s not coming from there. I sometimes feel like I’m reading the Emma Goldman memoirs, where she was trying to tell the whole fucking world, how the Russian Revolution was while being there, and nobody believed her for years to come. This is just some observation that I made, maybe it’s not true. But.. yeah.
[applause]
Nina: There’s time at the end for the audience. So it would be nice also for the recording of the event not to shout in between. Thank you.
One other important point, we actually see in this whole discussion and which we already actually [already] started to touch [on] are the colonial and imperialist perspective, which are still inside our movements as well, because we are coming from certain backgrounds and are socialized in certain ways of thinking. We were discussing beforehand “what is this solidarity?”
And we were talking about it in the way that there should be actually a two way solidarity or something like mutual solidarity, right? That would mean that we actually interact in respect for each other and listen to each other, and being often…yeah, for the other person’s perspective. We often see that, yeah, this didn’t really work out, as we already touched [on] right now. We would like to get a bit deeper in this problematic discussion or points.
Masha: Yeah, so what I’m going to share right now is like my perception, I’m not saying it’s the truth, but I think that many people might share it is that for the first time, probably in my life, it was clear to me how anarchist solidarity is divided. Just like we are divided, living in different countries, different countries have capitalist abundance, or resources, access to power, let’s say, and also living in this West, East, South, North…how much our movement copies that and how much the solidarity is divided along lines of previous colonialism and also capitalist abundance.
For example, I think you would agree that the difference would be very great between a Ukrainian comrade denying solidarity to a French comrade or to a French group (in terms of resources in terms of power you get in terms of solidarity, international solidarity you get) and the French or the German group, or German movement, denying solidarity to the Ukrainian movement. I think it’s clear that we are not on that side, even like equal in terms of what it means when you are denying something for us or what it means when you we are denying something for you. Or you even maybe don’t even think that we exist and can deny something to you.
I think it’s interesting that on the on the other hand, as people from the East, I usually looked up to the Western comrades, as the leaders of everything, they have infrastructure, they have all the knowledge, we translate your books and read how you live, how you organize. We try to copy paste: if you come to Belarus, you would have Food Not Bombs. I don’t know free markets, like everything that you have created 10 years ago and forgot about it, we kind of tried to do.
On the other hand, we are in this position, which is also not reflected, let’s say unreflective position, that we also see you as a point of resources: like we come to ask you for something, you [to] can tell us you you give it or not. But it’s us who are coming and wanting to tell you, and wanting to explain to you and wanting you to listen, to please listen, to please fucking listen. This is a bit humiliating, but it’s also seeing you as a comrade, I’m not seeing somehow you as a comrade, but as a resource, which is also something we have to reflect on to kind of tip the scale. For me, it’s a dual process. It’s not just you have to like give us rights, but also us stopping to see all the other comrades as unequals, or like that we are a bit inferior, somehow.
But the problem, I think, was that sometimes I [have been] faced with the reality after the war, that it was kind of easier for the Western comrades to see us as victims. It’s like, we are doing a lot of presentations about Belarus, and everybody likes it, because we are living in a such a shitty country, we need help, and we are these victims. You know? But whenever we start to ask, okay, do we also have our opinion? Can we like, say it? We also have our own analysis? Not that we are copy pasting yours anymore, we want to produce ours. How about that? And I think this is the way where some people like are not ready for that. As long as we follow your analysis, we are okay. As soon as we don’t, we are barbarians. Like we don’t understand something, we are a bit stupid, we didn’t read enough Malatesta or something like that. I hope it’s clear that it’s not like that, we all can read. We have access to the same information as you all. It’s just that we live in another reality.
The last point probably I will make here is also is a little bit connected to this, like political correctness that somehow exists kind of under behind the curtain in the movement. ‘It’s cool to talk about exotic people like Kurds fighting, Zapatistas, they have some knowledge, right? They really are different from us, and we can learn from them. But we cannot learn from Ukrainians because they’re white like us. And they have to I didn’t know they have to either learn from us or just follow the general Western civilization thing.’ On the one hand, we are not exotic enough. On the other hand, whenever we try to be exotic, we are not, like put on the same level like we cannot compete with Kurds for solidarity because we’re not even doing the same thing or we don’t understand. I think it’s interesting to observe that. I wouldn’t imagine like if there would be a Syrian panel, or a Kurdish panel, that people would attack these people like us, but it’s okay to attack us. Because we’re white, we are like Europeans, we will endure it. This is how it should go. Right. So, yeah, I think it’s an interesting observation.
[applause]
Nastya: Also, it’d like to say that we, as a group helping political prisoners, and Russia, militant political prisoners, we receive actually a lot of solidarity. For me, it’s like a part of our common struggle. But I see a disproportion of resources given to us and given to Ukrainian groups, even now, when [the] situation is escalated, and we should react, and we should express solidarity. And also about, like colonial thinking: I can’t understand why I hear so much from anarchists about state and state and state and state about NATO and Russia and other bullshit. Why we are not all thinking about Ukrainian people who defend themselves, and who defend their land, their homes, their loved ones. For me, it’s kind of [a] very logical thing, that the war doesn’t go on between states… it’s people who defend themselves.
Mira: Yeah, I think for me, one of the thoughts I had during these 16 month, 17th [month] already soon…going and talking, talking, talking, asking all the time in the position of asking help, all [the] years before for refugees, also now, for victims and for fighters.
The rules I’ve made for m[yself] here is that [I should] not to make comrades angry. We should be nice. We should be nice. We should be patient. Like if we say…we should control every word. Because then these people who are against us, they will catch us use it, make statements, news articles, all these kinds of things. I think I cannot call these people comrades really, because when you feel that much of violence and tense, without really [the] will to speak, or understand. I cannot say this word.
People accept it in the movement. That’s how I’ll call it now. So even when Nastya was talking [a moment ago] talking. And I’m like [saying to myself] “land, land is the word you should not use land is bad. But then they will catch us by this land, because it already happened.”
It’s like, yeah, people have full control of on this on their side. I didn’t know how to avoid it. But people are saying awful things to me during the event sometimes. I should be nice, because making conflict can cut help to my comrades. So I don’t want to be a reason of it. It was several times like really brutal things [that] people were saying,
I – as a personality, if it will happen in Ukraine [laughs]…it will have consequences. If it happens here…I don’t know what to call it. It’s not racism. We should create some word like for this thing to Ukraine. But that exists, I feel it. I can see how it happening. And today I have also understood [an] interesting thing, that actually the conflict in the beginning….we had [a] person, the person was attacking me. I was patient, answering very polite, but when it was about other comrades from Ukraine, I want[ed] to fight with him. Because I cannot see that. Yeah, that’s interesting, just sort of for insight. It’s also that, for example, there are even cases when people [do a lot of] damage to our movement, because [there are] Nazis [who] are trying to say, “look, these communists, this leftist, they support Russia, they want the death of our movement in Ukraine.” It has influence, what is published here, what is going on here. But we cannot criticize because we should be nice.
And like, for example, [there] was some Italian graffiti person who made graffiti in Mariupol, occupied… I have friends who walked from there to survive. Who drank water from snow to survive there. It was luck [that] they had this fucking snow… Mariupol [is a] very sensitive topic.
So the Italian comrade came there and made graffiti with some girl crying like Donbass [is a] girl crying with these tears, whatever. And put this antifascist action symbol on that.. Do you understand that I cannot use the Anti Fascist symbol after that in Ukraine normally? Because it would be this association that these are the people who are doing propaganda for Russia. I don’t know how to explain it, but it [is] like we are fighting to see, to say, “Okay, we are doing this and that we are good. We are nice. We’re anarchists, join us trying to make the movement” and then it’s done and the person does it and have no consequences after that, [but this person] is still accepted in the [anarchist] moment [here].
So I think that I want this part also to be in the consideration: that we are not only supporting people, we are also trying to build up movement. All this aggression is visible. And, actually, I feel much more secure under bombs and in Kyiv than here [with these people].
Nina: Okay, thank you. We would like to touch another point, which we kind of framed in the sense of critical solidarity, because all the thoughts which are abroad right now, and we already feel it in the room, that there are people who don’t share or have different perspectives. We were really wondering: a lot of people support a lot of crazy things in this world, ut as Mira just said, you have to perform in a certain way to get solidarity right now. We were wondering why it’s so so easy for people to withdraw solidarity, but it has such huge consequences right now for people in Ukraine and people don’t care about that. They don’t consider this. We were listening to the question of resources: who has the resources right now in the movement, and who needs it?
We would [like to] exchange a few thoughts on that matter, or go a bit deeper into that question.
Boris: All right. So, one of the things that we are actually talking about during our presentations as ABC Belarus is [the] war in Ukraine. We can’t shut up about this, because it’s a huge topic that actually affects us all: politically, socially, economically. It doesn’t matter that there are no bombs currently falling in Belarus, [though that] might happen tomorrow, Belarus is affected by that war. But when we thought about talking about this topic, right, it came to our mind that actually, we will get punished for talking about the war in Ukraine. We will get negative reviews for solidarity that we are calling [for] from the comrades. Right?
We actually got to learn how easy it is for the people to disregard what we are saying. Just because we are talking about the war in Ukraine. Maybe our positions on the war in Ukraine do not align. Maybe you know, something we don’t know and you are [a] very intelligent and knowledgeable person. I don’t know.
But it is shocking. It is very disturbing how easy it is… how easy it was, is, and during those following weeks and months and years to follow. How easy it is for anarchists to abandon their comrades: abandon their comrades who are fighting, abandon their comrades who are fighting on the streets, who are fighting in the prison in Belarus (I’m not talking about Ukraine, in Belarus) because of what we are saying. For you, our comrades and prisons are becoming enemies stronger (for some of you) in this all, are becoming bigger enemies, from my feeling than the state, capital, and all the horrible systems that are destroying human beings. It is very hard to go through this years of solidarity work, to see how fragile it is, how fragile those connections are that we were building through the years of our struggle… How easy it is for people to break those connections, sitting in comfort of your houses of your corner of your planet, without any consequences for you. But with huge consequences, not only for us, but for the comrades that are fighting in prisons.
I would like you to let it fucking sink [in], that you are ready to abandon people who gave their freedoms, and some of them gave their lives, in favor of your political contradictions with the other groups. It is it is astonishing, it is horrible. It is very discouraging for any solidarity work to come. You have to know that this is a huge danger, that is actually not above only ABC Belarus or Kyiv groups but any group that is doing solidarity work: that comrades are becoming enemies so fast, not only for those who are like us, but also those who are sitting in prisons, and they are continuing their fight there.
Nastya: Also about our comrades and prisons. For me as a person doing solidarity work and supporting prisoners in Russian prisons: I can’t imagine that all [those] people, our comrades, our friends, would be free if Russian state, racist regime will stay [in power]. It’s impossible to imagine that, for example, repressed Crimean Tatars [could get] free. Maybe it would be necessary to say that this group of people, this group of native people of Crimea, [has been] repressed by Russian regime since occupation of Crimea, and get huge prison terms, like 10 years in prison, 20 years in prison up to life sentence[s]. Just because they for a very long time, opposed any authority, and they were quite independent from any state. Those people who have been sentenced on ‘terrorist’ articles for just being a part of [a] community. They also wouldn’t be free, even if your dream will somehow change it. I don’t know what magic should happen to to lead to this result. For me, it’s very clear that [the] freedom of our comrades, of hundreds of prisoners in Russian prisons, is directly connected with the fall of this regime, the state and this country in its current state.
Mira: I’m also thinking that it seems that movements here are fighting for this and that right. For us, the biggest thing oppressing us is the Russian attack. So [do] why people think that it should be justice for them, they’re fighting for justice. And for us, it should be only peace. Because justice for me, is my friends in Russia and Belarusian jails getting out. Justice for me, is stolen kids going back to their families (because Russia also stole kids from occupied territories). Justice for me is: we are not sleeping with bombs every night. Like really because they do it every night like they can do it months with just one, two nights without. Justice for me is also our comrades who are prisoners to be back from these jails. Justice for me also is to have peace, real peace. When [our comrades get out], [they should] have [a] place there to really think, grieve who we [have] lost. Because just stopping [the war, the repression] at the point where it is, it’s not justice.
And, for me, it’s also interesting that, it’s one more time [that] “when this fight [is] not our fight.” I also listened to these arguments during Maidan [movement, that] “it’s not our fight, it’s not good for anarchy, is this and that.” And I’m really curious: which ideal revolution with ideal anarchists [are the] people waiting [for] here?
[applause]
Nina: Okay, we already made quite a lot of points, we will have a last final round with final statements of each of you.
Nastya: For now, supporting of our friends, our comrades, groups in Ukraine needs to be consistent. For me, it feeds on feminist logic on de-colonial logic, and imperialistic logic. From my perspective, to be a feminist means to have a right to self-defense, to fight back. This is exactly what Ukrainian people Ukrainian solidarity groups are do[ing] right now. They’re realizing their right to self-defense.
Masha: I just wanted to share one last example that is connected with what I think is many times when we make the declarations about who we are as anarchists like “We are anti-capitalist, we are anti-sexist, we are anti-homophobic, we are anti-militarist,” and it’s becoming empty words, when we are actually not building any structures that support these statements in our movement.
It’s easy to say “I’m anti-sexist,” but when the person claims that they have been harassed, to just tell them to fuck off or like to say, don’t say about it, we are anti-sexist. So, sexism doesn’t exist here. And it’s not in the anarchism base. So stop talking about it.
I think that anti-militarism is becoming kind of such a thing, which is just declarative solidarity with the people without any practical consequences. How I see it, it shouldn’t be solidarity with Solidarity Collectives. But I don’t see how the people who claim to be anti-militarist in the anarchists movement and claiming solidarity with the people, or the working class, how they actually do it, and what is growing out of it.
And about this purity…just [using] the example of this camp, I don’t know how much you are involved in talking with the organizers, or how much you are following this telegram chat, which is telling every day about people fucking up this, people fucking up that, there is a police going to come or a fire brigade cannot access or the trains’ railways got fucked up. For us: it’s just messages that were read to enjoy our commonality here. But behind that curtain, there sits… I don’t know how many people and receiving the fucking calls from the cops, from the fire brigades, from the state, from the city, and they’re talking to them for us to be here. And if we were so purist here, “anti-state anti-police, no talk, no dialogue, no conversation” like this, we [still] need someone to take care of these conversations for us to be here. Why is it so unclear for some people that we cannot be purist in everything we do? Why is it not clear that for us to sit here and not be bombed and not been advanced by the fascist state somebody needs right now to fight on the fucking borders of the East and West. And yeah, we can disregard this people and say they’re bullshit, but this is how we can [survive].
So yeah, for me, it’s like very clearly connected that purism doesn’t exist, we are not stupid to say that participation of anarchists in the army is a delusion from the idealist anarchist picture. But we are offering that solidarity because we understand there is much more to that picture than black and white.
[applause]
Boris: Two days ago, and I’m remembering the two days ago a lot, so just let let it sink in [for] you. Two days ago at our talk, there was a guy (or a person) who said, “it’s a strange world.” And it kind of like got stuck in my head. His strange world was because [it’s] strange that people are fighting in the military against Russia. I think for me, it became a thing that is like, you know, rotating in your head, and it’s getting stuck and stuck and stuck, and again, and you think “Fuck, it’s a strange world.” So I would like to talk about shortly the strange world, right?
It’s a strange world, where anarchists tell fighting people to lay down their weapons. Very strange for me. It’s a strange world in which so-called anarchists rally to abandon solidarity with those who fight for their homes. It’s a strange world in which it is more important to provoke comrades from war[torn] regions than actually show a little bit of solidarity. It is a strange world in which capitalist peace, for anarchists, is more important than a fight against dictatorship. It is a strange world in which anarchists are expected to be nice. It is a strange world in which anarchists are laughing during in a minute of solidarity with tortured and murdered by the state.
[applause]
One last thing, I think all knows what Fortress Europe is right? It is a horrible monster that exists beyond the states. It extends to the eastern borders to the southern borders, sometimes to the northern borders. It is a place where you live. It is the place where we have to live right now. It is a place where you live in peace. You enjoy that peace, you fight against the state, you fight against the capitalism, but you have to understand that every time you tell the people that they have to run to Fortress Europe, maybe they don’t want [to].
In the last years, you might have seen that a lot of people prefer to stay in, war in the war zones where the torture and death and starvation and hunger and diseases are. It’s better for them to come here. This is their home, right? You might think. But ask yourself, why people around the world in the war in the struggle don’t want to come here to your beautiful nice place with the blue skies, mountains, green meadows and things like that. It is important to me for you to understand that we don’t want to live in Fortress Europe, your Fortress Europe with a fake peace, with the fake enjoy[ment] of life, with the fake fucking high salaries. We don’t want to see that. As anarchists, as anarchists, we don’t want to have Fortress Europe: we don’t want to have this nice place where people would enjoy some peace while the rest of the world is burning. As anarchists we have to be in the places where the world is burning.
[applause]
As anarchists, we have to be with our comrades, on the streets, in the trenches, in the prisons, or outside of them. We have to show as much solidarity as we can, because solidarity is what makes us all strong. And as soon as we stick together, we can make the revolution possible.
[applause]
Mira: I want to say that when everything was like going on, since 2014, we as anti-militarists were signing all these statements… blah, blah, blah, because we saw that [there was] still [a] possibility for peace and wished it just to stop. We did it already. It’s not that we didn’t try. We were fighting [to stop] militarization. It was if you check old texts [documents], it would be my sign[ature] there. [laughs] Ok, surely not [mine but] okay, [many of our signatures].
Most of the people who signed the papers, they’re fight[ing in the army] now. One [of] my friends who signed that things is in jail. They’re a war prisoner now. It’s not that we didn’t try. It was just the moment when we understood that the problem is that Russia is taking territories, and then they make people against their will go to their army and fight [the] next territories. And that’s what I call militarization, really. And we are anti-militarist, our anti-militarist people decided to join army to, to stop it. That’s how we see it. I mean, you can disagree, but a lot of people see [the] situation like this. It’s not a professional army, it’s civilians, who went to fight, and who hope to be civilians after. It’s not the people who are building [and] creating the army, who we have.
Also, I want to say about solidarity, that actually, solidarity is not only what Europe [is] giving to us, I mean, not only this, we have a lot of solidarity in Ukraine, now. It’s that mostly donations are coming from people from Ukraine, because a lot of people have a like really small income [and] still donate. It’s that when we lose somebody… when I had lost [someone] recently, the first thing I want, is very fast to go to my comrades there, because they are the ones who understand and who will support.
Even when we are making mistakes, we became like really softer to each other. We are not judging that easy, we are trying to understand each other. It’s a pity that sometimes to become more anarchist, to feel more solidarity, to try to talk to people more to feel more that you are part of your community you need war. That’s awful, but that’s true. It changes a lot of things.
Also, like, Boris said [about] why people don’t want to live in Europe… For me, actually, before that happened maybe I would like to live in several places. A summer [would be] nice. And I cannot say that I [would] want [to] forever, but for a year or two, it would be nice. But when it happened, there was fake news somewhere that Germany is given passports to Ukrainians. That was the moment when I was like, “fucking hell, go fucking away this passport. I don’t need it.” Because when is something like this happens the only thing you want. And then the only thing you think about is security of your people if that they will be alive. And yeah, I mean, yeah. Nothing less interesting than German passport invasion really? Like, nobody was curious even.
It would be nice if people would think about solidarity and about just relations also between each other, not only based on some, like unshakable principles, but also based on just being human being part of community, being part of the movement. Yeah, the way people [are] talking…it’s not only critique, it’s also how people do it. I mean, yes, maybe we are overreacting, people from Ukraine, I would agree. I’m definitely overreacting: when somebody is shouting, when somebody is trying to put something against us, because it’s [a] very sensitive topic. I’m also a feminist, and I think that if it would be like some things against feminist, people [would] support me and understand why I’m overreacting [so much]. But with this, we have war, we all have people who died, some of us very close people who died. And yes, we are not going to any events when we where we can [be] traumatize[d] because we understand that okay, this and this, we should not go there because it would be very traumatic, but people still want to bring it to us, and nobody sees that [that traumatization] is violence.
[applause]
Nina: Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for all of you sharing. I know it’s hard, you just mentioned that it’s, it’s really hard. Especially in an environment where there are people really offensive and rejective. I think that the important point is that this is your life reality. This is not an abstract, theoretical discussion some people can choose to take, this is your life. I think people should be a bit more respectful. I would announce that for the coming discussion to be constructive and respectful. And take an account, what was what was actually said the last one and a half hours. So, we will give over to the moderation for the discussion now.
[applause]
Moderator [translated from French]: Hello, so I’m part of the organization, and I’m the one who is going to make the moderation of this discussion in this room. So the subject of this workshop was to hear the point of view from the perspective of the people fighting against Russia, so Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, [to] listen to the point of view and trying to understand and understand why they are doing what they’re doing. And also, why are they saying what they are saying.
It’s important to respect the subject of this workshop, and that everybody who is going to speak should try to respect, [that to] change the subject, it is a form of censor[ship]. We are trying to avoid that. So for example, so if I was doing a feminist workshop some people would try to ask question[s] about the patriarchy and the existence of patriarchy, I would be like, “I can’t talk, you know, I’m trying to talk about feminism.” There would be a point where in the workshop, I would say, “please do not disturb and please shut up.”
This is why to keep on the subject, it’s going to be able to liberty of expression. There was a few workshops to talk about anti-militarism and still going on. If the theoretical question [is] about anti-military, ‘do we have to support people that are trying to fight against a war,’ it’s not the topic of the [discussion]. Please, we’re going to try to let those people talk. When I’m going to do the moderation, we’re going to try to respect the subject. If some people don’t want to respect the subject, I will try to make them not speak.
Now we’re going to make a tour of moderation. This person, Milo, is going to bring the microphone to each person. I’m going to try not to do an arbitrary way, but to make [ranked stack]. Each person can speak one time, [and] ask a question. If there’s no new person asking something, we’re just going to give [the mic to] someone who already spoke.
If you ask a question, or if [it’s] big could you try to synthesize your subject, and try to think before talking “is it a repetition, or am I bringing something new?” And please, instead of applauding, which could interfere with the understanding of the workshop, you can just do these signs [makes silent gestures]. Thank you. And everybody will be would say, okay, and if you’re not, okay, you have to put your hands down. So this won’t block the fluidity of the conversation, please, if someone shouts, do not shout. I’m trying to ask you to respect the people who are on the panel, and as you can see, the subjects are very sensitive and, and think about it instead of criticizing. I’m going to try to do this moderation. And if I can’t, we will just stop the event. Now, it’s your turn.
1st Audience Member: So I just wanted to express my sadness. And one thing I’m sad about is that we couldn’t focus on the actual topic proposed for this conversation. But I understand this because the second thing I’m sad about is that many of our comrades, and not only in in Europe, seem to treat solidarity as a kind of a supermarket when I go and I pick some products and I put them back on the shelf saying ‘this is not exactly what I like, this has wrong ingredients, or this, this has not enough calories or whatever.’ It’s been said already by one comrade, earlier in this camp, that here we are supposed to celebrate the spirit of Mikhail Bakunin. I don’t think he would go to a supermarket of solidarity. Instead, he would try to support national liberation movements and national uprisings and make them more into revolutions and teach people anarchy. That’s what I wanted to say, I think.
But I also have a question: Could you tell us a bit about international legions and what they are? How do they work?
Moderator: We have to wait for Mira to return and then we can answer this question. Meanwhile, we’ll take another question
2nd Audience Member: I see it’s really hard in this very heated atmosphere to talk about what’s really your original work going on in Ukraine. That’s something that I would be really interested in, I would be very happy to hear a bit about how anti-authoritarianism can be practiced in such a difficult environment, and maybe just like a practical example of everyday activism in this very difficult context of how you practice anti-authoritarianism there.
Mira: To the question of practically what we do inside Ukraine….Serena and I will have the presentation from the Solidarity Collectives at eight o’clock, who is [in] the collective, who worked [on] this helping people, like solidarity for Ukraine inside [of] Ukraine. So it will be me and the comrade who lives in Ukraine, we will tell about our experience during this. So if if you are ready to come, we will be happy to see you there.
And then there was the question about international legions, as I understood…we are not working with them from people who have been there, I heard not very nice comments on the people who are inside, [that] it’s just some foreigners who came to fight. They’re definitely just strangers.
I would say that, for Ukraine, in the beginning, they made it a really big topic everywhere. [But in the end. There are a few units that are a] part of this international legion. But yeah, I think that the visible ones are only the Belarusian and Russian units, which are very different. I mean, they’re each different topics to discuss. So international legions, if you imagine it as one group of people going somewhere- No, it’s not. [It’s] just [a] bureaucratic thing for people who fight in different groups and who are foreigners. Is it clear enough? [Because I wasn’t here for the question being asked, so I wonder]?
3rd Audience Member: First, let me say I’m really ashamed of my German background. Because these voices who are yelling like, “oh, they are in Ukraine. They should not practice this or that.” I think it’s really ignorant. So yes, that was my first point. I also feel ashamed for, like, we have so much resources, as you’ve told, but we didn’t use them in a really productive way, I think. And this is one of my main points here: to take [it] fucking serious if you call us anarchists, if you call us activists, otherwise, it’s only just a nice patch on your bag or something.
Yeah, and second topic, right? Today, there was a meeting of antimilitarist coordination. I visited it to hear what they what they got to talk [about]. Not everybody was a fool, but the same guys there were coming here to provoke this meeting. I fucking hate it. Because it was exactly as you were describing. They was saying “Yeah, we are against the wall. We have to stop everybody with a gun in his hands.” But don’t even think about, for example that you already had these thoughts.
I just want to give, I think, three examples how you could act as an anti-militarist activist in a solidar-ic way. So, for example, you can organize general strike, like the weapons industry, but it should be like in Iran, because Iran is selling weapons to Russia. But if you organize this in Ukraine right now, the consequence will be invasion [by] Russia. Fucked up.
So [a] second example would be, just support the fucking anarcho-communist combat organization, which is actually attacking Russian military infrastructure right now. So why you’re talking about like, “oh, we want peace, blah, blah, blah.” Just go there, raise money. And yeah, support the anti-militarist activists in Russia.
For example, maybe if you’re against weapons, maybe, we can send some vests which can protect you from shooting. So, it will be more than just like “Lulu, you can’t go to the frontline, then you’re not anarchist.” Know what I mean?
So, and last one, is a question. I am really interested in how, or if you if you thought about networking with anarchist struggles in Iran and Sudan and so on, or are you connected in any way? Because, [by] my point of view, maybe this is like a kind of starting cell or something of a global self-defense unit or something against all states, against all invasions against militarism, and for the freedom of every human being. Thanks.
Nina: Thank you. And maybe just shortly about comrades in Iran and Sudan. We are in touch with comrades from Sudan. Unfortunately, the situation is really fucked up for them. And they are not so many. And the only thing we could recently do was [to] provide money. So yeah, it’s kind of… but we try to network. I also wanted to say that, unfortunately, right now, at the same time, there’s an event about grassroots movement about Sudan and Iran.
Mira: If it was a question to Ukraine, we don’t have contacts we are interested in [this] because they have something similar, but I would say that we are also [a] small movement, we are not big. Resources to really follow [those movements] are not very high. I think attention is more [directed] to Kurdistan. We have more of understanding, because we had people who went there, and then they made speeches. We had the comrade from Russia, who was going everywhere and he also made this website, and it’s people translating things about Kurdistan. It’s more, but for a pity he fell in the battle recently. I know that people keep [up] on this work. If you go to [the] Belarus table there, they also have books translated into Russian about Kurdistan. So if you speak Russian, you can buy it.
Yeah, it was a Sudan and Iran. I think it would be interesting, but it’s not only us, it’s also they never tried to contact so we should find some resources on both sides at some point when it would be possible. I mean, it would be cool if it can happen, but [hasn’t] yet.
Boris: I want to talk about Iran, Sudan, sorry. I just wanted to clarify something that is very important for me, and I think important for people in this table… Who thinks in this room after this talk, and maybe after previous interactions with us, that we are for war? Just just raise your fucking hands just to make it clear? Right? That we are ‘for war,’ we are here like ‘let’s make some war people who are in audience things that people on the table, love wars and want to have more wars,’ because I’ve heard some comments about that coming from that corner. And apparently you’re not listening. It is very important for us to clarify that people who are sitting on the table, oppose all wars, there is no good war. But sometimes we find ourselves in wars and that’s where we are right now.
[applause]
Instead of being individualistic, very self-focused people who are saying, “just run, alone, you can make this decision run.” We are trying to do something collectively, we are trying to fight collectively. And this is our point: not fighting like war, war, war, every war, but fighting this war in the way we can, in the way our energy allows. I think it’s important to respect that and to hear that finally, that there are no militarists here, there are no people who are supporting wars. And this is a very important point to make for me here.
4th Audience Member: Hi, I will try to speak in English [something in French??]. Okay. So firstly, I just wanted to say thank you very much to the five of you for coming, I think it’s very a very brave thing, the comrades who fight in all different ways. I think it’s very brave of all of you to come here, especially when there are comrades in the room who wants to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong. And who wants to spit on the graves of of all of our dead, I think [your speaking] is incredibly brave. And I think it’s as brave as taking up the gun. So I think thank you very much. And a round of applause for the table.
For those of you in the room who are coming here to disrupt these talks, and especially the last person who wants to laugh in a minute of silence, you [swears in French]. No, sorry.
Translator Interjects: so, fuck your Mother
4th Audience Member: I say Fuck, your dead. If you want to come, and you think that anti-militarism is funny, and to laugh on the graves of our dead, then fuck your dead, too. And your grandparents in Italy, your grandparents in France? Were they fighting with the Nazis? Or were they fighting against them?
You ask me… in Italy, you have this legacy, right? Where you say Brigada we’re against the fascism. So whereas against the fascism now. And on top of that, I want to say that it’s very easy to come here, and to attack anarchists as anti-militarism. But there’s a fucking police station down the road where they have guns, there’s a military base about 10 kilometers away. If you’re a real anti-militarist, I’m with you: we take some molotov and we go to the fucking base here, because this is the power right.
And the last thing I want to say is about colonialism. I think that in in Europe, we have one view of colonialism, that is [that] Europe and America [are] colonial power. Right? But to the east of us, there is also this other colonial power. Russia, right. And historically, in Belarus, and Kazakhstan, in Ukraine, in many countries around the area, this has been a huge imperialist power. If we stand against imperialism, it’s not just American imperialism that we have to stand against, but also Russian imperialism. And so my question to those people who are who say that anti-militarism, where is your anti-imperialist perspective?
Lastly, a little question to the to the guys, all of you on the [panel]. I just wondered, in terms of in terms of prisoner support, what is the most useful thing that can be done aside from money right now? Yes. Thank you again.
Masha: Well, right now, I don’t think any solidarity action next to the embassy makes a lot of sense or like will really release [anyone] or [that] there is any leverage on the powers in Russia or Belarus that we can like push.
But I think that it’s important, and we have also started to think about what are we going to do with all these people who will get out of jails, who have been in jails repeatedly, but also with the people who have been in the front line, and having all the mental disturbances that people from prison have. We as a movement are never ready to actually accept and live with the people who are like, this is my own experience that it’s really hard to live with a comrade after they experienced something as hard as prison in Belarus, but I can only imagine what it is like to experience something at war. I think we need to prepare for that and prepare some structures that could help us to really socialize these people in our way, to show the collective solidarity for them to have actually a place to stay not for like one week in a squat. If they need their time, there should be some structure some like sanatorium like say, I don’t know, massage sessions, whatever, talking to them listening to their experiences, and like, I don’t know, therapy groups organized by comrades.
I think this is not at all present. At least not that I know of it. I think we should, not only for Belarusian and Russian prisoners, like we have fucking loads of prisoners everywhere. In Italy, in Spain, in Chile, whatever. We need to take care of the comrades and not pretend that the day they come back to to their release, they are the same as us mentally or like on this level. So for me, it’s really important.
[applause]
Mira: I mean, I’m saying it is presentation to see our comrades not [after being in prison for] 20 years, we need the collapse of putting this regime. So it’s very connected things. For war prisoners, we don’t have comrades from Ukraine who are in jail in Ukraine in the moment.
We didn’t have [any during] last 12 years. It’s not very common to be in jail there because of corruption. We just don’t really have this kind of regime. I mean, it’s not better, it’s just not this way, violent.
Also with the help in from here, I think that if these war prisoners will be out, I will definitely not risk recommending them to come here, because then they will have this re-traumatization because they can meet people who are aggressive to them. We have here people who usually the so called anti-militarist, they love deserters and we have some, but it’s people with whom you find, like, really, and people who are pressured to say, it’s like I listened just two days ago [to] the stories [and] they’re pressured to say that [they deserted] because they’re very pacifist, but it’s not not this. I’m here and not in [the] army, not because I’m very pacifist. It’s just because I’m afraid to die in the battle. I’m just not brave enough. Like, that’s the thing. So for me for this, yeah, nothing. [And, to repeat, our prisoners need] just money.
Boris: Think, for me, both for prisoners, and for the war that is going on the wars that are going on, you’re living in the again in the fucking capital of capitalism. Right? And that means that a lot of things that are happening here are affecting other regions. So to give an example, ikea shopping, right? Wood comes from Belarus, your fucking chairs was probably made in Belarusan prisons. That’s that’s how it works. Right? You are very opposing, you know, delivery of weapons to Ukraine, many of you. But somehow there’s very little, from the anarchist movement, shouts about stopping the military industrial complex that delivers stuff to Russia.
Look at that, think about how can you disrupt Russian capital in in your country, you are in Switzerland, this is a fucking, I don’t know, capitol of capital of capitalism. There is so much Russian capital that you can become very rich if you figure out how to get it. So do something – like don’t fucking waste your energy on [a] couple of tanks that [they] send to Ukraine. Do things that actually affect the other parts of the world. Yes, it will take a little bit more effort than coming to a presentation and shit talking about your dead comrades. It is complicated. It requires fucking effort. So do those efforts in the same way as those people who are fighting, actually putting a lot of effort in the fight.
Moderator: He would like to say something in German.
Translated from 5th Audience Question: I would like to say something about the Putin propaganda in the situation of Ukraine, the link between the Putin propaganda and the war. A lot of [propaganda has] been said, been published by the Die Linke [(The Left) Party] in German. Also from the Stalinist movement, but a lot of propaganda is [also coming from] the Right. For example, in Germany, there is the AfD, [which is] against the military [support sent] to Ukraine, so that’s the Left and the Right side that is a bit together. I would just like to know, what is the newspaper published about that? There was a conference about the neo-fascism and the invited representatives in 2013 and there was an Anti-Fascist protest. So the right parties get money from Russia. So how come the right wing was get propaganda from Putin?
Translator clarifying: So the question is saying that there’s this story about that, The Kiev regime is a Putinist marionette regime, but actually the president is a huge comedian. How do you see the actual situation in Ukraine at the moment concerning Human Rights, and how can the movement develop? What is there to defend?
Mira: I mean, war destroys a lot of things. For sure, like, the human rights, really, I mean, it’s also that people who usually fight on protests, they are mostly locked now in army or busy with volunteership. So I would say that for sure [the] state goes mad. They’re doing a lot of things they planned to do for years, and now they have space for that, especially in the field of labor law. It’s really like, disgusting, what they do.
Human rights, I don’t know… our best person for human rights, who actually supported us with all our prisoners as ABC, since we started to work in war, is a war prisoner [himself] now in Lugansk. Like Maksym Butkevych who we also made a campaign about, who is a well known anti militarist in Ukraine, and journalist and was given speech is like, lessons against hate speech. And now he’s been [accused of being] a Nazi [by Putin’s “denazification” invasion], [for] making war crimes and [sits] in [a] Russian jail, in this Luhansk jail, but in jail by Russia. So for sure we suffer. Without him, it’s really that half of work is impossible to do.
In general, [the war is] destroying the [whole] situation. I mean, economically, human rights, meaning all the [things]. For sure, when [there] is war, everything is not working as it should be: not only on the frontline, but it’s also that important people [are] dying, and they’re in jail, and they are in [battle]. So for the moment, there are a lot of difficult situations in these fields. I will say for sure that it was better before 24, February 2022 [when Russia invaded].
Moderator: So now I’m going to talk in French. So we’re going to finish at seven to half past five, because everybody’s really tired. So who has a question?
Translated from 6th Audience Question: There’s no question that we have solidarity with the fight you’re fighting in a specific way. On another point have to talk about…for this, we need a kind of common ground and understanding. I [had] just wanted to hang up a poster, and I was attacked because of that. I’m transgender, queer, etc. And it’s good if you’re being respectful concerning this, and if we accept our differences and that we have different opinions. I don’t want to say more about that now.
Your position is very important, and we want to hear it. We want to hear it from Belarus. We want to hear it from everyone from Russia. We want to hear it from Ukraine. We want to hear it from other countries as well from other countries around the world. We are [in] solidarity with all people who are in prisons. That’s not in question. Our main problem is with a lot of people, not a lot of those are here. The person who said that we were coming to disturb was not telling the truth. We want to demilitarize anarchism.
So there’s a discussion about being gender inclusive. Maybe I’m not talking in a good way. But please, just let me finish. For us, it’s important to distinguish between self defense, social revolution [on the one hand] and militarization and war [on the other]. It’s important to think about how can we not become part of a militarization, and fight and be [in] solidarity with the people who are coming into prison or becoming prisoners of war. So it means we have to think about how can we get Russian deserters or Ukrainian deserters out of the countries and get to a politic that disempowers the power? And in this, this context, we think that using weapons is legitimate, but taking up uniforms, state organizations, fascistic group or military, we don’t think that’s legitimate. I see that I have to come to the end [of my statement], and would be good if we could find a respectful frame to talk about these differences. With all the respect that you’ve been saying, to concerning Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, because we have to, but we certainly want to bring our position to the table because it’s important to us.
[applause]
Mira: Yeah, thank you for question. It’s actually second time after the year, the same question from the same person. Interesting.
Last time, I asked what actually are the ways to deal [with the war you propose], and we didn’t find common ground on how to [approach this in] another [manner]. But I have a proposal for people who really feel that we [on stage] are all about militarism. And they very well know how to do it [the correct] way: We have all the resources and the possibilities to provide [for them to come to] Ukraine. You don’t need visa, it’s very easy. You just take in your passport. We will provide [a] place to stay. I mean, we can do it really, I’m not joking, if you’re interested, we can do it.
You can help physically with humanitarian [jobs]. So, bringing water to people, bring food to people on the front line, like close to the front, to civilians, not to fighting ones. I mean, it’s still frontline, but [less dangerous]. Maybe, then you can talk to our soldiers. You might find common ground there. When you share what they have, in reality, then in that position, your [position] would be really strong.
So maybe there’s a good plan, that’s just a proposal. If people want [to do come], because for me, [having this conversation] in circles [for] 16 months, it’s quite tiring. I have my own interests which [I haven’t had time to address]. For example, I was always questioning “How would happen in Germany in [the] 1940s have happened?” And now I’m questioning how it could happen a second time, how society can support mass murder, in general. So, yeah, I have other interests. And I think we should also concentrate on many other topics around the world and around Russia. Because I think it needs a lot of research and a lot of thinking: what happened to the society?; why is this like this?
I’m very interested, not aggressively at all, because I have members of my family who also they direction. And I for sure, I want to think about that. How to change their opinion, how to work against this propaganda there and not in Europe. You know, and it’s really like…
Boris: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can also go to Russia. There is a lot of work to do in Russia. I mean, yes, you need visa. Visa is very hard to do for the people living in Western Europe. It’s very hard. You just have to go to the embassy and pay 35 Euro. But, like get your shit going, like start doing things. You can’t do it here? Do somewhere else. Go to Ukraine, go to Belarus. In Belarus. You also don’t need a visa, Belarus is a very socialist country, go Belarus. Enjoy Minsk, very nice city. [sardonic, puts on accent]
I’m not I’m not joking, we really need people in all those countries to continue our fight because people are sitting in prison, because people are fleeing the prosecution, you can help you can help in so many different ways, but [not] disrupting solidarity, [which] is happening quite often. So come and do work, show your solidarity through action.
[applause]
Masha: I just wanted to address the thesis, or the message about seeing some of the methods that other anarchists are using as counter-revolutionary, or destructive for the movement, right? So for example, speaking for myself, I identify as anarcho-communist. I really, honestly think that many individualist tendencies are counter-revolutionary, and really destructive for the movement, for at least for the work I’m doing and for the methods I’m choosing. They are sometimes like in a real confrontation with what message I want to deliver to the people, and how they see the people or, generally, the population. It never occurred to me, that I could like come and impose something on them I’m not letting anybody impose anything on me. Like that other anarchists would discipline me into something. It’s been 16 month and you just need to acknowledge this as a fact that there are some anarchists in the world, in Ukraine, in this room, that are okay with using using this method in this situation. And you just [have to] accept it instead of disrupting this. If you think it’s counter-revolutionary, make your own events, do it, understand how you want to figure it out and not ask us how we should figure out [for you] your trend of anarchism.
Moderator: Just had to say it will be the last question because the comrades are tired. And yeah, we’ll finish off after this. Sorry.
Translated from 6th Audience Question: I just want to say thank you for speaking. I just want to make a quick point of question like, I feel like anarchists taking arms is not new, like in anarchist history. Yes, Spanish anarchists took up arms to defend against Franco’s fascist armies, insurgency. Now contemporary Ukrainian anarchists are taking up arms to defend themselves from occupation. feel like a lot of people are neglecting that when Russian army occupies parts of Ukraine, people are disappeared, people are taken to torture centers…
My question is why do you think Western anarchists are not like reflecting on this history and are acting so surprised that people are taking arms, even forgetting the Makhnovshchina, the Makhno army taking arms defend the freedom?
I guess my second question is, are there like any non-western examples of support that you value that was beyond Europe or [from] the global south that was different from the way North American or European anarchists were undermining solidarity? Did you find better solidarity from the global south or non-european/anglo context? Thank you.
Nastya: Important for me difference between stopping and ending the war. The most common thing I see here in the streets, like “stop the war,” or “stop the different wars” and also [I saw] the same [things] in Russia….I would like to end this war.
[applause]
Masha: So just a quick answer about the why the western anarchists forgot or don’t think of, or don’t use the example of the Spanish or Makhnovshchina, because it’s two different things. It’s like one thing is when you self organize, and you fight with your comrades not as part of the State army, and you’re fighting for the revolution with revolutionary forces, which was the case in Makhno’s army and the Spanish War, which is not the case right now in Ukraine.
But, at the same time, I think when the people with a clear anti-militarist position try to produce the message that all anarchists have always believed this way “that we should never step into the army unless it’s the anarchist army,” which is not true. If you read the historical figures, like read Kropotkin versus Malatesta there would be always arguments [for] or against joining this or that force, based on how you see the consequences of joining or not joining. For example, I think most of us here are like basically supporting the position that the consequences of anarchists retreating from this ground is basically means that there will be no anarchist movement afterwards, neither in Russia nor in Ukraine, nor in Belarus. We would like to have that [movement], even if we are ending up in another Liberal state. And we will, because we don’t believe in a one time revolution that happens in a day.
But we’re like ready to fight for this, the state that is now like more liberal than the other fascist states because this is where we survive. This is where we can live and not die, and rot in fucking prisons. This is why we’re choosing that. This is a temporary solution and we understand that we’re not stupid. But this we see as the most right thing to do right now. We like calling the rest to even if you don’t support just listen to the comrades who are there. Why is it so difficult?
Mira: Second question, I will answer your second question. For the second question about solidarity in other parts of the world. I think that’s a bit like what we discussed that everything is… for us, it was first everything concentrated on Moscow, then we stopped with that… then it’s everything concentrated on Berlin or something West.
We were running an anarchist-feminist festival in Ukraine. One of the main aims was to connect this West and East Europe. Because nobody needed a visa to Ukraine at that point between Russia, Belarus. That’s why we thought it was a good place to meet. And we kept doing it also, during the war. We managed to have, a couple of times, people from Kazakhstan, from Armenia, from Georgia from other Eastern places. The problem is that we don’t have resources, and they don’t have resources, money wise.
So every time to meet, we need somebody on the west, to ask to pay for their tickets. That’s why [it’s hard] to build these connections. In the beginning, we were telling that with Russia Belarus we were also losing connections. But in the beginning of war one of the first reactions, one of the first solidarity came from Kurdistan, very fast. Also people in more like Georgia, Kazakhstan, they supported our people who went there, (mostly from Russia, but also from Ukraine a bit, and [I’m not sure about from Belarus]). But yeah, they don’t have money to send us, really, but they support our actions there because there are things which they can do [where they are]. So we have [resources], but it’s not very [well distributed], and even worse far[ther] away. It’s about resources. I always meet people from these faraway countries in Europe. I mean, in the EU, in Ukraine it isn’t that easy. [laughs]
Nina: So I want to remind you, once again, on our email list, we would like to extend our network we already have with people who would like to support us. So it’s not like just about receiving information. Rather [about] contributing, sharing, spreading counter the counter propaganda. We are really relying actually on everybody supporting in that, especially on the question of countering the Russian propaganda. And yeah, thank you all.
I want to remind you of the event of the solidarity collectives where this is going to be a bit more practical and different actors who are supporting practically in the last one and a half year will be there and share their experiences. It is at eight [pm] in the bookfair in the ice arena.
Boris: And we also have a table in the bookfair in case you want to give comments and so on and so forth. You can try to flip our tables if you’re like so flipped in your life but we are there and so the conversation can continue in case you’re interested.
[applause]
Nina: We want to thank the translation thanks that you were all here. Thanks for live streaming and bringing this to a wider audience than we are here and recording the audio so we can put it online. And thanks for the amazing moderation of this discussion.
[applause]