If you mean printing weapons, I really doubt that would help a lot in getting access to female hospital wards, homeless shelters, bathrooms, domestic abuse centres, and so on.

A symptom for sure. She’s just a kids writer, nobody would pay her any attention if she was a communist. She’s being boosted exactly because she’s a TERF.

That sounds great but I don’t believe a Western style liberal democracy is able to do that due to how enmeshed Nazis are in their organisations on every level, from regional to international, and how central fascism is to the project of saving capitalism in the face of crises.

It’s the same with saving the planet and any other project demanding radical change - we’ve learned time and time again capitalism can offer nothing but empty promises, to actually achieve anything you need to first establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As an added bonus, DOTP is able to re-educate and de-radicalise communities targeted by fascist indoctrination by placing their needs first, raising their standards of living, and allowing them to flourish and develop a healthy communal spirit, so only the worst offenders, leaders and ideologues, need to be executed.

There’s exactly the same sentiment expressed in one of the exhibits in the Berlin Stasi museum (predictably).

I think the term originated within CPGB (a Marxist-Leninist party in the UK) so Trots had nothing to do with this one.

By the way, Vijay Prashad explained it very well a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7357419/6115188

Stalin had nothing to do with Hungary though, that was Khrushchev.

The Donbass is a territory unique from others in the region.

Doesn’t make it a nation.

I also believe that when two cultures come together, Russian and Ukrainian for example, that this creates a unique culture where traditions from both become mixed together.

Sure, this is basically what Cossacks were, with some influence from nations of Caucasus; there were even some calls for independence.

However this is not what happened in Donbass, ask anyone in Donbass what is their nationality and they will either say Russian or Ukrainian.

I think the Russian communist party is big enough to try and do something.

Thank you!

I hope you’re right for all our sakes, guess we just have to wait and see where this goes.

No worries at all, this reads completely civil. :)

Great points about control over resources, I think you’re right here, this is clearly not the priority for Russia.

CPRF is bigger than Social-Democrats were in Lenins times. I know they won’t try and bring the war home to turn it into a revolution, but I think they absolutely could if a Lenin shows up (cause Zyuganov is evidently not it).

For the Russian people and the Russian soldier this is an anti-fascist struggle.

OK this is a bit much. Russia has been a hotbed for Nazism since the 90s putting even the likes of Poland to shame. Travel guides to Russia have to warn people of colour to stay in hotels on Adolf Hitlers birthday cause Russian neonazis murder people year after year to celebrate the date.

Ukraine somehow managed to out-Nazi Russia after Maidan but still, the idea that Putin invaded Ukraine to fight Nazism is laughable cause he never had any issues with Nazis in Russia.

The problem is that at this point, it has become very hard to separate the Bandera cult and the russophobia from Ukrainian identity.

That’s just Great-Russian chauvinism. Sorry but you’re parroting the most reactionary Russian propaganda, like this piece which openly states de-nazification of Ukraine is necessarily also de-Ukrainization: https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html

I can’t agree with that. Even Nazi Germany didn’t need to be de-Germanized after the WW2, you only had to change the system and you got DDR.

I’m not sure I follow, what is so specific to Galicia in the current Ukrainian national identity? How is it different from Ukrainian identity of the UkrSSR?

It seems to me Ukrainian Nazis did the same thing Nazis do everywhere - take a national identity and slap some hatred on top. In this case, Bandera cult and russophobia. Remove that and you’re back to just… Regular Ukrainians. Am I missing something?

I find it revolutionary since it challenges the status quo of the uni-polar world.

Was Iraqi invasion of Kuwait revolutionary because it went against US interests?

Revolutionary defeatism isn’t the idea that communists should want Russia to lose every war. Its wanting your capitalist government to lose the war so you can turn it into a civil war.

Everyone in this thread agrees communists in the West should facilitate their governments defeat. The only disagreement is whether Russian communists should practice defeatism or not.

If you are Russian then yes you should want Russia to lose in Ukraine

Cool, we agree then.

There is no nation of Hong Kong, they are Han Chinese. There is no nation of Donbass, they are Russians and Ukrainians. The way you’re trying to read that quote from Lenin, every single town, every village, every district is a nation. That’s not at all what Lenin said.

Tibet does have it’s own language, territory, and culture, and so it is indeed a nation.

It is quite apparent that you don’t understand Ukraine, its national-ethnic composition or its history.

language, culture and historical national conception of a minority in the far West of Ukraine.

OK this is laughable. I was raised in Ukraine and I don’t need a Westerner to tell me I don’t understand it, especially one who seems to think Ukrainians are “a minority in the far West of Ukraine”.

There is a continuum of culture and language in Ukraine going from East to West.

I’m aware, thanks. The way I’ve been taught, Dnipro marks the border between Eastern Ukraine, which was always under Russian influence, and Western Ukraine, which had significant Polish influence and cultural ties. But the same goes for Russia. Ukrainian language was spoken all the way to the Don, the Cossack dialect has strong Ukrainian influence, and really entire Southern Russia is a mixture of Ukrainian, Georgian, Abkhasian, Ingush, Circassian, and other influences. Where exactly is the “ethnically and historically correct” border between Ukraine and Russia? I have no idea, maybe it’s along Dnipro, maybe it’s along Don, or anywhere in between.

Where is the legally correct border between Ukraine and Russia? That’s much easier, that was peacefully agreed in 1991. Should Ukraine pursue a return to those borders? Fuck no, that ship has sailed and it’s time for Ukraine to cut its losses and accept whatever peace it can have.

Your post with date-by-date history of the lead up to this conflict is spot on and I’m aware of those events. They still don’t justify invading a brotherly nation. Again, having been raised in the USSR I can’t support Russia’s wars on its neighbours, even if the fault lies mostly with the West.

Look at China, it manages to maintain sovereignty without killing large numbers of people in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and without waging wars on internal separatists like in Xinjiang.

No, the DPR and LPR are not nations, they never claimed that, they consider themselves part of the Russian nation, as did much of Ukraine to some degree before the Ukrainan nationalist re-education project began post 1991

Again, having grown up in Ukraine in the 80s, I can assure you people living there considered themselves Ukrainian, even Russian speakers like me.

Not nations? says who?

Lenin, Stalin, and Marxist-Leninist theory in general.

The people of the LPR and DPR have the right to self determination.

Not any more than people of Hong Kong or Taiwan. Because they are not nations.

Very good and well thought answers, thank you. I upvoted both, no idea why would someone downvote a well researched comment, especially in the reading group / discussion thread.

I’ll reply to both your comments here to keep it in one place. I’ll need some time to think about what you wrote and go over your sources with a fine comb. Just a couple of questions now, and thank you in advance for the help:

It is clear that this attack was coming as preparatory shelling from the Ukrainian side had already begun just a few weeks prior to Russia launching the SMO. I have explained this in a prior comment on another post where i also provided sources confirming that this occurred in the lead up to the SMO: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7112898/6016809

It looks like the only source for amassment of troops is this, are there any other sources, at least a link directly to the Russian ministry of foreign affairs statement it references?

Согласно информации, озвученной МИД РФ, Киев стянул в Донбасс 125 тыс. военнослужащих, что составляет половину всей украинской армии.

Regardless, amassment of troops can be a show of force and more often than not doesn’t lead to an invasion, for instance Russia has amassed troops and held military exercises along Ukrainian border regularly since 2014.

As for preparatory shelling, your post has no sources at all, it only links this article which is not from OSCE and doesn’t link to OSCE source. Do you have a link directly to OSCE report?

The goal of the Banderite Nazis was and is ethnic cleansing. They have explicitly said this. See the sources on this that i gave here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7263447/6081888

The only source is one unnamed guy saying this. I’d like to know who he is and what the context was cause most likely he was calling to kill separatists, not just ethnic Russians. That’s horrible but no different from what you could hear some people say on Russian TV about separatists within Russia.

That’s not enough to claim Zelensky’s govt was going to ethnically cleanse Donbass.