Why The Left Matters: A Century of Struggle, Social Justice And The Road Ahead

The future of the Left in India will be decided by the ability of the movement to rebuild and deepen its links with the working people.

MA Baby
Updated on: 12 December 2025 

OUTLOOK, INDIA


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Summary of this article


The Left in India has endured for a century because it is rooted in the struggles, dignity and aspirations of workers and peasants.


Left ideas in India were not foreign imports but emerged organically from indigenous egalitarian traditions and early radical thought.


Communists played a decisive role in the freedom movement through organised mass struggles, trade unions, peasant uprisings and cultural platforms.


A hundred years is long enough for political currents to appear and disappear. Parties have risen on slogans and vanished in silence. What has endured in India, despite repression, distortions and political headwinds, is the Left movement. It has endured because it has always belonged to the working people of this country; to their labour, their dignity, and their dreams of a society free from exploitation. From the earliest murmurings of radical thought during anti-colonial resistance to the mass struggles of peasants and workers, from the severe blows of state repression to the experience of forming governments that delivered transformative reforms, the Left has left an indelible mark on modern India. The history of the Left is not parallel to the history of the nation, but it is rather interwoven with it.

The popular misconception that Left ideas were imported from abroad collapses the moment we revisit our own history with honesty. For example, in 1836, even before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined the ‘League of the Just’, Vaikunda Swamikal, a social reformer who lived near the present day Marthandam (part of the erstwhile Travancore) started a utopian socialist movement called ‘Samathwa Samajam’. This is just one example. In fact, an investigation into the history of most societies and civilisations will reveal many examples of historical, mythological or intertwined narratives of a just and egalitarian society.

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The 1905 Russian Revolution electrified the world, but India already had its own revolutionary impulses. The Anushilan Samiti in Bengal and the Ghadar Party in North America reflected an uncompromising resistance to colonial rule and a belief that freedom cannot be begged, it has to be seized. The Ghadarites, many of whom later became communists, carried the message that national liberation was inseparable from social liberation.

The October Revolution of 1917 provided inspiration, but not instruction. India’s young radicals were searching for tools to interpret the exploitation they experienced and witnessed in mills, plantations and villages. This search culminated in the formation of the Communist Party of India at Tashkent in 1920—five years before the party was organised publicly in Kanpur in 1925. The first Secretary of the Party, Mohammad Shafiq, symbolised a simple truth that the Left in India arose not from seminar rooms or drawing rooms, but from intense anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle.

Long before the Congress adopted the slogan of Poorna Swaraj in 1929, Hasrat Mohani, a communist, put forward the demand in 1921 at the Ahmedabad session of the AICC along with Swami Kumaranand, a peasant leader. The formation of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920, and later organisations such as the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the All India Kisan Sabha, the All India Students’ Federation and the Progressive Writers’ Association, turned radical thought into organised mass movements. Workers, peasants, women, students, youth, cultural activists and writers, all found in the Left a political home that combined the struggle for independence with the struggle for social transformation.

One of the final nails on the coffin of the morale of British rule in India was delivered by the sailors of the Royal Indian Navy uprising in 1946. It resulted in an insurrection by over 10,000 sailors and received massive support from the civilians and even police forces of the country. This mutiny was a loud message to the British that Indian soldiers will no longer aid or become a tool for the exploitation of their own people. It must not be forgotten that the sailors were proudly flying the Red Flag of the Communist Party on their ships (along with those of the Congress and the Muslim League flags) during the rebellion.


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Mass Struggles That Redefined India

What distinguishes the Left’s contribution to the freedom movement is not rhetoric but sacrifice. The communists led united struggles of workers and peasants that shook the pillars of colonial rule and feudal power. The Tebhaga movement in Bengal demanded two-thirds of the produce for the tiller. The Telangana struggle was carried forward by countless ordinary villagers, including women leaders like Mallu Swarajyam, and it confronted the nexus of feudal lords and the Nizam’s private militia. In the princely state of Travancore, the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising challenged autocratic rule. Each struggle was met with brutal repression. Yet each of them created a new political consciousness: that the land belongs to those who cultivate it, wealth belongs to those who produce it, and democracy means nothing without dignity.

Across the country, peasant movements asserted themselves in different contexts with shared aspirations. In Malabar, the struggles against Jenmi landlordism built the foundation of the Kisan Sabha. In Thane district, Adivasi struggles after 1947 challenged debt bondage and land dispossession under the leadership of the Sabha. P. Sundarayya, who would later lead the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as its General Secretary, dedicated his life organising poor peasants and farm workers, and towards the study of agrarian relations throughout undivided Andhra. In Tamil Nadu, G. Veeraiyan and others organised agricultural labourers against caste-linked exploitation and violence. The agrarian movement in Thanjavur was built by the CPI(M) and its mass/class organisations. This movement was intricately linked with the anti-caste struggle and over time, it gained so much strength that even the very idea of an agricultural union existing irked the landlords so much that they organised a gruesome massacre in the Keezhvenmani village, killing 44 Dalits, the majority of whom were women and children.

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Similarly, it was the CPI(M) and progressive class organisations that led a relentless struggle to get justice for the survivors of Vachathi state violence. These movements struck at the most deep-rooted structures of Indian society including but not limited to caste hierarchy, patriarchy and the culture of unpaid, invisible, unrecognised labour. In this sense, the Left did not wait for independence to begin fighting for social transformation. The battle for social equality was already underway in the fields and factories much before 1947. The Draft Platform for Action, 1930 was the first attempt towards preparing a programme for the party. This document recognised the ruthless abolition of the caste system along with agrarian revolution and overthrow of British rule as a necessity to achieve the complete social, economic, cultural and legal emancipation of all workers.

The years immediately after independence were marked by severe repression of the communists. The Telangana struggle was crushed with horrendous state repression. Leaders and cadres were jailed, forced to go underground, or killed in fake encounters. A distorted narrative was created to paint the Left as a threat to the nation precisely because the Left was demanding that land and power be returned to the people. Yet the repression did not erode the movement. Instead, it solidified the understanding that political democracy without economic democracy is hollow.

The turning point in parliamentary recognition came in 1957 when Kerala elected the first Communist government through the ballot. Land reforms, education reforms and democratic decentralisation fundamentally altered the social landscape of the state. The 1957 experiment proved that the Communists can govern, not just agitate; and govern in ways that expand people’s rights, not restrict them.

In later decades, Left governments deepened that legacy. In West Bengal, Operation Barga secured tenancy rights for millions of sharecroppers and laid the groundwork for rural poverty reduction. The panchayat system that empowered local democracy emerged in West Bengal and Kerala long before it was recognised in the Constitution in 1992. In Tripura, land redistribution ensured that two-thirds of land went to a tribal population that formed one-third of the state. These should be seen as parts of a coherent model of development in which human welfare is not an afterthought, but the starting point.

These experiences speak volumes about why Kerala continues to repose confidence in the Left, electing it twice in succession, something that has been unprecedented in the state’s political history. When governments deliver social justice in real terms, people do not forget.

Whenever India has been threatened by authoritarianism, the Left has taken an unmistakable stand. During the Emergency, when many parties compromised or justified excesses, we who opposed it paid a heavy price, but still refused to surrender constitutional and democratic rights. In the decades since, the Left has been the most consistent force against communal polarisation. It recognised much earlier than others that communal politics is inseparable from economic inequality, a divided society is easier to exploit.

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The crises India faces are the outcome of policies that prioritise private profit over public good and division over unity. A different future is possible—one based on secularism, equality, dignity of labour and democratic rights.

The CPI(M) warned in its 23rd Party Congress about the rise of the communal-corporate nexus which is an alliance of reactionary social forces and big capital. Today, as public assets are being handed over to private monopolies and dissent is being increasingly criminalised, that warning reads not like a precise description of current reality.

Whenever labour rights, public sector enterprises or natural resources have been threatened, the working class with the Left at the forefront has fought back , whether it is to prevent the sale of strategic Public Sector Units or to resist anti-worker labour codes. The one-year-long farmers’ movement on the borders of Delhi, which forced the repeal of three farm laws, saw active, consistent and disciplined participation from peasant organisations like the All India Kisan Sabha and other democratic and Left forces. The Kisan Long March in Maharashtra, where thousands of poor peasants walked peacefully with red flags, became a symbol of how democratic mobilisation can achieve what electoral arithmetic cannot.

Why the Left Matters Even More Today


There is a popular trend to judge political relevance solely by election results. But the Left’s history in India shows that the yardstick for us has always been larger: the strength of our links with working people, our ability to organise struggles, and our capacity to offer an alternative vision. Even in a period when the Left’s electoral strength is seeing unprecedented setbacks, its ideological and organisational presence continues to shape resistance movements across the country.

Today, India faces economic stagnation, record unemployment, nutritional crisis, collapse of public health funding, increasing numbers of suicides among peasants and agricultural labourers, rising caste violence, attacks on women, systematic communal polarisation that includes attacks on minorities, dalits, tribals and transgender people. In such a situation, the Left remains the only political force that speaks not of temporary relief but of structural change that includes public investment, universal welfare, labour rights, land reforms, public education, and a secular democratic republic rooted in equality.

The recent achievements of the Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme launched in Kerala show that it was a policy initiative grounded in the conviction that no human being should live without dignity. It does not mean that Kerala is free of poverty, but the achievements of this programme are a significant step in that direction.

It is this orientation that explains the renewed interest among young people in progressive politics worldwide. Against the rise of the far-Right forces, the youth are also marching behind the new faces of the Left and progressive forces in their countries to challenge inequality, corporate power and racism. The examples of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Catherine Conolly, Zohran Mamdani, and countless other unnamed organisers and forces, speak volumes about this renewed interest. India is not an exception to this global churn.

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The Next 100 Years


The Left movement in India has completed more than a century, but its task is far from finished. It has fought for generations of workers, peasants, women, students and marginalised communities; not for the sake of abstract ideals, but for concrete improvements in their lives and in the society as a whole. The future of the Left will be decided by the ability of the movement to rebuild and deepen its living links with the working people and other toiling masses.

Applying the scientific understanding of Marxism-Leninism in the concrete conditions of India is pertinent to achieve the above. As Young Comrade Lenin once mentioned, “We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life. We think that an independent elaboration of Marx’s theory is especially essential for Russian socialists; for this theory provides only general guiding principles, which, in particular, are applied in England differently than in France, in France differently than in Germany, and in Germany differently than in Russia. We shall therefore gladly afford space in our paper for articles on theoretical questions and we invite all comrades openly to discuss controversial points.” (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. IV, pp. 211-212).

The crises India faces are the outcome of policies that prioritise private profit over public good and division over unity. A different future is possible—one based on secularism, equality, dignity of labour and democratic rights. For that to become a reality, the Left is not just relevant but indispensable. The struggles of the past 100-plus years have immensely contributed towards shaping the democratic foundations of India. The next 100 years must complete the unfinished task of revolutionary social transformation.


(Views expressed are personal)

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/


M.A. Baby is General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist)

This article appeared as 'We Shall Overcome' in Outlook’s December 21, 2025, issue as 'What's Left of the Left' which explores the challenging crossroads the Left finds itself at and how they need to adapt. And perhaps it will do so.

What nations around the world can learn from Ukraine

University of Colorado at Boulder

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When Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many outsiders expected the worst. Predictions swirled that the capital city of Kyiv would fall in a matter of days or weeks.

But Kyiv, which is home to nearly 3 million people, is still standing today. So is the majority of Ukraine, even though the country has experienced extreme losses. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and military members have died, roughly 3 million people have been displaced within Ukraine, and 20,000 children have been forcefully deported to Russia.

Now, in a recent special issue of the journal Post-Soviet Affairs, political scientists from the United States, Ukraine and beyond take a fresh look at how the nation has persevered through the crisis. The studies examine how resilience can spring not just from armed forces but from the actions of everyday people and communities.

The special issue was edited by Sarah Wilson Sokhey, associate professor of political science at CU Boulder, and Inna Melnykovska, assistant professor in comparative political economy at the Central European University in Vienna.

“Ukraine is still there,” said Melnykovska, who grew up in Chortkiv, a small town in western Ukraine. “You can still attend the cinema and concerts and can still have a great coffee in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine. We wanted to know how society is still able to function and also resist in times of war.”

Through five studies in the special issue, researchers trace that resistance back to a series of decentralization reforms that began in 2014, around the time when Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea. These changes shifted power from the national government to local municipalities around the country.

The research reveals how people and organizations, from small town mayors to parent and youth groups and activist networks, banded together to keep the nation running. These local players helped find housing for people displaced by the war, secured medical supplies, and kept the lights on in cities, literally.

“Ukraine is, in many ways, an example for other countries,” Sokhey said. “The theme is resilience: There are some remarkable lessons here about how things can get done under really bad circumstances.”

Stake in society

Sokhey gives the example of a doctor she met this year during a research trip to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. By day, the woman practices medicine and teaches at a local university. In her off time, she leads a group of volunteers that solicits donations for medical supplies and sends them to the front lines of the war. 

The doctor and her colleagues have kept up their work for more than three years and counting.

“There’s a real fatigue that comes with having to do this all the time,” Sokhey said. “But even with that, when they get requests in and need more people, they go to their families and their friends, and they can still get a bunch of volunteers.”

These kinds of stories are common in Ukraine, Sokhey said. In many cases, their roots extend back to well before the war began.

In 2014, Ukraine began dividing the nation into 1,469 municipalities, or “hromadas.” These hromadas retained broad powers to decide how they set their budgets. In some cases, citizens in hromadas even vote on the region’s spending priorities, a process known as participatory budgeting.

Melnykovska believes the reforms empowered many people across Ukraine to get involved in local politics—and that involvement continued after the full-scale war with Russia erupted eight years later.

“These decentralization reforms gave everyone a greater connection to the state,” Melnykovska said. “Every participant in society had a greater stake in Ukrainian sovereignty, in ensuring that Ukraine would continue to be there.”

In one paper appearing in the special issue, Sophie Schmäing of the University of Greifswald in Germany explored how those early connections became useful during the war.

In the city of Dnipro, for example, a parent group that had originally formed to improve local schools started making candles for the army in 2022. In the winter, a group of young activists in Kyiv that had originally formed to get involved in participatory budgeting built a warming room for city residents as many lost power.

Separately, Sokhey and her colleagues examined how voting patterns in local elections shaped policies in Ukraine—a case of democracy in action.

The team found that hromadas with higher voter turnout rates also tended to spend more money on social services, such as housing and resources for displaced people and other vulnerable groups. Sokhey sees the results as evidence that local authorities are listening to and responding to the demands of their constituents.

“Even before the war began, Ukraine had been taking these steps to improve local governance and accountability,” she said. “All the evidence we have suggests that these changes allowed the country to respond much more effectively.”

Lessons for the world

Sokhey and Melnykovska emphasize that governance in Ukraine is far from perfect. 

In one study in the special issue, for example, Maryna Rabinovych of The Arctic University of Norway and her colleagues highlighted several hromadas that have established martial law systems—which, the researchers argue, risk undermining local governance.

But Sokhey and Melnykovska added that countries around the world, including the United States, could learn a lot from Ukraine. Strong societies, where individuals and communities feel empowered to solve their own problems, are crucial for helping nations survive times of crisis.

“Ukraine’s situation is probably good news for nations where state institutions are weakening,” Melnykovska said. “These institutions have another pillar to help them survive, and that is society.”

She follows the Facebook page for the mayor of her hometown, which has a population of about 30,000. The city has gotten creative, using international interest around the war to bring in funding for a variety of projects. They include efforts to modernize the town’s energy system, along with improvements to water pipes, which date back to the Soviet era. Those kinds of efforts will become critical when people who fled Ukraine at the start of the war eventually start coming home, Melnykovska said.

The political scientist also offers a warning: Ukrainians have been remarkably resilient, she said, but they can only be resilient for so long.

“Society can get tired, and some resources are running out,” Melnykovska said. “This resilience has been long-term, but it’s not endless. There should still be support from outside.” 

---

Journal

Post-Soviet Affairs

DOI

10.1080/1060586X.2025.2545626 

Article Title

The local and regional dimension of Ukraine’s resilience during Russia’s full-scale invasion: an introduction

Bjarke Friborg (Red-Green Alliance, Denmark): ‘There is no contradiction between military support for Ukraine and criticising NATO and the arms industry’

By Bjarke Friborg, Michel Lanson & Patrick Le Tréhondat

Published 16 September, 2025

First published in French at Réseau Bastille. Translation from European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine. 

The Nordic left is making great strides in its thinking on issues of popular defence and security in Europe. This thinking is fuelled by its strong and ongoing commitment to Ukraine. It actively supports Ukrainian trade unions and social movements, as well as progressive anti-fascist fighters who are combating Russian imperialism. 

Bjarke Friborg, a member of the Danish Enhedslisten (Red-Green Alliance), has just returned from Ukraine, where he visited Solidarity Collectives with Helene Vadsten. He was interviewed by Michel Lanson and Patrick Le Tréhondat

Can you tell us about Red-Green Alliance, its history and its political orientations?

The Red-Green Alliance was founded in 1989 as a united front of several radical left-wing traditions in Denmark, including left-wing socialists, the Communist Party, the Trotskyist SAP (Socialistisk Arbejderpolitik or Socialist Workers Politics, Danish section of the Fourth International) and a Maoist group. After initially struggling to cross the 2% electoral threshold, the Red-Green Alliance entered parliament in 1994 and has since become an important parliamentary and extra-parliamentary force on the Danish left.

Today, the party combines a strong eco-socialist and internationalist profile with a focus on growing social inequalities and general working-class issues. We consistently criticise capitalist austerity and a slow and inconsistent ecological transition in the face of the climate catastrophe. The party works closely with popular movements and trade union activists and remains a pluralistic organisation with strong internal democracy. Since 2011, we have generally obtained 5-7% of the vote nationally, and in the last local elections in 2021, we obtained 24.6% of the vote in Copenhagen, making us the most popular political party in the city.

In recent years, debates have taken place on issues such as the EU, NATO, Ukraine and Palestine. Some accuse us of having ‘betrayed our principles’ because we now field socialist candidates for the European Parliament instead of advocating for leaving the EU, because we support arms deliveries to Ukraine, even if they transit through NATO, and because we defend a free Palestine while condemning Hamas as a far-right terrorist group. However, for the majority of party members, we are simply defending consistent and practical international solidarity in favour of the rights of workers, women and minorities.

The Red-Green Alliance is strongly committed to Ukraine and more specifically to the Ukrainian left. What is the political significance of this commitment and how does it translate in concrete terms?

From the outset of the large-scale invasion, we have argued that this is a matter of fundamental solidarity with people resisting imperialist oppression and aggression. The Russian invasion is clearly an imperialist war of conquest, and Ukraine's right to self-determination must be defended, which in practice includes military support. However, this does not mean that we support the Ukrainian government, the oligarchs or corruption.

On the contrary, we are collaborating with the Ukrainian left, trade unions and civil society organisations that are fighting not only for national independence, but also for democracy, social rights and workers' control. In collaboration with the Green Alternative party, and since 2023 via the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy (DIPD), we have secured direct financial support for the progressive organisation Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement). Thanks to this support, it has been able to open social centres in Kyiv, Lviv and the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih in the east of the country. We continue to be impressed by the work of these activists, which unequivocally confirms that Ukrainians are not mere pawns on the geopolitical chessboard, but actors in their own struggle for liberation.

Do you think there is a Russian threat to Europe? How would you characterise it as a left-wing organisation?

It is obvious that Russia is a large European country. However, if you are referring to the European Union and allied countries such as Norway, as well as other countries neighbouring Russia, the threat posed by Putin's regime is undeniably very real. Not necessarily in terms of “tanks rolling into Paris”, but certainly as a threat to democracy, sovereignty and the principle that borders cannot be changed by brute force. As a left-wing organisation, we oppose Russian imperialism just as we have opposed American and NATO imperialism: not by supporting one bloc against another, but by defending the right of peoples to self-determination and supporting democratic and progressive forces in Russia and its client state, Belarus.

How do you articulate a policy of popular defence and your social policy of emancipation? And how is this perceived by the ‘left’ in general?

For us, the key concept is that of popular defence – a democratic defence based on citizens and rooted in civil society, not a militarised state apparatus serving the interests of business, the arms industry and imperialist interventions in Africa, Central Asia or elsewhere. Defence is not just about weapons and armies, but about the collective capacity of people to organise and protect their communities.

Some on the left see this as a contradiction, but we argue that it is consistent: opposing militarism does not mean ignoring the need for people to resist aggression. The alternative to popular defence is to leave the field open to authoritarian powers.

Faced with the Russian threat, the Western left has found itself powerless. Its mostly obsolete anti-militarist traditions place it in insoluble contradictions. On the one hand, it denounces the military-industrial complex and rearmament, but on the other, it calls for arms deliveries to Ukraine. It denounces NATO but remains silent on the military alliances between Russia and China. And it says nothing about the latter's extraordinary arms build-up. How do you approach these defence and military issues, both at the level of your country and at the European level?

The left has always been divided on security issues, but the large-scale invasion of Ukraine has clearly led to a new rebalancing and a rejection of certain dichotomies. For us, members of the Red-Green Alliance and the Nordic left in general, there is no contradiction between military support for Ukraine and criticism of NATO and the arms industry. We strongly condemn Russia's aggression, but we also oppose massive military build-ups based on arbitrary targets set by Donald Trump.

At the same time, we call for the socialisation of the arms industry, a ban on EU arms exports to countries such as Israel and China, and a global security architecture based on mutual disarmament, cooperation and popular sovereignty – not a new arms race.

At your last conference, which focused in particular on defence issues, the SAP criticised you, explaining that ‘Enhedslisten does not have a defence policy that is radically different from that of the mainstream in Parliament’ and that you had therefore aligned yourselves with bourgeois parties. How do you respond to this accusation?

The conference approved a new defence and security policy that supports the supply of arms to Ukraine and the strengthening of the territorial defence of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, while rejecting a general strengthening of military capabilities, an international arms race and the granting of military powers to the EU. This clearly distinguishes us from all the other parties represented in parliament. With regard to the SAP, the group mainly warned the Red-Green Alliance against any illusions about reforming NATO or the EU. Both organisations are composed of imperialist states pursuing their own interests, and any military build-up will ultimately serve those interests rather than international solidarity or the protection of democracy in countries such as Moldova and Georgia. I understand and respect this criticism, while pointing out that the SAP has always supported the arming of Ukraine and does not explicitly oppose investment in civil preparedness or better protection against hybrid warfare and cyberattacks.

On the other hand, some members of the Red and Green Alliance proposed an alternative statement that rejected without distinction any type of investment related to the idea of territorial defence, while effectively abandoning Ukraine and warning against ‘choosing sides’ in a war that is ‘also’ a proxy war. I am glad that this statement was rejected.

Denmark is unique in that it has a union of non-commissioned officers that is a member of the LO labour federation. What do you think of the functioning and organisation of the Danish army?

In all the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, soldiers and officers have unions with collective bargaining rights and elected representatives. The unions are integrated into the labour market system, but their role is to represent subordinates as employees, which differs from the popular democratic control of the armed forces envisaged by the Red-Green Alliance.

Historically, relations between the Danish left and the main military union HKKF (Soldiers and Corporals Union) have alternated between cooperation and tension. In the 1970s, the so-called ‘red soldiers’ movement among conscripts challenged military hierarchies, NATO and Danish defence policy, demanding better conditions and more democratic influence. The HKKF, which represents professional soldiers, adopted a more moderate and loyal position, which some members of the left considered too close to the system, even though collaboration was established on practical issues such as housing and working hours. Today, the HKKF functions as a traditional trade union focused on wages and working conditions. It should be noted that in 2018, its president was the chief negotiator for 180,000 civil servants on the verge of a general strike. Danish soldiers are joining the protests in uniform and supporting the campaign on social media, notably through posts by personnel deployed in Afghanistan brandishing slogans of solidarity.

From this perspective, following your recent trips to Ukraine, what can you tell us about the Ukrainian army? Both in terms of its social composition (mainly working class) and its functioning, the Ukrainian army is surprising. We know, for example, that there is an LGBTQ military union within it and that unionised workers in uniform are in constant contact with the unions of which they are members.

As part of a delegation from the Red and Green Alliance, I met with several progressive civil society organisations and trade unions in Ukraine, all of which demonstrated a strong commitment to the defence effort and the performance of the army. This included general and targeted support for soldiers, specific groups and units, and veterans. From a left-wing perspective, I find the Solidarity Collectives particularly noteworthy as they channel direct aid to anti-fascists, trade unionists and eco-activists on the front line, with the support of a vast international grassroots network.

In addition to their humanitarian efforts, they are also involved in the artisanal production of drones, which has clearly become an important part of international solidarity efforts. These forms of civil-military interaction are very different from the situation in countries such as Denmark, but they are of course entirely understandable as missiles continue to rain down on Ukrainian homes, farms and towns.

Fundamentally, this reflects the fact that Ukraine's defence clearly does not rely solely on a standing army of professionals and conscripts, but on a popular war effort, with the army made up of ordinary workers, trade unionists, students, LGBTQ people and volunteers fighting for their communities. As a result, there is an extraordinary degree of interaction between civilians and the military, with activist networks and non-profit organisations providing everything from medical supplies to homemade drones.

The mainstream media tends to focus on sophisticated Western weapons and billions of dollars in financial aid. However, what often goes unnoticed are the grassroots fundraising campaigns and self-organised production networks that support the Ukrainian resistance on a daily basis. At the same time, soldiers still lack basic rights, even in wartime. There are no transparent rules regarding rest, demobilisation or rehabilitation, and official trade unions are banned. However, new initiatives have emerged to fill this gap. Initiatives such as the LGBTQ Military Union of Ukraine and the ‘Invisible Battalion’ (which focuses on women in the war) have gained prominence, while the progressive organisation Sotsialnyi Rukh has set up its own helpline and provides free legal aid to soldiers, veterans and their families.

Other left-wing parties in Scandinavia and Northern Europe share your positions to a greater or lesser extent. How do you collaborate or plan to collaborate?

The Red-Green Alliance works closely with left-wing parties in the region — the Swedish Vänsterpartiet, the Norwegian Rødt and the Finnish Left Alliance — as well as with movements in Iceland and the Baltic states. We do not always agree on all tactical issues, but we all recognise that solidarity with Ukraine is essential and that we need to redefine left-wing security policy for a new era. Our goal is to build a Nordic and European network that links support for Ukraine to a broader, socialist, feminist and ecological vision of security, beyond militarism.

AU CONTRAIRE

Ukraine’s Embrace of Suicidal

Nationalism

George H.W. Bush's warning fell of deaf ears...

by James Carden | Sep 18, 2025 | 

Reprinted from The Realist Review. 

The recent assassination of the Ukrainian neo-fascist politician Andriy Parubiy are a grim reminder of the far-right origins of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution — a revolution which eventually gave way to the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022 and a war that has decimated the Ukrainian state.

At two key moments over the past 20 years, during 2004’s Orange Revolution and, a decade later, during the Maidan uprising, Ukraine’s nationalist political elites, at the urging of the American foreign policy establishment, sought to marginalize, stigmatize and eventually disenfranchise the substantial bloc of ethnic Russian citizens living in the country’s east and south.

That such an eventuality was possible (if not likely) was foreseen some 35 years ago by the last decent foreign policy president we’ve had, George H.W. Bush, who crafted a post Cold War policy based on (1) a refusal to rub Russia’s diminished fortunes in its face and (2) a wariness of re-awakening the poisonous sectarianism that so marked the politics of Eastern and Central Europe at mid-century.

Bush’s emphasis was on avoiding creating unnecessary crises within the post-Soviet space rather than provoking new ones (as subsequent Republican and Democratic administrations have chosen to do). As Bush’s secretary of state James A. Baker later wrote: “Time and again, President Bush demanded that we not dance on the ruins of the Berlin Wall. He simply wouldn’t hear of it.”

The nature of the Cold War had changed with Mikhail Gorbachev’s UN Speech of December 7, 1988. Gorbachev announced that the USSR was abandoning the class struggle that for decades served as the basis for Soviet foreign policy. In place of that, Gorbachev declared that Eastern European states were now free to choose their own paths, declaring that “the compelling necessity of the principle of freedom of choice” was “a universal principle to which there should be no exceptions.”

Gorbachev continued:

…The next U.S. administration, headed by President-elect George Bush, will find in us a partner who is ready – without long pauses or backtracking – to continue the dialogue in a spirit of realism, openness and good will, with a willingness to achieve concrete results working on the agenda which covers the main issues of Soviet-U.S. relations and world politics.”

Initially, Bush and his team were skeptical of Gorbachev. In his memoirs, Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft dismissed Gorbachev’s overture, writing that the speech “had established, with a largely rhetorical flourish, a heady atmosphere of optimism.” Scowcroft, echoing the analysis offered to him by the CIA, worried that Gorbachev would then be able to “exploit an early meeting with a new president as evidence to declare the Cold War over without providing substantive actions from a ‘new’ Soviet Union.”

The caution with which Bush and his team treated Gorbachev likewise was extended to the newly or soon-to-be independent states in Eastern Europe.

There was to be no dancing on the ruins of the Berlin Wall.

The diplomatic historian James Graham Wilson writes that Bush realized that a triumphalist approach on the part of the Americans might backfire. “Ok, so long as the programs do not smack of fomenting revolution,” Scowcroft wrote on a paper proposing ‘democratic dialogue’ in Eastern Europe.

Eventually, Bush accepted that Gorbachev was serious about reform and came to see him as a partner in ending the 40 year division of Europe. What changed?

September 18th marks 5 years since the death of the acclaimed Princeton University scholar Stephen F. Cohen, a leader of the “revisionist” school of Soviet history and author of a biography of Soviet leader Nikolai Bukharin that Gorbachev admired.* As such, it is appropriate to recount for future historians a little known episode that took place at Camp David in November 1989, a month before the first summit meeting between Bush and Gorbachev. The meeting played a role in convincing Bush to overcome the skepticism of his advisers displayed toward Gorbachev.

A young National Security Council aide named Condoleezza Rice (who became, a decade later, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under Bush’s son) invited Cohen and Harvard University scholar Richard Pipes, a Polish-born anti-Soviet hardliner, to consult with the President. Pipes and Cohen were no strangers to one another, they were frequent sparring partners on television and radio.

As Cohen recalled in an oral history interview with Columbia University’s Harriman Institute in 2017,

I got a call from the White House from Condi [Condoleezza] Rice saying, “We want you to come to Camp David next week and we’re going to stage a debate between you and Dick Pipes for the president’s entire team,” Secretary of State, head of CIA, everybody, the vice president, “about Gorbachev and what we should do. Is this a trick by Gorbachev or should we seize this as an opportunity to end the Cold War?”

Cohen continued,

I mean this was ridiculous. [Ronald W.] Reagan already thought he’d ended the Cold War, and when he left office in January 1989 he said so: “we ended the Cold War.” But there was this so-called long pause by the Bush administration.

I had talked to Bush privately…about this. But Bush decided on a Camp David debate — because his administration was really split on this. Was Gorbachev an opportunity or a dangerous hoax? In 1989 they’re still debating this. So I went to Camp David. They obviously invited us because of this idea that there was the Princeton school and the Harvard school. Pipes was probably the leading American “hard-line” scholar of Russia. He’d been head of the B team, he’d been on Reagan’s national security council. He was really connected to the conservative movement in America. I, I guess, had the reputation of being sort of the left liberal position…

But this event at Camp David was fascinating. Pipes and I each were given fifteen minutes, then we were interrogated by all these guys. I felt like Zelig. I’d seen these people only on TV — except for the President.

Cohen had for years been wondering how it was that so many within the US establishment got Gorbachev wrong. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1987, Cohen noted that most American commentators had “maintained that Gorbachev represented nothing significantly new. Now they seem baffled. Such foggy perceptions prevent the United States from considering the equally historic possibility of a new kind of relationship with the Soviet Union.”

As it happens, Cohen’s concerns were shared by Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, who also wondered how it was that top CIA Russia analysts such as Robert Gates got Gorbachev so wrong. Many years later, Cohen told me that at the meeting at Camp David, Bush directed Cohen to sit next to him at lunch, and, having seemingly rejected Pipes’ advice, told the group, “Steve is my kind of Russianist.”

Gorbachev believed that the Soviet Union was reformable, and that, some form of Union would and could go forward along social democratic lines. As the USSR teetered on the brink of collapse, Bush recognized the combustible reality on the ground. The most well-known expression of Bush’s policy towards the emerging post-Soviet states was made on August 1, 1991, during a speech to the Ukrainian Rada where he pledged that the US would take a ‘hands off’ approach. Bush told the audience that the US “cannot tell you how to reform your society. We will not try to pick winners and losers in political competitions between Republics or between Republics and the center. That is your business; that’s not the business of the United States of America.”

Bush also warned he would “not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” (Andriy Parubiy was the embodiment of this brand of nationalism).

Not everyone at Bush’s State Department was pleased with Bush’s not-terribly-implicit criticism of Ukrainian nationalism—a nationalism, one hardly needs reminding, that reared its head in alliance with a rather rabid brand of German nationalism during the Second World War.

Jon Gundersen, then serving as US Consul General in Kiev, said in a 2012 interview with the Association for Diplomatic Training and Studies that,

…I have a letter from Paul Wolfowitz, who was at the time the Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security policy.

He was using our cables [Gundersen and his team in Kiev were pushing against Bush’s more cautious policy] against some at State who would say, “Well, we have to work with the Soviets and Gorbachev. Let’s not push it too much.” The Pentagon’s thinking, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was driven by military, not political objectives. If Ukraine becomes independent, the thinking was, Soviet forces would have to retreat a thousand miles from NATO and it would no longer be a strategic threat.

And so they looked at it from a military perspective; they were less involved with arms control or other considerations. There were some in S/P , State’s Policy Planning Council, who agreed. However, most at State and the NSC [National Security Council] wanted to stick with the existing policy toward the Soviet Union.”

Bush, beset by neocons like Wolfowitz in the Pentagon and diplomats at State who had ‘gone native’ was also targeted by neocons in the media such as Robert Novak and William Safire. Safire was a Madison Avenue ad-man turned speechwriter for the disgraced Spiro Agnew, who later was to become the in-house neoconservative for the New York Times, derided Bush’s speech as “Chicken Kiev.”

Writing on August 29, 1991, Safire took a victory lap while panning Bush’s address. “Communism is dead,” declared Safire.

…The Soviet empire is breaking up. This is a glorious moment for human freedom. We should savor that moment, thanking God, NATO, the heroic dissidents in Russia and the internal empire, and the two-generation sacrifice of the American people to protect themselves and the world from despotic domination.”

Needless to say, for Safire and his neocon brethren, not all despotic dominations were created equally.

The very nationalist impulses that Bush warned against were those that drove Kiev, in both 2004 and 2014, to attempt to nullify the votes of the Russian-speaking citizens in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine. And more dangerously, political elites in Kiev (with close ties to the United States and Canada) embarked on a mission to join the NATO alliance. The US Ambassador to the USSR under President Reagan, Jack Matlock, says that he was “quite convinced that if Bush had been reelected he would not have [expanded NATO].”

But we will never know, because on Tuesday, November 3, 1992, Bush lost the presidency to Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

Ukraine’s embrace of nationalism and NATO had begun.

*I was hired by Cohen to staff The American Committee for US-Russia Accord in 2015.

James W. Carden is the editor of The Realist Review.  He is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.

Great Moments in the History of Chrystia

Freeland’s Failure to Have Achieved More for Ukrainian Fascism (2013-2025) than Her Grandfather Achieved as Hitler’s Propagandist and Spy (1939)

by John Helmer / September 18th, 2025

Chrystia Freeland’s final leap at political power in her 12-year attempt to rule Canada ended yesterday when she fell flat on her face.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose push has proved more kinetic than Freeland’s jump,  allowed this to be understood when he offered Freeland the less than face-saving post of reconstructing the Ukraine which her warfighting campaign against Russia has all but destroyed. The cost to Canada of this destruction since the Special Military Operation began in February 2022 has been C$22 billion, including about C$13 billion in loans which the Kiev regime cannot repay but which are being serviced from the interest earned on Russian assets seized by the NATO allies.

Freeland’s ouster was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank.

In his official release, Carney appeared not to know that Freeland is resigning her parliamentary seat.

According to Carney’s announcement,   Freeland had “helped to secure historic trade negotiations, guide the response to a global pandemic, complete early learning and child care agreements across Canada, and… remove all federal barriers to internal trade.” Not a word about the priorities of  Freeland’s career, war against Russia and war against China. “I have asked Chrystia to serve as Canada’s new Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Carney said, “in addition to her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.”

Carney is believed to have authorized press leaks ahead of his cabinet meeting on Tuesday to reveal Freeland was resigning her combined portfolio of internal trade and transport. In the rush, Carney took several hours before deciding to split the portfolios and assign them to different individuals.

After the cabinet meeting Freeland avoided the press. Returning to her office, she drafted the social media post of a letter which she addressed, not to the prime minister, but to “dear neighbours, dear Canadians.” She then announced: “I do not intend to run in the next federal election.” As her reason for the exit, Freeland claimed she “is not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” Instead, “after twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself.”

Freeland had her 57th birthday last month.

A Canadian source in a position to know commented that there have been growing policy differences between Carney and Freeland. “Carney has signaled his willingness to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports in order to secure Chinese cooperation on their tariffs on Canadian canola. Freeland is recognized in Beijing as a China-hater who, as we know, made sabotaging Canada’s relationship with Beijing a top priority.”

Canola is Canada’s most valuable field crop and farm export, with farm cash receipts of C$12.9 billion in 2024. China had been importing about two-thirds of the Canadian canola crop until Beijing imposed a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal in March, and then a 76% tariff on canola seed in August.  This was retaliation against a series of hostile Canadian political and trade attacks on China, culminating in August 2024 in a 100% tariff on EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported Chinese steel and aluminium.

Freeland’s “past behaviour,” said the source, “displays that she’s not at all trustworthy, let alone capable of putting the government’s goals in front of her own ambitions. Other members of cabinet didn’t hide their dislike of her from Carney. She has the reputation of blowing up cabinet meetings with clumsy, hysterical attempts to run everyone else’s business. That has threatened Carney. Freeland then underestimated his ruthlessness in getting rid of her.”

Beginning with the first reports in 2017 of Freeland’s grandfather’s career as a German military collaborator in World War II — spy, propagandist and genocide profiteer — to Freeland’s plotting with Biden Administration officials to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, the archive of DwB stories on Freeland has reached 82.  An album of the Freeland cartoons has been published in The Complete Dances with Bears Comic Book,  Chapter 5.

Here’s a selection at their original links for a keepsake of Freeland’s passing, and for the one thing she has been incapable of since she first arrived in Moscow as a journalist thirty years ago – laughter.

January 19, 2017:

March 16, 2017:

May 14, 2017:

June 18, 2017:

June 11, 2018:

April 22, 2019:

January 26, 2020:

April 3, 2024:

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John Helmer is an Australian-born journalist and foreign correspondent based in Moscow, Russia since 1989. He has served as an adviser to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia, and has also worked as professor of political science, sociology, and journalism. Read other articles by John, or visit John's website.