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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:20 pm

Opportunism in the form of sectarianism. Left movement and SVO
No. 10/74.X.2022

The leftist is, in fact, a philistine, but an ideological philistine. An idea is a thought that calls for action, and thoughts, as you know, can be scientific, that is, correctly reflecting objective reality, and unscientific, therefore, inadequate to reality. So, the leftist is precisely the bearer of unscientific thoughts, therefore, his activity is unscientific, stupid.

I. Bortnik

1. Introduction
Recently, more and more often I began to read comments in the Agitprop news feed of Mr. Semin. Interest was caused by how the mass of the left reacts to the announced partial mobilization in the country. Overwhelmingly, the same tears “No to war!” and appeals to "perform the Maidan", which gained their special scope with the beginning of the so-called NWO.

The behavior of "people playing" is not difficult to explain, because they, like all to some extent adequate people, do not want war. That is why they are trying to find reasons to justify their unwillingness to support the NWO, the reasons for not accepting the situation that has developed in the country around this very NWO, and, most importantly, to adequately assess the events taking place in the world. And since, unlike the liberals, the leftist, thanks to the “red” bloggers, more or less understands the essence of all imperialist wars, the main reason for rejection is that the masses of the left perceive the SVO as a struggle of capitalists within the class for the redistribution of markets, zones of influence, that war, as Lenin said, is "the continuation of the policy of imperialism." But the problems of modern leftists are not that they see enemies on both sides of the barricades, but that that they focus their attention only on ONE SIDE, that is, the Russian oligarchy. By this, they are completely indistinguishable from Russian liberals and show all the one-sidedness of their thinking, since the leftist did not even make a remark about the European and American bourgeoisie, namely their policy in Ukraine, the balance of forces and interests of ALL parties to the conflict. It is understandable, as soon as a more or less intelligent person hints at Western imperialism, he will immediately be labeled a protector or a social chauvinist. Apparently, mentioning the existence of a MORE ferocious imperialist in the face of a united West is akin to a taboo for leftists!

As in all modern Russian films about the Great Patriotic War, the enemy, that is, the fascist, is only designated , but in fact the Soviet government represented by the NKVD officers, Chekists, commissars, etc. is exposed as the enemy. zm and the Ukrainian fascism nurtured by him are only indicated, but the main enemy is their own bourgeoisie. This is what is at the forefront of leftist propaganda. And this is fueled by the fact that, they say, look, "we also have fascism." And it would be relatively reasonable and correct from the point of view of communism, in a Leninist way, if we already had a Bolshevik party to take power in both Russia and Ukraine.

Naturally, any criticism also implies some alternative, as they say, "criticize - offer." And the modern leaders of the left movement cannot offer anything other than historical analogies, quotes taken out of context from the works of the classics. It gets ridiculous when leftists ask each other how it sounds or where to find the right quote from Lenin regarding a specific situation. And having found the right quote, they begin to “burn the unbelievers” with this quote, relying on its truth and steadfastness. As, in fact, any priest in the church has a baggage of a number of quotations from the Holy Scriptures and immediately gives an answer to any question of a parishioner, referring to a specific Gospel. The most weighty arguments of the leftist are the following quotes:

“The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but desire the defeat of its government. This is an axiom. And it is disputed only by conscious supporters or helpless servants of the social chauvinists.

"To abandon the slogan of defeat means to turn one's revolutionary spirit into an empty phrase or one hypocrisy."

“A revolution in time of war is a civil war, and the transformation of a war of governments into a civil war, on the one hand, is facilitated by military failures (“defeat”) of governments, and on the other hand, it is impossible in practice to strive for such a transformation without thereby contributing to the defeat ".


Etc.

Such hysteria, in an effort to hang the label of a guard on a more or less thinking person, is heated up by Semin almost hourly, thereby setting the tone for the entire left movement. The clearest example:

“Since the communists have nothing: no popularity, no organization, no party, no labor movement, no support for the military, no front-line skills, should we stop showing off and ... support the fascists?” - (c) anti-fascist Semin.

Any fascism is characterized, first of all, by its anti-communism. But to fully consider that an open fascist dictatorship is in power in Russia at the moment is at least ridiculous, because no one has banned (yet) the communist ideology, no one is massively destroying monuments to Lenin and burning Marxist literature, no one is on poles of communists does not hang and no one is imprisoned for communist views. In Ukraine, everything is exactly the opposite and in colors. It is only necessary to hint at this, and we get the following:

“Are you scribbling from a trench, Kremlin guards? You repeat yourself."

Fascism in its pure, “historical” form has not yet been observed in Russia. All that we can see at the moment is that the authorities are trying to implant the religion of capitalism, that is, nationalism, into the public consciousness. Naturally, under the capitalist system, nationalism paves the way for fascism, but does NOT yet establish it, since certain objective and subjective conditions are necessary for this.

Almost every leftist knows by heart the definition of fascism according to Dimitrov, that is, in short, fascism is an OPEN DICTATORY OF FINANCIAL CAPITAL. We all know that corruption is a tool for connecting the ruling class with the state, that is, big businessmen with the government through bribery and nepotism, small businesses with regional authorities through the same bribery. Fascism is the power of financial capital ITSELF, that is, power without intermediaries. And when liberals of all stripes take it upon themselves to assert that, for example, corruption has already been defeated in the United States, we perfectly understand and know that corruption in the United States has gone from bottom to top. And in order to pursue their policy and get rich, American magnates do not need to bribe ministers and other high-ranking officials, since they are seated in government and deputy chairs.

As for Russia, anti-communism is expressed here only in ideological form and attempts to finally destroy the "birthmarks" of the USSR. As “market democracy” flourishes in the country, the propaganda machine gradually emasculates the entire “bloody” legacy of socialism from public consciousness. Individualism, nationalism, philistinism, religion and other forms of obscurantism are imputed as an alternative to collectivism and the brotherhood of peoples. The achievements of the Soviet era are revealed to the layman not as achievements of the Soviet system, scientific planning, public ownership of the means of production, but as a “unique feature of the Russian person”, his abilities, his “God-adoration”, etc. And we did not win the war against European National Socialism thanks to the communists, but in spite of them, people went to fight not for their homeland, for Stalin, but because “absolutely up to the lantern, what power! The power changes, but the land and the house remain the same.” Absolutely everything is translated into a nationalistic way.

Levakov is jarred by the fact that Putin is sleeping in an embrace with the book of the main ideologist of Russian fascism I. Ilyin, and propagandists of all Russia from Dugin to Kiselev and Solovyov have long dismantled his Talmuds into quotes and are trying to flaunt them on every broadcast of state television. And that's the only reason we have fascism in our country! But this does not mean the presence of fascism in Russia. This only says that the fight against communism is currently being waged on an ideological level. That is why such speculators as Vasek Sadonin are still croaking in the swamp of the left information space and collecting donations. Other bloggers are engaged in the analysis of historical fakes, falsifications and other things TOTALLY with impunity, unlike those who have “bad brakes”. All this suggests that we, the communists, all the necessary conditions were provided for the forging of cadres of the Bolshevik type, unhindered self-education, agitation, propaganda, and, most importantly, for the creation of a party. We have an excellent opportunity to show the INEFFICIENCY of capitalist management using the example of modern reality. But instead of all this, the modern leftist, like a monkey in a mirror, will flaunt “his” quotes, while not forgetting to play tanks during breaks, and blame specific people for everything that happens. At the same time, the whole struggle for "communism" comes down to a simple arrangement of srachs in the comments.

But with the beginning of the SVO, the petty-bourgeois little world collapsed overnight, and the leftists, completely inadequately evaluating what was happening around at this historical moment, carried nonsense. Instead, as the guru of the modern left movement once taught netov. Trotsky, “think globally”, instead of assessing his place in the ongoing events, the modern leftist simply decided to hide his face behind the “No to war!” banner, completely unaware that nothing could be changed with slogans and shouts alone. The war is going on and will continue regardless of our dissatisfaction with it. And therefore, we, the Communists, need to determine our place in all this and develop our own strategy. But a leftist is a leftist.

Undoubtedly, a certain proportion of leftists are trying to look at the situation as a whole on a larger scale, or, I would say, strategically, taking into account the alignment of opposing forces in the world and, most importantly, the position of the communists in all this. But as soon as the mass consciousness of the leftists begins to think a little wider than the framework of “No to war!” or begins to give a slight “roll to the right”, the great helmsman Semin manages to grab the helm and ... activate the trigger pre-installed in the mind of the leftist by posting an old interview with Yevgeny Fedorov on his Internet resources, they say, anyone who tries to hint at Western imperialism is doomed get into the marginal environment of the NOD and can boldly bow his head to receive a special pennant with the inscription "protector" and "social chauvinist". And therefore, it is impossible to look at the situation from different sides, except for the leftist, because "we also have fascism." And since we also have fascism, then we leftists should not treat this war differently. It should be treated in the same way as the liberals, that is, "No to war!".

The fear of leftists in their reflections “to turn the wrong way” is due to the dogmatic scheme of political deviations, the so-called “political compass”, where we have socialists at the top left, liberals and fascists at the top, centrists in the center, etc. The leftist is precisely the slave of this “systems”, since he is clearly incapable of thinking OUTSIDE the framework of any systems. Therefore, any encroachments "to the right" or anywhere else for the leftist is akin to a "betrayal" of their ideals and beliefs. In search of absolute and relative truths, such “compasses” on the Cartesian coordinate system are an absolutely anti-scientific approach.

2. On the position of the communists
I finally lost faith in the mental abilities of the reference leftist when I read the following calls and what kind of support these calls found:

"... We need to go to the front and campaign among the soldiers."

As I understand it, the leftists, who call for agitation at the fronts, will campaign against their government, advocate for its defeat? We remember Lenin's quote about the defeat of our own government very well. And the leftist is clearly not going to agitate on enemy territory with the same ideas and slogans. Even though he lacks intelligence, the instinct of self-preservation will not allow him to go to such stupidity. Well, how will things be in "their trench"?

As an example, I invite a leftist to think about what would happen if a Soviet soldier during the Second World War began to agitate against the Soviet government for the defeat of his government, and if we overthrow him, we will certainly drink Bavarian? Nothing, except for a camp or execution, shines for such an agitator, since agitation against one's own is regarded as a betrayal. And in the eyes of fellow soldiers and officers, you, "comrade Pravda", will be that very traitor. And if there are not a dozen of you, but thousands of such “truth-tellers”, you will be regarded by the military command of the RF Armed Forces or the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a whole network of agents to demoralize soldiers. And this, in turn, is an excellent pretext for declaring the communist ideology EXTREMIIST, regardless of the popular mood in the country. And then the dream of the modern Russian leftist will come true - he will see real fascism in the Russian Federation, which he was so afraid of. And you will have to conduct "Marxist" agitation and propaganda from deep underground.

Foolishness, of course, they do not hold. This is clearly seen in the example described above. But behind the cries of "agitation at the fronts" there are only appeals. After all, the leftist himself will not go to the NWO or ATO zone voluntarily, it must be done by “someone else, but not me, I have paws”! And someone else should build communism, and let someone else build the party, and someone else should deal with the theory, and I'll see, and if anything, I'll support it with a like and then I'll go play Dota. And in general, we are waiting for the second coming of (Christ) Ilyich and (paradise) communism itself will come, because it is inevitable! And why this is inevitable, the leftist is not able to clearly explain, since for the most part he does not even own an elementary theory. All that remains is faith in the signs of fate!

In a sense, the position "No to war!" defines the place of modern communists, although the word "communist" is too strong a word. It is more correct to call Semin's adherents the leftists, since the leftists still grow and grow before the title of communist. For “ you can become a communist only when you enrich your memory with the knowledge of all the riches that humanity has developed ” (V.I. Lenin).

This is what frightens the modern leftist! Indeed, in order to absorb the whole array of knowledge that the classics of Marxism once absorbed and digested, the leftist needs to abandon his narrow-mindedness, petty-bourgeois way of life, petty-bourgeois thinking, etc. Petty-bourgeois thinking revolves only within the framework of the current moment, it is subject to momentary urges and desires. And if, as an example, a leftist is reminded that, for example, Lenin wrote his 55 volumes of works by hand, without a keyboard, computer, and even more so Google, the leftist will simply brush aside all this and say, they say, “after all, this is LENIN", as if relying on his "divine" origin. Lenin is a product of persistent, conscientious WORK, and not a "messenger of the Lord."

The leftist was not so jarred when the civil war was going on in Ukraine, as he began to jar when he suddenly received a summons to the military registration and enlistment office or lives in fear of suddenly receiving it. At the same time, one important point should be taken into account: when the civil war in Ukraine had just begun, for a long time the leftists supported the people of Donbass, supported Semin’s policy regarding all kinds of help to people. Many leftists and leftist organizations such as the "ROT Front" and the National Bolsheviks were engaged in the collection of humanitarian aid, and Semin was personally involved in the delivery. At the same time, the Russian authorities were not very much cussed, and if they were cussed, then for "inaction." But when Russia finally began to act, the leftists completely lost their landmark. And in the spirit of terry Trotskyism, the leftist began to argue his position with exclamations of “Bourgeois everywhere”, perceiving the surrounding reality in black and white colors, not distinguishing shades of gray, features and differences of the modern era from the past. In my opinion, this is caused by a banal fear that not only the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, but also the mobilized leftists will have to go and protect the people of Ukraine from the “junta”. And then the leftist suddenly had two faithful comrades: “This is the same as 1905” and “This is the same as 1914”, and therefore, we must go against our government, we must stand up for it defeat, while not lifting the fifth point from the couch. At the same time, Lenin has other quotes:

“Clarification of the nature of the war is a necessary prerequisite for a Marxist in order to resolve the question of his attitude towards it. For such a clarification, it is necessary, first of all, to establish what are the objective conditions and the specific situation of a given war. It is necessary to put this war in the historical situation in which it is taking place, and only then can one determine one's attitude towards it. Otherwise, not a materialistic, but an eclectic interpretation of the question will result. According to the historical situation, the correlation of classes, etc., the attitude towards the war at different times should be different. It is absurd once and for all to refuse to take part in the war on principle.”

“In order to find out your attitude to this war, you need to understand HOW IT DIFFERS FROM PREVIOUS WARS, what are its features” (V.I. Lenin. Complete Works. Ed. 5., Vol. 26, M., 1969, pp. 27-35).


In simple words, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SUPERIMPOSE EVENTS OF THE PAST ON THE EVENTS OF THE CURRENT! “... Otherwise, it will turn out not a materialistic, but an eclectic interpretation of the issue ...”. Attempts to paint a landscape with one paint and one brush doom us not so much to the successes of the past, but to ERRORS in the current moment and in the future. If all sinners on earth will be judged by God, then we Communists will be judged by HISTORY! And if, according to the assurances of believers, God is merciful, then history is the most vindictive and unprincipled, cruel woman, for there is no worse enemy than a rejected woman. But you, left comrades, are pulling this woman by the hair in the most shameless way and are trying to poke a torn-out tuft of hair into every “unfaithful shaitan” in the face. If Lenin advocated the defeat of his own government, it only means that for this there were ALL THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS! When Lenin put forward slogans about the defeat of his own government, he had in mind that the revolutionary movement should be carried out FROM ALL SIDES of each warring side, of all participants in the imperialist war. This is well illustrated by Lenin's favorite quote by leftists:

“A revolution in time of war is a civil war, and the transformation of a war of governments into a civil war, on the one hand, is facilitated by military failures (“defeat”) of governments, and on the other hand, it is impossible in practice to strive for such a transformation without thereby contributing to the defeat ".

The transformation of the war of governments. Not governments, but governments. This means that the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war must be handled by the communists on the part of EVERY government. A third world imperialist war is inevitable, and we understand this. But in order to reverse this war, not for the good of the monopolists, but for the good of the people, we need a PARTY, that is, the vanguard of the working class. Is there a communist party of the Bolshevik type in Russia? NO! Are there such parties in European countries? NO! Are there similar parties in the USA? Also no! And if there is no party, then who, in the event of an imaginary success of the revolution, will govern the country? Lesha Navalny? These questions for the leftist will remain without a sane answer.

Today's conditions are completely different from the conditions of 1914, and the situation of today's communists is different than in the same 1914. The presence of the vanguard of the working class is one of the main conditions for any socialist revolution. Without a party there can be no revolution. Lenin had such a party at the time of 1914. Even in Kaiser's Germany, there were also social democratic parties, and they continued to form and replenish throughout the First World War. Even at the conclusion of the “separate” Brest peace with Germany, despite the cries of the Trotskyists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, etc., Lenin proved to everyone that the looming bourgeois revolution in Germany would annul all the established agreements. What, in fact, happened in November 1918 - Kaiser's Germany fell under the onslaught of the revolution (albeit a bourgeois one), thereby annulling all previously concluded agreements. The conclusion of peace brought Russia out of the First World War, which, in turn, allowed the Bolshevik Party to begin building socialism in our country. Well, since we don’t have any party at the moment, attempts to “walk” against our government do not make any sense, but only, on the contrary, aggravate our situation. Although this is loudly said, because the standard leftist today does not go against his own government, but sits against his own government. I would sit behind the study of theory - there would be more sense.

In the recent 2015, Mr. Semin quite competently explained his position regarding the civil war in Ukraine and the situation of modern communists:

“In contrast to 1914, today an opportunist is not someone who, sacrificing class interests, swears allegiance to his imperialist fatherland. An opportunist today is one who, in his political myopia, goes over to the side of ultra-imperialism, brings closer its final triumph, and, consequently, the verdict for all classes, except for the class of exploiters ”(Konstantin Semin, Nakanune.ru , 2015).

And he goes on to explain why:

“Only Russia can stop ultra-imperialism and restart the Soviet project. Perhaps with the participation of China, which - with all the reservations - retains the strongest inertia of the socialist system. The defeat of Russia and China will mean the dictatorship of imperialism and the defeat of socialism for decades, if not centuries to come.”

“For example, it is very easy to call the war in Ukraine a confrontation between the Russian and American bourgeoisie. It immediately follows from this that in such a conflict there are not and cannot be "good" ones, but only bad ones. Therefore, no one can be supported at all. Stupidity. If any intervention in the conflict of capitalist interests is a mistake, then it remains to simply watch as ultra-imperialism breaks down the last barrier on its way to global domination? After all, there are no other ways to prevent this among modern Leninists and Kautskys .objectively no. So what? Ultra-imperialism will develop, be calm. But instead of a cleansing world revolution, at the final stage, the world will receive a total dictatorship of a transnational oligarchy, based on a super-powerful system of suppression, surveillance and control, and on a nuclear club (the only one) too. In this system, its social Darwinist architects will no longer have any brakes - they will be able to write off the inefficient, defective, objectionable or unusable, even not by the countries - the continents.

To intrigue the “Putin regime” in the face of a confrontation with a MORE powerful and stronger enemy equates the modern leftist not so much with a traitor to “bourgeois mortgages”, but with a traitor of the future socialist revolution. If the modern left movement had connections with party cells abroad, and if the Russian left movement had its own communist party, that is, the vanguard of the working class, and if the communists had the GRAND MASSES at hand, then Lenin's slogan about the defeat of governments would take place . But this is nothing, and therefore the population of the country, already demoralized by liberals and the petty-bourgeois way of life, is completely demoralized with slogans about the defeat of its own government, which means dooming our country to a deliberate loss in the upcoming war, which in turn will entail a LOT of problems in party building, communist agitation and propaganda, and the LIFE of communists in general. The Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, fed by the American and European bourgeoisie, are the same CHAIN ​​DOGS that will hang communists on poles or burn people in the new houses of trade unions, as was the case in Odessa. They have been pickled in battles for nine years. But Semin of 2015 has sunk to Semin of 2022: “... Stop showing off and ... support the fascists?” -d-i-t-e, he shares the position of not just anyone, but even Lenin HIMSELF. But what kind of Lenin? The one who campaigned to overthrow his government under all existing conditions (party, revolutionary class, revolutionary situation, etc.),

“It is necessary to place this war in the historical situation in which it is taking place, and only then can one determine one’s attitude towards it”?

Surely the leftist will not buy into this? Actually, the leftist bought into it, not understanding at all that Semin’s position of the 2015 version is precisely the LENIN position, that is, the position of a materialist-dialectic, in which he defined that “in contrast to 1914, today an opportunist is not the one who, sacrificing class interests, swears allegiance to his imperialist fatherland. The opportunist today is the one who, in his POLITICAL MYOPICITY, goes over to the side of ultra-imperialism, brings its final triumph closer .”

Konstantin, in his vision of the situation in 2015, operated with the same Leninist statement:

“According to the historical situation, the correlation of classes, etc., the attitude towards the war at different times should be different. It is absurd once and for all to refuse in principle to participate in the war.

But Semin of 2022, ignoring all those horror stories with which he stuffed the entire left movement for several years, put a bucket on his head with the inscription “No to war!”, And we got the sarcastic following:

“I am against Bandera. I am against the Vlasovites. But still it is better to support the Vlasovites. This was bequeathed by Marx and Rosa Luxembourg "- (c)" in Chinese socialism "Semin.

Regarding the 2015 article itself, Konstantin spoke separately:

“Having fun. The security guards/social chauvinists, it turns out, are now dragging in their teeth an old text (2015), where I passionately refute Lenin, defend Kautsky and call for rallying around the global American evil. This text is the published part of an almost year-long correspondence with Marxist comrades. The dispute was conducted exactly after my return from the Donbass and before I read any serious theoretical works. Already in the same 2015, Lenin and life itself convincingly proved that my opponents were right. I have talked about this many times. It was not possible to defend Kautsky. However, the guards and the national communists can make a new attempt.

As noted above, at the beginning of the article, as soon as the leftist in his thoughts gives a “tilt to the right” or at least goes beyond the position “No to war!”, the label of “protector” or “social chauvinist” will be immediately hung on him ". Labels, especially from an opinion leader, are like a sacred tablet, true and unshakable. At one time, leftists butted heads with liberals about the "mind, honor and conscience" of our time, Lesha Navalny. A question for the leftists: how many labels of “Kremlebots”, “guardians” did you receive? Were these labels true? And now another question: are all those labels that you are trying so hard to hang on every dissent correspond to reality?

With what "Marxists" did our esteemed Konstantin correspond and discuss? This question has been asked by leftists for more than a year. Aren’t these the same “Marxists” that, for example, on the HistoryLab YouTube channel, comrade. Stalin is a "tyrant", but not. Trotsky a "true Marxist"? Maybe A. Batov, mired in economism? We will not wait for an answer. What is the point of hiding real (and not fictional) Marxists from the public? After all, Comrade himself. Semin waves his books all the time and repeats: “Study the theory! Study the theory!”, while hiding those who “deal with” this theory. This only leads to doubtful thoughts. And what, in fact, did Lenin prove to him? What is possible, in isolation from the historical context, in isolation from the conditions of the CURRENT era and the differences between this era and the old one, to STYLE Lenin's quotes as a stencil on everything, what do you see around you? Only a nerd would fall for something like that.

Qualitative changes in the entire left movement are conditioned by qualitative changes in the consciousness of K. Semin himself. Where Semin is, there is a “left movement”. If Semin defended an anti-ultra-imperialist position in 2015, almost the entire left movement defended the same position. And if by 2022 Mr. Semin has slipped into “bourgeois pacifism”, and in theory – into fierce Trotskyism, then the leftists, respectively, have slipped there too. As the German playwright Bertolt Brecht once said: “The worst of the illiterate is a politically illiterate person.” The leftist, in spite of all his ideology, remains such, that is, a politically illiterate person, since he is in all respects a person led by his *opinion leaders*. And if you take into account his zero craving for self-education - and even more so.

3. About party building

Lenin had a party, but how are things going with party building in our country now? Semin's formula "quantity will give rise to quality", with which he substantiates his work to involve an increasing number of supporters in the left environment (for which special thanks to him), in the event of an imaginary success of the re-revolution, it will lead to its dialectical negation and form a synthesis in the form of a new (old) opportunistic CPSU. Why exactly? Following this understanding of dialectics, Semin, as the leading condition for the formation of synthesis (new CP) as a quantity, intentionally or unconsciously loses sight of what actually forms this very quantity, that is, the combination of some qualities! Undoubtedly, the entire left movement is a collection of separate individuals, that is, a certain social cell that forms this very quantity, but what is the QUALITY of these same individuals at the input and what are they like at the output? That is, what qualitative changes are taking place ?

Every person who comes to leftist ideas, the ideas of communism, especially at a young age, is wholly and completely a product of the capitalist system. And since he is a product of this system, this means that a person will have those properties that this system has and every minute translates into the public, and from it into the individual consciousness. He is the mirror of the social being in which he resides. This person is a tradesman, a hired slave who dreams of getting rich and becoming a capitalist, his mind is completely infected with idealism and all its forms, even mysticism. It is infected with all kinds of animal atavisms and all those deformities that private property breeds. And since a person is a “reflector” of the social being in which he lives, then the only thing that he can adequately reflect is thatgood and what is bad . But at the same time, such concepts as “good” and “bad” do not always agree with Marxism, and sometimes even completely contradict it.

And now the question is: what quality will the communists-Seminists and, moreover, the new PARTY have, if the gurus themselves from Yarsky to Rudy have bastard qualities generated by private property? This is clearly seen in the information products that they produce.

In order to build socialism, that is, the lower phase of communism, we need to raise the level of human literacy, and build socialism itself on the basis of culture, as Lenin once said and did. And if we want to make our country advanced in terms of its statehood, we need to raise the literacy of the population, raise the culture of our country, and everything else will follow, as Stalin once said and did. But you, left comrades, continue to try to preserve all the “good things” of capitalism, all those ugliness to which you are so accustomed, you are trying to JUSTIFY them and bring them into the socialist future. But sorry guys, that's not how it works.

To believe that the imperialist war will give rise to the leaders of the proletarian movement, and at the same time not to try to substantiate this argument, but simply to shout out “because”, equates the modern leftist with sectarians. This is what idealism is all about! As noted above, Christians are waiting for the second coming of Christ, while leftists are waiting for the second coming of Lenin. But if someone similar to Lenin suddenly comes (not in appearance, but in mind), I am ready to bow my head on the chopping block, but the leftists will simply throw stones at him, because the new Lenin will cut down all petty-bourgeois leftist overshoots in the bud.

An imperialist war can give rise to some "leader", but what QUALITY will this leader be? Most likely, it will be a new Trotsky or Hitler in general, since this does not require any theory at all - only ambition.

In order to make a believer doubt religion, he must be made to read the Bible. In order to make a leftist doubt the truth of the teachings of his leftist YouTube "gurus", he must be forced to study the works of the classics. And as soon as a person begins to study Marx's "Capital", or at least Lenin's "On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", he will certainly begin to understand that, for example, Oleg Komolov, with his "overproduction crisis" and world-system analysis, is a bourgeois sing-along who, by the way, he receives awards from the Higher School of Economics; when you start to study the works of Lenin-Stalin, you begin to understand that the kids from the Vector group are "kindergarten gendarmerie on guard of opportunism", that is, snails carrying frank nonsense that even the language does not dare to call revisionism, because even before that they did not even matured.matureSocialism consists in the fact that money as an instrument for the circulation of goods ALREADY must be LIQUIDATED, and this cannot be done without getting rid of this very marketability, only people who read “Capital” diagonally could say! The Stalinist policy of annual price cuts was aimed at getting rid of marketability. But "kids" are kids, and no less kids believe in all this. But here's what the leftist will always truly, believe in a Christian way, is the steadfastness of quotations from the works of the classics, completely unaware and unaware of the context in which they were uttered. And since they do not know the context, then the “necessary” and “convenient” context will be presented by such turkeys as Remy Meisner, demonstrating all their professionalism in verbal balancing act, in the common people of “verbiage”, without giving a person a chance for critical reflection.

The struggle of the communists against the bourgeoisie on the ideological front is the struggle of materialism against idealism. The struggle of the communists against the leftists is also a struggle between materialism and idealism, no matter how the leftists shout, asserting that they, too, stand on materialistic positions. The whole "materialism" of the leftists consists of a simple "there is no God", and that's it! But the reality is that it is not enough for communists to recognize themselves as materialists, since materialism implies the cognizability of the surrounding reality and objective reality as a whole. And in order to cognize objective reality, you need to “study, study and study COMMUNISM again!”what Lenin once called for. But the leftists do not want to learn anything. Why study or "why study theory" when it is already in finished form as a ready-made instruction lies on the shelves in the form of collected works of MELS - the leftists ask. Why is theory needed? We need PRACTICE!" they say. No need to study, just believe in the "holy scripture" and those demagogues that "carry" this scripture into the light, for everything given (by the gods) by the classics is eternal and their ways are inscrutable! And to any person poking you in the face with a theory, continue to MAKE your "red jihad" in the spirit of religious fanatics.

The theory is exactly what is needed in order to NOT BE LEAD by all those characters who so vehemently stigmatize themselves as true Marxists, but in reality are outright opportunists and even enemies.

Theory is needed in order to just CONFESS the paths laid by the classics of Marxism. And since everything that happens in objective reality is in CONSTANT MOVEMENT, this means that the works of the classics should not be crammed like religious dogmas, but, firstly, they need to be conscientiously STUDYED and UNDERSTOOD and, secondly, DEVELOP FURTHER! The capitalism of the 21st century is no longer the same as the capitalism of the 19th-20th centuries, and the FASCISM of the 21st century is no longer the same as the fascism of the 20th. But for you, everything must comply with some canons and "stencils". This is the whole eclecticism of the leftist methodology, and there is no smell of dialectics here.

4. Left and NWO
Revealing his attitude to the so-called SVO, the leftist is capable of everything, except "God forbid, to solidarize with the bourgeoisie." In the view of the leftist, any contact with the bourgeoisie is akin to betrayal and, without fail, as if bitten by a vampire, you will turn into a vampire, that is, you will turn from a communist into a bourgeois. Such twists are nothing but cretinism, cannot be named. By the same analogy, Comrade. Stalin attributed to the "traitors", because, despite the turning point in the course of the Second World War and the Second World War as a whole, comrade. Stalin insisted that overseas "partners" open a second front. At the same time Comrade. Stalin knew perfectly well that Hitler was the FEDER OF THE TRANSNATIONAL OLIGARCHY, that it was the British, French, American, Spanish, Italian and other bourgeois who sponsored the “campaign to the East”, the campaign against communism. Tov. Stalin knew perfectly well that America does not open a second front simply because it is waiting for someone to win. And despite all this, Stalin demanded the opening of a second front. What do you think, Stalin sided with the bourgeoisie? By the same analogy, Mao Zedong can also be attributed to traitors, because in order to defeat the Japanese invaders, who were superior in power to both the Chinese Communists and the nationalists of the Kuomintang combined, Mao had to (hold your breath) enter into a TEMPORARY TACTICAL alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, that is, with the Kuomintang. On the recommendation, by the way, comrade. Stalin. And after they defeated the Japanese militarists, the communists continued their fight against the nationalists and won.

In the current conditions of the imminent new world war, no one offers you, leftists, to "solidize" with the bourgeoisie. We are talking about the fact that it makes no sense to interfere with the bourgeois Russian Federation to help the people of Donbass, destroy the Ukrainian fascists and overthrow the Kiev regime, since Russian "fascism" is more light than Ukrainian or American fascism, since the Russian oligarchy is trying to resist the Western oligarchy and by all means, at the very least, is trying to weaken it, WHAT, IN ITS TURN, GOES FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES. At the same time, you should not forget that you, "communists", do not represent ANY POWER AT ALL, you are only essentially a "party of interests". There is no party, no leaders, no broad masses behind your back. You are NOBODY and you can't stop anything. The policy of the Russian Federation towards Ukrainian fascism and Nazism is correct, since a good Nazi is a dead Nazi. The anti-Nazi rhetoric of the Russian government speculates on the Soviet past. And despite all the jingoistic, nationalist frenzy, the Russian bourgeois are playing into the hands of us, the communists, since they, unwillingly, FORCED to carry the communist "agenda" to the masses. No one expands Soviet sentiments in our country so widely as the current government. Our task with you is to direct these moods in the right direction, conduct agitation and propaganda, and the so-called NWO should simply not be interfered with.

“Only Russia can stop ultra-imperialism and restart the Soviet project. Perhaps with the participation of China, which - with all the reservations - retains the strongest inertia of the socialist system. The defeat of Russia and China will mean the dictatorship of imperialism and the defeat of socialism for decades, if not centuries to come,” Konstantin Semin, 2015

Russia and China, as Comrade was correctly noted. Semin, preserve the strongest inertia of the socialist system! And the events of 2022 are the inertia of the events of 1991-1993, that is, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our task with you is NOT TO LET this very inertia go out. As soon as this inertia goes out, one should not even dream of any "communism".

5. What to do?!

We cannot influence the outcome of the current situation in the world. But this does not mean that we should just sit back and watch the fights without rules between two gopniks on the street. From who wins, our fate depends entirely on you. As noted above, our task is not to let the strongest inertia of socialism die out. This inertia should be transformed into energy, condensed into deeply ideological people, and construction of a new communist party, not in name but in quality, should be started. The vanguard of the working class should be formed not from the number of adherents of the Witnesses of Ilyich Church, but from QUALITY, from which this very quantity will be formed. Following the victorious practice of Comrade. Stalin and, using the Stalinist formula "STAFF DECIDE EVERYTHING", we must be engaged in the education and formation of COMPETENT personnel, who in the future will constitute this very vanguard of the working class. This is exactly what the socio-political magazine "Proryv" and the newspaper "Proryvist" are doing.

A. Werther
29/10/2022

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:03 pm

Path to breakthrough
No. 11/75.XI.2022

Different kinds of circumstances can push people to get acquainted with Marxism, but usually the desire to master diamatics, economic theory comes with time, and even then not for everyone. Initially, people, as a rule, adjoin all kinds of leftist movements, rallies, go on strike in order to get some crumbs from the masters. That is, they strive to somehow improve their situation - to raise wages, shorten the working day, etc. - without going beyond the framework of capitalism, since all manifestations of the latter have become fixed in their minds as something normal, self-evident. It goes without saying, after all, that in order to survive, one must go to work for the "uncle", it goes without saying that someone is rich, and someone has nothing. What can you do? There is absolutely no doubt about the establishment of the state and money once and for all - we are talking at best only about “building " a state with a "more just" system and a less offensive distribution of money . Small wages, loans, unemployment, inflation, poverty, prostitution, crime - all this is completely normal, familiar to everyone. But few people will not call the fact that all of the above can disappear as a utopia.

The left is busy fighting for justice, for a "good" state. They are familiar with the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin only by phrases taken out of context. What are they doing? They create countless “their own”, special “parties”, communities, groups, engage in idle talk on the Internet and, at the most, take people to rallies, protests, processions in order to allegedly achieve some results. The more advanced may call themselves communists, accurately shoot with torn quotes from Marx and Lenin, talk a lot, presenting themselves as experts, but do nothing really to fight for communism. Unfortunately, this is where the great activity of all leftists stops. Creation of “one’s own”, special, which [allegedly] does not yet exist, personal interests, careerism, “promotion” of oneself – this is what often leads leftist leaders. Those who sincerely would like to build something, whether it be communism or a just state, their ignorance, their unwillingness to work hard on the elimination of this very ignorance, on studying the works of the classics of Marxism and mastering diamatics, interferes. All these people, as a rule, make pathetic attacks on the Breakthrough, and this happens because of their illiteracy and interest.

Those who are not guided by personal interests and who are not hindered by laziness will work tirelessly, constantly increasing their scientific competence, discipline, will study hard themselves and teach others. Such people gradually begin to realize that everything that happens around is not the result of the actions of any person - whether the president, the governor - but a historical necessity; that all that is customary—this politics, culture, art, social stratification—is characteristic only of this stage, of this level of development of production, and of this type of production relations; that this habitual was once new, having once replaced the old habitual, and that it also has a path of development from a lower stage to a higher one.

Breaking away sometimes from reading on the bus, I sometimes look out the window and, seeing the capitalist reality around me, I think. Once upon a time, after all, I accepted all this reality in a philistine way, like all my random fellow travelers, like those people outside the window, on the sidewalks, in cars and houses. I grew up in this reality, I studied and was brought up in it. I, like my entire generation, studied according to bourgeois textbooks, watched bourgeois television, sometimes went to church with my grandmother, in the future I wanted to be rich and not deny myself anything. But the following things contributed to my coming to Marxism.

The first is ease of learning. From the first grade I made progress in all lessons, which was a very rare occurrence among boys. The second is art. Independently engaged in modeling, guitar, writing poetry and stories. At various times, he even dreamed of becoming a sculptor, a musician, and a writer. The third is the love of books. Starting with the notorious "Harry Potter" in elementary school, I, let's say, gradually evolved in terms of what I read, and in high school I already read "Martin Eden", "The Pain", and from poetry I loved it most of all, and I love it to this day day, poems by E. Bagritsky.

In the senior classes I became interested in socialism, however, only at the level of sympathy, sympathy. Then I considered it only an alternative to the existing system with its injustice, inequality, mass poverty and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a handful of exploiters. Contributed to my interest, firstly, the capitalist reality surrounding me with all its characteristics; secondly, my birth in a rural-proletarian, far from rich family, as a result of which both I and my younger brother and sister, like my mother, who grew up in the 90s, experienced the “charms” of market life; thirdly, my craving for knowledge, art and books, which allowed me to get to socialism and begin my path to enlightenment. At this time, I sometimes even entered into discussions with classmates, defending socialism as a "fair and correct alternative" to capitalism,

After graduating from school and enrolling in my, let's say, specific university, I temporarily suspended my passion for the topic of socialism - initially there was simply no time for this, because the load was, to put it mildly, significant. At the university, I encountered many abominations, unusual and unpleasant for me, from the environment, classmates. In the first year I looked closely, got used to it, in the second - I even tried to get close to them, as a result of which I noticed that I was changing for the worse, about which I wrote poetry several times at that time.

By the equator of education, in the third year, everything around me becomes even more disgusting, all the lust, debauchery and obsession with money and sex of modern youth, that is, my classmates, the same age, the division of a seemingly whole team into “elite” and “workhorses ". And I myself become disgusted with myself, because until recently I wanted to become closer to this. I am moving away from the team - not completely, because we studied and worked together anyway, but when they had obscene conversations, I already tried not to be present, I tried not to spend leisure time with them, as much as possible due to the specificity of my university. All popular musical novelties, clips, films, from which I have not been a fan before, also become triple disgusting to me with their vulgarity, debauchery and vileness. I understand again, as I once did in high school, that socialism is "more correct." There was no such thing in the Soviet Union: songs of those times are pleasant to listen to, movies are pleasant to watch, and, most importantly, people are people, not semi-animals obsessed with money and sex. That's what was in my head when I finally turned in the direction of Marxism, not yet understanding the latter.

Of course, what was then in my head was not Marxism at all. It was simply a decision that naturally followed from all my previous development, which determined my ideals - love, brotherhood, equality. I saw all this in socialism, on the example of the USSR, including the stories of the older generation.

In the social On the net, I was looking for various groups and pages on such topics and at one fine moment I stumbled upon the Breakthrough community, looked it up, and read it. I was impressed that the issues are considered here exclusively from scientific positions, for each of them there is a clear justification. Interested. Entered. Every day I read article after article and at the same time, slowly, slowly began to understand. Many, many things caused difficulties, especially new concepts for me: basis, superstructure, opportunism, scientific centralism, etc. Articles on diamatics, one might say, were not perceived at all, no matter how hard I tried to read them. I realized that I was seriously lagging behind in all respects and, as the breakthroughs always instructed, I would soon acquire my first three books on Marxism: The Origin of the Family ..., The Manifesto and Anti-Dühring.

Since Anti-Duhring, I read exclusively with a pencil in my hand, for notes and underlining. This work of Engels, constructed in the form of a critique of E. Dühring, contains an enormous amount of material, substantiated and necessary. And the contribution of this book to my mind is invaluable.

In the future, I read the main works of the classics of Marxism one after another (not quickly, of course, sometimes rereading the same thing several times): Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy, Ludwig Feuerbach, Engels' Dialectics of Nature, The State and Revolution , "Imperialism ...", "Materialism and empirio-criticism" by Lenin and many others. etc., not without benefit once distracted by "Studies on the Nature of Man" by I. I. Mechnikov. Later, in my fifth year, I acquire an invaluable philosophical heritage: the complete works of Lenin in 55 volumes. In addition, I find wonderful books from the Stalin era in the second-hand booksellers of the city, including books on art, religion, and communist education.

And now, when I have studied the necessary, but still, of course, far from sufficient amount of material, when capitalism, which seemed to me earlier wrong and unjust, appears as a historically transitional society, along with all its characteristics that I hate, I no longer fall into despondency. . I understand that the poverty of the masses and the wealth of the minority is an inevitability under the existing mode of production, an inevitability that loses its force when humanity outgrows this mode of production and gets rid of it. I understand that the bestial relations between people, the almost complete absence of love - all this is dictated by capitalist production relations, which are primary, and a change in these relations means a change in others. It is obvious that all the figures of modern "art" are all morning stars, instawomen, clavikoks are the same products of capitalism and capitalist relations, bourgeois henchmen who think only about money, about sex, about pleasures and bring all this “jam” to the masses. I now know that the goal of the modern education system is not the all-round and maximum development of each child into an adult, adequate personality, but the formation of specialists, workers, scientists, etc., competent only in their narrow field and ignorant in all other fields, especially in the field of historical sciences, which are taught distortedly, to the advantage of the ruling class. Otherwise, a generation would grow up that would easily overthrow the bourgeoisie, because neither the bourgeoisie nor any other class of exploiters would have lingered a single day in their place, if not for the MASS IGNORANCE of the class of the exploited. Ignorance reigns among the proletariat, sponsored by the bourgeoisie, implemented through the education system, through the media, through art, politics and religion. And as long as this ignorance of the proletariat flourishes, the latter will not unite into a full-fledged working class, will not free itself. To help the proletarians, to guide them—that is what the communists must do. But this requires a real communist party of the Leninist-Stalinist type, built on the principleScientific centralism , representing the real SCIENTIFIC VANGUARD of the revolutionary class. The breakthroughs are engaged in the training of personnel for such a party of scientific centralism.

Now I no longer have a dream of, say, a "just state," for the state itself is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, for the legitimization of this oppression. The revolution of the working class under the leadership of the Communist Party is the way to the liberation of all mankind. Of course, after the Revolution, there is still more work to be done, but this is after. The primary task is the formation of a communist party, i.e., the subjective factor of communism, which does not yet exist in Russia.

There is no doubt that the future belongs to the breakthroughs. It is a great honor for me to provide them with any assistance by taking part in their activities. My primary tasks are further theoretical training, as well as propaganda work, mainly in the form of articles and notes.

Thus, people can come to Marxism in different ways, and above I have shown what my way was. From sympathy for socialism, by which I did not understand the lower phase of communism, and disgust for capitalist reality, I came to Marxist theory, to dialectical materialism and Breakthrough. From not accepting modern art, modern interests and modern love, I came to identify the cause and the only sure way to deal with it. Of course, although my current level of training is much higher than before, it is still a hundred times lower than it should be. But this only means that there is still a lot of work ahead, hard, but necessary and worth a lifetime.

L. Komissarov
2/11/2022

https://prorivists.org/75_proriv/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 18, 2022 3:51 pm

On the personnel problems of the bourgeoisie
No. 11/75.XI.2022

It is necessary to know how to merge city after city in the conditions of one's overwhelming military-technical superiority. More proof that private property relations can nullify any objective advantage. The capitalist Russian Federation in the course of the SVO clearly demonstrates how poorly the bourgeois state copes with a complex, large-scale task that requires an increased level of centralization, organization, coordination, and promptness in making RIGHT decisions. And for making such decisions, personnel with developed scientific thinking are needed. The bourgeoisie does not have enough of these cadres.

It is precisely this trouble with personnel that is the Achilles' heel of any bourgeois state. Where and how does the bourgeoisie recruit those who serve it in the state apparatus, the army, the police? Yes, according to the same principle as in capitalist production. Higher positions are distributed according to the pull, they are occupied by people from the bourgeois environment, especially if we talk about the relatively young generation. Caste and nepotism flourishes. Scratch any "young manager" of a high level - it turns out that this is someone's son. At the same time, young people are clearly not enough. The personnel reserve of the bourgeoisie is very limited here. After all, carrying out the interests of certain financial groups requires a proper level of “reliability” and trust. Therefore, often a failed work in one direction is simply transferred to another. Positions lower may be available even to people from the environment of employees. True, not the most intelligent. For example, from my school class in state structures there were mostly three-year-olds. And further career advancement is possible only through proof of its usefulness for capital.

Such a system is a reflection of the official's real place in the capitalist system. His objective mission is to promote the interests of the very oligarchic group that nominated him to a responsible post, to balance between these interests and the interests of the entire capitalist class.

As we remember, the basic law of capitalism is the maximization of profit in cash. Each official is called upon to maximize the profits of his masters, and in such a way that he is not imprisoned, but at the same time not to forget about his material interest. What personal qualities are most valuable for an official? Selfishness, careerism, the ability to play up, lie, duplicity, unscrupulousness, venality... Such qualities turn him into an ideal servant of the bourgeoisie where it is a question of the relatively peaceful distribution of surplus value in favor of his masters, and the bourgeois state works satisfactorily. But as soon as it comes to the emergence of extreme circumstances, when the general class tasks of the bourgeoisie come to the fore, the state apparatus begins to crack at the seams because of such cadres. What is remarkable the bourgeois state is not in a position to produce qualitatively different cadres in sufficient numbers. Therefore, it is an absolutely rotten idea that it is enough to replace bad cadres with good ones and things will go ... Even honest and sensible cadres who accidentally find themselves in the bourgeois apparatus cannot change the situation, beingsurrounded by us mediocrity and thieves.

Take the same Putin. For once, the bourgeoisie managed to recruit an intelligent figure to the highest post, especially against the background of colleagues from other countries. Yes, in a bourgeois sensible way, with far from scientific thinking. But even he is unable to do anything in a system where the highest value is money, and the leading cadres are mired in luxury and frankly illiterate. He surrounded himself with such people and therefore bears personal responsibility for what is happening.

This whole system shows the unique stability of idiocy. It even gives the impression that it is stuffed with agents of foreign intelligence. In fact, even though there are probably spies, it’s still a matter of banal careerism, self-seeking, stupidity, irresponsibility and impunity. For example, who slipped information to Putin that a 150,000-strong group could defeat the Ukrainian Reich? Are any of them punished? Who developed and implemented the CBO in the form in which it has been mediocre for almost nine months? Did anyone answer for unsuppressed enemy air defense, for unjustified losses, for the surrender of cities or the creation of the conditions that led to this? Who was responsible for the wreckingly carried out mobilization? At least one army bureaucrat was imprisoned for rising prices for uniforms in the Voentorg system? And after all, from top to bottom, this is how a system built on money works. Junior commanders lie to seniors about the number of destroyed enemies and equipment. Senior commanders lie to generals about the situation at the front. The generals lie to the leadership of the country, the leadership lies to the masses. Bureaucrats in the field report on the mobilization carried out, as a result, everything was done according to the papers, but in reality unprepared people are sent to the front. And no one cares about it.

As a result, they throw out a cry about a “people's war” and people begin to share their last penny with the soldiers so that they buy sleeping bags, bulletproof vests and drones, the production of which the Russian bourgeoisie did not take care of. Alas, this will not make sense either. A soldier dressed for the weather, commanded by mediocrity, who are given orders by merchants, will not fight better.

There is only one positive thing here. The bourgeoisie is discrediting itself more and more in the eyes of the masses of the people, duped by it. After all, she is always ready to bargain, and for the masses it absolutely rightly looks like a betrayal. It is very likely that the "people's war against fascism" will end with another "Minsk". The question of why thousands of young men died will remain open.

What can the communists offer? After the removal of the bourgeoisie from power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the working class under the leadership of the communists, the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie will be destroyed . Part of the bureaucracy, of course, will run over to us, and we are well aware that at the first stages it will be difficult to do without bourgeois specialists. Soviet practice has shown that this audience needs an eye and an eye. Those whose activities will be anti-social in nature will be punished in the most severe way. In parallel, the training of new managerial personnel from the environment of mental and physical workers will proceed at an accelerated pace. Every cook can learn to govern the state. The selection for civil servants will be the most severe, with the most severe responsibility for betraying the Party's confidence. Under the conditions of the gradual elimination of relations between private property and classes, as a scientific-planned economy is being created, the civil servant will turn from a servant of capital into an important link in the national economy, on the quality of whose work social prosperity depends. The changed objective place of an official in the system of industrial relations will inevitably lead to a change in the set of personal qualities that are in demand for this position. Yes, this is a slow business. The practice of building the first stage of communism in the USSR showed that there were enough geeks among Soviet civil servants. But it's one thing when the social system encourages the best qualities in people, and the geeks, who are essentially an atavism of the capitalist system, cleaned regularly. It is quite another thing when the social system itself massively generates geeks who feel quite at ease. The capitalist system massively encourages acquisitiveness, irresponsibility, stupidity, so the capitalists will always have trouble with managerial personnel. The NWO once again demonstrated that the bourgeoisie offers employees to pay with their lives for their stupidity. At least for this, she must be called to account.

N. Fedotov
17/11/2022

https://prorivists.org/75_war/

Benefits of our situation
No. 11/75.XI.2022

Based on the experience of the past nine months, we must all finally admit that the NWO has dramatically improved the working conditions of the communists. To put it in a nutshell:

1. The most rabid and most sophisticated part of the bourgeois ideologists, the liberal bourgeoisie, has been cut out of the information field and continues to be cut out by the Russian state, behind which stand all the power of the propaganda machine of the West and the century of bourgeois culture.

2. At the same time, compared with the long tail of liberal ideologists who have been forced into the minds of students and schoolchildren since 1992, everything that the “nationalist bourgeoisie” can portray in ideology is quite primitive. With Mises, Hayek, Popper in sophistication and in terms of massiveness and duration of influence on the brains of the population (30 years from each textbook and from each iron they spoke about the goodness of the market economy), neither Dugin, nor Leontiev, nor anyone else who can be pulled out by the Russian bourgeoisie. Small, secondary, a lot of emotions instead of some kind of logic (the same Dugin does not even recognize formal logic at all, as “mondialist science imposed on the world by the West” and his writings are more like revelations of a heroin addict than some philosophical works).

3. The unsuccessful course of the NWO, its frankly poor organization, mediocrity, venality, incompetence of the Russian bourgeoisie and almost all of its managers, generating a mess that is sharply dissonant with jingoistic statements, demoralizes the supporters of nationalism, the so-called. "patriots". As a result, a certain vacuum has formed in the mass consciousness. The population despises the liberals, does not trust the nationalists, although it continues to hope for a miraculous "Putin's plan", and is actively looking for an explanation for what is happening.

4. In this situation, OUR TIME HAS COME . The proletarian is subjectively READY TO READ US . Because the critically deteriorating situation requires a search for answers, and the main bourgeois forces inspire less and less confidence in him. Because even the most stubborn monarchists in 1905, after Mukden and Tsushima, were asking questions “what to do” and “who is to blame” with might and main, and did not react in the spirit of “we need more icons for the troops.” Because the lack of connection between icons and victories was obvious even to the most devout. Therefore, everything that we say in this situation, one way or another, will somehow reach the proletarian.

5. The system of bourgeois propaganda is obviously falling apartand quickly formalizes into a state-compulsory ritual - about the same sanctuary, which in historical times was depicted by state institutions of the Republic of Ingushetia and members of the Union of Michael the Archangel. They do not even hesitate to cosplay the RKMP - prayers in schools, singing of hymns, wearing patriotic badges by government officials, a jingoistic version of the story from every iron (weakly correlated with the actual history), a wave of "kozmakruchkovshchina". Sometimes it even seems that they are playing with us at a giveaway. It is impossible to be so stupidly substituted for criticism! But there is no understanding of all this. Even such a sly-assed patriot as Zakhar Prilepin speaks the obvious old worn-out mantra about “bad boyars” deceiving the “good tsar”, not realizing that this has been dismantled and chewed many times, that this is a trite primitive excuse, and not at all

I. Bortnik
17/11/2022

https://prorivists.org/75_sit/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:08 pm

ALEXEI KUDRIN STARTS HIS RUN TO SUCCEED PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

Image

By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

There were only two ways for Alexei Kudrin to become the president of Russia that he and the US government have always wanted.

The first was for him to become prime minister first, and for him to get the job through the back door, exactly as Vladimir Putin got it from Boris Yeltsin. The second was for him to take the job by a US-backed, regime-changing plot as Yeltsin ousted Mikhail Gorbachev.

However, after repeated attempts at the back-door option over the past decade have failed, Kudrin has come up with the second way. Last week, in a secret meeting with Putin, it was agreed Kudrin would leave his official post as Accounting Chamber chairman and become the nominal head of the Yandex group’s restructuring into a combination of state-controlled internet operations and offshore commercial businesses controlled by the group’s founding oligarch and Israel exile, Arkady Volozh.

In this second role Kudrin will be paid a very large sum of money for himself – between $335 million and $1 billion, depending on the terms of his deal with Volozh. Also, he will be free to bank large donations from wellwishers, all of whom aim to defeat Russia in the present war and replace Putin in the Kremlin.

The terms of Putin’s agreement with Kudrin include approval for a new form of control over the most powerful media and internet platform in the country for influencing domestic political campaigns for the foreseeable future.

The Kremlin has not disclosed last week’s meeting, but on November 29 it sent an official notice of Kudrin’s exit to the Federation Council. Kudrin has published by Telegram this explanation of what he is doing. “In total, I have spent about 25 years in the public sector. Now I would like to focus on large projects that are related to the development of private initiatives in a broad sense, but at the same time have a significant effect on people. Therefore, I am leaving the post of Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, and I have submitted a corresponding application to the President of the Russian Federation in accordance with the established procedure.”

No one in Russia believes that by “significant effect on people” Kudrin means to be kindlier than his rival for US sponsorship for the Kremlin job, Alexei Navalny. In all of Navalny’s years of exposing oligarch and official corruption in Russia, Kudrin has never been targeted or criticized. He has reciprocated the favour towards Navalny.

Mikhail Delyagin, the influential economist and Duma deputy, has restricted himself to observing that at the Accounting Chamber Kudrin was no more than “an accountant who protected state corruption.” “Kudrin made the work of the Accounting Chamber more systematic, more client-oriented for other branches of government. It has been the most comfortable body for interaction inside public administration [and] has never been an influential body. If the state considers corruption as a direct threat to its existence, then the Accounting Chamber will receive the order to investigate it. So far there have been no such signs.” Delyagin is unready to say what he thinks on the Yandex appointment.

Kudrin’s opponents in domestic politics don’t doubt that in leaving the Accounting Chamber for Yandex, Kudrin is not exiting from the country nor retiring from Russian politics. Instead, as Sergei Stankevich, the veteran opponent of Yeltsin, told Tsargrad yesterday: “the Accounting Chamber was a politically neutral position. In the large IT corporation [Kudrin] will have more opportunities to influence political processes. And he will have more freedom in formulating his views in the public sphere. So he’s not leaving politics; instead, he’s making his comeback.”

So far not a single newspaper, television talk show, social media platform, or Duma deputy has asked why the President has agreed, and what Putin’s plan is for Yandex and for Kudrin.

In 2024 when Putin runs for re-election, he will be 74 years old; in 2030 when that term ends, he will be 80. Kudrin is 62 now; 64 in 2024; 70 in 2030. “That’s getting on in years for the new president of Russia,” a Moscow source comments. “But just right for the grey cardinal of the Kremlin, the kingmaker.”

The last time Putin and Kudrin met and talked on the record was June 14 of this year. The lead images are the official Kremlin photographs of that meeting. The official record of what they said can be followed here. There was no mention in the Kremlin communiqué of Volozh’s scheme for the reorganization of the Yandex assets and of his shareholding. Press and public leaks of the scheme have followed in opposition media, including The Bell and Meduza. They have been amplified by the US government’s propaganda organ RFE/RL and by the Japanese propaganda platform in London, Financial Times.

Follow the archive of Kudrin’s career as Anatoly Chubais’s protégé during the creation of the oligarch system in 1996; as deputy finance minister in charge of the state treasury and bank default of 1998; and as Putin’s protégé as finance minister, deputy prime minister and Accounting Chamber chairman until now.

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“Alexei Kudrin is the longest-running candidate for regime change in the Kremlin who is not in jail, or outside the country” – March 18, 2019

For the Meduza version of Kudrin’s career, read this.

This is how Yandex has just reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington on its proposed reorganization between the offshore and Russian assets. According to the company, “the Board anticipates that Yandex N.V. will in due course be renamed, with the business to be divested retaining exclusive rights for the use of the Yandex brand. This process is at a preliminary stage. There can be no assurance that the Board will be successful in identifying and implementing paths to executing these steps, including identifying buyers for stakes in the business to be divested. These steps will be subject to continued analysis and, ultimately, shareholder approval. We will update the market as and when we have further information in this regard.”

Omitted is the scheme for Kudrin to negotiate for US and European Union (EU) approval to remove sanctions from the renamed offshore assets and preserve Volozh’s control, as well as his fortune and the contribution he will make to the political future Kudrin will be discussing in detail.

In The Bell’s version of the terms of the Yandex deal, leaked indirectly from Volozh and Kudrin, Volozh will exchange his 51.7% stake in old Yandex for full control of the offshore assets of new Yandex, while Kudrin will take a 5% shareholding of the Russian or offshore assets, or both. Estimates of what the asset split will be, what shareholders will remain to control the Russian assets, and what their market capitalization will amount to for calculation of Kudrin’s payoff have been leaked to The Bell.

The Kudrin payoff is so large it is is potentially the camouflage for the costs of his political comeback campaign between now and 2030.

Yandex shares have been listed on the NASDAQ exchange in New York since 2011. According to its last SEC filing of September 30, 2022, the Yandex shareholders were the Volozh Family Trust, with 45.1% voting control; other directors and management, 6.6%; other pre-IPO shareholders, 2%; and a free-float of 46.3%. How many of the reported free-floating investment fund shareholders are fronting for Volozh is unknown. All the shareholders have been subject since 2019 to Russian state control through a golden or priority share, which has passed through several legal variants.

YANDEX SHARE PRICE TRAJECTORY ON NASDAQ EXCHANGE FROM IPO IN 2011 TO EU SANCTIONS IN 2022

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Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/

MARKET CAPITALIZATION OF YANDEX FROM 2011 TO THE PRESENT

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To understand who controls the listed Yandex shareholdings, through what front companies, cutouts, and offshore evasion schemes, start with the IPO prospectus of 2011 here. The conversion of the Russian state’s golden or priority share into a Public Interest Foundation (PIF) share was reported in 2019 here. Volozh was sanctioned by the European Union in June 2022, but he is not sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in Washington. This is the latest Yandex report of its shareholding structure as of September 30, 2022. Source: https://companiesmarketcap.com/
The company market cap as of November 25 was $6.7 billion.

Sergei Glazyev is one of the best-known economists to have opposed Kudrin in Russian policymaking. He is also the explicit critic of Central Bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina, and ally of Oleg Tsarev and Dmitry Rogozin in their campaigns to run the Novorussian regions. On his Telegram channel and website, Glazyev has not mentioned Kudrin, Yandex, or Volozh. He refuses direct requests for comment.

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Left: Andrei Volozh with President Putin in 2017. Right: Sergei Glazyev.

The Communist Party and its deputies in the Duma have yet to publish their assessment of what is happening. The party spokesman would not answer on the telephone, and requested an email of the questions.

Moscow political analysts who are unsympathetic to Glazyev and to the war party are claiming that Putin wants Kudrin to become, according to Sergei Markov, his “channel for Putin’s negotiations with Western leaders…The Kremlin needs negotiations with the leaders of the Western economy. They want to end the conflict and come to peace.”

“Kudrin won’t go far from the state,” claims Alexei Makarkin from the Moscow think tank, Centre for Political Technologies.

“Kudrin will not go far from the state anyway,” according to Makarkin. “He will still be closely associated with it. So what will be the format for his relations with the state…let’s wait and see. There was the instance when Kudrin left the civil service, but still returned — and even when he left, he remained loyal to the state. No evidence of his departure is given now. And judging by how Kudrin recently met with the president, he continues to enjoy his trust… The Russian economists in power have a consensus on sound economic policy and on the non-admission of economists from the left. So those who are engaged in economic policy in Russia will remain. In order for the supporters of the mobilization economy [Glazyev, Delyagin] to have a future, some very serious shocks are needed so that they really get a chance to steer the ship. At the moment, such shocks cannot be expected.”

http://johnhelmer.net/alexei-kudrin-sta ... more-70294
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:28 pm

Feet on the ground in St Petersburg: first impressions
gilbertdoctorow Uncategorized November 29, 2022 19 Minutes

I had imagined that my first report on this latest trip to St Petersburg which began with our arrival yesterday afternoon on a bus from Helsinki airport would be delivered a week from now when I would have a sufficient store of impressions to share. But as both Oksana Boyko and I agreed during her interview with me a week ago, life in Russia since 24 February is evolving at a fast clip and 24 hours here have already yielded some things which I must share while they are so vivid.

First among them is meteorological: Petersburg is now well and truly in winter mode. The temperature at our arrival was minus 5 degrees Centigrade and there is a snow cover in the countryside. Not enough to ski on yet, but enough to slip and slide on the sidewalks in our semi-suburban outlying district of Pushkin/Tsarskoye Selo.

Why is this important? Because when you are are living in conditions of plus 12 degrees as I have been in Brussels for the last month and you hear about the hardships of the Ukrainians facing winter conditions without heat, without electricity, without water, that story has a remote, abstract character. When you yourself are living in conditions well below freezing outdoors, that vision becomes immediate and alarming even if indoors, as here remains the case, apartments are overheated and, without any thermostats, you adjust the temperature to your liking by opening windows.

This is not to say that I have developed a soft place in my head for the Ukrainians and their government of murderers and thieves in Kiev. No, but I deeply regret the loss of life among civilians in Ukrainian cities as the entire energy grid there is reduced to rubble in the coming weeks. The remaining young and prosperous Ukrainians will get in their cars and land at our doorstep in Brussels and elsewhere in the EU. I think of the splendid Jaguar with Ukrainian license plates that was briefly parked in front of my Brussels house a couple of times in the past few weeks. But the old widows, the infirm, the young children in Ukrainian cities will die in droves in their unheated apartments and no one but propagandists playing to the EU leadership for more funds to be embezzled will take note.

And who is to blame for their deaths? Our leaders in the EU and in the USA will say, without missing a beat, that Mr. Putin is to blame because he is bombing the Ukrainian infrastructure to bits. That is as fair-minded as the same people having said from the beginning that the Russian attack on Ukraine was “unprovoked.” The reality is that without the destruction of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure the Russians could not and cannot put a stop to the delivery to the Ukrainian forces on the front of ever more destructive weapons systems from the US and NATO arsenals. And it is these deliveries that have been prolonging the war and postponing its inevitable end in Ukrainian capitulation.

Now a necessary word about the suffering widows, infirm and innocent children caught in the middle of this confrontation. It has been denounced as ‘barbaric’ by none other than the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz and his German passport holding colleague, president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen. Now that is not hypocrisy. No, it is worse than hypocrisy. German leaders seem to be forgetting who reinvented barbarism in the middle of the 20th century. They are forgetting the one million Leningraders, one third of the city’s population at the time, who died of starvation and cold during the Siege put in place by….the Wehrmacht. Instead they are now weeping over the 6600 civilians whom the UN reports as having died so far in the Russian Military Operation in Ukraine. It would be so much better if they simply shut up and did the decent thing, namely to stop supplying arms to the Kiev regime and called upon the rest of the world to also desist and press for immediate conclusion of peace on the basis of Ukrainian neutrality.

****

Now that I have gotten this first overwhelming impression out in black and white, I proceed to the little impressions of daily life in Petersburg after a six week absence.

As is my custom, I have some remarks on retailing in the food sector resulting from my shopping trips yesterday and today, visiting my nearby Economy class supermarket just across the street for staples, visiting the higher end Perekrostok supermarket that is a 10 minute walk away. And visiting the city open air food market in downtown Pushkin, a 15 minute taxi ride away.

There are changes in the product assortment and especially in packaging to report. Price changes are less evident, just as the price for petrol at filling stations has not moved up more than 5% or 10% since 24 February. By change in packaging, I note a downward move in the visual aspects of cartons of juices, dairy products and other liquids now that global packaging suppliers including Tetrapak have left the Russian market and stores of their products have been drawn down and replaced by Russian newcomers to the field. The same surely will happen soon in yoghurts fridges when Danone’s departure is completed. For the moment, their Activia brand is still on sale. Meanwhile, import substitution also entails market entry of new categories of products produced by local factories. I just spotted the market debut of liquid detergent capsules for washing machines to replace powder detergents, which have been narrowed in range by the departure of major Western producers like Proctor & Gamble.

The availability of tropical imported fruits at all price levels of retail continues to impress. The assortment of persimmons or pomegranates here is far more extensive than in Brussels. The famous kishmish seedless grapes, both blue and yellow, are in full season here. Like the other exotic fruits these traditional dessert grapes known in Russia for decades come from Uzbekistan and other producing countries in Central Asia or from Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The wine selection in Economy and mid-market range supermarkets continues to shift away from Western European producers towards Russian, and also towards Balkans producers. The challenge is to find something drinkable amidst wholly unknown labels at prices in the 8 to 10 euro range, which is dominant on the shelves.

My visit to the fish counter at Perekryostok took an unexpected turn. Just six weeks ago I had remarked on the high quality of their sea bass and dorade thanks to better freshness than I see in the same fish categories and coming from the same Mediterranean exporters to Belgium, all at half the price or less of Delhaize, the Lion or of the Moroccan fish seller who supplies local restaurants in our quartier. This time when I stepped up to the counter the sales lady greeted me with: “We have no imported fish!” I can only guess that she determined by my Italian sheepskin winter coat and Finnish sheepskin hat that I am a foreigner and one who will only eat fish coming from my part of the world. I assured her that I was not looking for imported fish, just for good fish. She lost her aggressiveness, confiding to me that they have not received imported fish for some weeks now, and pointing out to me the excellent sudak from Russian suppliers(sandre to the French, Zander to the Germans, sandacz to the Poles) river fish that they previously did not carry but now were featuring at a giveaway price of 6 euros per kilo. I followed her advice and the evening’s dinner was splendid. A fall-back position would have been flounder from Murmansk, also a safe bet and priced at four times below the price for the fish in Brussels.

I decided to test the story about no deliveries of imported fish by visiting my preferred fishmongers in the city market of Pushkin. There they were in the display case – both dorade and sea bass. The sales lady said they had no problem with supplies. In her words, “we get these from Turkey, and they are our friends; they are supporting Russia. What we don’t have is anything from Norway, who are not our friends.” In short, the vox populi behind a fish counter. This same vendor is offering fresh salmon caviar from Kamchatka sold from a big plastic tub at 100 euros per kilo. We used to buy black caviar at that price, but times do change, in Russia as everywhere else. We bought 150 grams and had the very best caviar sandwiches for dinner tonight in years. Obviously the logistics of supply from Kamchatka is well in hand.

When I say that the product assortment in Russian supermarkets is changing all the time now, I must place that in the context of similar goings-on in Brussels. With the sky-high electricity bills, heating bills and inflation in food prices, the general population in Belgium is undergoing a serious deterioration of purchasing power and the results translate directly into what we see or do not see on store shelves. The Russian stores are showing a proliferation of “promotional prices” on all sorts of foodstuffs and non-food products. In Belgium what I see is proliferation of economy, brand-X products at the expense of major brand products. I see that cheaper categories of wine fly from the shelves, economy packed toilet paper flies from the shelves, so that if you are not an early riser on a Saturday morning when you shop for the week you will miss many items on your list.

Moving on, I have a word to put in about banking and foreign currency. Most readers are surely aware that most major Russian banks have been cut from SWIFT and are unable to execute orders of Russian customers to make transfers or pay bills abroad. What you probably did not know is that some middle sized Russian banks that have no ties to the government continued to enjoy their SWIFT status. And as recently as 6 weeks ago one of these banks which is based in St Petersburg assured us that we would be able to make transfers abroad if we completed a real estate transaction here. Today, their website updated the situation, saying that the minimum sum of a transfer abroad that they will accept is for 50,000 euros or dollars. I visited their office to see if this was not a mistake, and learned that indeed that is their new policy and it is likely intended to discourage small retail customers like us from bothering them with an assignment they know will likely end in tears. Experience has shown them that there can be delays of a week or more on the sending side while the Russian government inspects the transaction and there can be delays lasting months on the receiving end in Europe, depending on the country in the EU, even total blockage of the transaction without refund.

Meanwhile, while one door closes another opens. From the very beginning of the Special Military Operation and cut-off of Russia from SWIFT, the exchange rates were bizarrely volatile until Russian banks established market driven cross currency rates that replaced the Central Bank rate for purposes of their dealings with retail customers. And then it quickly became clear that these rates were theoretical because bank branches across Russia did not have euro or dollar banknotes on hand to meet the demand of their customers. Now, as of today, I can confirm that the Russian banks around me in Petersburg are afloat in foreign currency. You can walk in to one bank and on the spot buy 20,000 euros against cash rubles. You can walk into another bank, Sberbank, and order those same 20,000 euros for delivery on the next day. How one can explain the sudden flood of cash euros in Russian banks when there is virtually no tourist traffic is beyond my understanding.

I close with a remark about who exactly is coming across the border from Finland to Russia on the four daily buses operated by the competing firms Ecolines and Lux. Yesterday morning, at the Vantaa Helsinki Airport bus depot, we witnessed the departure of the Ecolines bus at 8.15am They had about 6 passengers aboard. Our own Lux bus, departing at 8.45 had about 40 of the 50 seats aboard filled. In our case, it quickly became clear at the passport control checks that apart from a couple of Finns with their young child and myself, all the other passengers were dual national Russians who held European Union passports. As for the Ecolines passengers, they were Ukrainians, and for that reason alone we caught up with their bus at the Russian border, since they were undergoing close questioning.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/11/29/ ... pressions/

******************

Moscow: United Communist Party activists attend opening of monument to Fidel Castro
November 28, 2022 United Communist Party of Russia

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Moscow, Nov. 22. Photos: United Communist Party

In Moscow, on Nov. 22, 2022, on Fidel Castro Square, the grand opening of the monument to the great commander and leader of the Cuban Revolution took place.

Following Cuban President and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel, the communists of the OKP together with representatives of allied left organizations laid flowers at the open monument.

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Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: United Communist Party


https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... el-castro/

The Putin regime has stopped pulling down statues of the Soviet Union's heroes too, in a bid to rally support for his government which will never match the respect and affection which the post-Soviet working class maintains for the USSR.

Let the middle class clerks flee to Georgia, they are part of the problem, not the solution.
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:17 pm

NWO and perspectives of the anti-war movement in the West
No. 12/76.XII.2022

The appointment of General Sergei Surovikin as commander of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine was marked by massive strikes using missiles and kamikaze UAVs on energy infrastructure facilities in the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. These strikes continue on a regular basis, causing a hypocritical reaction from the United States and NATO, which all these years turned a blind eye to the bombing of the cities of the DPR and LPR by UAF militants. However, there is no point in complaining, the consequences of Russian strikes do not allow the population of Ukraine to fully experience what it is like to live in the republics of Donbass, since the Russian army is not engaged in the destruction of civilians.

At the same time, fierce battles, combined with the consequences of sanctions against the Russian Federation, lead to an increasingly serious burden on the economies of NATO countries, and the irrational and inept use of Western weapons by the Armed Forces of Ukraine has significantly devastated the arsenals of the United States and EU countries. Which led to an attempt to seek a truce, to which the White House is pushing the Office of the President in Kyiv.

The crisis in the European Union is leading to the fact that the position of its economy, until recently considered one of the leading in the world, is rapidly degrading. This generates among the impoverished local proletariat and the ruined petty bourgeoisie, as well as part of the big capital, which lost profits and was forced to close production facilities, the growth of anti-war sentiment. Which is in contradiction with the position of the Brussels bureaucracy, which is actively advocating the continuation of the war. At the same time, it should be noted that large European capital has entered into an agreement with the American one and plans to survive the crisis by transferring production from Europe to the United States.

In the future, the growth of peaceful and anti-war sentiment may play into the hands of anti-fascist forces opposing the West, including communist China. And the stronger they are, the higher the probability of strengthening the internal struggle in the West. Which will undoubtedly weaken its ability to incite unrest and civil wars in countries that are members of the BRICS, SCO, EAEU, CSTO, ASEAN blocs.

If rocket strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities continue, then the decommunization promised by Vladimir Putin will be directly translated into reality. Considering that electricity is the blood of modern industry and civilization in general, in the event of a significant loss of it, the economy quickly dies, and with it the old order of life. The country itself is rolling back to the pre-industrial level, with the subsequent increase in drug trafficking, crime and crime.

The Kyiv regime proclaimed itself the ideological successor of the bourgeois UNR, which contradicts the provisions of the Constitution on succession from the Ukrainian SSR, and sooner or later this discrepancy had to be resolved. And given that the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism relied not on the proletariat, but on the peasantry, the transformation after 1991 of the country from an industrially developed and rich country into a raw material appendage with rampant rural romance and cheap labor is quite logical.

Some of the Ukrainian fertile lands have already been bought up by American corporations (indirectly), but, of course, local propaganda does not write about this. When it was necessary, the law on the land market, which had been procrastinated for so long, was adopted in the Rada at night, almost secretly. But all this is not considered an “occupation” and an encroachment on state sovereignty, not to mention high treason. Ukrainians are being driven into the trenches, under patriotic demagogy about "defending the fatherland." Not to mention the fact that this is already in fact the American "fatherland".

What is happening in Ukraine is easily explained in the context of the ongoing redistribution of zones of influence in the new conditions. If earlier American imperialism was aimed at capturing new territories, then after the crisis of the collapse of the old world order, it is forced to significantly moderate its appetites and strengthen those positions in which it managed to gain a foothold earlier. For this, using the opportunity to provoke long protracted crises in "authoritarian" countries for their political and economic exhaustion, with the expectation that the United States will be able to survive by destroying the economy of its satellites and devouring their industry.

The American empire, hidden behind the word "globalization", is crumbling before our eyes. Part of the bourgeoisie of non-Western countries, which was previously considered an ally in Washington, is gradually refusing to obediently serve.

The fact is that cooperation with China for many countries becomes practically the only alternative option to prevent the possibility of the collapse of their own economies. And China has something to offer them. As a result, all that remains at the disposal of the United States is England and the European Union with rapidly degrading economies, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Of course, the US has influence in Latin America, but China and Russia are pushing it out of there more and more rapidly. A similar situation is developing in Africa, whose countries are trying to get hooked on new "baits".

Living in the countries of Eastern Europe is becoming more and more difficult, but in Ukraine it is not at all. And since their territory near the borders of the Russian Federation is considered by the United States on the basis of military plans, the population turns into the very “cannon fodder” who is destined for the fate of suicide bombers. In Ukraine, whose population is gradually leaving the country, this has been fully realized. According to the UN, 14.3 million citizens have already left. Considering that the population census has not been conducted since 2000, and the approximate figures before the start of the special operation were indicated at the level of about 35-37 million people (which is quite optimistic), there are not so many people left in the administration of the Zelensky Office.

As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, American General Mark Milley, made it clear earlier, the United States is interested in the war in Ukraine lasting for years. But is the European proletariat and the local bourgeoisie ready to endure poverty and crisis for years for the very values ​​for which, according to Ursula von der Leyen, more than one hundred and twenty thousand Ukrainians have already died? Of course not. But it will have to. The NWO may well drag on, and the accumulation of problems could theoretically induce Europeans to take more active actions both against local authorities and against the United States.

But even if this happens, there is a large American military group on the territory of the EU, which is de facto an occupying one, and therefore we can hardly expect any serious changes in favor of a change of course and the coming to power in Europe of politicians declaring withdrawal from NATO and cooperation with China and Russia. It's a long way.

Oddly enough, but it is precisely the right-wing European circles, for example, such as in Hungary, despite all the anti-communism, that are interested in cooperation with the PRC to strengthen economic ties. At the same time, this is also important for China itself, which, despite the refusal to impose an ideology, is expanding its influence through trade, demonstrating the advantages of its own political system. That is why the Americans are trying with the help of their Eastern European regimes to complicate the access of goods from China to Western European markets. After all, it is not for nothing that politicians in the USA and England compete with each other in anti-Chinese rhetoric and the number of closed Confucius Centers.

No less interesting is the near future of the United States, where the political crisis has not subsided since the storming of the Capitol. And the more and more aggressive rhetoric of the White House and the Pentagon against China, North Korea, Russia, Iran as a new "axis of evil" is quite natural. After all, the worse things go overseas, the more furiously they will fight for the remnants of their empire there. The Chinese Global Times published an article that the next decade will be marked by the destruction of American hegemony. NATO is already losing the battle for Ukraine, and it cannot win the battle for Taiwan. And this means that the authority of China will grow. Like the authority of the Russian Federation.

By the way, the defeat of NATO in Afghanistan in comparison with the situation in Ukraine is very significant in this respect. Since it is already known that the day of the war in Ukraine in terms of ammunition consumption is equal to a month in Afghanistan. From which we can conclude that the dwindling arsenals, like the Western military-industrial complex, were “sharpened” exclusively for war against a much weaker enemy. This was enough to demonstrate the power and superiority of the "free world". But it turned out to be not enough against such a technological adversary as the Russian army, even with all its problems identified during the NMD. And now NATO is forced to look for a way out of the situation. The restructuring of production takes years, resources, qualified personnel and time. And the last resource is the least.

But it's not just about the problems at the front, which have greatly knocked down the false shine from the Western military-industrial complex. Problems in the rear. Russian missile strikes have shown that the maintenance of the Kyiv regime is becoming increasingly burdensome for the US and EU, but they do not intend to back down. The rapidly impoverished European proletariat must now “pull the strap”, into the pocket to which Zelensky is allowed to run his hands.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent revelations that the Minsk agreements were needed to give Kyiv a military muscle boost candidly reveal the essence of the West's peaceful intentions. At the same time, the words of Putin, and then the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, once again showed the obvious - the Russian leadership, to put it mildly, was fooled. And most importantly, it turns out that it allowed itself to be deceived. And the current difficult situation is a direct consequence of the cowardice and weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, despite all its ostentatious formidability and the might of the army. Of course, no one in the Russian media or pro-Kremlin social networks will write like that. The Foreign Ministry makes an offended look and accuses the West of hypocrisy, and Lukashenka pushes that, they say, Merkel just wants to be in trend. But does this somehow justify the actions of the Russian Federation? Of course not. The Kremlin, which rebelled against the fascist coup d'état, together with Germany and France, tried to return it back to the power of the Kyiv regime. Allegedly for the sake of peace and an end to the war. The logic is frankly monstrous. These agreements are nothing more than formal complicity in the murder of the civilian population of the Donbass republics. And the politically dependent leadership of the DPR and LPR was forced to participate in this. Now Putin and Lukashenko are talking about denazification... Who loses as a result of the "peace initiatives" of the Western and Russian bourgeoisie? As always, the proletariat loses. Both European and American, as well as Russian, which is forced to bear the costs of the actions of its regime. Allegedly for the sake of peace and an end to the war. The logic is frankly monstrous. These agreements are nothing more than formal complicity in the murder of the civilian population of the Donbass republics.

But since the initiative on the battlefield is again gradually shifting to the Russian troops, it would be right not to give the West a reason for a respite and further grind the Armed Forces of Ukraine and military units, as well as actively work to deplete NATO's arsenals and economic base. The more serious damage NATO suffers in the war with the Russian Federation, the worse the state of the North Atlantic Alliance will approach the battle for Taiwan. No matter how you feel about the local regime, the victory of the Kuomintang in the elections has so far given little. The most interesting is yet to come.

In addition, if we talk about the situation in the rear, we should also take into account the factor of Ukrainian refugees. In winter conditions, the flows of refugees to Europe may increase again, as well as the cost of their maintenance. But the Europeans themselves are to blame for this. That is why the claims of local right-wing politicians and their complaints about the left-liberal line of the European Union and criticism of the so-called multiculturalism look completely ridiculous. In principle, they want the same thing as the Brussels bureaucracy - to live well at someone else's expense, but at the same time not to spoil relations with China, the Russian Federation and other countries. But this is unreal. As they say, the train has left.

The former way of life for the West is gone forever and will never be restored. Previously, we lived well at the expense of other countries, but now we have to live on the basis of available resources, which are becoming less and less, and the purchase of new ones will be very expensive. Because in the context of the redistribution of spheres of influence and the destruction of the European economy by the Americans, you will have to bow to those who are called "dictators" in the local press. And the frantic reaction of the newspaper Spiegel to the visit of the chancellor of the Bonn regime, Olaf Scholz, to the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, is very indicative. Because in this way a very unsightly picture of the position of the FRG is visible. The destruction of the European Union by the United States is pushing Western European countries into the arms of China, which is extremely frightening for local pro-American political circles. Therefore, it is worth waiting for the growth of neo-McCarthyism in the US and anti-Chinese propaganda in the EU.

After the Second World War, the West was fenced off from the socialist camp led by the USSR with cordons established at the suggestion of the Fulton speech of the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Now they are talking about some kind of “world order based on rules” that the international community has never seen before. Well... let them now live according to these very "rules" in their own reservation, around which they are so rapidly erecting high-voltage fences. But you will not be fed up with democracy. Without the loss of raw colonies, it does not seem to work. And now the European proletariat, as well as local businesses, will have to get acquainted with the peculiarities of the new realities in which they will have to live. Of course, under such conditions, the proletariat will not seek answers from Marx and Lenin, but will be imbued with the ideas of right-wing populists, exploiting their protest moods and cultivating chauvinism. In general, nothing new. Nevertheless, the present conditions are the most optimal for a part of the proletariat to begin to think about the questions posed by the Marxists.

K. Kievsky
18/12/2022

https://prorivists.org/76_svo/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 19, 2022 3:02 pm

What are they now talking about on Russian talk shows?

My watching and reporting on Russian state television news and talk shows might best be described as ‘random sampling.’ I do not spend my days seated before my computer monitor tuned to www.smotrim.ru broadcasts of Sixty Minutes or Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. After all, Sixty Minutes has both early afternoon and early evening broadcasts each weekday with different guests and breaking news subjects, while Solovyov’s shows Sunday through Thursday nights run for two hours beginning at 10 pm CET.

However, when I find something of unusual interest, which happens once every few days, I stick with it. Such was the case with Solovyov’s program last night and in this brief bulletin I will share with readers what impressed me most. The subjects I describe below are important for anyone following the rapid changes in global geopolitical alignments these days, yet they do not appear either in the Western major media or even in specialized commentary that circulates in the U.S. diplomatic and academic communities on daily digests to which I subscribe.

First, one of Russia’s leading orientalists and China specialists commented on the changes at the top of the Chinese Communist Party which appeared from the new line-up that Xi installed at the recent Party Congress. From the standpoint of Russian analysts, Xi has brought to the top a constellation of pro-Russian personalities who share his predilection for the Russian alliance, while removing known pro-American officials seen to be anti-Russian. What this means is that the long talked about plans to intensify Chinese-Russian economic cooperation will finally be implemented in the coming several years. In turn, that poses for the Russians the challenge to define where they want Chinese investments and technology to come in and how to manage the relationship in such a way that dependence on the West, which has just been terminated by the sanctions regime, is not replaced by dependence on the Chinese, which also would compromise Russian economic sovereignty. In the first order, we are likely to see heavy Chinese investment in improving the logistics infrastructure that supports the existing trade in hydrocarbons and other commodities. Additional railways and port facilities are at the top of the list. This is essential if the bilateral trade now pointed towards 200 billion dollars is to rise to a new plateau.

This same orientalist directed attention to another challenge that Russia’s government has yet to address if the closer relations with China are to be sustainable over the long term. He suggests taking a page from the American playbook. The Americans, he noted, have long practiced the cultivation of those they identify as future leaders of countries they want to bring into their sphere of influence. These prospective leaders are educated in the States and inculcated in American values. Russia, he insists, must do the same with those who are expected to be future leaders of China, all in the cause of Soft Power.

Another topic of particular interest on last night’s Solovyov show was the recently announced proposal of Turkish President Erdogan for the Turkish, Russian and Syrian leaders to sit together and define a modus vivendi, a path of cooperation in the region. The readiness of Erdogan to sit at a table with Bashar Assad was identified as a breakthrough, since he has been the last to recognize the legitimacy of the Assad regime. The prospects are that this change in the Turkish position will result in a joint position regulating the Kurdish question on their common frontier. This, in turn, will lead to the expulsion of all foreign troops from Syria. Those ‘foreign troops’ are, of course, the Americans, whom the Syrians yesterday accused of stealing more than 18 billion dollars worth of oil and agricultural commodities from the Syrian territories they illegally occupy. The realignment of Turkey with Syria is driven, in the view of Solovyov’s panelist, by the Americans’ military backing for Syrian Kurds. It was said to be noteworthy that Iran, which has been a principal backer of Assad during its long civil war, was not invited to the table by Erdogan, whereas Russia is invited. In short, if the Erdogan initiative moves ahead it will spell a major change in Middle Eastern politics and a significant loss of American Soft and Hard power in the region.

Amidst these new issues for discussion by the two different sets of panelists whom Solovyov presented on his show back-to-back, the war in Ukraine held its own thanks to some fiery statements by a retired high military officer who is now the head of the State Duma’s Committee on Defense. His opening remarks were sure to attract riveted attention: he called for the putting in place of plans to bomb London! Why not, he asked rhetorically, given that the British have spoken publicly about the possibility of bombing Moscow. Russia should destroy the military command infrastructure in and around London using either conventional or nuclear arms. Like others on the show, this panelist sees the war through the prism of armed conflict between Russia and NATO, where Ukraine is only the designated territory of combat. From this perspective it will indeed be a ‘long war’ that goes on for many years to come.

Otherwise, the number one Ukrainian topic of the evening was the unprecedented Ukrainian rocket and artillery attack the day before on the provincial capital of Donetsk, which received more than 150 incoming missiles, many from US-provided launchers. None of the blasts was directed against military targets; all struck residential buildings, markets, social infrastructure buildings at morning hours when there would be a maximum of people in the targeted structures or open spaces. Photos from the scene of destruction were put up on the screen and included images of the main cathedral of Donetsk, whose cupola was struck directly by one missile; this was held up as one more demonstration of the ‘satanic’ nature of the Kievan rulers, whose intent was clearly to traumatize the Donbas population.

There were more than a dozen deaths and a great many injured among the civilians from the latest Ukrainian barrage. The conclusion which Solovyov’s panelists reached from this reign of terror that has gone unreported by Western media is that it is high time to wreak destruction on the city of Kiev, not merely on its power generation, so as ‘to wipe the smile off the faces of the Ukrainian Nazi gang.’

Solovyov put up on the screen a video of Vladimir Putin’s televised speech earlier in the day pledging to bring the standard of government services in the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts including pensions, salaries, available kindergartens and schools up to the level of neighboring provinces of the Russian Federation. One panelist remarked that this is all fine but is achievable only after the region, now legally RF territory, is properly secured against Ukrainian attacks. This was an unsubtle swipe at the President.

Iran also figured among the more interesting points in last night’s talk show. One panelist noted how Western intelligence experts are speculating that Russia is providing missile technology to Teheran under the terms of their new alliance. Nonsense, he commented. The Iranians have gotten substantial technical assistance from North Korea for development of their strike missiles. Thus, Iran today has serial production of excellent ballistic missiles with a 700 km range. It is expected that they will soon have intermediate range missiles under construction, and eventually will be building ICBMs with a 13,000 km striking distance, meaning capable of reaching the continental United States. These achievements are the result of North Korean assistance. What the Russians are now offering Iran is the technology to fabricate satellites, especially the electronics.

Meanwhile the Iran-Russia rapprochement is broadening out in new directions. Leading officials in Russian domestic security last week visited their counterparts in Teheran to lay down channels of consultation on maintaining domestic stability in the face of malicious intervention by the United States and its allies in support of Opposition demonstrations. The panelist remarked favorably on the executions in Iran of two anti-government demonstrators. As he noted, the latest hanging was of a young man who had brutally murdered an Iranian policeman charged with keeping the street marches under control.

One additional newsworthy item on the show’s agenda last night was the interpretation one panelist gave to the recent statement by former German chancellor Angela Merkel that from the beginning she had viewed the Minsk Accords as buying time for Ukraine to rebuild its armed forces after its 2014-15 military defeats in the Donbas. Many commentators, myself included, have explained this remark as self-justificatory in the context of ongoing vilification of Merkel in German media and political spheres for having been ‘soft’ on the Russians during her time in office. However, last night’s panelist said that Merkel’s political statements are never accidental or incidental, but are substantive. Her intention was to ride the current wave of thinking in German political circles by making negotiations with Russia impossible due to total breakdown in mutual trust. This is part and parcel of the ‘long war’ policy against Russia.

Otherwise, as is often the case in recent editions of the show, yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov was given over to philosophizing over the new identity Russia must adopt now that its love affair with the West is finally over. The debate is now no longer between Western-oriented Liberals and Conservatives. It is among Conservatives themselves, who have split between Nationalists and Centrists. On this show, the former tend to be represented by Duma members or LDPR party stalwarts and the latter by university deans and think tank presidents.

When leader of the LDPR party Vladimir Zhirinovsky was alive, he was frequently invited onto the Solovyov show and was given unlimited use of the microphone, never interrupted as was so often the practice suffered by other panelists. Now the nationalist positions of Zhirinovsky are advanced by others, including RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonian and by Duma member Andrey Lugovoy, best known in the West as the KGB operative wanted by the British police on suspicion of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, and by Solovyov himself. I have little doubt that in the weeks ahead we will see the recent prisoner exchange Viktor Bout on the Solovyov program given that he has just been inducted into the LDPR Party.

What all of these Nationalists have in common that sets them apart from the academicians in the Centrist group is strong leanings towards Soviet era mobilization of the whole population of Russia around national defense in the coming ‘long war’ with the USA and NATO. Solovyov himself repeatedly speaks of the need to establish ongoing military training of all able-bodied males so as to prepare a 3-million strong Russian army. As regards the economy, these Nationalists take a dim view of the market and seek state direction of industry.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/12/16/ ... alk-shows/

Ain't sayin' that Putin is a swell guy(he betrayed the USSR!) but cheap propaganda from the West is tissue thin upon examination. It ain't no 'clean room' democracy there, but it ain't here either. The main common point is capitalism.

(Yeah, yeah, "Our shitty 'democracy is better than your shitty democracy. Nyay nyay!")
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:22 pm

PRIMER ON THE NEW RUSSIAN LAW AGAINST PUBLIC PROMOTION OF SEX CHANGE, SEX PREFERENCE PROPAGANDA

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

To keep western children safe from being misled by Anglo-American reporters on this topic, here is a primer on what exactly the newly enacted Russian law says; what Russian public opinion thinks; what the Russian courts, judges, and lawyers have interpreted the law to mean; and what the record of enforcement so far reveals.

Adults should not underestimate the politics of this issue. Russians can see and understand the potential power of the LGBT election bloc as it is polarizing voters in the US and other western countries.

According to this just published study of the last US presidential election, LGBT identified people accounted for one in ten (11.3%) of the voting eligible population – that’s adults over 18 years of age. This bloc was “pivotal in ensuring Joe Biden’s victory in several key states—and, subsequently, in winning the Presidency. Had LGBTQ+ voters stayed home, it is likely Donald Trump would have won re-election. By 2030, one-in-seven (14.3%) voters will be LGBTQ+ identifying, representing a sharp increase from the present day. The LGBTQ+ voting bloc is projected to continue to surge in the decade following, nearing one-in-five (17.8%) voters by 2040.”

The majority of Russian voters and the Russian political consensus aim to prevent this from happening at home.

Senior Russian judges acknowledge that when there is a conflict like this one between individual, collective and political rights, and between the convictions of majorities and minorities, it is the constitutional duty of the legislature to strike a balance between them. Accordingly, the judges believe the new law reflects the current consensus, and both are lawful.

Russian pollsters add that the sharper the protests grow against the new law, especially in the West, the stronger the majority view will become and the heavier the crackdown to follow.

The statutory provisions of Federal Law 479-FZ, voted by the State Duma on November 24, 2022, and by the Federation Council on November 30; signed into law by the President on December 5

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“Article 6.21. Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, sex change
1. Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences or sex change, expressed in the dissemination of information and (or) the commission of public actions aimed at the formation of non-traditional sexual attitudes, the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences for sex change or a distorted view of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, or the imposition of information about non-traditional sexual relationships and (or) preferences for sex change, arousing interest in such relationships and (or) preferences for sex change, except for the cases provided for in Article 6.211 of this Code, if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act,
entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of fifty thousand to one hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from eight hundred thousand to one million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days.

2. Actions provided for in part 1 of this Article committed among minors, if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entail the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from one million to two million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days.

3. Actions provided for in part 1 of this Article committed with the use of mass media and (or) information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet), if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entail the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from one million to four million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days…

Article 6.211. Propaganda of pedophilia
1. Propaganda of pedophilia, expressed in the dissemination of information aimed at substantiating and (or) justifying pedophilia or the formation of the attractiveness of pedophilia, or the imposition of information about pedophilia that arouses interest in pedophilia, except for the cases provided for in Article 6.20 of this Code, if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from four hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from one million to four million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days.

2. Actions provided for in part 1 of this Article committed with the use of mass media and (or) information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet), if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entail the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of four hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from eight hundred thousand to two million rubles; on legal entities – from four million to ten million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days.

3. Actions provided for in part 1 of this Article committed by a foreign citizen or a stateless person, if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entail the imposition of an administrative fine in the amount of two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand rubles with administrative expulsion from the Russian Federation or administrative arrest for up to fifteen days with administrative expulsion from the Russian Federation…

Article 6.212. Dissemination among minors of information demonstrating non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences or capable of causing minors to desire to change their gender

1. Dissemination among minors of information demonstrating non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, including a description, image of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, or capable of causing minors to desire to change their gender, except for the cases provided for in part 2 of Article 6.21 of this Code, if these actions do not contain signs of criminal punishable act, entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of fifty thousand to one hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from eight hundred thousand to one million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days.

2. Actions provided for in part 1 of this Article committed with the use of mass media and (or) information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet), except for the cases provided for in part 4 of Article 6.21 of this Code, if these actions do not contain signs of a criminally punishable act, entail the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand rubles; on officials – from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand rubles; on legal entities – from one million to four million rubles or administrative suspension of activities for up to ninety days….”
Source: http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/

SUMMARY TABLE SHOWING TYPE OF OFFENCES, CLASS OF OFFENDERS, AND FINES

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Source: https://journal.tinkoff.ru

Russian public opinion

May 23, 2019 – Levada Centre: “Almost half of Russians support equal rights for gays

“Sociologists of the Levada Centre asked Russians about their attitude to people of non-traditional sexual orientation. The survey showed an increase in tolerance towards homosexuals. The answers to the question of whether LGBT people should enjoy the same rights as citizens of traditional sexual orientation were divided almost equally — 47% were in favor and 43% were against.


Denis Volkov, deputy director of the Levada Centre, attributed this to a decrease in the effect of the campaign around the law on the prohibition of propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors adopted in Russia in 2013. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recognized the legislation as discriminatory.

The reason for the improvement in the attitude of citizens to LGBT, political scientist Alexei Makarkin says is the refusal of the authorities to appeal to the homophobic sentiments of the population within the framework of the ‘conservative wave’. ‘This emotion has gone away, because they don’t talk about it on TV, it has returned to typical conservative subcultures. But if tomorrow they start showing people with blazing eyes again — people who will shout that someone is again corrupting the venerable moral foundations of Russia — the degree of intolerance towards LGBT people will increase again,’ the expert said.

Which social groups are the most tolerant

Almost 40% of Russians are neutral towards LGBT people; a little more than half (56%) expressed their negative attitude still. The number of people who say they know homosexuals has increased from 6% to 8% since 2016, ‘although it should not be excluded that it has simply become more comfortable for people to talk about it with interviewers. In any case, the growth of this indicator means a trend towards a slow normalization of attitudes towards LGBT people in our country,’ staff analysts of the Levada Centre report on the results.

Those Russians who have homosexuals among their friends treat LGBT people better. Among them, about 80% of respondents demonstrate a ‘neutral or positive’ attitude — significantly more than in any other group.

The greatest tolerance is shown by young people under 25 years of age (60% of neutral and positive responses in the under-25 category versus 33% among the elderly); residents of the largest cities (51% vs. 34% in rural areas); people with higher education (48% vs. 36% among those who do not have it) and a good income (49% against 32% among the poorest).

Sociologists asked what respondents would do if they found out about the homosexual orientation of one of their friends. Only 23% would not change their attitude towards this person in any way. 22% would continue to communicate, ‘not wanting to hear’ anything about the preferences of a friend or girlfriend; 18% would communicate less. That is, the majority of Russians (63%) is ready to come to terms with the homosexuality of an acquaintance to some extent; 31% of respondents would completely stop communicating.

Source: https://www.levada.ru/

On May 22 [2019], the Levada Centre also published a survey on social distance. Respondents were asked about their attitude to the circumstance that representatives of various minorities would move into the next-door apartment. As neighbours, an elderly single person, a family with a disabled person, and a single mother with a child do not cause a negative attitude in most cases. By contrast, members of a religious sect, a homosexual couple, and a dysfunctional family are regarded as the most undesirable neighbours. Potential proximity to homosexuals causes 59% of respondents to express dislike or fear.

Almost half of the respondents (45%) do not know about cases of violence against LGBT people. About a quarter of respondents (28%) are aware of this as a widespread phenomenon throughout the country or in certain regions. Isolated cases of violence — 20%. People younger than 25 were the best informed about violence against LGBT people. The older the respondent, the less awareness of cases of violence against LGBT people he demonstrates.

Sociologists asked respondents whether they believe that sexual orientation can change under the influence of external circumstances or it is an innate property. Sociologists said their reason for adding this question was the hypothesis that the negative attitude towards LGBT people is partly based on mythologized ideas that it is possible to become gay or lesbian under the influence of ‘bad influence’, ‘depraved behaviour’, leading to the need for protection, including under the state and by legislation, and to approval for the prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality. However, ‘this hypothesis needs further development and evidence,’ the Levada staff snalysts say. Only a quarter of respondents (27%) are sure that sexual orientation is an innate property which does not change under the influence of external factors; 47% believe that the orientation can change under the influence of environment, upbringing or life events.”

July 2022 – Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin’s poll

“More than 1.4 million people participated in the survey on whether LGBT propaganda should be completely banned in Russia, which State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin published on Telegram on July 10. In the comments published in the voting post, a discussion unfolded about the necessity of such a measure.

The post with the survey has gathered more than 2.7 million views. Users left more than 74,000 comments under the publication, in which they shared their opinion on whether such a ban is needed in Russia.

‘Do you consider it necessary to introduce a ban on propaganda of non—traditional values?’ asked Volodin. At the time of writing, 69% of users chose the ‘Yes’ option, 26% of survey participants felt that propaganda of non-traditional relations should not be completely banned in Russia. The remaining 5% of respondents voted for the ‘non-committal’ option.

Earlier on Monday, July 11, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Alexander Khinshtein supported the proposal of the Speaker of the State Duma for a complete ban on LGBT propaganda. The deputy recalled that now the restrictions apply only to children, and such a measure, in his opinion, is not enough. He added that the discussion of this initiative in the State Duma may begin already in the autumn session.

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Left, State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin; right, Alexander Khinshtein, Samara deputy and since 2020 chairman of the Duma Committee on Information Policy – this committee had jurisdiction over the draft legislation; Khinshtein led the parliamentary debate.

Volodin on July 8 proposed to introduce a ban on propaganda of non-traditional values. ‘With the withdrawal from the Council of Europe, the demands to legalize same-sex marriages in Russia have become a thing of the past. Attempts to impose alien values on our society have failed,’ Volodin said. He also said that Russians need to strengthen the institution of the family.”
Source: https://lenta.ru/news/2022/07/11/volodin/

Russian press reporting

December 7, 2022 — “Sit down and keep your head down: why the law banning LGBT propaganda was tightened.
On December 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a package of laws on a complete ban on LGBT propaganda. Prior to that, since 2013, there was the rule prohibiting gay propaganda only among minors. The tightening is aimed at ‘protecting our future from darkness’ – that’s how the speaker of the State Duma and one of the authors of the initiative Vyacheslav Volodin wrote in his Telegram channel.

Despite the fact that there is still no clear definition of the concept of ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’, it will be banned in films, advertising, books, media and audiovisual services.

We do not know exactly how the innovations will be interpreted, but it can be assumed that any assistance to LGBT representatives, their associations, and their public events, which previously did not allow minors to participate in them, may now be banned altogether. And this will mean that a part of our society will become completely invisible, turned off from life. The EAN [Yekaterinburg News] tried to figure out the legislative changes with the help of lawyer Dmitri Lebedev.

What laws are being amended
Deputies considered two bills. The first one amends the federal laws ‘On Mass Media’, ‘On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection’, ‘On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development’, ‘On Advertising’, and ‘On State Support of Cinematography of the Russian Federation’. The second bill amends the Code of Administrative Offences and clarifies responsibility for LGBT propaganda.

What is meant by propaganda?
According to lawyer Dmitri Lebedev, the term was first used in the Russian legal system under statutory articles related to the prohibition of terrorist propaganda. There, propaganda was understood as the dissemination of materials aimed at forming a belief in the attractiveness of an action or at forming an idea of the permissibility of carrying out terrorist activities.

‘Attractiveness or acceptability’, Lebedev emphasizes
As for LGBT propaganda, the Supreme Court of Russia has proceeded from the fact that the concept of propaganda implies active public actions to form attitudes and (or) stereotypes of behaviour in the mind, or activities aimed at encouraging the persons to whom it is addressed to commit actions or to refrain from committing them.

‘The prohibition of propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations does not prevent the realization of the right to receive and disseminate general, neutral information about non-traditional sexual relations, to hold public events in accordance with the procedure provided for by law, including open public debates on the social status of sexual minorities, without imposing lifestyle attitudes,’ Lebedev quotes an excerpt from the Constitutional Court ruling. He emphasizes that while this resolution is not the key one, it is necessary to focus on it.

What will change for the media?
The media are prohibited from distributing materials promoting pornography, non-traditional relationships and gender reassignment. An important role in this is played by the message with which the information is presented. ‘For example, a statement of fact is permissible: Ivanov and Petrov were in an unconventional relationship. There is no propaganda here. But it is impossible to use the information in a positive way – for instance, what a happy family Petrov and Ivanov have,’ the expert says.

What will happen to movies, books and advertising?
With works of art, the situation is more complicated. In literature and films, any information is somehow aimed at forming an ideology. “These are memes that we master – they talk about what kind of culture there should be. In practice, it is now impossible to make films about the LGBT community and its problems. In fact, now any film in which a same-sex couple appears can be recognized as propaganda,’ Lebedev claims. The situation is similar with books and advertising.

Can I be punished for a post on social networks?
A whole new concept has been introduced in the law – propaganda of non-traditional relations. This covers any dissemination of information aimed at promoting LGBT people. Data in any form is prohibited – images, descriptions. Social networks are no exception. ‘If I start posting pictures about the attractiveness of same-sex relationships in my social networks with an audience of a thousand, this is definitely going to face an administrative penalty and a fine from Rb50,000 to Rb100,000,’ Lebedev is sure.

‘No one knows how the courts will decide on LGBT propaganda. So far, we can talk only about our own interpretation. Most likely, propaganda issues will be sent by judges for expert examination. In general, I think that the law enforcement practice will go down the same track as the statutory article about discrediting the army. Only zealous violators will be severely punished,’ lawyer Dmitri Lebedev believes.

December 12, 2022 – “Russia has adopted a law on the prohibition of LGBT propaganda… how will it affect literature, cinema and other spheres…

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Source: https://journal.tinkoff.ru/news/zapret-lgbt/

… The book industry is the most concerned. After the adoption of the laws in the first reading, the head of one of the largest publishing groups in Russia, Eksmo-AST, Oleg Novikov, said that vague formulations jeopardize up to 50% of the titles of books on the Russian market. Other publishers also complained about the lack of specificity in the laws. They don’t know which books might be banned.

The Russian Book Union sent a letter to the State Duma with a request to clarify whether works from the school curriculum are now banned. Alexander Khinshtein, Chairman of the State Duma Information Policy Committee, replied that the laws adopted by the State Duma prohibit ‘not mentioning LGBT as a phenomenon, but propaganda.’ But the deputy apparently did not take into account that now there is a fine for distributing information about LGBT among minors.
According to Khinstein, there is no propaganda in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, but there is in the book Summer in a Pioneer’s Tie. But according to what criteria the latter book fell under the ban, the deputy did not specify.

Some publishers, bookstores and services already restricted the sale and release of controversial books even before the laws came into force. The publishing service Ridero sent a letter to the authors asking them to check their books for violations of the law banning LGBT propaganda. Representatives of the service provided a list of topics that should be avoided in the text, on the cover, in illustrations and other parts of the book: information about the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences, information that forms a distorted idea of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relationships, information about sex change. These are all formulations from the law.

The Labyrinth bookstore has temporarily suspended sales of some books. Representatives of the store did not publish a list of works, but Summer in a Pioneer’s Tie and The Goldfinch are now unavailable for purchase on the site.

Representatives of Litres said that the service will withdraw from sale books that may fall under the law. They asked the copyright holders to check whether their works can be recognized as a violation. Litres also suggested that the authors rewrite the text so that such books could be sold again. Popcorn Books, a publisher that specializes in topics such as identity issues, racism, sexism and attitudes to one’s own body, has warned that their books with LGBT characters will most likely stop selling….

The bans will also affect the cinema. Due to the vagueness of the wording, market participants and experts interviewed by Kinopoisk in the summer of 2022 could not answer what would happen. But these formulations have not become more precise. LGBT-themed films have been censored before. For example, in 2021, distributors cut three minutes from the picture Supernova. And in the movie Avengers: The Finale, one dialogue was revised…And there have been many such cases of self-censorship.

Now such films may simply be unable to get a screening certificate. And it will not be possible to show pictures to minors simply with a demonstration of LGBT themes. The cartoon Luka could theoretically fall under such a ban.

Online retailers also fear that due to the vagueness of the wording, it is unclear which products cannot be sold. The Association of E-commerce Companies in an appeal to the deputies asked for clarification. According to the market participants, ‘the situation with these laws is paradoxical: there is a ban on sale and liability, but there is no register of such goods or at least criteria, as well as mechanisms for evaluating goods.’ They believe that retailers themselves will have to check whether specific products violate the law. And that will take a lot of money.
Source: https://journal.tinkoff.ru/news/zapret-lgbt/

How the Russian courts interpret

June 19, 2013 – “Prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality in the light of judicial practice by Sergei Khavansky, PhD in Law, Head of the Legal Editorial Office of the Company Garant
One of the most high—profile legislative events of recent times is the consideration by the State Duma of the so—called “law on the prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality”, or rather, draft law No. 44554-6, according to which the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation is supplemented by Article 6.21, according to which “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors” is prohibited…

Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation
So, it makes sense to start with the ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 151-O-O dated January 19, 2010. Paragraph 3 of this decision states that the regional legislator ‘has established measures aimed at ensuring the intellectual, moral and mental safety of children, including in the form of a ban on performing public actions aimed at promoting homosexuality.’ According to the Court, ‘the prohibition of such propaganda in itself – as an activity for the purposeful and uncontrolled dissemination of information that can harm health, moral and spiritual development, including forming distorted ideas about the social equivalence of traditional and non–traditional marital relations – among persons deprived of the opportunity to critically evaluate such information independently due to age, cannot be considered as violating the constitutional rights of citizens.’

In conclusion, the Court considered that ‘such restrictions do not consolidate any measures aimed at banning homosexuality or its official censure, do not contain signs of discrimination, in their meaning do not allow excessive actions of public authorities. Accordingly, the provisions of these laws contested by the applicants cannot be regarded as disproportionately restricting freedom of speech.’

Supreme Court of the Russian Federation
A year and a half later, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation spoke on this topic (Ruling of the Judicial Board for Administrative Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. 1-APG12-11 of August 15, 2012). This judgement contains a definition of propaganda of homosexuality among minors, which ‘involves active public actions with the above-mentioned goals associated with the formation of an attractive image of non-traditional sexual orientation, a distorted view of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional marital relations.’ It is these formulations which formed the basis of Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation.

It follows from the Court’s understanding that not every public action can be identified as propaganda, and thus its prohibition ‘does not prevent the realization of the right to receive and disseminate general, neutral information about homosexuality, to hold public events in accordance with the procedure provided for by law, including open public debates on the social status of sexual minorities, not imposing homosexual life attitudes on minors as persons who, due to their age, are not able to independently critically evaluate such information.’

The distinction indicated above in the position of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation between ‘propaganda’ of homosexuality and its ‘discussion’ and ‘information’ is important in the context of the need for compliance of Russian judicial practice with the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In particular, we are talking about the Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights of October 21, 2010. According to its paragraph 84,

‘there is no ambiguity regarding the recognition by other participating States of the right of people to openly call themselves gay, lesbian or other sexual minority and to promote their rights and freedoms.’

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Compilation of pending and decided cases at the European Court of Human Rights

As the European Court noted, it ‘lacks scientific evidence and sociological information confirming that the usual mention of homosexuality or an open public discussion about the social status of sexual minorities will have a negative impact on children or vulnerable adults. On the contrary, only with the help of a fair and public discussion can society address such complex issues that have been raised in this case. Such a discussion, supported by academic research, would clarify several issues that cause general misunderstanding, such as, for example, whether a person can be raised as a homosexual, is inclined to homosexuality or is lured from it, or whether he can voluntarily choose it or give it up. It was precisely such a discussion that the applicant tried to initiate in the present case, but it could not be replaced by spontaneous opinions of officials, which the latter considered popular.’

As a result, the position of the Russian Federation was recognized as violating Article 11 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950.

Based on the results of the above analysis, it can be concluded that there are at least three different concepts in judicial practice: propaganda of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ themselves (including homosexuality); promotion of the ‘rights and freedoms of sexual minorities’; and “information’ about homosexuality and discussion of the related issues.

The positions of the courts on each of these points are as follows: the ban of the first by the Russian courts is recognized as legitimate, and the ECHR has not ruled on this issue; the second is protected in Europe and is not banned by Russian courts; the third is recognized and defended by both the Russian and international courts…”
Source: https://www.garant.ru/ia/opinion/havanskij/479268/


October 10, 2014 — “LGBT and the Law
“The Constitutional Court issued an explanation regarding the controversial law banning the dissemination of information promoting non-traditional sexual relations among minors (the common name is ‘the law on the prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality’). The reason for the clarification was the appeal to the Constitutional Court by LGBT activists Nikolai Alekseev (right), Yaroslav Yevtushenko and Dmitri Isakov: they were found guilty of an offense for holding public events in violation of this law.

The Law introduced article 6.21 into the Code of Administrative Offences — ‘Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors’, which implies a fine of four to five thousand rubles. Alekseev and Yevtushenko became the first in the country convicted under this law — for their picketing outside the children’s library in Arkhangelsk with a poster ‘Gay propaganda does not exist. They don’t become gay, they are born gay!’ (The Arkhangelsk region was one of the first regions where this law was adopted even before its consideration in the Duma). Isakov, who held a lone picket in Kazan, received his fine due to the fact that a teenager from Arkhangelsk, Eric Fedoseev, read about this picket on the Internet and wrote a statement to the police. All three activists have filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights.

The Constitutional Court considered the law and the article introduced in the Administrative Code and ruled that it did not contradict the Constitution. But in addition, the judge of the Constitutional Court Nikolai Bondar, commenting on the position of the court, said that the article ‘does not prevent an impartial public discussion of the legal status of sexual minorities, including by holding public events in accordance with the procedure established by law. However, minors should not be involved in the relevant activities, and the information disseminated should not be targeted at them.’

Nikolai Alekseev, one of the most active figures in the Moscow LGBT movement, has already managed to call this reasoning of the Constitutional Court a significant breakthrough in the fight for LGBT rights. Natalia Tsymbalova, coordinator of the Alliance of Heterosexuals for LGBT Equality, agrees with him: ‘The ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation seems to me a very important milestone in the struggle for the right to freedom of assembly of the LGBT community,’ she said, but added that ‘ideally, the court should have recognized the notorious law on gay propaganda unconstitutional, but agreed that “no one expected such a demarche in the current political situation.’ Nevertheless, according to her, it is important that ‘the court forbade an expansive interpretation of the law, which is often done by various political machinations and homophobes in our country. Now it is explicitly stated that the law cannot be the basis for banning public actions, discussions and other events in defence of LGBT rights.’

Nevertheless, Tsymbalova, who has extensive experience in holding actions in defence of LGBT people and negotiations with the St. Petersburg administration, noted that ‘the practice of St. Petersburg is such that our rights to freedom of assembly are often violated by the authorities but not at all on the basis of the law on gay propaganda. In St. Petersburg, this law was rarely applied. Here officials are much more likely to come up with various other loopholes to refuse to approve permits. For example, in February 2013, with the support of the Democratic Petersburg coalition, we tried to organize a rally against the law on gay propaganda, which was still a draft law at that time and was to be considered in the next reading by the State Duma. The authorities refused to authorize this rally for us at 20 (twenty!) in different places, having come up with a variety of excuses (such as repair work, the proximity of courthouses, the fact that we will allegedly interfere with passers-by and similar fictions). It is obvious that the ban on the rally was a political decision, but the law on propaganda did not appear in the refusals in any way.’

Another St. Petersburg activist, gender researcher Valery Sozaev, in a conversation with OVD-Info, also noted that, despite what the Constitutional Court says, ‘there is practical implementation on the ground.’ He said that in addition to banning the actions, some government representatives in for outright provocation to disrupt LGBT events: for example, deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Vitaly Milonov, known for his fierce struggle against LGBT people, and his assistant Anatoly Artyukh ‘constantly bring minors to our demonstrations for the purpose of provocation. Milonov comes with his own children to the actions of LGBT activists, thus provoking the guards, the police to stop these actions.’ Sozaev suspects that law enforcement practice will change little with the release of the judgement of the Constitutional Court: ‘There have been decisions of the Constitutional Court concerning regional laws — Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg, Kostroma. LGBT activists apply these resolutions, but there is no outcome from this either.’…

Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code is still used quite rarely in the wake of past actions. In Moscow, for the first time, charges under this article were brought last year against LGBT activist Alexei Davydov, who was detained during a picket outside the Russian State Children’s Library with a poster “Being gay is normal”, and five other people detained with him (this was the only case of charges under this article noted by the Department of Internal Affairs-Info in Moscow for the year).

In this context, the decision of the magistrate of the judicial precinct No. 423 of the Tverskoy district of Moscow to pay compensation to LGBT activist Irina Fedotova, , who was sentenced to a fine for a single picket against the law of the Ryazan region on “propaganda of homosexuality”, adopted back in 2006, was unprecedented.

Events in defense of LGBT rights often become a reason for detention even without the application of the relevant article: according to OVD-Info, in 2013 in Moscow, the relative number of events on such topics where detentions occur is 7.1% (in 2012 — 0.9%), the number of detentions on them is 11.4% (in 2012 year — 1.2%). The average number of detentions per LGBT support event in 2013 is 13.9. In St. Petersburg during the same period, the share of detainees at LGBT events from the total number of detainees at mass events was 12.1%, the number of LGBT events with detentions is 7.1% of the total. The average number of detentions per LGBT event in St. Petersburg is 18.7.

Much more often, the article is used by regional authorities to refuse permits for rallies and protest meetings. As recently as October 1, the Moscow authorities banned the holding of an LGBT march for one hundred people, since “the information contained in the text of the notification about holding a public event suggests that the goals of the planned march violate the prohibitions provided for by federal laws Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation – ‘holding a public event by this group of citizens in places open to free access will cause moral harm to children and adolescents who have become unwitting witnesses, offend religious and moral feelings, humiliate the human dignity of other citizens, violate their rights and freedoms, which will cause a negative reaction of society and may provoke illegal actions by persons who do not share views their participants’; and in addition, the march ‘will interfere with the movement of pedestrians, violate the rights of citizens who do not participate in it.’…

A curious story happened with the approval of LGBT actions in Kostroma in June. The gay march on June 1 was immediately refused in connection with the celebrations of Children’s Day in the city. The march, scheduled for June 2, was unexpectedly agreed (though not in the place where the organizers wanted), but later the approval was withdrawn due to a sewer accident. After lengthy court proceedings, Nikolai Alekseev managed to obtain recognition of both refusals as illegal…

Some LGBT activists, focusing on the current legislative and law enforcement practice, prefer to move away from symbols and even words directly related to LGBT topics when holding events. As the head of the Murmansk LGBT organization Maximum Centre Sergei Alekseenko told OVD-Info, recently all their public events ‘were organized so that there were not even words with the root ‘homo’ or ‘LGBT’. ‘We try to avoid these words so that we are not accused of violating this law. We have not had a single refusal, but we do not declare actions specifically as LGBT and we often file notifications for actions against xenophobia in society in general, and not just against homophobia,’ says Alekseenko. ‘We don’t go out with rainbow flags, we don’t go out with some harsh slogans, as they do in St. Petersburg and Moscow, especially ultra-activists. We are moderate. We are not trying to create a provocation, we want people to see and think once again.’ According to him, usually the authorities do not refuse permits to hold the event…

The law on the prohibition of propaganda among minors of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ has been repeatedly tried to be applied for prosecuting specific individuals without connection to public street events. In the Khabarovsk Territory, Alexander Suturin, the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Young Far East, was sentenced to a fine of 50 thousand rubles for publishing an interview with geography teacher Alexander Yermoshkin, who was fired from his job for LGBT activism. Suturin was accused of violating part 2 of Article 6.21 — on propaganda through the media, which already entails a much larger fine than participation in the event. In May of this year, a Murmansk activist Violetta Grudina was charged due to the fact that minors were found in the group of the Maximum Center in the VKontakte social network, of which she is one of the administrators.

In addition, Elena Klimova, a journalist from Nizhny Tagil, the author of the project Children-404 about homosexual teenagers, was accused of creating a ‘page promoting non-traditional sexual relations’ in the VKontakte social network. The indictment for the offense was filed by the St. Petersburg deputy Vitaly Milonov. However, the Dzerzhinsky District Court of Nizhny Tagil terminated the proceedings in the case due to the fact that the administrative protocol against Klimova had been drawn up with violations.”
Source: https://ovdinfo.org/articles/2014/10/06/lgbt-i-zakon

The Yury Dud case, July 2022

“Yuri Dud was fined 120 thousand rubles for an article about ‘gay propaganda’ among children. The magistrate of the judicial precinct No. 271 in the Lefortovo district in Moscow fined journalist Yuri Dud 120 thousand rubles under the article on ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors’ (part 2 of Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code). This was reported by the Telegram channel for Moscow courts of general jurisdiction. According to the docket of the administrative case, the court issued its decision on July 7. What became the reason for the administrative case has not been specified. The head of the Safe Internet League Yekaterina Mizulina claims that the protocol against Dud was drawn up because of an interview with the artist and openly gay Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, which was published on the YouTube channel “VDUD” in April 2021…”
Source: https://www.currenttime.tv/a/dud-oshtra ... 39583.html

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Left image: Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich in interview broadcast from Brazil with Yury Dud. Right: Yekaterina Mizulina.

Enforcement statistics
Judicial practice under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation

“According to the statistics of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in 2014 Russian courts issued a total of two decisions on the imposition of fines totaling 245 thousand rubles for ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation. In particular, one legal entity and one official were fined. In addition, cases were opened against five other people under this article, but all of them were acquitted, and the proceedings were terminated. In particular, in August 2014, in the Smolensk region, the manufacturer of the children’s game ‘Fanta’ was fined, because one of the tasks required players to portray a date for a same-sex couple. In January 2014, the editor of the newspaper Young Far East Alexander Suturin was fined in Khabarovsk for publishing the material ‘The Story of Gayography’ about the dismissal of a homosexual teacher Alexander Yermoshkin.

In January 2015, Elena Klimova was fined under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code for creating the project ‘Children-404’ about LGBT teenagers. In October 2016, the project’s website was also listed by Roskomnadzor in the unified register of prohibited sites. Already earlier in September 2015, the social network VKontakte, at the request of Roskomnadzor, blocked the community ‘Children-404’.

According to the human rights organization “Agora”, in 2016, under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, Russian courts considered cases against 12 people, of whom 8 were found guilty and fined an average of 50 thousand rubles. The main point of the accusation was the dissemination of media materials about LGBT people and the publication of their own posts on social networks. A total of 15 people were fined for ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” under federal law by that time.

In 2017, Evdokia Romanova, a resident of Samara, was fined 50 thousand rubles by the court for promoting homosexuality. It is clarified that the girl reposted links to articles by The Guardian and BuzzFeed about LGBT people on her Facebook page.

In March 2018 , it was reported that the website gay.ru was listed in the Roskomnadzor unified register of banned sites because of the promotion of non-traditional relationships among minors, despite the 18 years of age warning note on the site.

In August 2018, a 16-year-old schoolboy Maxim Neverov from Biysk was fined 50 thousand rubles. According to the protocol of the administrative offense, the teenager posted on his VKontakte page ‘an image of the actions of young people and their appearance (half-naked body parts), which, according to the expert’s conclusion, show signs of propaganda for same-sex relations’.

According to statistics published on the website of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of Russia, a record number of cases under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation was sent to the courts in 2019 — 20 in total. At the same time, only 4 people were brought to formal court proceedings in these 20 cases, with a total amount of fines, 108,000 rubles. According to Alexander Belik, a lawyer for the Russian LGBT Network, this indicates that the majority of courts is implementing the ECHR decision in the case of Bayev v. Russia, recognizing the statute on propaganda to be discriminatory.”

Source: https://ru.wikipedia.org/

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Left: the text of the Bayev ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, June 20, 2017 -- https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-174422%22]} Right, ECHR Judge Dmitry Dedov who issued the dissenting opinion on the 7-judge panel.

Excerpts of the Dedov opinion in the Bayev case, June 2017
“To my regret, I voted against finding a violation of Article 10. The Court has found that the legal provisions in question do not serve to advance the legitimate aim of the protection of morals, and that such measures are likely to be counter-productive in achieving the declared legitimate aims of the protection of health and the protection of the rights of others. Briefly, my reasoning is as follows.

The Court refused to accept that the interference had a legitimate aim, namely the protection of public morals, public health and the rights of others. The Court did not take into account the fact that the impugned Law sought to protect the privacy (including the dignity and integrity) of the children and the convictions of their parents as to how their children should organise their family life. In the present case the Court deals not with the conflicting views, but with the conflict of rights, namely, the right to freedom of expression and the right to private and family life. In the situation of conflicting interests in cases regarding freedom of expression the Court usually strikes a balance between conflicting rights. The Court completely refused to do that in the present case, even in the part of the judgment assigned to the analysis of the rights of others…

Needless to say, sexual identification, as well as sexual orientation, is a very intimate process, albeit influenced by social life and social relations. The international instruments, including the CRC, recognise that children should primarily consult their parents or close members of the family, rather than obtaining information about sex from the applicants’ posters in the street.

Indeed, the impugned provision of the Law pursues the primary aim of protecting the values of a traditional family. This provision could be interpreted as supporting the family and maternity. It could not be interpreted as preventing adults from engaging in same-sex relations, as it could be in a discrimination case. Fortunately, the Court has already supported the State’s duty to protect the right to family and maternity of vulnerable female prisoners in a life-sentence case

The Court has concluded that the minors who witnessed the applicants’ campaign were exposed to the ideas of diversity, equality and tolerance, and that the adoption of these views could only be conducive to social cohesion. I am not sure that that was clear enough for the children, or that they could come to such a conclusion, which requires knowledge and understanding of those high principles. The various research confirms that younger children do have difficulty in maintaining a consistent view on universal rights, expressing uncertainty about prohibiting freedom of speech[3]. It should be added that the above values have not been explicitly expressed by the applicants. Obviously, education in the context of sexual relations (a very intimate and sensitive subject) should be dispensed with great caution. Therefore, it is difficult to agree that a slogan raised on the street can satisfy any educational purposes…

Personally, I agree that children should be educated in an environment free from violence based on different sexual orientation; however, the applicants did not provide the Court or national authorities with any evidence that there was such a case (namely, a case of violence among children) in the particular school or library where the applicants held their demonstrations. Also, no such application was lodged with the Court.

The Court, in the present case, did not seriously take into account the fact that the private life of children is more important than the freedom of expression of homosexuals. It appears from the circumstances of the case that all the demonstrations were held in order to promote non-traditional sexual relations (which is not itself an issue of public interest); they were not held to express opinions on issues of public interest such as same-sex marriage or adoption. Two of the demonstrations were held in front of the school, without consultation with the teachers, and without targeting a certain category of pupils of a certain advanced age, and there was no other evidence to conclude that the purpose of the demonstration was to involve children in a discussion of social problems like tolerance. The applicants themselves acknowledged that the choice of venues and the content of the banners had been intentional to protest against the legislative acts in question (see paragraph 52 of the judgment). The applicants would like to demonstrate that homosexuality is normal and natural. However, homosexuality is not persecuted either by the State authorities or by the children of the school or their parents, and society in Russia in general is tolerant of this phenomenon. Many homosexuals are public figures who are accomplished in the arts, business and State governance. In the event of violence against homosexuals, any such case could be brought before the Court if the national authorities have failed to fulfil their positive obligations. However, there was no reason based on factual circumstances to hold demonstrations in those particular places.

The Court has concluded that the promotion of same-sex relations is not detrimental for public morals, health or rights of others, even if the opinion was expressed in direct conflict with the right to private life. The Court was satisfied that in staging their demonstrations the applicants did not seek to interact with minors, nor intrude into their private space (see paragraph 80 of the judgment). I believe that this view is completely contrary to the Court’s established case-law, because the existence of a conflict between freedom of expression and private life is not dependent on any intrusion into a private place in its literal sense, but in the present case it constitutes an intrusion into a perception of a lifestyle! “The present case is quite complex. It presents not merely a conflict between the right to freedom of expression and the right to private and family life; there is also a conflict between different forms of self-identification of a person. This issue is vital for both conflicting parties, and they will never come to an agreement…”

http://johnhelmer.net/primer-on-the-new ... more-70399

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Close the Moscow Helsinki Group
December 20, 16:31

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So we lived up to these glorious times.
The Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group. One of the oldest bedbugs of demshiza and dessida, which has existed since 1976. It employed such "cadres" as Serge Kovaleva, Lyudmila Alekseeva and the like. The liquidation of such structures is another step towards cleansing the country of the legacy of perestroika and the "saints of the 1990s."

Memorial was closed last year. This year, Novaya Gazeta and Ekho Moskvy were closed. In this way, things will come to the Yeltsin Center next year.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8043181.html

105 years of Bloody Gebne
December 20, 13:24

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On December 20, 1917, the Cheka was formed. On this day, we celebrate the Day of the State Security Officer.
To all those involved in the native "Bloody Gebne" with the holiday and creative achievements in the fight against external and internal enemies!

PS. This year, by the way, marks the 100th anniversary of counterintelligence of the GPU of the NKVD of the USSR.

PS2. The Iron Felix monument must be returned to the Lubyanka.

https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/colonel ... 36_900.jpg

Google Translator

Liberals will wail and gnash their teeth about all of this though these items are of varying essence. The conservative nature of the Russian working class cannot be ignored as it is in the US. It is certainly nothing to be happy about, otoh from this work we can see that such attitudes are neither as bitter as in the US. Also, the Russian government is not determined to confuse homophobia with with rejection of Western cultural hegemony, something too easily done by people who ought to know better. What passes for 'Western culture' as presented by the MSM is purposeful garbage.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 23, 2022 12:28 am

Strong convictions
No. 12/76.XII.2022

You are servants of darkness!

Some of you are lying on the couch, surrendering to the miserable,

petty-bourgeois anguish.

Inflate an elephant out of a fly, putting your stupid suffering at the center of the universe!

But there are other bastards!

For them we are tarantulas and utopians!

For them, the feat of Soviet soldiers is nothing.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is a red creature.

Che Guevara is a bloody maniac.

These fellows think they're geniuses.

Know fools!

Maxim Gorky was an intellectual!

Although what is it for you ?!

You laugh at hard work, physical.

For you, an honest worker is a stupid, sweaty dork.

And you yourself are yelling, drinking stinky cola, bastards:

<Russia is the realm of the lazy!>

Say it in the eyes of Lomonosov, you will understand

He has a speaking name!

But another generation has grown up!

We love our history and culture.

We know the dates of glorious victories!

We read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Che Guevara and Stalin.

We hate you, bourgeois sons and daughters.

And capitalism is disgusting to us.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their fetters,

But we, who want to help them, must not lose our convictions!

We think we are the only ones, but we are not!

Guys!

Let the fanaticism of my lines reach you!

We must learn and help others!

And every year our beliefs

Will be harder and harder!

V. Oktyabrsky
19/12/2022

https://prorivists.org/76_tu/

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 24, 2022 4:12 pm

The sooner they take it away, the better.
December 24, 16:15

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Prigozhin about those rich people who, to the very end, try to pretend that nothing is happening in the country and the world.

(Video at link, Russian)

Just now, I was pretty pleased with the news about the arrest of Abramovich's assets in Canada.

And in general, it's funny to see how oligarchs rushed about in the growing rift of the new Cold War, who thought they were holding reality tightly by the balls, but it turned out that the opposite was true. Reality has changed and seized the oligarchs by their causal places, showing the pettiness and worthlessness of these "masters of life." It is hardly possible to find many people in our country who will feel sorry for them. Such are the death throes of Russian compradors.

By the way, if you look at it this way, Prigozhin in the current realities, in addition to the leadership of the Wagner PMC, plays the role of a political commissar who conveys basic messages to the masses in simple and understandable language, which official propaganda often cannot correctly explain.

1. Don't piss.
2. Get together.
3. Only forward.
4. There is no return.

However, the desire to somehow roll back the situation has not yet been completely eliminated in the Russian elites, which periodically manifests itself in various statements by representatives of the authorities and big business. It is not so easy to break with the 30-year-old wrong way, but nevertheless, the inertia of the break with the West does its job.



https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8052637.html

Google Translator

Ho, ho, ho, indeed.The irony is palpable. Bit by bit the neoliberal capitalist regime designed by Washington is dismantled as a matter of national survival, the resort to the tried and true. A step towards repatriation of the the people's resource stolen by those worms.

A bit of seasonal cheer in these dark times.

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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