History for Ukraine

pinkypinky

Just wanted to mention a day of history talks online in support of Ukraine.

They'll be on YouTube and the idea is you make a donation on the Just Giving page

The line-up looks great:

https://historyforukraine.co/speakers-and-volunteers/

BalcombeSt4

This isn't the first Russian invasion, and I'm not talking about Stalin.

Makhnovshchina Ukraine was one of the first successful Anarchist movements put into practice. But sadly like Anarchist Catalonia, it was crushed by the combined efforts of militant imperialism & Bolshevism, as George Orwell himself observed in Homage To Catalonia.

"The free soviets were conceived of as the basic form of organization in the Makhnovshchina. These soviets acted independently from any Central Authority, excluding all political parties from participation, and met to self-manage the activities of workers and peasants through participatory democracy.[115] The soviets acted as the local organs of self-governance and federated together up to the regional and national levels, resulting in the relatively horizontal organization of the soviets.

The Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents represented the "highest form of democratic authority" within the political system of the Makhnvoschina.[117] They brought together delegates from the region's peasantry, industrial workers and insurgent soldiers, which would discuss the issues at hand and take their decisions back with them to local popular assemblies.[118] Four Congresses were held over the course of 1919, while one was banned by the Bolsheviks and another was unable to convene due to renewed conflict with the Red Army.

The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU), commanded by Bat'ko Nestor Makhno, constituted the principal armed force of the Makhnovshchina. Composed largely of peasant partisans and generally supported by the wider peasantry, the RIAU was able to capture large amounts of territory throughout southern Ukraine.[65] Within this "free territory", the RIAU declared that its aim was to "serve and protect" the social revolution in Ukraine, but also that it would not impose its own ideals upon the Ukrainian people."

Sigh, not only was a truly free people & truly democratic system, lost but the term "soviet" became to be forever linked with Bolshevik barbarism, instead of the egalitarian democratic hope it initially represented, like the Limerick Soviet, Kncocklong Soviet, Bruree Soviet, Waterford Soviet, Clare Soviet, Arigna Soviet etc...Like Chomsky points out a lot, in political history terms time & again take on the opposite meanings of what they originally meant, i.e, Republicanism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Socialism, Soviet, Anarchist etc...