decision-making structures, in the form of soviets or assemblies, but they didn’t have time to take root. The Berkut started to openly shoot people in Kiev, and in February the insurrection spread throughout the country. People were occupying administrative buildings and everywhere blockading the police. The regime attempted a last push, but overestimated its forces and failed, and then Yanukovych was forced to flee to Russia.
In appearance, Maidan had won. An enormous amount of people in Ukraine gained experience in autonomous organizing and street sensibility, and sacrifice did not befall them in vain. People felt like the game had changed, and they could now take hold of a common power.
But, in anarchist and leftist circles, this euphoria soon died. Thanks to the efforts of the liberal and Russian media, however opposed they were in their ends, the Right was able to portray the image that it was the radical vanguard of Maidan. Among many of us, joy gave way to panic as those whom one might have fought on the street the day earlier had now suddenly gained official posts in the new structures of state power.
Something far more dreadful was on the way. Russia annexed Crimea and started a war, which was an ambiguous gift for the new government. The energy set free on Maidan was channeled into volunteer battalions and support for the ruined Ukrainian army, which couldn’t do much against Russia. From now on, defending the Revolution of Dignity didn’t mean being on the barricades of Kiev, but on the front line. The movement then disappeared, of course, as it is obviously wrong to protest when your country is at war.
As for the Russian leftists, they found themselves on the side of Russian propaganda, and began to increasingly criticize “Ukrainian fascism.” Well-known figures like Boris Kagarlitsky started spreading stories about an “antifascist proletarian popular uprising in Donbass.” Some of these leftist personalities could be seen drinking tea with Russian nationalists and imperial fascists at the next meeting for the Russian World in Crimea. The young went to war as volunteers, if not to bomb villages, then at least to take some selfies in camouflage, Kalashnikov in hand. Others became war journalists, following battalions like the Prizrak brigade in Donbass, whose leader, after rounding up a few well-known neo-Nazis, became famous for defending the idea of raping women who weren’t home after curfew. None of this seemed to bother the Left, as long as the battalions kept waving red flags and singing songs from that sacred war, complemented by stories about NATO soldiers on the Ukrainian side and images of dead children. As for the older Western leftists, they found themselves reliving the Cold War and started support campaigns for the “antifascists of Donbass.”
After the shock of the first months, most of the Russian radical milieus turned away from such a confusing situation. Either the issue of the war did not concern them, or they felt there was nothing they could do. There was also a new wave of repression in Russia, within a context of unprecedented support for Putin. In this situation, there was increasingly less public political activity, and more comrades turned to infrastructural projects like cooperatives or publishing. Others decided to immigrate, either within Russia or abroad.
In Ukraine, on the other hand, organizing was on the rise. Despite the war, political life was blooming, but things were shifting fast. The Antifa and punk milieus generally became patriotic right-wingers. Anarchists weren’t spared from this dynamic, many of whom grew sympathetic to the “autonomous nationalists” of Autonomous Resistance, an ex-Nazi group from the barricades of Maidan that was now spreading a mix of anti-imperialism and concepts taken from the new Right. Following their logic, nationality was the same as class, and ethnic conflicts and even cleansing could be understood as a form of class war. They saw the war with Russia as an anti-imperialist struggle, supported the army, and applauded their members who went to war as heroes. Others followed a similar path. Though they started by unmasking the fascist character of the Russian state, they ended up arguing that the only valid strategy against the Russian invasion was to support the Ukrainian Army. By evoking the history of World War II, they mirrored the logic of Russian propaganda, accusing anyone who criticizes the Ukrainian government of being pro-Russian or, of course, “fascist.”
Another part of the movement decided that, again in reference to World War II, when faced with absolute evil, it was better to collaborate with the devil. In today’s terms, Russia was the obvious evil, and therefore collaboration came in the form of joining the Ukrainian Army or the volunteer battalions—in the end, supporting the government institutions. There were some of our now ex-comrades who went to war, or at least supported such a decision. It is certain that no one wanted to become cannon fodder for capitalists and the state. But, for some of them, it seemed like the only option left to fight the Russian invasion and the Russian machine. The most naive sincerely believed in the revolutionary nature of the people, and for a moment really thought they could agitate among the soldiers, convincing them to turn their guns against the government. The most cynical spoke about the opportunity to “gain war experience,” while others just felt pressure and the need to do something. With their support of armed struggle against the military invasion, part of the movement drifted toward a fascination for anything military. They seemed hypnotized by a new world of Kalashnikovs and camouflage, in contrast with which everything else just seemed to fade from view.
The topic of war soon became dangerous to address. The propaganda was working not only in Russia but also in Ukraine. While those who argued against the war could quickly be labeled as Putin’s agents, it also became illegal to make public statements against military mobilization.
A lot of people simply became tired of all the conflicts and left the movement. The country’s economic crisis forced people to work more, snatching away their time. While the energy of Maidan continued to nourish autonomous projects, stagnation struck the heart of the movement at the same time Ukrainian society was in crisis and the government still hadn’t completely regained control of the situation.
OTHER HISTORIES
In retrospect, it seems the movement failed to find a way to oppose the rising populist imperialist consensus, both in Russia and in Ukraine. And for this not only our weakness, but also the way we have defined priorities in these last years, is to blame.
Too busy fighting fascists and Nazis in the street, we did not develop a solid analysis of what fascism is, nor did we propose an alternative to the official history of World War II, which seems to haunt us at every turn. At the level of rituals and symbols, we finally followed the version advanced by the Russian state—the myth of the unity of the Soviet People against fascism. The narratives about other forces that confronted both Stalinism and Nazism—like those of the partisan movement that rejected the rule of the Red Army—have become marginal. We have likewise paid too little attention to the conflicts of peasants and workers against Stalinism, or to the Gulag insurrections during the war.
On the other hand, we also must rethink the colonial character of the Russian and Soviet empires. Armed conflicts in distant places have so easily been forgotten. Even the war in Chechnya, which was important for anarchists in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, was forgotten by the next generation. We are in dire need of internal structures that allow us to transmit such experiences and their lessons.
In this light, it’s not surprising that the explosion of war in Ukraine took us by surprise. We have not fully taken account of the fact that Russia is always at war somewhere, in some part of the world. And now this war knocks at our own door, and threatens our comrades and neighbors. It attacks our friends. We no longer know what common ground can establish connections between our movements, especially at the moment we need it most.
It seemed to us, as Russians and Ukrainians, that we almost lived in the same space, with a close past and present. We shared our experiences and resources in our struggle against common hardships. Yet when our states plunged us into war, feeding off the myths of our common past, we didn’t know how to resist. The more they try to mobilize the dead to divide us, the more we should show that history can’t be reduced to what
