I was one of a number of socialists who solidarize with Ukraine’s fight to defend itself from Russian imperialism and who came together to protest outside the Peoples Forum in New York City on November 19, 2022. Our protest targeted the ‘Real Path to Peace in Ukraine’ meeting being held there that was really concerned with promoting the victory of Russia’s monstrous attempt to re-conquer its former colony.
The organizing force behind the meeting was the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which operates the People’s Forum as a front for recruitment. The PSL is a Stalinist organization that, behind its rhetoric of anti-racism and anti-imperialism, really promotes a political line consistent with the foreign policy interests of China’s ruling Communist Party – for one example, it denies the CCP’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people.
Besides speakers from the PSL and its various front-groups, the event several of the most prominent figures on the left who call for Western governments to stop providing Ukraine with arms. Cutting off the supply of weapons to Ukraine, however, would not bring peace. All it would achieve would be to allow Russia to win its war. The leftists promoting this demand in the name of peace are thus engaged in a profoundly dishonest game of bait-and-switch.
Former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was the biggest name advertised as speaking, but at the event it was announced that he would not be participating due to “technical questions.” This turned out to be a lie: Corbyn had made clear that he would not be participating well before the event but the organizers continued to promote it as featuring him anyway.1
Other celebrity-leftists did participate, including Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute and, most scandalously, the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Stein is notorious for once being Putin’s dinner guest in Moscow and boasting afterwards that the Russian dictator listened to ideas “made by myself and three other political figures” on foreign policy and agreed with them on many issues.2 (Among those unnamed other figures accompanying Stein was Donald Trump’s arch-reactionary, QAnon-promoting former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.)
In an attempt to reach at least some of the event’s attendees with a genuinely anti-imperialist perspective on the current war, I wrote a leaflet for our united-front protest. The text of that leaflet follows.
Some Questions for Socialists at
‘the Real Path to Peace
in Ukraine’ Meeting
The liberation of colonized nations from the violent rule of great powers has always been central to the cause of socialism. But colonialism’s horrors have so overwhelmingly targeted people of color that it’s easy for some to forget that early colonies of rising capitalist powers were Ireland and Ukraine.
In modern Ukraine’s case, it has been invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany for example, and most of all by Russia under both the Tsars and Stalin. So when Putin likened himself to Tsar ‘Peter the Great,’ explaining that his invasion was a step in “making Russia great again” as it was when it ruled a vast empire, one could have expected the socialist movement to rush to Ukraine’s defense.
Instead, Russia’s invasion has been confusing for those in the west who are accustomed to U.S. imperialism being a singular force of racist imperialist wars. The speakers at today’s meeting exemplify this confusion. They all say that in the case of Ukraine’s plight, the usual ethical and political duties of solidarity with the colonized don’t apply.
We socialists who support Ukraine’s cause of national liberation from Russian imperialism think this is a terrible betrayal, and we are asking the speakers to clarify their positions on the fate of Ukrainian people.
For example, most of the speakers say that the supply of arms to Ukraine from the U.S. and other western powers shows that Ukraine isn’t really a victim here, but a proxy of western imperialism. But when Toussaint L’Ouverture led the Haitian Republic, whose people had liberated themselves from slavery, he did deals with a number of colonial and slave-trading powers in order to obtain weapons and other support to defend Haiti. Was he a proxy of great powers? Ho Chi Minh and his forces in Vietnam received weapons and on-the-ground guidance from the U.S.’s forerunner of the CIA when his immediate enemy was Japanese colonialism. Was he a proxy of the U.S. then? Or did Ho take advantage of great power rivalries to defeat his immediate enemy before continuing the struggle against U.S. imperialism?
Right now, Russia is targeting Ukraine’s electrical and heating infrastructure with missile and drone attacks. A member of the Russian Duma (parliament) recently explained on Russian state television that this is being done to use freezing temperatures, starvation, and disease to kill Ukrainian people. It is also being done to force a new wave of refugees into western Europe, which Russia hopes will discourage support for Ukraine. Should Ukraine at least be sent air defense systems to stop this genocidal violence?
And one final question (among many that could be asked): many of the speakers today argue that Ukraine should surrender territory to Russia in order to avoid Putin following through on his nuclear threats. In that case, if neo-fascist Marine Le Pen comes to power in France and one day threatens to use nuclear weapons unless France re-enslaves Haiti, should she be rewarded with Haitian territory? And if so, how much? How many people are worth sacrificing? Because with millions of Ukrainians currently enduring the horrors of Russian occupation, genocidal re-colonization is what these speakers seem to be proposing as a fate for Ukraine.
Socialist Friends of Ukraine, e-mail: SocialistFriendsofUkraine@gmail.com
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