 of its economy. Now, so there are these three different layers to this conflict and the proportions in which these three different layers express themselves at different times are different. Say for instance, in 2014, the conflict was mainly a civil war between Eastern, South Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine. In which the Ukrainian government in Kiev sent the army against its own people in the Donbas. Now, today, that is not the overriding character of this war, although that still exists. But I would say that the dominant character of this war is an interimperialist conflict. Now, as I said, the main subject of this talk is the history of the national question in Ukraine. And we know the national question is linked to the development of the national bourgeoisie, the development of capitalism. We dismiss this idea that's put forward by Ukrainian nationalists and by nationalists in all countries that they can trace the history back to, I don't know, 1,000 years ago. Recently, an official Twitter account of the Ukrainian government posted an animated GIF, a little video, where they said that already back in 1899, Ukraine wanted to join the European Union. It's not a joke, but yeah, they traced back the origins, the roots of the Ukrainian nation back to Kievan rules and so on. At that time, nations did not exist. National sentiment did not exist. And in fact, the nations, modern nations are the creation of the bourgeois revolution. And here we find the first problem. The bourgeois played a progressive role in creating nation states in its early days through revolutionary means in most cases, unifying the nations in terms of language, but also in terms of a common market, a common system of weights and measures, a common system of tariffs and so on. And this was the historical period of the unification of rise of modern bourgeois nations, France, Britain, Germany later, Italy later and so on. Spain never completed the process in a progressive way. But in the case of Ukraine, Ukraine was under foreign domination up until, in fact, the first time where an independent modern Ukrainian republic was founded was in 1917. So prior to that, Ukraine was divided between different imperialist powers and it never developed its own bourgeois, its own capitalist class. There was capitalist development in Ukraine in the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, where it was mainly foreign capital, French, British capital they invested, particularly in the Donbass, in steel industry, in the mining and so on, and in the big cities. And this was at the time when, as I say, Ukraine was divided between different imperialist powers. Now Ukraine is mostly a flat land in central Europe and Ukraine, Poland. This is mostly flat land and as a result between Europe and Asia. And as a result of this, this has been the place of mass migrations, invasions with different empires coming from Asia or coming from Europe, moving eastwards or westwards and some northwards and so on, and different parts of Ukraine have been in different times of history and the different types of foreign domination, for instance, the Crimean Hanate under the domination of the Turkish Ottoman Empire was an important part of southern Ukraine and determined, all these different invasions have determined to this day the national character, the slightly different national characteristics of different regions of modern day Ukraine. Modern day Ukraine, you could say, is a patchwork of different regions that are put together. You have, for instance, Bukovina and Transcarpecia, which are part of western Ukraine but have a completely different character than Volinia and Galicia also in western Ukraine, which are the main site of Ukrainian nationalism because they were dominated by Moldova, Romania and Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so on at different times of the... That's why I'm saying this maps are quite complicated. You can get your head around this. And then there is... But the basic division of Ukraine, you could say, is the division between western Ukraine, i.e. the regions of Galicia and Volinia, which were one time part of the Polish-Lithuanian regime and for quite a long time they've been part of... And under the domination of western empires, including Poland and so on. And then you have eastern and southeastern Ukraine, which has been for a longer period of time under the domination of the Russian Tsarist Empire. And in between there is... Which is based around Harkiv and the whole area around the Donbas, Donetsk and Luhanks and going all the way down to Odessa, Mikhailov, Kherson, all the places that now have been invaded by Russia and the threat of Russian invasion. And this division, you can see that it seeps through even to today's politics in Ukraine. It was in western Ukraine that Ukrainian nationalism first emerged, Ukrainian national identity during the 19th century. And this was because that region, that part of Ukraine was under the domination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where there was a policy of national cultural autonomy. Each people had their own schools, in their own languages and so on. This allowed a certain room for the development of the Ukrainian language, the Ukrainian nation. Around mainly, this area was also very peasant, agricultural, rural based. So it was mainly peasants who spoke the Ukrainian language. And here is where the main intellectuals of early nationalism, like Tata Sevchenko, the national poet, rose, developed, codified the language and created a national identity for Ukraine. While the language was completely banned in the areas of Ukraine that were under domination of the Russian Empire. Russia was a Zaris Empire, was a jailhouse of nations, as Lenin explained, and all minority languages, although the great Russians represented only about 45% of the total population, but all other languages were banned. And the Zaris Empire used very skillfully the national question, the national oppression as a way of staying in power. And also anti-Semitism. Ukraine was the site of a long history of anti-Semitic pogroms. But in reality, the composition of the population was a bit peculiar because Ukrainian speaking population was mainly concentrated in the countryside amongst the peasants, while in the cities, there were also Ukrainian speakers in the cities, but in the cities the workers and also the urban Pettyburzhua were mainly great Russians, Russian speaking, and Jewish and Poles. So that created a division. There was always the tendency of thinking that the Ukrainian nationalism was a backward, peasant ideology, and that there was certainly an element of great Russian chauvinism amongst the workers in the cities didn't understand the national question or these people who spoke these other languages. They were separate from them. They didn't come into regular contact with. And there was never Burzhua, the development of a national Burzhua. For this reason, this was a complicated situation, having a correct policy on two questions, on the question of the land, i.e. agrarian reform, and on the question of language and national rights was very important for the workers' movement in the Russian Empire to be able to succeed. And this was very early recognized by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the 1903 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which was the name of the Marxist Party at that time. They adopted a program which included in point nine a point about the national question. And they basically said that they were in favor of the right of nations to self-determination up to an including independence if they so wished. And also they were in favor of the greatest autonomy and language rights for national minorities. But at the same time that they said this, which is correct, they also said that they were in favor of the unity of the working class party, the unity of the Marxist party across the different national groups. So there was one Russian Social Democratic Labor Party which covered the whole territory of the Russian Tsarist Empire. But this was not an easy discussion. This was Lenin's position, which was adopted by the Congress in 1903. But this was not the position of all Bolsheviks, of all Marxists at that time. Very famously, Rosa Luxembourg, who was a Polish Marxist, and obviously very close to this question in Ukraine, adopted the opposite position. She said that she had a very strong anti-nationalist position which was correct for a Polish Marxist opposition to the Polish, the leaders of the Polish national movement were reactionary. But at the same time, in her case, this went too far. And she said that the Russian Marxists will not adopt the position of the national self-determination for the oppressed nationalities, because this will help the bourgeois, the petty bourgeois and the landlords that were using the national question in Poland and in other nationalities. And she was wrong on this. She was wrong. And had the party adopted that policy, it's doubtful whether they will have carried out a successful Russian Revolution in 1917. But there were others. There were others like Bukharin Piatakov, who was Ukrainian himself, Radik, who were also against this Lenin's policy on the national question. And that argument was, which they maintain all the way up until 1919 and after the Russian Revolution, they said the national question, national self-determination is utopian and the capitalism in the epoch of imperialism. There can't be the formation of new nations is not possible. Therefore this is a utopian slogan. And the socialism will be redundant because there'll be the fraternity of all workers regardless of nations. So they were against this policy. We will see the display the negative role later on in Ukraine. Now, as I said, the first time that the Ukrainian independent or autonomous authority was created was in 1917. After the February Revolution in Russia, February Revolution in Russia, in which, by the way, the taking over of power in Petrograd, Ukrainians played an important role. They, obviously the overthrow of Zari's empire gave rise to all the national movement and so on in all the different republics. And then you had the creation of the Central Rada government in Ukraine and also the creation of Soviets, Soviets of workers, peasants, soldiers in Ukraine. The Bolsheviks participated in the Rada. They were in a minority. And very soon there was a conflict, there was a conflict emerged between the Central Rada, which was mainly based in Western Ukraine and the Soviets. They had two completely different policies. In fact, the Central Rada, which was dominated by bourgeois nationalists and petty bourgeois elements refused to give land to the peasants. This was one of the crucial questions in the revolution in Russia and in Ukraine. And so progressively it was losing support amongst its own bases of support that it originally had. The October Revolution was truthful to its word and one of the first acts of the new revolutionary Soviet government was to recognize the independence and national self-determination of all the oppressed nations. Even if that meant, at that time, handing over these countries, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine and others, handing over these countries to petty bourgeois nationalist elements, in some cases in the form of Mensheviks, in some other cases of petty bourgeois elements, bourgeois nationalists, who were against Soviet power. But it was important for the Soviet power in Petrograd and in Moscow to send a clear signal that they had nothing to do with the Tsarist Empire, with the oppression of great Russian imperialism, and that they were for the freedom of the nations. This was the only basis on which they could then wage a campaign to win over, to win over these republics to Bolshevism and to win a majority for the workers and peasants councils in these regions. Now, but immediately there were problems. The Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was under a republic called the Ukrainian National Republic, the UNR. And immediately, very shortly after it's Declaration of Independence in mid-November 1917, the Ukrainian National Republic allowed a Cossack reactionary army to march through its territory in order to go and smash Soviet power in the southeast, in the Donbas, mainly, where the Soviets were based on the mining proletariat. This led the Soviet government in Moscow to declare war on the Ukrainian National Republic and it was the beginning of a civil war. It was a war that had two different aspects to it. The invasion of the Red Army, if you want, but also the invasion of the Red Army was based on the uprising of the workers and peasants in Kiev, in Kharkiv, in all the big cities and industrial centers in Ukraine. So this was, again, a civil war between black and white, if you want, and also the intervention of the Soviet Russia in this. This was then further, the Soviets, the Ukrainian Soviets and the Red Army were in the winning side, but then, this was then further complicated by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This was the peace negotiations between Germany and the Soviet government in Russia. And what they were forced by the German advance, I. Trotsky had the policy of no war, no peace. He wanted to delay the negotiations so that the Soviets were able to make an appeal to the revolutionary masses in Germany, trigger a German revolution and then be able not to have to sign any peace in detrimental terms with Germany, but this didn't happen. The German, it didn't happen at that time, in the spring of 1918. The German high command, obviously, wasn't stupid. They realized what the Soviets were doing and then they decided to advance. While they were still talking in Brest-Litovsk, they decided to advance and they took over quite a lot of Ukraine and they forced settlement, the Brest-Litovsk agreement, by which Soviet Russia was handing over large parts of the majority of Ukraine. So majority of Ukraine was for a period of few months and the German, an Austro-Hungarian domination and the Red Army was pushed back. So I'm just saying, this then gave rise to, then in November 1918, there was a German revolution. The Soviets then said, well, the Brest-Litovsk agreement is finished and then they decided to intervene in Ukraine again. And then there was the beginning of a civil war that lasted for two or three years. There was extremely complicated. It wasn't just two sides, there were, I don't know, 25 different sides. There was a part of that civil war, which was a Ukrainian-Polish war in Western Ukraine. There was also the Ukrainian National Republic, which allied itself with German and Austro-Hungarian imperialism. Then there was the war between the Whites, either counter-revolutionaries and the Reds, the Soviet government, which was also taking place in the territory of Ukraine, which was one of the bases of counter-revolution, the Dnikin armies and so on. Then there was the Magnoite, I hesitate to call them anarchists, but the Magnoite peasant armies that were doing their own things, sometimes allied with the Reds, sometimes allied with the Whites. In the middle of all this, there was the formation of the Hetmanate, which was a Ukrainian authority, Ukrainian dictatorship that was allied to Western imperialism. 1.5 million people died, and many cities changed sides. Many times there were massacres and so on. And during this war, there were also massive antisemitic pogroms committed by all sides, with the exception of the Red Army. And what this demonstrated, this period of extreme turmoil and confusion, what this demonstrated is that something that then was ratified in the Second World War. There was no room in these republics, not in Ukraine, not in Georgia, not in Poland, not in any of these newly independent countries. There was no room for a half way properly independent sovereign bourgeois democratic country. It was only two alternatives. Either domination by Western imperialism, anti-dictatorship, a ferocious dictatorship in this case, or Soviet power, either workers and peasants coming to power. There was no middle way. Any attempt at national independence was completely crushed by the circumstances. It was at this point, I think it was at the end of 2019, beginning of 1920, that Lenin, on the back of the advance of the Red Army into Ukraine, made a very famous speech, which is called a letter, letter to the workers and peasants of Ukraine. It's on the website. I recommend Congress to read it. It's quite long document, but it's very exposes, explains Lenin's policy on the national questing, which was extremely careful and was designed to do two things. One, to convince the Ukrainian workers and peasants that the Red Army had nothing to do with sadist nationalism and that Ukraine was independent. The Soviet power had recognized the independence of Ukraine and that the Ukrainian workers and peasants had to decide their own future, whether they wanted a completely independent country, an independent country that was federated with Russia in different degrees, a confederation or a complete amalgamation. But that was not for the Russian Marxist or workers to decide. It was for the Ukrainian workers and peasants to decide. And in this letter, he says, he's extremely very careful. He says, we want unity, but we want a voluntary unity. And we recognize that such a union cannot be affected at one stroke. We have to work towards it with the greatest patience so as not to spoil matters and not to arouse distrust and so that the distrust inherited from centuries of landowner and capitalist oppression, centuries of private property and the enmity caused by its divisions and red divisions may have a chance to wear it off. This was Lenin's policy. But here Lenin was not just addressing the Ukrainian workers and peasants, he was addressing the Ukrainian Bolsheviks who had a wrong position on this question. The first head of Soviet power in Ukraine, unfortunately, was Pyatakov, who was a Ukrainian Bolshevik but he had a completely wrong position. He had an ultra-left position and he argued for this in the party. And he said, what I said before, that Ukrainian, that the national self-determination is a utopian, is utopian under capitalism in the epoch of imperialism and it's redundant under socialism. So he said, look, we already have socialism, we have Soviet power and therefore there should be no talk of nationalism or anything like this. This was his wish, but nationalism did exist and played a big role. And as Lenin explained, centuries of oppression and grievances and so on had a big impact in the psychology of the masses in Ukraine, particularly of the peasants. And at that time you couldn't have a revolution in, successful revolution in Ukraine without winning over the peasantry. That's quite clear. Lenin's policy actually was, and then the second head of Soviet power in Ukraine was Rakovsky. The Balkan internationalists. But he also had a wrong position on Ukraine. In fact, his position was that Ukrainian nationalism didn't exist. That there was an invention of a few intellectuals that you didn't have to take into account. This created lots of problems and aggravated the situation in Ukraine. He, to his credit, he then later in 1921 changed his position and came to Lenin's point of view. Lenin's very careful position allowed the Bolsheviks to win over a section of the left social revolutionaries in Ukraine, which was mainly a peasant party. This peasant party in Russia had risen up in 2018 against Soviet power. But in Ukraine joined, united, fused with the Bolshevik party to create a united communist party. And Lenin said, we have differences. Some of the, there were differences amongst the Ukrainian communists about the question of whether Ukraine should be independent or not. About whether the party should be independent and affiliate directly to the common term and things like this said. Let's not allow these secondary questions to divide us. We're all fighting for workers' power against the capitalists, the land owners and Western imperialism. Let's unite on that basis. All the other technical questions of the limitation of borders, the degree of federation and all that, we can discuss later on over time in a patient way. And he said something, my time is against me, but I will quote this because I think it's a very important quote. He said, thank you. He said, if a great Russian communist insists upon the amalgamation of the Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians might easily suspect him of advocating this policy not from the motive of uniting the proletarians in the fight against capital, but because of prejudices of the old great Russian nationalism of imperialism, such mistrust is natural and to a certain degree, inevitable and legitimate. Lenin says. So Lenin is warning the great Russian communists to be careful because of history. But then he says, if a Ukrainian communist insists upon the unconditional state independence of Ukraine, he lays himself open to the suspicion that he's supporting this policy not because of the temporary interest of the Ukrainian workers and peasants in the struggle against capital, but on account of petty bourgeois national prejudices of the small owner. So he's attacking both the danger of nationalist prejudices on the part of the great Russian nationalists but also on the part of the Ukrainian nationalists. This is very interesting. So consequently, we great Russian communists must repress with the utmost severity the slightest manifestation in our midst of great Russian nationalism. And you can see clearly that this is not just a letter to Ukrainian workers and peasants, this is a letter to his own party members in Ukraine who had the wrong policy on this question. And this was to come up again in 1922. 1922 was the founding of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Prior to this, there was the Russian Socialist Federative Republic and all the other different republics. No, in 1922 was the formation of the USSR. And here there was a conflict between Lenin and Stalin. Stalin was the commissar for nationalities and he bungled the whole situation everywhere in Georgia, in Ukraine, everywhere in Poland. And his position, Stalin's position was we have the Russian Socialist Federative, what's this, Russian Socialist Soviet Federative Republic and all the other republics should amalgamate with it, they should just join the Russian Republic. And Lenin said, no, we can't have that. And he produced an amendment to the statutes of the constitution of the Soviet Union. He said, this is a voluntary union amongst equals, i.e. the Trans-Caucasian Federation, the Ukrainian Socialist Republic and the Russian Socialist Republic, they unite on equal terms with the right of any of the component parts to separate if they so wish. And the constitution of the Soviet Union set this until the overthrow of the Soviet Union. This was Lenin against Stalin with the support of Rakovsky, who by this time had changed his position. And this was very important for Lenin because it revealed. It's a very careful approach to the national question. Now, this was followed then by a policy which was known as indigenization, koryetsanya. And this policy consisted in the promotion of the national languages, the national culture in all of these regions. Because there was this problem that the leading layers of the communist parties in all the different nationalities was composed mainly of great Russians and not of the communists from that nationalities. So this was promoted. There was a leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party called Mikhail Scribnik and he was the secretary of the party and he was also an intellectual and he played a role in codifying the language but Ukrainian became the medium language in schools. He was promoted through culture and so on. The level, the percentage of people who could speak Ukrainian massively increased. The number of Ukrainian, ethnic Ukrainians in the party increased in percentage. And also this was not just a cultural policy, it was accompanied by an economic policy. As Ukraine developed economically through Soviet power, the peasants left the land and moved on to the cities. They joined the factories. And Ukrainian language came into the, came to be more prominent in the working class. However, however, this was not to last because Stalin came after Lenin and he broke with all these policies. He took power and destroyed basic Lenins and the rise of the bureaucracy to power also destroyed the national policy of Lenin. And basically implemented the national policy which was completely the opposite. By 1928, the bureaucracy, the Stalinist bureaucracy was completely afraid of what was happening in the country and took an ultra left, ultra left turn and attacking the peasants and then also attacking the nationalities and they started seeing nationalist deviations everywhere. They reversed the policy and they implemented the policy of national chauvinism. In fact, Lenin had described, if I can find it, Lenin had described, what is it? Had described Stalin's approach, can't find it. He said something to the effect that Stalin's approach was a approach of a great Russian imperialist and he did implement this policy. Mykola Skripnik was a porch in the porches in the 1930s and then on top of this, this policy was accompanied and this is important for Ukraine, with forced collectivization. And forced collectivization created a massive disaster in the countryside and particularly in the peasant, grain producing regions, chiefly amongst them, Ukraine, but not just Ukraine. Today the Ukrainian nationalists say this was a policy design to create a genocide of the Ukrainian people but in fact, this policy created mass famine everywhere in other grain producing regions in Russia, which in Kazakhstan, nothing to do with Ukraine. Although it's true that in Ukraine the policy of the bureaucracy was not only just a bureaucratic policy but it was also a great Russian nationalist policy. The two things overlapped each other. Not only this but then the porches in the 1930s affected particularly Ukraine and if you read this book by Pierre Brouet, the communist's under Stalin, you can see which is not available in English, unfortunately. You can read it in Italian, Spanish, French. It should be translated at some point but you can see how the left opposition, the Trotskyist opposition was particularly strong in Ukraine in the big factories amongst the youth, not by coincidence. So this created a situation which gave rise to the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism became popular again and Soviet power was seen by a section of the population as not only as a bureaucratic power but also as a foreign Russian nationalist operation of the Ukrainian people. And here we have the rise of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists own in the late 1920s and this is a fascist organization, Ukrainian nationalist organization which is based on fascist ideas of creating an ethnically pure Ukraine and fighting against Soviet power, fighting against communism, against Bolshevism. It was extremely reactionary organization but which gained quite a lot of support in Western Ukraine on the basis of this or helped let's say by the really stupid policies, Russian nationalist policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But this may make no mistake about this. This is a fascist organization. They themselves say we are fascists, we model ourselves on Mussolini and fascist dictatorships in Central Europe and so on. And then later on when it became fashionable it became also a Nazi organization, pro-German national socialist organization. And in fact, and then this comes the next part of this formation of the national identity of Ukraine which is very important today which is the Second World War. And the Second World War was mainly of course a war in Ukraine, mainly a war between the Red Army, Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. And the own took a position led by people like Stevan Bandera, Yushevich and others. They took a position of collaborating with the Nazis. Not just collaborating with the Nazis, the idea was we're gonna declare an independent Ukraine, independent fascist Ukraine, we're gonna call on the Nazis to support themselves on us here. We're gonna be the representatives of Nazi Germany and the Nazi ideology and Hitler had given some hints that he will be in favor of something like that. And the Nazis were able to raise a volunteer division in Galicia, the SS Galicia, volunteer division of the SS troops amongst the Galician peasants and Ukrainian nationalists. This reactionary Ukrainian nationalism allied, again, like in the 1920s, with powers to its west, a western imperialist powers. Not in the sense that we understand today, but in this case with Germany, a powers that came from that side. Now, Jesus. Now this is far, but I'll spend a bit more time on this question before I jump because this is very important. In 1939, as you know, there was the Hitler-Stalin pact and they divided Poland, the division of Poland between Germany and Soviet Union and Stalin's Russia meant also the occupation, the partition of Poland meant also the Red Army occupation of Galicia and Bolivia, which had up until that time been part of Poland. And this was also an important part of this question of the formation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. And also then they raised an armed wing, which was the Ukrainian insurgent army, which was a bit wider than the own itself that was fighting on the side of the Nazis. And they, in the periods when they were in power or in a position to do so, they carried out massive pogroms of Jews but also and mainly of Poles. Their idea was that we need to ethnically cleanse the whole of Western Ukraine from Poles. Remember that this area had been in the Polish domination for a very long time and it was a multinational region. And tens of thousands of Poles were massacred in the most brutal way. In fact, they were the shock troops for Nazi Germany and they carried out the most dirty work for the Nazis, particularly in 41, 43, which is the period of German occupation. Now, by a quirk of history, Indian Hitler was not in favor of this idea of an independent Ukraine. And the Ukrainian Nazis would wanted them to be recognized by Germany were left without the recognition, but this didn't stop their collaboration. Some of them were arrested by the Nazis, like Stevan Bandera, but they were kept in good conditions in special quarters in the concentration camp. And the collaboration continued, even in the period where the UPA insurgent army was allegedly also fighting the Nazis. And lots of the cadres of the own and the UPA were trained by the Germans. And then when the Germans entered again, they were the shock troops for them in Ukraine. But of course, this is just one side of the story. Millions of Ukrainians from all parts of the country participated in the Red Army struggle against Nazi Germany. And this is part of the historical memory, the banner of the victory, the victory day. And all of that is part of the historical memory of millions of Ukrainians today. And millions died. Ukraine is the country which had the largest proportion of population killed during World War II and where some of the most important battles took place. Now, you fast forward to 1989 and 91. It was the collapse of the Soviet Union, the restoration of capitalism, which was a complete disaster from the point of view of the Eastern countries, but particularly in Ukraine. Ukrainian population went down from, I think, 52 million to 45 million in the space of 10 years because of the increase in mortality, mass migration, and so on, the whole destruction of culture and everything and the creation of a really rotten regime based on oligarchs. And these oligarchs adopted this division of the country. Some oligarchs were Western Ukraine based, more liberal and pro-European Union, I pro-West, and some other oligarchs were more pro-based in the East and pro-Russian, pro-Eastern, but they didn't really care much about this. So all they cared was about the loot and they settled affairs amongst themselves through assassinations and so on, but they used this. And you can see in the political history of Ukraine since 1991, there's a clear division of the country between the East and the West. The East votes for the Party of the Regions. The West votes for other parties that are close or pro-European, pro-Western parties. And this division reflects and replicates the divisions that have existed historically in Ukraine. And then there was an attempt, a section of the oligarchic capitalist class in Ukraine to build Ukrainian national identity based on just half of the country or one side of the country. A reactionary Ukrainian nationalism. Not all Ukrainian nationalism is reactionary, but this particular brand of Ukrainian nationalism, which references itself on the organization of Ukrainian nationalism, nationalist, Stevan Bandera, the Ukrainian insurgent army, is reactionary, not only reactionary, but alienates a third or half of the country that has completely different points of reference and can only lead to the breakup of the country. This reactionary nationalism destroys the Ukraine. That's it. And this we can see very, very clearly after the Maidan, this process was strengthened after the Maidan takeover in 2014 when the new rulers in Kiev adopted a whole series of measures against the Russian language and education in the media, but also the glorification of Stevan Bandera, the Ukrainian insurgent army. There was a law that declared them the heroes of the national liberation of Ukraine. It is now banned in Ukraine to criticize them. This is a criminal act and so on and so forth. There's the Stevan Bandera streets and monuments and this is not just back in 2014, up until just a few days ago, was the 14th of October, the day of the defender of Ukraine instilled by Poroshenko in 2015. And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, gave a medal to a guy who was a veteran from the Ukrainian insurgent army who was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Poles during World War II. This guy is 99 now. But why did he need to have, to make this gesture? Well, quite clearly to appeal to this layer and to appeal to this building of a national identity based on this reactionary Ukrainian nationalism. Now, some Ukrainian communists that I've spoken to, they explained it in the following way and they're not wrong. They say Lenin created Ukraine and the Ukrainian nationalists have destroyed the country and this is true. It was Lenin's policy that allowed for the creation of the first independent Ukrainian Republic that has ever existed, existed in the modern times. And it's the Ukrainian nationalist, Ukrainian reactionary nationalist which have split and destroyed the country because of course, the Maidan movement in 2014 had a counter reaction. People who didn't like Stevan Bandera, who didn't like these national heroes, they rose up, didn't like the national rights being trampled upon, they rose up. And there was no talk in the West at that time about national sovereignty, the national rights of the Russian speaking people, people in the Donbas and the Donetsk and Odessa and other places who were massacred as well against whom the army was sent in the anti-terrorist operation. And then there was another important point at that time which is that because when the army arrived in places like Slaviansk, Kramatorks and so on, there's videos from that time. In the Western bourgeois media who was reported and they found that instead of Russian invaders with the fact it was the local population who started talking to them, blockading the tanks and then they said we're not gonna fight against these people. And the Ukrainian state had no other recourse or had no other better idea than to raise volunteer battalions mainly from amongst the far-right neo-Nazi nationalists to carry out this. And this is the origins of the Azeroth battalion. And this is the situation that led to a civil war in Ukraine in which of course Russia took advantage and intervened, but that was not the origins. Russia took advantage of that and intervened but that was very much a homegrown conflict in Ukraine between two sides of the population. And so just coming to 50 minutes, just coming to an end, I'll just like to say two more things. One is that, oh, by the way, this is not just what this Lenin created Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalists have destroyed it. It's not just something that Ukrainian communists say, but also Putin said this. Didn't he say this when he was announcing the invasion? He said, well, you want the decommunization. Well, let's go all the way because Ukraine is a communist Bolshevik creation of Lenin, which will have never existed, he said. This is his position, but he's not wrong on the facts. He's not wrong on the facts. The Ukrainian independent sovereign republic could only exist because of Soviet power in Russia because of the Bolshevik revolution, he said. So you don't want communism, well, let's do away with all of it. Let's go to the situation prior when the Russian Empire controlled the country. And then Zelensky, in fact, this is ironic because Zelensky tried to move away from this division of the country. He was elected on the basis of implementing the peace agreements, reintegrating the Donbas into Ukraine. And in fact, this is a bit funny, but he tried to look for other national identity symbols. He said, if we reference ourselves to things that happen in the Second World War, we're gonna be split, he is right. So the new national symbol of Ukraine is gonna be the borsch, the Ukrainian national soup. And this you will unite all Ukrainians, then other people say, no, borsch is not really Ukrainian. But anyway, this was his attempt to do this. And he was completely opposed by the far right. They created the no surrender, what's it called, the no surrender coordinating committee, something like this. And they basically faced him, even arms in hand. These are the people who've been armed by the state. And he basically gave in to them in the end. They, the monster they themselves had created. So what is the position that Marxist revolutionaries internationally should take on this conflict? No, having understood what's the background to this. Well, first of all, I mean, I will say that the clear model is the position that the Marxists took in the First World War, the position of Livnek. And Lenin, the main enemy of the working class is at home. This means that we here in Britain, we have a war-mongering government. All of them have gone, least trust, Ben Wallace, Boris Johnson, several times. They've all gone to Kiev, show support, more and supporting this war. Because they see this as a war against Russia, an opportunity to weaken Russia. So our main enemy is our own ruling class. And so therefore we are against Western imperialism. We're against the imperialist war-mongering of our own government. We cut across through the fog of lights and we link the foreign policy with the home policy. Same government spending millions and billions in propping up this regime in Kiev. Now, tell me, how much sovereign is the government in Kiev when the wages of its civil servants are paid by Washington and London and Brussels? This is no sovereignty at all in that. When its army is trained in Britain, 10,000 soldiers, Ukraine soldiers, been trained here when its ammunition come from the west, when its satellite imaginary comes from the west, when its intelligence comes from the west, the coordination of the operation. I mean, this is a colony of NATO right now. But going back to this question, we need to link foreign policy with home policy. The same government that has no money, people have no money to hit their homes here, while the government is sending millions to this war in a faraway country. This is a complete scandal. The Russian Marxists' first task is to oppose their own government. This is a reactionary war on the part of, put it in, reactionary imperialist war based on great Russian nationalism, which is one of the most reactionary ideologies that's ever been includes anti-Semitism and a whole number of other things. They should oppose this war. However, they need to take into account some other factors, that since this is a war between NATO and Russia, there are gonna be many Russian workers who think, who are not very happy with NATO interfering in Russia so they need to be careful not to mix the banners with the banners of the bourgeois liberals in Russia who are also against the war, but they are in favor of NATO. They like to have a pro-NATO government in Russia so they need to be careful with that. And finally, this leaves us the question which is the most complicated one. What should be the position of Ukrainian Marxists, Ukrainian revolutionaries? And here, there's all sorts of confusion. In the same way, there's groups here in this country whose position is arms for Ukraine sanctions on Russia. Why do you even start criticizing this? This is the position of Boris Johnson. Sorry, Lisztras, I don't even know who's in power here. This is the position of Joe Biden. Why do you need a socialist group to adopt that position? I mean, this is complete capitulation to your own imperialism, but going back to Ukraine, there are groups there who call themselves socialists who in fact have adopted the position of Ukrainian nationalism, the worst possible position that you can have. And I'd like to read with the permission of the chair a short quote. What was the position that the Serbian Marxists, the Serbian socialist took in World War I? Remember that Lenin said, the only part of this war, which is a genuine war of national defense, is on the Serbian side, he said. Because remember, it was the Serbians who killed the Archduke of, Arch, Archduke Ferdinand, but in fact this was a war of Austro-Hungarian empire against Serbia. It invaded Serbia and you could argue, as Lenin said, that this is a war of national defense on the part of a Serbian. Everything else is an imperialist war that we oppose, but we could consider giving support to the Serbian War of National Liberation. Very similar situation. What did the Serbian Marxists say? So in a letter to Rakovsky, one of the leaders of the Serbian Marxists said, for us, it was clear that as far as the conflict between Serbia and Austro-Hungary was concerned, our country was obviously in a defensive position. He says a few other things and then he says, if social democracy had a legitimate right to vote for war, they had members of parliament in the Serbian parliament. Anyway, then certainly that was the case in Serbia above all. But he then says, however, however, for us, the decisive fact was that the war between Serbia and Austria was only a small part of a totality, merely the prologue to universal European war. And this latter, we were profoundly convinced of this, could not fail to have a clearly pronounced imperialist character. And as a result, we, being part of the great socialist proletarian international, considered that it was our bounden duty to oppose the war resolutely. We did not want to cause any diss, and then he makes an ironic point. So they opposed the war. They voted against the war credits in the Serbian parliament. At a time, when the country was being invaded by Austro-Hungary, and there was a strong nationalist movement, they said, no, this is just a prelude of a bigger international war. And remember that it was Russia that was using the national rights of the peoples in the Balkans to their own advantage, Zaris Russia, that is. And then he says in an ironic, I'm not sure if it's ironic or not, but he says, he comes across that way, he says, as a result, oh, sorry, we did not want to cause any discord in the attitude of the sections of the international. And yet, it is precisely through our position, opposition to the war, that we have, contrary to our intentions, caused such discord. For alas, almost all of the other socialist parties have voted for this war. So imagine, they were in the position where it would have been at least somewhat justified to vote for war credits. And then it was all the others, i.e. the Germans, the French, the Belgians, all of the other socialist parties voted for the war. With very few exceptions. But then he says also something very interesting, which I think is relevant to Ukraine, he says, unfortunately, we were only too right. This war, this letter was written in the spring of 1915, letter to Rakovsky. He says, unfortunately, we were only too right. This war has destroyed Serbia. It will be an understanding, statement to say that the country has been decimated. Half and the best half of our population has been destroyed. To losses in combat, we must add, others, even greater caused by T-foid fever, other epidemics, blah, blah, blah. What was the best and most valuable in Serbia no longer exists? And then he says, greater Serbia will have no Serbs. Now this phrase has become a popular saying amongst us. I.e. the idea of the Serbian bourgeois to create a greater Serbia, which was their idea, which meant also territorial takeovers of other neighboring countries, of course. Now this phrase has become a popular saying amongst us. Greater Serbia will have no Serbs. The national policy of the bourgeois in Serbia will destroy the Serbian people. And they were right. He says, the people are completely exhausted and all of them long for peace. The most, they have experienced the most terrible disillusion about their own chauvinist policies. So I think that this kind of gives us an indication. What should be the policy of Marxist in Ukraine? Well, the Marxist in Ukraine must explain that it is the policy of Ukrainian reactionary nationalists that have been in power that has created, first of all, the division of Ukraine in 2014, which gave a fertile ground for Russian intervention. So you can't sort any of this out without starting from that point of view. And that policy should be in order for there to be an independent sovereign Ukraine. First of all, we must overthrow the regime of the Ukrainian oligarchs. And on that basis, and on that basis alone, we can then make an appeal to the Russian workers to overthrow their own regime of the oligarchs and settle matters between the two peoples in a friendly matter. Now this might seem completely utopian at the present time. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has certainly, must have certainly pushed a lot of people in the hands of reactionary Ukrainian nationalism, even people weren't that way inclined before. But as the war goes on and Ukraine is battered and destroyed, some people will start to long for peace as this letter says. Some people will start to say, was it worth? Why, what's the reason for this war? Weren't these politicians completely irresponsible to divide Ukraine along national lines in the first place? And should we not put an end to this? And this is the policy, and on this basis, is that the policy of the Ukrainian Marxist must be developed. Thank you, and sorry for going all the way.