The 2014 US-NATO coup in Ukraine and subsequent conflict entered a new phase on February 24, 2022, as the Special Military Operation began, directly challenging US imperialist hegemony. A coalition of forces within Russia, which includes Communists, are battling US-NATO imperialism. The SMO began after the Russian Duma, led by an initiative from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics. These regions of Ukraine have been resisting the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, which saw other regions fight back as well, but who were defeated by the US-NATO backed military.
The international communist movement, which has been rebuilding since the counter-revolution within the USSR in the early 1990s, has revealed right and left forces who have attacked the SMO and Russia, supporting Ukraine instead.
The Party of Communists USA has resolutely stood with our comrades from the Communist Party of Ukraine, who participated with the US Friends of the Soviet People’s annual Commemoration on the Great October Socialist Revolution. Both the Komsomol (Young Communist League) and the Communist Party of Ukraine worked with US Friends of the Soviet People, the PCUSA, and other allied organizations and parties in the 2021, including the currently imprisoned Kononovich brothers.
US Friends of the Soviet People 2021 Commemoration of the 104th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution
The Party of Communists USA has always stood by our comrades in Ukraine. We recall a declaration from the Communist Party of Ukraine, months before the Maidan coup:
The Communist Party of Ukraine has issued an urgent call for solidarity from the international workers’ movement, warning that an attempted fascist coup is underway in the former Soviet republic.
On the afternoon of Dec. 8, protesters in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, toppled a statue of Soviet leader V.I. Lenin. The Svoboda (“Freedom”) party set up its flag and also the flag of the World War II era Nazi collaboration regime on the pedestal. The group’s leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, declared this vandalism to be the “political murder” of communists.
Protests began in Kiev on Nov. 21, uniting various pro-Western opposition forces under the name “Euromaidan,” after the government of Viktor Yanukovich announced plans to delay agreements toward integrating Ukraine into the European Union.
Yanukovich, who had strongly supported joining the EU, pulled back as European and U.S. officials poured on pressure to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine’s bourgeois government. This pressure included extremely harsh terms for an International Monetary Fund loan.
While the numbers have been exaggerated in Western media reports, the pro-imperialist protests have grown and undertaken numerous provocations – including ramming a government building with a bulldozer.
The Svoboda group plays a leading role in the protest movement. Party leader Oleg Tyagnibok, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, has built his political career on appeals to anti-Russia nationalism and anti-Semitism.
Following the destruction of the Lenin monument, Anatoli Sokoliuk, head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Communist Party of Ukraine, reported: “At 19:00 Kiev time, crowds of opposition in the city center are saying that their next target will be the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich. They are calling for the arrest of the Ukrainian government.
“The fascists have also called for the destruction of the Communist Party of Ukraine office and expressed a desire to kill all of our workers,” said Sokoliuk. “That is why I and my comrades will defend our headquarters.”
The German daily Junge Welt reported Dec. 9 that the Ukrainian government had begun raids against organizations involved in the Euromaidan movement. It is unclear what impact these steps will have on quelling the U.S./European-backed forces.
Anti-war and solidarity activists in the U.S. must be on alert to respond to further provocations by the West and by fascists inside Ukraine.
Declaration from the Communist Party of Ukraine, December 10, 2013
The KPU, or Communist Party of Ukraine, led the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the USSR years and was then the third largest political party in Ukraine up until 2014, when the KPU was brutally suppressed by the US-NATO installed coup government.
Various trends within the world communist movement decided to take the side of the US-NATO installed coup government, on behalf of the “people of Ukraine.” The “people of Ukraine” ceased to have a say in any form of parliamentary form, nor any media presence as the post-2014 government has cracked down on all avenues of dissent, be it media, trade unions, or the Communist Party of Ukraine itself. Fascism, once rooted, is not regular bourgeois democracy as in the Russian Federation or United States of America, but rather a government which represents reaction in its purest form; a corporate oligarchy which controls all channels of communication and the lives of the people.
For this reason, at the time of the SMO, to call for support for the “people of Ukraine” (a country which has been broken into different geographical pieces by US-NATO imperialism) against the “unjust invasion” of the Russian Federation, is to regurgitate US-NATO talking points.
Ideological trends in the world communist movement of 2023 have used different paths to arrive to the same location, supporting fascism in Ukraine and the goals of US-NATO imperialism.
Sam Webb was the leader of the Communist Party USA from 2000 to 2014 and openly supports the “heroic resistance” of the “Ukrainian people”
Those who call themselves Communists and say the same message as Antony Blinken, Secretary of the US State Department, need to pause and rethink their statements and actions.
The Party of Communists USA reiterates our support for the Communist Party of Ukraine, and our support for the people of US-NATO dominated Ukraine, and likewise the people of the Luhansk and Peoples Republics, and of all the Communist Parties, workers, people and allied organizations of all the former Soviet Republics in their efforts to resist the number one enemy in the world today, US-NATO imperialism.
The PCUSA welcomes the SMO as it has created a new line of demarcation within the world communist movement of those who are opposed to fascism and those who are not.
The rebuilding of an international communist movement can now resume, as the SMO has revealed the dangerous actors who seek not to construct but to divide the Communist parties. The PCUSA, working with allied Parties, struggles for a real new Marxist-Leninist ideological pole, which as of 2023 is now being established. In addition, our Party works domestically to create an anti-NATO electoral coalition, while also participating internationally in anti-US-NATO-imperialism organizations.
By Chris Bovet
National Chair
Central Committee
Party of Communists USA
