We publish this resolution unanimously approved by the IMT World Congress (Greece, July 29 - August 3, 2014).
The counterrevolutionary Maidan movement in Ukraine brought to power a right-wing nationalist government which contains far right neo-fascist elements. The provocative policies of the new government towards the Russian speaking population in the South East and Crimea pushed them towards secession. The reactionary capitalist Russian government of Putin took advantage of this to advance its own interests.
The Yatseniuk-Turchynov-Poroshenko government, with the full support of Washington, London and Berlin, has pursued a policy of curtailing democratic rights and launched a so-called “anti-terrorist operation” against its own people in the Donbass, including the bombing and shelling of civilian areas.
Fascist and Nazi paramilitary gangs and private armies funded by individual oligarchs have been incorporated into the state apparatus and given impunity for their violent activities. Left-wing, communist and trade union activists have been attacked, kidnapped and murdered, their offices assaulted, looted and burnt down, forcing their organisations underground. This culminated in the Odessa massacre in which at least 48 people (including members of the KPU, Komsomol and Borotba) were killed at the hands of the fascist paramilitary gangs.
A legal assault has been launched against the Communist Party of Ukraine - an organisation which received 2.6 million votes in the last parliamentary elections - with the stated aim of banning the party and its symbols. The communist organisation Borotba has already been forced underground after its offices were raided and attempts were made to kidnap some of their leading activists.
The International Marxist Tendency expresses its full solidarity with the anti-fascist resistance in Ukraine and pledges to mobilise the widest possible layers of the labour movement and the youth worldwide to defend the democratic rights of those struggling against the Kiev authorities.
At the same time we firmly believe that a genuine anti fascist movement can only be built on the basis of proletarian internationalism and must be linked to the struggle against capitalism. The only solution for the working people of Ukraine lies not in nationalism (neither Ukrainian nor Russian), which divides them and allows the oligarchs to impose their policies, but rather in the fraternal unity of workers of different national groups and speaking different languages, based on the recognition and respect of their cultural and linguistic rights. This means the expropriation of the oligarchs, the restoration of collective ownership and the abolition of capitalism in Ukraine which would have a powerful effect in Russia itself.
- Solidarity with the antifascist resistance in Ukraine
- Down with the NATO-EU backed Kiev regime carrying out war on its own people
- Stop the war in the Donbass
- For working class unity firmly based on proletarian internationalism
- For the expropriation of the oligarchs and the building of a planned economy under democratic workers’ control
- For a socialist Ukraine, for a socialist Russia - workers of the world unite!
Approved unanimously by the IMT World Congress - Greece, July 29 - August 3, 2014