Guevara’s ‘heresy’ reflected his profound perception of socialism as a transitional stage – the period between capitalism and communism – in which the qualitative tasks of preparing human consciousness and social relations for communist society were as important as the quantitative tasks of developing the forces of production. ‘We fight poverty but we also fight alienation’, he said: ‘Marx was concerned with both with economic facts and their reflection in the mind, which he called a “fact of consciousness.” If communism neglects facts of consciousness, it can serve as a method of distribution but it will no longer express revolutionary moral values.’ Through the revolutionary process, Cubans would transform themselves and this would in turn impact upon the institutions and relations they established within the Revolution.

-Yaffe (2009) Pgs. 9-10

This was heresy??? God. Old Soviet dogmatism’s a migraine.

This earlier section in the book has me very curious about the specifics of his critiques.

Guevara challenged the way in which Marxism had been interpreted and applied in the socialist bloc, condemned the dogmatism of the USSR and set up an alternative economic management system in Cuba. Through his systematic critique of Soviet political economy, by 1966 he was able to conclude that without a dramatic policy change, capitalism would return to the Soviet Union. [!!!]

Pg. 2

Prior to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 there was a lack of community identification and empowerment in Cuba. The country’s Batista-run government was a dictatorship supportive of America’s off-shore business interests, and Cubans were not able to participate actively in decision-making in areas that most affected their community organizations and workplaces. An attempt to change people’s perspectives from the individual to the collective was led by Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, who believed that living under a capitalist economic system caused people to adopt traits characterized by individual greed, profit, and selfishness. His aim was to instill in the Cuban people new values that emphasized moral convictions of social justice and a collective rather than an individualist approach to life (Benjamin, 1997). According to Juan Antonio Blanco, Director of the Felix Varela Center, a Cuban non-governmental organization studying ethics and politics, one of the goals of the Cuban Revolution was to create those new perspectives and values in Cuban citizens. It sought to create Guevara’s vision of el hombre nuevo, the new man. The Cuban Revolution thus sought to be not only a vehicle for redistributing wealth in Cuba but also to release the Cuban people’s creativity and participation in society (Benjamin, 1997). One of the vehicles for bringing about that change in values was the introduction of structural changes and the creation of mass participatory organizations which were intended to restructure traditional attitudes and beliefs and to transform Cubans into selfless and cooperative members of the community (Salas, 1983).

First, I will say that it was Lenin himself who argued that a transitional DotP will inevitably include elements of both socialism and capitalism:

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order. But what does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question. Let us enumerate these elements:

1. patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming; 2. small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain); 3. private capitalism; 4. state capitalism; 5. socialism. Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific feature of the situation.

V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Childishness, April 1918

The question in my mind is not "is China socialist or capitalist?" but rather "is China a dictatorship of the proletariat or a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie?" and further "in which direction is China's development heading?"

If a nation is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, then it does not matter how socialist its policies or economics becomes, because the government remains a government by and for the bourgeoisie and so capitalism and private ownership will remain a thorn in the side of the working class - see, for example, the failure of the German Social-Democrats to secure proletarian power and their eventual succumbing to reaction and fascism.

On the other hand, if a nation is a dictatorship of the proletariat, then it is entirely possible that, provided it is done carefully and with profound discipline, the nation can incorporate elements of capitalism during a transitional period and use them to develop the economy in a progressive and beneficial manner.

China has shown no signs of a bourgeois counter-revolution, nothing of the sort that has been observed in Eastern Europe after the fall of socialism there. The Communist Party of China remains the leading party and the majority party in China. The Chinese constitution continues to proclaim the pursuit of socialism; their leaders continue to profess an adherence to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. If the bourgeoisie were in power in China, there would be no need for a pretense of socialism. Why should we believe the Chinese proletariat is so extraordinarily class-conscious and organized as to necessitate the pretense of socialism in order to keep them content, yet so uneducated and weak as to have no ability to recognize a bourgeois counter-revolution nor any motivation to fight against it? It is far more sensible to view China as a long-standing DotP.

As for which direction China is heading, I will offer my recommended reading on China:

Why the World Needs China, Kyle Ferrana, 2024

The East Is Still Red, Carlos Martinez, 2023

The economists Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano and Stefanie Stantcheva have conducted some fascinating surveys of public perceptions of a variety of policy issues, and the results on immigration are sobering. UK respondents dramatically overestimate how many immigrants there are and how many of them are Muslim. They overestimate what proportion of immigrants are from north Africa by a factor of 10, and from the Middle East by a factor of two, and underestimate how many are from North America. Respondents underestimate how many are Christian, and also underestimate the education levels and employment status of immigrants relative to the UK-born population. These misperceptions are not unique to the UK — they are common in rich countries.

[...]

Foreign-born UK residents are much more likely to be of working age than the UK-born — and thus less of a fiscal burden. They tend to be healthier than the UK-born, and are much more likely to have a university degree. Seventy-five per cent of them have lived in the UK for more than five years and 90 per cent speak good English. None of this suggests that immigration is likely to usher in any sort of financial, social or cultural calamity.

https://ia801508.us.archive.org/34/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.190774/2015.190774.The-Poverty-Of-Historicism.pdf

You might find these interesting! You should definitely give them a read.

I was already familiar with Popper, not extensively I'll admit, but enough. Such a curious recommendation. This is the famous philosoper who frames historicism as a sort of fatalism, suggesting it treats the course of history as an inevitable march where human intervention is basically useless. He reduces historical materialism to something like a prophetic machine. Well, such a peculiar reading of Marxism! He even draws on meteorological forecasting analogies to compare it to social prediction, going so far as to frame it as a sort of prophecy; a convenient move, since it allows him to strip the concept of agency from it in line with his own philosophical preferences.

His concept of historicism has been described by another philosopher, Walter Kaufmann, as almost an idiosyncrasy, reflecting a lack of academic responsibility and exegetical rigor, given that he groups Plato, Hegel, and Marx into the same category, alongside a political narrative reinforced by his philosophy in service of a political agenda. I mean, how can one read him without taking into account the historical context in which he lived? Popper himself stated that The Open Society and Its Enemies was his contribution to the war.

The 'laws' of capital, like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, are tendential. They actively depend on the dynamics of class struggle. And ironically, Popper himself cites Marx's famous line about philosophers only interpreting the world when the real task is to change it, yet "seems" to miss that the centrality of praxis already disrupts any notion of passive determinism. Dialectics, by its very nature, resists rigid determinism. That was one of his targets too, but instead of engaging with it, he ends up constructing a strawman. There's almost a built-in irony there; misunderstanding dialectics tends to expose itself the moment someone tries to critique it without actually grasping it. The joke kind of writes itself. The lack of it.

Another core argument of his is that it's logically impossible to understand or reshape society as a "whole," since all scientific inquiry and empirical observation have to isolate specific aspects of reality. From what's clear in his thinking, any attempt at total planning inevitably leads to authoritarianism, because the so-called utopian engineer would have to silence irrational objections, and in doing so, would end up suppressing rational critique as well. I might even agree with that, if we were just talking about philosophy in the abstract.

It's a pretty mechanical misunderstanding of what totality means. Marxist dialectics account for structural relations; majorly exploitation of labor, the commodity form… it's economic analysis! He rejects systemic analysis on the grounds that we can't comprehend the totality of the world, so basically his epistemology ends up atomizing reality. It focuses so much on isolated parts that it refuses to acknowledge the machinery they belong to, which makes it impossible to understand the roots of systemic crises. It's outright a refusal to engage with it on its own terms.

Actually, to his credit, he does propose an alternative to large-scale planning, but even there, he treats social institutions as if they were neutral tools, machines you can calibrate to achieve certain ends. That's just not how material reality works under capitalism itself. The state and its institutions function to reproduce and sustain capital accumulation. His idea of gradual reform lacks systemic grounding. The moment reforms begin to threaten profit rates or the dominance of ruling classes, they're either hollowed out or outright reversed by the same institutional framework. It ends up being a sort of denial dressed up as pragmatism. Society doesn't just need incremental reforms, it's the same flawed logic as thinking the abolition of slavery ended the entire system of oppression built around it, when its consequences clearly persist to this day.

Marxism analyzes the internal contradictions of capitalism, like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which is already a complex economic framework in itself. Regardless of where one stands politically, Marx's importance to the study of economic history is undeniable; any serious academic curriculum touches on it.

A Marxist Critique of Anarchism by Nodrada

The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict Ann Robertson

The Makhno Movement and Bolshevism by Alp Altinörs

Anarchism or Socialism? by Stalin

Marxism vs Anarchism by Zhenli

A Marxist Critique of Anarchism by Poejesh

Conspectus of Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy by Marx

The Myth of Nestor Makhno by Colin Darch

"On Proudhon" Letter from Marx to JB Schweizern

Bonus: a cute anecdote

Vladimir Vasilyevich Romanenko // (68 years old), city of Selidovo // (Donetsk People’s Republic) // Comment by a medical worker during the inspection of the site of his family’s killing: //“In my left hand are clearly human remains. These are ribs, fragments of bones. This is a woman’s hair clip, found among a pile of burned body fragments. In my right hand I have remains of a human spinal column.” // “Right here, on this very spot, my family was shot, and when their bodies were burned, I did not see it. They were completely burned, most likely because the Ukrainian soldier saw me run away. In my hands I have the hair clip of my daughter-in-law — little Olechka, my daughter-in-law’s clip. She was standing right here. // At seven in the morning, I went outside to the toilet in the yard, in the garden. I went out there and heard shouting: ‘Everyone come out of the house.’ It was a man shouting, a Ukrainian soldier, in Ukrainian camouflage with a green stripe. He looked about 50 years old, short in height. // When they brought my family out of the house and made them stand facing the wall, he was shouting across the whole street. There were two of them. One stood a bit further away, and the other stood in such a way that I could see him very clearly. // From the side of the garage they placed my wife, then my grandson, my son — I don’t remember exactly. Then my daughter-in-law and the matchmaker — the daughter-in-law’s mother. My daughter-in-law started crying, saying: ‘What are you doing?’ And he just started shooting. He shot my wife first. Then he went on shooting the others. I ran away through the garden. // Later, when I came back on the 28th, I saw the bodies lying by the wall where they had been shot. But they had been burned. The next day I went, found some bags, and gathered the remains. Where it had burned, I covered the remains. Everything that was there, I collected into five bags and buried them here under the entrance to my building. We buried five people — five bags that remained — my family. Years of birth: 1951, 1955, 1978, 1974, and 1991.”

[machine translated]

Vladimir Nikolaevich Pogorelov // city of Selidovo // (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “I was buying milk in Voroshilovka. An old man asked Ukrainian soldiers: ‘Boys, when the Russians come, how will we live with them?’ One of them, the biggest one, turned and said: ‘Grandpa, don’t be afraid of the Russians — be afraid of us.’ He said: ‘We have 600 guns; when we leave, we’ll wipe Selidovo out.’ Since 2015 they’ve been promising to wipe us out. Ukrainian soldiers personally told my mother twice, and almost all women: ‘When we leave, we’ll wipe Selidovo off the face of the earth.’ But I stayed so it wouldn’t be wiped out. // Near shop No. 56, people used to gather to buy things. A mortar shell hit there once — no one was killed. A week later, people gathered again. I was thinking of going in the morning to buy mineral water but decided to go after noon. My godfather Alexei and my friend Gena went there to buy meat. Around ten o’clock a shell hit — four people were wounded. A woman had her kidney torn out, Gena had his leg pierced and an artery severed. A fragment got stuck and wasn’t removed. My godfather Alexei Vanin also had his leg pierced through and a graze to the head. Ukraine was firing. September–October. // In September, near the Revino bridge, I went to feed dogs. Ukrainian soldiers lived three houses down. When they left, they simply threw a grenade into the house. It caught fire and burned for two days because people were afraid it might be mined. // Or on Ostrovsky Street — a soldier came out from two houses down. Three minutes later, the house exploded. // Refugees from Peski and Pervomaisk were living in the children’s hospital. Ukrainian soldiers came, inspected the building, saw where people were living, collected all the fire extinguishers, and left. About six hours later, a strike hit — from Ostrovsky Street. It hit exactly where the refugees were living. There were no fire extinguishers, nothing to put out the fire. Those who survived gathered and fled further into Ukraine. // Russian troops were not there yet. They entered on Thursday around 2 p.m. On Tuesday, Ukrainian soldiers entered house No. 19, in front of mine. They went around breaking doors and shooting everyone they found. Anyone who opened the door was shot in the head. An 80-year-old grandmother, a lifelong teacher, was shot in the head. Everyone there was shot in the head. Three people survived — one didn’t manage to open the door, another barricaded himself and heard French and Ukrainian speech. A Frenchman said something, and a Ukrainian replied: ‘We don’t have time to break doors anymore. We’ve already cleared it.’ They left him alive because they had no time. // On Wednesday, someone with a Georgian accent walked through our yard shouting: ‘Is anyone alive?’ He reached my building. I was about to answer when he started swearing. I gathered the residents — six of us — to decide whether to open. We decided not to, since he was swearing. We waited for someone more polite. That was Wednesday — he was deliberately looking for civilians to kill. // In our building, they took a family of five, including a child, out into the yard and shot them. Ukrainian soldiers. // Snipers were placed here, and starting Tuesday they shot all the men. One ran into a shop — the sniper shot him there. His body is still lying there. // At the intersection, bodies lie in a row. All were shot in the head. Around this house, all the men were shot by Ukrainian snipers, maybe mercenaries. // A son came from a nearby street, saw his father lying dead, and ran home for shovels. While running, a sniper shot him in the head. He didn’t manage to bury his father.”

[machine translated]

Valentina Yevgenyevna Vasilkonova, city of Selidovo (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “On October 21, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were retreating. We were standing by the entrance, and they started shooting. We heard Ukrainian speech: ‘Come here, come here.’ We ran and scattered into the entrances. My front door was shot through. I ran inside quickly, and a Ukrainian soldier shouted: ‘She ran over there.’ And they shot through my door — there’s still a hole in it to this day. // They also fired at the building across from us, number 12. We ran inside, but people were standing in entrance number 12 across the way. They locked the entrance. The Ukrainian soldiers said: ‘Open up, open up, nothing will happen to you.’ Aunt Valya opened it, and they shot the four of them. They hadn’t done anything. Lena was just sitting on the couch. They shot her. They shot her son, asking why he wasn’t fighting. They shot Sasha. Aunt Valya started screaming, and they shot her too. Lena said: ‘What are you doing?’ One of the soldiers said: ‘What should we do with her?’ Another said: ‘Just finish her.’ And they did.

A boy, Kolya, ran in. He lived nearby and had heard the shooting. He ran over, and they shot him too. Four people at once. Then they stayed in that apartment — about twelve of them. A young man living across saw everything through the window. They shot up his windows. // One man came out to surrender, and they shot him. He was lying near the entrance. In our Solnechny district, six people are lying dead. A woman was walking with a bag — a Ukrainian soldier shot her. Once, twice, three times. My neighbor Sasha told me: the soldier shot her three times. At first she started moving, and the soldier said: ‘Oh, you’re still moving?’ and shot again. ‘Waiters, waiters, waiters’ — that’s all we heard from them. // Sasha’s kitchen windows were shot up because they were firing. His door was shot too. My door was shot in the first entrance, his in the second. // When they were retreating, they shot at us. It’s good I hid… They opened the entrance and shot at the doors because they saw me running. Thank God they didn’t come into the apartment. If they had come in // In the neighboring house, a woman was feeding cats. Aunt Lena was 75 — they shot her. And Kirillovna, a Ukrainian language teacher, was running, made it into the entrance, but a soldier caught up with her and shot her. A 75-year-old woman feeding cats — why shoot her? // Those who write comments to me, those who left, say: ‘It can’t be Ukraine, Ukraine didn’t touch us when we lived there.’ But I stayed — I know it was Ukraine. // How do you prove that it was Ukraine who killed, and not Russia? Russia came — did they shoot us? No, on the contrary, they help us. They ask if we have food. We say we have everything, thank you. They help — they even brought me firewood. // My son also died on the 21st. He and Ruslan, a friend, and Seryozha went to a house on Ostrovskaya Street, 18, to drop off a friend. They arrived, got out — and Ukrainian soldiers were still sitting across from them. On the 22nd they had already reached our Solnechny district. It was around 10:30 at night. The soldiers said to them: ‘Why are you driving around?’ — ‘We brought a friend,’ Aunt Valya told me, Seryozha Sklyar’s mother. They kept asking: ‘Why are you driving around?’ // When I was burying my son, neighbors told me the soldiers had been drunk, they started picking on the boys, asking: ‘Why aren’t you fighting?’ I don’t know how it happened. They shot up the car — it’s still there by the house, riddled with bullets. Then they killed Seryozha. They carried him and laid him down. While they were carrying him, the soldiers were shooting at my son, Yevgeny Kirilenko. Aunt Valya said: ‘I started treating my son — his leg and arm were shot.’ // Then Zhenya went outside — a dog started whining. The soldiers had already shot the dog. He went out to it, and at around 10:30 at night they shot him near the dog. Then a soldier told Aunt Valya: ‘Look what they’re doing in that house.’ She said: ‘There’s no one left — you’ve already killed them all.’ And my son was lying there, dead. He hadn’t done anything. They weren’t rude, they didn’t argue, they didn’t say anything. They killed him simply for ‘why aren’t you fighting,’ for supposedly waiting for Russia. // Aunt Valya didn’t even hear our boys respond — they stayed silent. Then the soldiers came back and finished him off, in case he was still alive. Aunt Valya started screaming: ‘What are you doing, you butchers? You’ve already killed my son and now you’re killing him too.’ They didn’t touch Ruslan at first — he was the one bandaging him. // In the morning, when Ruslan tried to go out, the soldiers, while retreating, shot him too. So three people died at once. // Then the soldiers came here to our Solnechny district. So many people were killed here — bodies were lying around.

[machine translated]

Sergey Gennadievich Boenko, city of Selidovo (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “During their retreat, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were simply shooting everyone they came across. They went into apartment entrances, knocked on doors, broke down wooden doors, and shot those who opened them. On October 22, during the retreat, sometime after one o’clock, we heard intense automatic gunfire. // On the morning of the 23rd, I looked out the window and saw a dead man near entrance No. 6 of building 77 on Mikhaylovskaya Street. I went to the former ‘Solnechny’ shop and also saw a dead person on the corner. As it turned out, it was the neighbor of Sergey from the nearby building. He was killed on the corner of the building. // Neighbors saw that our neighbor had been killed. She was lying near the ‘Kolorit’ shop. Within a radius of one hundred meters from my brother’s apartment, I saw eight dead people. Valya — a neighbor from the first entrance — I buried her between the building and the shop. // Further on, near building 77, by the first entrance near the sidewalk, I saw two dead men of elderly age. Another dead person was near the sixth entrance. Near the ‘Solnechny’ shop, at the left corner of the store, lay Sergey Kasimov. At the right corner, behind the former ‘Soyuzpechat’ kiosk, there was another dead man. Behind the shops on the boulevard on the former Shchorsa Street (it was renamed under Ukrainian authorities), there was another man. And near building 12, by the first entrance, there was a dead man. // Another dead person lay near the turn by the house, near a concrete sewer cover. A second lay on the corner of that shop. A third man lay dead further down the sidewalk below the shop. One of them had been covered with something — he was about seventy years old. I had seen him alive several times before. // Varvara Sadchikova, a resident of the building’s first entrance, was killed about ten meters from here. I buried her on the 30th. She used to walk, loved dogs. She had dogs. She went out walking and was killed on the 22nd. // Near the second school there is a small-family dormitory building with a savings bank attached to it. Near the first entrance, right by a bench, there was a dead man lying there. Apparently, local residents had already covered him with something. That’s what I saw. // The Ukrainian Armed Forces also killed my former colleague from the mine, Volodya Borisov. At the intersection with Shevchenko Street. He was killed there in the same way as the others, during the retreat. You can’t call them soldiers… they’re monsters. They killed everyone indiscriminately. He was also killed. He had gone to fetch water, and they shot him there. // Why were they killed? I’ll tell you my view. Since 1991, there has been this rise of the Bandera narrative — that Bandera is a hero, that all those who were in the SS ‘Galicia’ division were actually fighting for Ukraine and did not kill civilians, and so on. But in reality, from the history we learned in Soviet school, we all know. // For ‘true’ Ukrainians now, the dream is to ‘rule’ — to dominate, to reign. Not through their own work, but by exploiting others — us, the eastern people.”

[machine translated]

Nikolai Vasilievich Glukhanich, // city of Kurakhovo (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “On December 19, 2024, I went out to take out the trash and on the way wanted to pick up a few more pieces of firewood from some broken wood. And Ukrainians dropped a drone on me near the second entrance, where the trash is off to the side, behind our building.

I have five fragments in me. In my temple, here on my arm there’s still a strong mark, and in my thigh. Where the temple is, you can clearly see it. If you want, I can take it off and show you how my shoulder was torn apart. // I was wearing this padded jacket, this quilted coat. It tore through it. It went from bottom to top. And right into the temple—can you imagine, two centimeters from the eye or so. It tore the hood, tore everything, and it was all very painful. Also here in the shin, in the leg. In total, five fragments. They’re small. They fired once. I already jumped into the entrance, and then a second time—the second drop was stronger. That is, they were finishing me off. // Another time before that, I was fixing doors in this entrance where I live. I reacted to the sound. When it hit—well, I managed to sit down in the entrance. My arm was hit—very strong, like by some kind of pellet. Extremely strong, like after a blow. Very, very painful. // They knew civilians lived here, knew we were civilians, saw that we were trying to clean around the house—they were watching us very closely. And they struck deliberately. They knew we were civilians. // Before me, the Terekhov family was injured. They went for water or firewood, and the son went first, around nine in the morning. I think he went for water; there was frost then, this was December 15, and he couldn’t get any. We were collecting water from a drainage outlet—it was closer and safer. But he probably went to the base where there were supplies of bottled water. Then his mother goes—he’s still not back—and she went to look for him. // I live on the fourth floor, I hear her shouting: ‘People, help!’ And she’s crawling there, along that alley behind the bank, crawling and rolling over. My God! I went out, started looking for people; a man from that building helped, and another one here. We found a blanket, pulled her out, then we see Sergey—her son—crawling too. She had a wound in her lower back and, I think, in the right leg, above the knee. And the son had an open fracture in the right shin. A terrible open fracture—the bone was sticking out. // She went to look for him after two or three hours. And they themselves were crawling and rolling, covering about half a kilometer like that. We dragged them maybe 100–150 meters—not much. With the fracture we just put on splints. It was December. // The drone knew that only civilians lived here. It’s bad, very bad. Ukrainians were finishing off their own. Then they started firing at our building. The windows are broken; I had just patched them up. It was coming from the direction of Dachnoye, where Ukraine was positioned. // They fired to the point that some kind of projectile flew in—I don’t know what it’s called, I still have the casing from it. It flew into the room, smashed things—seven through-holes in the kitchen, then it went through the bathroom, the storage room, then into the living room. About 30 holes in total, some through, some not. // Near the church, a young guy was injured. He lay in the basement for a month. He was also hit by a Ukrainian drone—he had been going for water, or they were feeding people in the church basement. He lived in that basement for a month and died near the church, somewhere there he was buried. His name was Viktor. // Others lived on Engels Street, and they had some kind of conflict with Ukrainian soldiers: ‘Why aren’t you leaving the city?’ And they were simply shot. I think they were pensioners—a man and a woman, maybe just below retirement age. It was Ukrainian soldiers who shot them. // Another man lived—he also had some kind of conflict with Ukrainian soldiers—they threw a grenade under his feet. His surname was Osipovich, in Yuzhny, that’s what I was told. Around 45 years old. // I wanted to go to church for Christmas. Ukrainians were dropping charges from drones, like mines, watching us from drones and striking like with mines. I couldn’t even go to church for Christmas.”

[machine translated]

Vitaliy Viktorovich Kolesnik, city of Kurakhovo (Donetsk People’s Republic // “People tried at night to run to a safe place, to the village of Krasnoye. They said they were shot at, struck by drones—basically, people were being killed. They were heading toward Donetsk, that is, toward the Russian troops. They were looking for safety, running there, running toward the Russian forces. And these enemies—‘Nazi’ Ukrainian soldiers—were firing at them, not letting them get there. // At some point people were looking for water. There’s the Vorsovskaya base here; there used to be a warehouse with water there—packs, maybe 19-liter ones, around ten of them. Some water remained, and people went there looking for it. Ukrainian drones attacked them. Many civilian bodies were lying right on the road. I even know the surname of one young guy—Terekhov—who was injured. A drone attacked him and damaged his legs. He started crawling. There was no one around. Then he rolled along near the highway, along the roadside with his injured legs. Eventually he crawled somewhere to a house and shouted for help. Apparently people heard him and pulled him out. And his mother was waiting for him. Her name was Valentina, may she rest in peace. She went to look for him, and a drone attacked her too. Somehow people carried them into a basement. But the mother couldn’t be saved—she died. Valentina Terekhova.

[machine translated]

Aleksandr Dmitrievich Chotiy, city of Kurakhovo (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “On December 20, 2024, my neighbor and I were living in a basement. We needed to go down into the cellar for household needs—get some potatoes, maybe some preserved food. We went behind the house and heard a drone flying in from the west. It flew behind the house, seemed like it kept going. // The cellar is very close—about five meters from the house. My neighbor was going down into the cellar, and I was standing nearby. Literally a second later, the drone came back and dropped something. // I fell. I couldn’t move because I realized a nerve in my thigh had been severed—in my right leg, and also in my left, it hit my toe and foot. // There was a man, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Kutsuvalov, born in 1980. A Ukrainian drone was specifically hunting him and two other people, dropped something on them, and he was also wounded. He lived at 10 Komsomolsky Avenue, apartment 20. // Ukrainian forces want to inflict maximum damage on the local residents who stayed here. They believe that those who stayed are ‘waiters,’ meaning they are waiting for the ‘Russian world.’ Most likely, that is why—to cause as much harm as possible to the local population.”

[machine translated]

Igor Aleksandrovich Kamenetsky, city of Kurakhove (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “On October 30, 2024, it was my father’s birthday. I congratulated him, then went to pass on greetings to a neighbor. We were with him in the garage, at 85 Michurina Street. // Two Ukrainian soldiers came in; with them was Andrey Bitner, born in 1976. They made us lie on the floor. I was struck on the head from above with a foot. When they entered the garage, they said: ‘Why didn’t you evacuate, you waiters.’ Basically, it was all ‘waiters, waiters, waiters.’ // They told us to lie face down. I was face down, and they kicked me in the back of the head with boots. Vova was shot in the arm. One of them asked about the car—whether it worked or not, what condition it was in, whether there was gasoline or not. They got in and drove away. // A second one stayed with us. The Ukrainian servicemen put us in a pit, back to back, made us take off our outer clothing, and took off our shoes. // One soldier continued: what are you doing here, translate from Ukrainian to Russian, from Russian to Ukrainian, do you know Ukrainian? // They forced us to sing the anthem. One told me to move toward the gate, press my head down, hands up—and a shot rang out. I saw Andrey slump to the side. // Another Ukrainian soldier came in. He said: ‘I’m here for you.’ They made me lie face down on the ground again. Again, questions: what are you doing here, what are you waiting for? // There was also a question from the second soldier to the first one who came in. He said: ‘Why did you kill that one?’ And he replied: ‘I didn’t want to guard two.’ // Then another one told me: ‘Get up and run.’ I said: where? ‘To Dnipropetrovsk.’ I ran to the turn, went around the corner to a neighbor. I asked for shoes, clothes, something to throw on.”

[machine translated]

Sergey Konstantinovich Andreev, city of Kurakhove (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “When the Ukrainian shelling began, we, of course, suffered greatly from it. Many were wounded, and there were deaths. // Acquaintances were returning home during curfew and saw that a Ukrainian unit was standing by a tank, and the commander was giving them orders: three shots at the city, two at the Kurakhove thermal power plant. // Our workers at the power plant tried in every possible way to provide heat and electricity to the city. But the Ukrainians hindered this. // Our mayor, whose surname is Padun, worked at the power plant and knew where to direct mortar fire, where it would hit most painfully so that it would take longer to repair. // And that’s why the Ukrainian military fired precisely at the transformer substation. As soon as smoke came out of the power plant’s chimney, shelling would begin. This was the first sign that people had restored the plant’s operation and started up the units to provide heat and electricity. // Mayor Padun knew exactly where to strike. According to rumors, he even gave instructions to the director—several directors changed at the plant during that period—to stop supplying heat, preserve the equipment, and evacuate all workers. // There were many collapses during the shelling, with people trapped under the rubble. There were many injuries, including shrapnel wounds. // The director of our lyceum was also affected in the same way. A strike hit while she was at home. In the kitchen, part of the window was blown out by the blast wave, and that fragment killed her. // Whenever shelling occurred, for some reason none of the Ukrainian soldiers suffered. They were warned in advance, and only civilians suffered. // There were many injuries. On my younger daughter’s birthday, a strike landed nearby. One woman was killed and another was seriously wounded. People were simply sitting on a bench when the Ukrainian shelling happened. // Later, drones appeared here—there were so many that it seemed like a swarm of bees. It was incredibly loud; they fell, exploded, and dropped payloads. Our apartment was damaged. It was a so-called ‘Baba Yaga’ drone. // We live on the fifth floor; in one room there is basically no ceiling anymore. The Ukrainian ‘Baba Yaga’ drone is one of the larger ones. We somehow learned to hide all the time. // Ukrainian troops did not reach our basement, but in the neighboring building they did and even took people hostage. People were sitting in the basement, and they drove them up to the first and second floors to use them as human shields. // I heard this from conversations with an acquaintance of mine who was in that basement.”

[machine translated]

Alexander Anatolyevich Machula and Elena Vladimirovna Machula, Kurakhove (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “On the first floor of our building lived a disabled man of the third category, Nikolai Ivanovich Samokhval, 57 years old. A support group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces came and killed him on December 23, sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight. Those who saw the body said there was a hematoma on the back of his skull. I understand it was a blow from a rifle butt. // One of four Ukrainian soldiers killed him. Four Ukrainian soldiers came to support those who were in the cooperative building and the House of Culture. The most brutal and stubborn among them had the callsign ‘Den,’ Dima. I didn’t let them into the entrance at first, but as soon as they got in, he pointed his rifle at me and said: ‘If you, old man, stop me from passing one more time, I’ll shoot you.’ //They threatened us, saying that when the Russians come, they’ll slaughter all of you. They said Russians eat dogs and cats, and that we are not people to them. // They stole property. Right in front of us, a Ukrainian soldier, about 20 years old, opened a wardrobe in the apartment opposite—a two-room flat. He told me he couldn’t wait to turn 18 to sign a contract with the Ukrainian army; he wanted to fight. He tore off a very strong lock, rummaged through drawers, and anything he found—he put in his pocket if it was valuable. // We all watched this in our entrance. We saw them breaking doors open without any hesitation, using crowbars. On the second floor, they fired several rounds from a 5.45 mm rifle while breaking down a door. // They arrived on December 19, 2024, around noon, and locked us in from the outside. They used us as a shield—I insist on that. I told them: ‘What are you doing, guys? You can’t do this.’ // Below us, they broke down the door of our neighbor Shanin. There was a sniper on the first floor beneath us, and a grenade launcher operator—the same ‘Den.’ They didn’t let us go anywhere. We couldn’t even go for water—we didn’t have water even to flush the toilet. // We used to go to a well under building 2V, but the Ukrainians locked us in. We cooked outside, and when I brought boiling water in, a Ukrainian soldier locked us inside with our own key. For three days, they didn’t let us out at all.

They left on December 23. I heard the key turn in the lock—that’s when we were finally able to go into the entrance. // The Ukrainians used drones a lot. They attacked us personally twice. We were walking from our damaged house, carrying some potatoes along Mechnikov Street, when a Ukrainian drone attacked us. Luckily, it got caught in the branches of a tree near the House of Culture. // The Ukrainian soldiers saw that civilians were walking. I was wearing a padded jacket, and my wife was wearing one too. We were carrying bags, and they still launched a drone at us. // They strike civilians so that we would talk less about what they were doing. Ukrainian soldiers believed that those who stayed here were already separatists, no longer Ukraine. They said to us: ‘What, are you waiting for the tricolors? Waiting for the Russian army?’ // They openly showed their hatred. They said: ‘You’ll see. Do you think things will be good here?’ // I didn’t let the Ukrainian drone operators into the basement. There were eight of us there—mostly elderly women, and me as the only relatively able man, plus Kolya, the disabled man. A Ukrainian soldier fired a burst over my head and said: ‘What, aren’t you afraid?’ I replied that I’d already had my share of fear when I served in the army. // One neighbor disappeared—Vitya Shuminsky from the second floor. Russian troops weren’t even nearby yet, but we were shelled every night by the Ukrainians for two months straight with mortars. // They would drive out from the stadium in a pickup truck with a mortar in the back, followed by another vehicle, probably with ammunition. They fired at the city, at kindergartens. One time they left at 11 p.m. and fired until morning, hitting whatever they could. Another time, at 6 p.m., already dark, four mortars started firing. The Russians weren’t even in Maksimilianovka yet. // The Ukrainians had a motto: ‘What is not Ukraine is ruins.’ And they destroyed all the infrastructure themselves. // We even know—the city mayor, many people can confirm this—ordered the Ukrainian military what to bomb. // They hit schools, kindergartens, residential buildings, the shopping center, the post office. Pensioners remained in the city and received pensions at the post office. When people gathered there, they struck it and destroyed it. // They didn’t spare their own people. Shelters meant for civilians were given to the military. Humanitarian aid was often divided and stolen, while people were given only simple pasta and flour. // As for Russian speakers—they hated us terribly. I wanted to charge a flashlight from a Ukrainian soldier; he took the charger and broke it. He himself was from Ternopil, 20 years old, named Bohdan. They were from Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne regions. // They also killed Gennady—we knew him from work. He was a year older than us, 68. He saw Ukrainian soldiers appear in the neighboring entrance, and since he was a smoker and cigarettes were scarce, he said: ‘I’ll run over and ask them—even buy one.’ He knocked on the basement door. It was terrible—they dragged him in and killed him. Only his hat remained. His wife lived on the fifth floor but never found the body. // I stored firewood in the seventh entrance for the stove. I noticed packages from pills appearing near my wood, and they were cooking something in a pot—some foul-smelling orange substance. Most likely drugs. Those were definitely narcotic pills. // Later I went for firewood, and on the first floor the door was open. In fact, all doors up to the fifth floor were open. In one apartment on the first floor, I saw a dead Ukrainian soldier sitting in a chair. I looked and left, never went back. // Later, when Russian soldiers—our guys, sappers—arrived, they checked it. They said: ‘Don’t go into that apartment on the right, where the Ukrainian soldier is sitting in the chair—it’s mined. Not only his body, but an explosive device is connected to a water canteen next to him. There’s half a canteen of drinking water there—don’t touch it. The Ukrainians mined their own soldier’s body.’”

[machine translated]

Tatyana Ivanovna Lazko, Kurakhove (Donetsk People’s Republic): // “Five houses in a row caught fire. There was Ukrainian shelling of those houses. We already more or less understand what is flying where and from where. // One person was dug out from under the rubble. The relatives took them away somewhere else in the city. // When I went the next day—my sister has an apartment there—I went there, and those Ukrainian soldiers were shouting: ‘In 10 days all the houses will be like this, all the houses will be burning.’ This was in November 2024. // They burned it down—I think it was a show for those who stayed here. Like a visual example, a lesson for those who remained in the city. From the Ukrainian side.”

[machine translated]

Anton Vladimirovich Savich, city of Vuhledar (Donetsk People’s Republic // “Throughout all this time, the Ukrainians—well, there was constant fire, they were shooting from everywhere. They were firing from the west. // The shelling was constant. Sometimes it was even hard to sleep—three years of continuous shelling. Visually, we saw that they were Ukrainian nationalists. // Here, near the school entrance, a vehicle arrived. There was food—humanitarian aid, water, grains, porridge in boxes. These were chaplains, from Christian churches. ‘Let’s pray, let’s pray,’ they said. The vehicle drove off, and immediately shells started landing. The metal door was riddled like a sieve—you could even take it off, it’s completely shot through. A man and I often played chess there. // Local residents were killed and torn apart by the shells and explosions. Here are the graves. We buried people wherever we could—on a garbage site, wherever possible. I personally buried Ruslan at the very beginning. Denis is buried here, then Andrey. Igor’s wrestling coach—just about half a year ago—came out of his basement, and a shell landed, tearing him apart. // Ruslan died two years ago, at the very beginning, down by the exit near the bus stop of the first mine—that’s where his grave is. // There was a barrel at the corner near ‘Vector.’ We used to go there for water. Four people were blown to pieces—flesh was scattered everywhere. And there were many such cases, just from shelling.”

[machine translated]

I heard that the translated testimonies had some minor translation errors and readability issues, but I figured these ones were okay.

Yulia Viktorovna Yayno, a witness to crimes of the Kyiv regime in the city of Mariupol // (Donetsk People’s Republic) // “Ukrainians from ‘Azov’ abducted girls, raped them, // and abused them in all kinds of perverse ways. // They injected construction foam into women’s internal organs. // These are not people – they are beasts.”

machine translated

Sorry, I'm spending the least amount of time on this section because it turned out to be the most difficult for me.

https://democracyfund.ru/userfiles/CRIMES%20OF%20THE%20KIEV%20REGIME%20AGAINST%20WOMEN%20AND%20CHILDREN-Rus.pdf

https://democracyfund.ru/userfiles/Military%20Crimes2.pdf

There is of course our current Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine and former Chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, Lieutenant general Kyrylo Oleksiiovych Budanov of “Don’t continue with that topic. All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” and openly supporting Nation Europa fame. Who is Nation Europa I wonder? Well it’s difficult to find out now because the Wikipedia page has been taken down, but I managed to dig it up on Internet Archive

Huh, there’s a lot of Ukrainian Armed Forces battalions who operate in Donbass in that member list But belonging to an international alliance of Russophobic Ukrainian nationalist neo-Nazis does not necessarily imply genocidal intent. Take, for example, one of the alliance's founders, Svoboda, one of Ukraine's five leading political parties. Several of their paramilitaries have become part of the Ukrainian army, such as the Sich Battalion, formed in 2014 by Svoboda to fight in Donbass and still fighting in Donbass under the name the 4th Sich Company of the Kyiv Regiment and under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, I am certain they have never said anything that amounted to genocidal intent against the people of Donbass.

Whoops… Well at least she’s never been officially endorsed by the Ukrainian Government!

Oh

Who was Mr. "we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world" replacing as the honourable head of the Ukrainian presidential office? Well that would be Andriy Borysovych Yermak, who while having left the president’s office, remains a member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, member of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and Chief of staff of the Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian and Social Affairs. Yermak, during his tenure as the Head of Office for Zelensky, once said, “Russians, these inhumans, have no right to be among civilized citizens of Western countries at all.” and “The Russians will pay for all the victims of the Holodomor and will be held accountable for today’s crimes. This will be a historic moment of reckoning. It is already awaiting the Russian nation.” and “The entire Russian nation will be punished for the evil for which it is responsible. It will not be possible to avoid punishment.” You get the idea, he talks a lot.

There's also Poroshenko's infamous speech, in which he says Ukraine will win the war by depriving the residents of Donbass of pensions, jobs, education support, and safety (our children will go to schools and kindergartens, while their children will live in basements/bomb shelters).

Ukraine’s former Minister of Social Policy Andriy Oleksiyovych Reva said about the people of Donbass: “Everyone who was pro-Ukrainian has left. And those who want to receive two pensions, one here and one here, let them endure. I don't feel sorry for them at all. I feel sorry for those soldiers and officers and their families who were killed there for these scum.”

Oleg Livanchuk, the head of the Krasnogorsk city military-state administration, said of the residents of the Donetsk Region city: "…And the television here is only Russian. That's why the people here are weak-willed. Plus, there's a large percentage of stupid people here… It's a neutral territory between two states, where marginalized people and criminals were exiled. And you can't change genes. A lot is born in the genes. That's your gene pool."

Semen Ihorovych Semenchenko, founder and commander of the 2nd Special Forces Battalion famous for their war crimes of the National Guard "Donbas", as well as former First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Security and Defence said in 2019 “In my understanding, Ukraine should have a strategy to depopulate Donbass. But despite the terrifying name, there's nothing genocidal about it… It's necessary to extract all labor resources from the occupied territories.” He was a recipient of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, third class, from the President of Ukraine and received a Makarov pistol from the head of the Security Service of Ukraine

The notion that I would align myself with the USSR, a dead, bloated corpse, simply because it opposed the USA, rather than because I have rigorously studied communist history and political economy and developed an understanding of how the world order is structured, is absurd. It assumes that I am merely picking “sides” out of naivety.

yes. freedom of the press means the freedom of the owners of the press to manufacture ideology that aligns with their worldview. the capitalist class still materially exists post revolution and, if it's available, they will try to use control of the media to create consent for a restoration of capitalist rule

before we give a "freedom" we have to ask whose freedom, to do what, and in whose interests? clearly allowing individuals to freely own newspaper businesses isn't in the interests of the overwhelming majority, who would suffer under any restoration of capitalist rule. equally, allowing the mass dissemination of pro capitalist ideology is against the interests of the masses whoever actually owns the media. so yes, the worldview of the NYT should be barred from print

freedom of the press works as an ideal in a capitalist country, most of the time, because the overwhelming majority of the media will be produced by the ruling capitalist class, which controls the economy. in that way the press manages to do much more than report information, but instead helps to protect capitalist rule by spreading and reinforcing a pro capitalist worldview while sidelining dissenting views

under the transition to socialism, however, the proletariat uses its position of power to suppress its material and ideological enemies while it builds socialism. how much suppression is necessary or wise at any time is is a question for ruling parties, and ofc can be debated, but the US 1st Amendment, which allows capitalist apologists to publish whatever they want, would be a gift to the capitalist class. this is especially true immediately post revolution, where the whole population has grown up under the indoctrination of the capitalist class and still holds many of its views as their own

From their credulous coverage of Trump’s transparently empty pre-war “negotiations,” to the breathless headlines speaking of how destroying the electrical grid of a country of 90,000,000 people “may” constitute a war crime, the media’s role in this conflict has gone far beyond the traditional manufacture of consent and into a realm of fully gaslighting the world and preemptively attempting to revise the historical record of this war.

The great returning force of imperial propaganda is commanding the people not to see with their eyes and hear with their ears. It is telling us to believe the president’s words but not his actions, to disregard his decade of lying and lying and lying about everything under the sun and to trust that, this time, he is being honest. This time, he is being just. He is not.

Remember this, 9 hours from now, when Donald Trump begins rolling a campaign of destruction across one of the oldest countries in the world. As he puts, in his words “an entire civilization” to death, “never to be brought back again.”

Remember that the signs were there. Remember that we saw them. Remember that the “responsible” people in the room pretended they did not notice. They will try to make you forget. You cannot forget.