Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revealed the new reality of great-power conflict, underwritten by nuclear weapons. Our task is to reject aligning with one of the great powers and to instead push for across-the-board nuclear disarmament.
As war rages in Ukraine, farmers have abandoned their work mid-season to take up arms against Russia. Those who stayed behind are in a race to harvest their crops before stray rockets torch their fields.
For two decades, the Communist Party has been part of Vladimir Putin’s power system, while also integrating many protest movements from within Russian society. But since the invasion of Ukraine, the party’s balancing act has become ever more precarious.
One year after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is backsliding away from democratic freedoms and liberal pluralism.
At the turn of the last century, Ukraine’s labor movement was subject to tsarist domination and divided along linguistic lines. The revolutions of 1917 inspired calls for self-determination and the formation of a common Ukrainian identity.
Elections to Ukraine’s parliament produced the first one-party majority since the end of the USSR. But as nationalist violence persists, comedian-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s base is anything but stable.
Socialists’ first task in Vladimir Putin’s appalling war on Ukraine: provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.
A recent exhibition, rescued from the Russian bombardment of Kyiv, aims to carve out a Ukrainian story from the complex history of Soviet avant-garde art.
Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to escalate in ways that imperil all human life. Yet the mainstream reaction is mostly striking for its apathy — and the Left is failing to mobilize against the mounting disaster.
The invasion of Ukraine is not simply a product of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist mindset. It corresponds to a project for Russian capitalism that he and his allies have pursued since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Putin uses the language of “demilitarization” to pursue an aggressive imperial policy against Ukraine. In an interview for Jacobin, a Ukrainian socialist explains the falseness of the Kremlin’s pretexts — and why the war could drag on for years.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been criticized for recent moves to centralize power. But these developments are less about the actions of a single leader and more the result of decades of state weakness following the dissolution of the USSR.
Lionized as a nationalist hero in Ukraine, Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer who left behind a horrific legacy.
In Germany, even radical left-wingers who long distrusted state power are today calling for more tanks and jets for Ukraine. Lacking alternative solutions to the conflict, parts of the Left increasingly fall in behind the government’s call to rearm.
The Dayton Agreement ended the bloody Bosnian War of the 1990s, but it hasn’t resolved the conflicts plaguing the country. It’s a cautionary tale for finding an effective peace agreement in Ukraine.
Hundred of thousands of Ukrainian workers have mobilized to defend their country against the Russian invasion. Yet economic elites are using this moment to push through an unpopular liberalization agenda.
Ukrainian elites have for decades been divided between Westernized professionals and pro-Russian oligarchs, each with a narrow social base. The missing force has been the working class, unable to develop its own distinct project for the country’s future.
Ukrainian painter Mykhailo Boichuk and his circle of socialist artists perished in Stalin’s 1930s repression, destroying much of the movement’s beautiful public murals in the process. Today what remains of their work is a symbol of hope in dark times.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed the energy politics of Europe: America became Germany’s main importer of liquid natural gas and Putin pivoted east. This new order is likely to generate more conflicts than the one that came before it.
Exhausted by over three years of Russian attacks, Ukrainians are increasingly ready to accept unfair political compromises and harsh territorial concessions to end the war. Yet it’s far from clear that this hard choice will actually bring lasting peace.