The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, 47, one of Putin’s most visible and persistent critics, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”. In a video from the prison in January, he had appeared gaunt with his head shaved.
The Kremlin said it had no information on the cause of death.
In early December he had disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region, where he was serving a 30-year sentence on extremism and fraud charges that he had called political retribution for leading the anti-Kremlin opposition of the 2010s. He did not expect to be released during Putin’s lifetime.
A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.
The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair. He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions and yachts used by the ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.
In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment. He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.
Putin has recently launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office. He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030, a possibility since he had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.
338 notes
·
View notes
Blog soundtrack: La Joven Guardia
you're legally obligated to play this when you browse my blog. also this will change every once in a while or maybe disappear for a bit. Lyrics under cut:
Somos la joven guardia
que va forjando el porvenir.
Nos templó la miseria,
sabremos vencer o morir.
Noble es la causa de librar
al hombre de su esclavitud.
Quizá el camino hay que regar,
con sangre de la juventud.
Que esté en guardia,
que esté en guardia
el burgués insaciable y cruel.
Joven guardia,
joven guardia,
no le des paz ni cuartel,
(¡Paz ni cuartel!)
Es la lucha final que comienza,
la revancha de los que ansían pan;
en la revolución que está en marcha
los esclavos el triunfo alcanzarán.
Siempre en guardia,
siempre en guardia,
joven guardia.
Hijos de la miseria,
ella rebeldes nos forjó.
Odio a la tiranía
que a nuestros padres explotó.
Más hambre no hemos de sufrir.
Los que trabajan comerán.
La explotación va a concluir.
Nuestras las fábricas serán.
Que esté en guardia,
que esté en guardia
el burgués insaciable y cruel.
Joven guardia,
joven guardia,
no le des paz ni cuartel,
(¡Paz ni cuartel!)
Es la lucha final que comienza,
la revancha de los que ansían pan;
en la revolución que está en marcha
los esclavos el triunfo alcanzarán.
Siempre en guardia,
siempre en guardia,
joven guardia.
Mañana por las calles
masas en triunfo marcharán.
Ante la guardia roja
los poderosos temblarán.
Somos los hijos de Lenin (y de Stalin!),
y a vuestro régimen feroz
el comunismo ha de abatir
con el fusil, martillo y hoz.
Que esté en guardia,
que esté en guardia.
el burgués insaciable y cruel.
Joven guardia,
joven guardia,
no le des paz ni cuartel,
(¡Paz ni cuartel!)
Es la lucha final que comienza,
la revancha de los que ansían pan;
en la revolución que está en marcha
los esclavos el triunfo alcanzarán.
Siempre en guardia,
siempre en guardia,
joven guardia.
Translation (OC)
We are the young guard
who's forging the future.
Misery tempered us,
we'll know to win or die.
Noble is the cause to free
man from its bondage.
Perhaps the path shall be watered
with the Youth's blood.
They better be on guard,
they better be on guard
the insaciable and cruel bourgeois.
Young guard,
young guard,
don't give him peace nor mercy,
(Peace nor mercy!)
The final struggle is beginning,
revenge of those who crave bread;
in the revolution that's in motion
the slaves will reach triumph.
Always on guard,
always on guard,
young guard.
Misery's children,
she made us rebels.
Hate the tyranny
that exploited our fathers.
We shan't starve anymore.
Those who work will eat.
Exploitation will meet its end.
The factories will be ours.
They better be on guard,
they better be on guard
the insaciable and cruel bourgeois.
Young guard,
young guard,
don't give him peace nor mercy,
(Peace nor mercy!)
The final struggle is beginning,
revenge of those who crave bread;
in the revolution that's in motion
the slaves will reach triumph.
Always on guard,
always on guard,
young guard.
Tomorrow on the streets
the masses will march in triumph.
Before the red guard
the powerful shall tremble.
We are the sons of Lenin (and Stalin's!)
and your savage regime
communism shall take down
with the rifle, hammer, and sickle.
They better be on guard,
they better be on guard
the insaciable and cruel bourgeois.
Young guard,
young guard,
don't give him peace nor mercy,
(Peace nor mercy!)
The final struggle is beginning,
revenge of those who crave bread;
in the revolution that's in motion
the slaves will reach triumph.
Always on guard,
always on guard,
young guard.
278 notes
·
View notes
The word "Nazi" has a specific meaning to normal people, but to vatniks and tankies it has five basic meanings….
"anybody I don't like"
"anybody who disagrees with me"
"anybody who's a citizen of a country that Russia wants to invade"
"anybody who opposed or simply didn't want to live in one of the tyrannical regimes I simp for"
"anybody who was oppressed or killed by one of my favourite mass murderers"
EDITED TO ADD: a tankie clown reblogged this post and made some typically asinine comments, so I thought I'd elaborate a little bit….
Tankie clown: @well1x is either referring to the fact that a lot of the "deaths under communism" listed in "the black book of communism" (which gives us the 10 million number or whatever) are quite literally Nazis in WWII, or they're referring to the fact that the only people who have been made to deliberately suffer under communism have been literal Nazis and fascists (generally speaking)
Joining the tankie cult requires you to live in a delusional clown world and believe in a shit ton of made up (and often contradictory) nonsense that requires a considerable repertoire of mental gymnastics (and lies) to maintain….
@well1x is literally trying to claim that all victims of communism are "nazis and facists" (sic), which - back in the real world - is a very obvious lie. It's also a blatant example of victim blaming. For example, most of the millions of men, women and children who were robbed, raped, imprisoned, sent to the gulags, tortured, starved to death, executed or ethnically cleansed by Stalin's henchmen were not Nazis or fascists, and many were innocent of any crime. The vast majority of the population in Stalin's Soviet Union also had to put up with crippling poverty and backwardness, the brutal suppression of their religious and community life and the total lack of freedom.
Based on his comment, I doubt if the tankie clown has ever read "the black book of communism" and I'm also not sure why he mentions this book in particular, when there are thousands of others that thoroughly document the numerous crimes of the regimes tankies insist on being the useful idiots for, and I think it's safe to assume that he hasn't read any of those books either (in fact, I doubt if he's ever read any book whatsoever)….
Tankie clown: Karina then shows an image of (presumably) some kids in the Ukraine famine. This is completely unrelated though because this famine was not manufactured by the USSR as say the Irish famine was by the English. Can't really attribute natural disaster to "muh communism"
Again - a typical genocide-denying tankie lie.
Tankies generally start by saying that the holodomor was Nazi propaganda, and when you debunk that they claim it was just a natural disaster, and when that doesn't work they make up some bullshit about how millions of farmers who barely had enough to live on were wealthy kulaks who burned crops and slaughtered cattle (and therefore deserved to die). And when you point out that the red army actually broke into their homes and confiscated all their grain, every cow or chicken or any other food they had, and that the Soviet authorities blacklisted villages, sometimes purely for containing relatives of Ukrainian independence fighters, and prevented the villagers from leaving, shot them for even collecting ears of grain from the fields, and watched them starve to death - tankies will just deny it, or laugh, or pretend that millions of holodomor victims were all rich landlords (and therefore deserved to die) etc etc….
I've also never seen English people pretending that the Irish famine never happened, or claiming that the victims deserved it, or that it was a good thing, or that Britain should re-conquer Ireland. On the other hand, it's difficult not to notice Stalin's smooth-brained groupies swarming all over social media every day denying or justifying the holodomor and other crimes of Russia and the USSR, and hoping that Russia not only re-conquers Ukraine but also Finland, the Baltics, Poland and other countries it has invaded and occupied in the past.
There's no point trying to reason with tankies using facts, logic or common sense - and appealing to their sense of decency while they're simping for their favourite mass murderers is a complete waste of time.
Tankie clown: Karina then says @well1x is defending imperialism(???), defending ethnic cleansing (which …what??), dreaming about labour camps and mass shootings (for Nazis yes plz), and does not do any praxis (based on?).
Yep - most tankie clowns claim to be communists while simultaneously embracing Russian fascism, supporting the imperialism of Russia’s mega-rich ruling class, mindlessly repeating the Kremlin's propaganda and cheerleading their war crimes. These morons seem to have no idea that the Russian Federation is an empire made up of many conquered states that Russia invaded, occupied and colonised in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, or that Russia's war against Ukraine is a brutal attempt to reassert control over one of its former colonies. Russia's history of imperialism is at least as bad as that of any western country - and they're still doing it in the 21st century.
And I have seen countless examples of tankies speaking openly of wanting to mass murder their ideological enemies (or people they don't like) - because they also delude themselves into believing that if their revolutionary dreams ever came true, they'd be the ones doing the arresting and killing, despite the fact that in a real revolution they'd be about as much use as a fart in a spacesuit. They also have no idea how their small dick energy is somehow going to bring capitalism to its knees, which they'd inevitably end up crying about if it ever actually happened in reality.
Most of them are complete losers who spend the majority of their time sitting in their bedrooms huffing their own farts while reading tankie fan fiction online. Tankie clowns also claim to be against western imperialism and capitalism, despite living comfortable lives in western capitalist countries and owing everything they have to capitalism, including the freedom to use their capitalist smartphones or laptops to post anti-capitalist tantrums on social media platforms owned by western capitalists (thus helping these western capitalists to maximise their profits).
This is generally the sum total of a typical tankie's - ahem - "revolutionary" activity.
The vast majority of tankie clowns wouldn't dream of ever giving up the comforts of capitalism to move to one of the authoritarian shitholes they stupidly simp for, because then they might not be able to play their favourite capitalist video games anymore….
It's also a fact that Russia and the USSR have ethnically cleansed millions of people.
Tankie clown: OP takes this insane train all the way to the station, and says @well1x is talking about anyone they don't like which… no. They're talking about the traditional Nazis.
No - they're falsely claiming that all victims of communism are Nazis and fascists. Learn to read….
Tankie clown: But also let's break this down. Who does OP think is being called a Nazi? "anyone I don't like" I mean I don't like Nazis, but I don't think everyone I don't like is one lmao. Funny tho, dude throws around the word tankie until it has no meaning.
In my experience, if you disagree with tankies about anything, they will pretty soon call you a fascist or a Nazi. It's they who throw around words like "fascist" and "Nazi" until they have no meaning (and most of them hilariously claim to be opposed to fascism while simultaneously supporting it - if it happens to be Russian).
Tankie clown: - "anyone who disagrees with me" if you disagree that all human beings deserve to live a dignified life regardless of race/sex/gender identity/sexual orientation/age/disability/whatever then yeah you probably are a Nazi
Straw man. See above….
It's also amusing to observe the doublethink of somebody who apparently believes that "all human beings deserve to live a dignified life" while simultaneously thinking that when his favourite mass murderers oppressed and/or killed huge numbers of people it was perfectly OK….
Tankie clown: - "anyone who's a citizen of a country that Russia wants to invade" why the fuck are we talking about Russia? Believe it or not OP, USSR does not stand for "United Soviet States of Russia" lmaoooo
We're talking about Russia because most tankie clowns support Russian imperialism and mindlessly parrot the Kremlin's propaganda about how Russia's latest invasion of Ukraine is some sort of special de-nazification operation (see above). Tankies are generally so ignorant, gullible and stupid that they will literally believe anything the Kremlin tells them….
Tankie clown: - "anyone opposed or simply didn't want to live in one of the tyrannical regimes I simp for" tyrannical regimes lmao. These were only "tyrannical regimes" for people who actually were in fact Nazis.
Again - this is the kind of reality-denying nonsense I'd expect to hear from a tankie clown. One thing that really appalls people in the central and eastern European countries that experienced the reality of being occupied by the USSR and/or Russia, is the staggering ignorance and stupidity of western useful idiots who have no idea what it was actually like, and are not only dumb enough to join the tankie cult, but insist on westsplaining to the victims and their descendants about how the horrors they and their families suffered (usually for doing literally nothing) either didn't happen ("cuz the CIA made it all up") or claiming that they somehow deserved it ("cuz they were all Nazis/fascists/kulaks/slave owners").
Back in the real world, these were tyrannical regimes for tens of millions of ordinary people who had done nothing to deserve being subjected to tyranny….
Tankie clown: - "anyone who was oppressed or killed by one of my favourite mass murderers" yeah basically that's what I've been saying.
Thanks for proving my point….
And please note that smoking weed on your mum's sofa isn't actually going to bring the world revolution closer.
That was just a joke…. 🤣😂
562 notes
·
View notes
The Liberal obsession with Psychopolitics and their painfully idealistic view of the State always come together to produce the dumbest fucking conclusions. They'll condemn any departure from the norms and procedures of Liberal Democracy as an "Authoritarian" increase in State Power (even if it actually increases the degree to which most of the population meaningfully participates in politics) and then claim that people such regimes because they have daddy issues that make them crave a strong and controlling leader they can project paternal feelings onto. Apparently material issues are just an excuse and class interests are made up bullshit; the State only acts "ideologically" when it deviates from a natural baseline and such deviations only happen due to perversions within the sacred institution of the nuclear family. Hitler and Stalin are the same and neither would have come to power if people had better dads.
This sort of shit gets even more embarrassing when they try to explain political trends within marginalised groups. I've seen someone claim that Trans women only become Marxist-Leninists because of a "longing for states and father figures" because yep I bet the desire to have a strongman in their lives is the only reason why such an economically and socially marginalised people would seek the end to Bourgeoisie rule and the abolition of the family. It's so obviously stupid to anyone with the slightest grasp on material reality, but I guess most Liberals aren't concerned with all that so they can just say whatever. Like isn't politics really just Vibes anyway?
85 notes
·
View notes
Why Ukrainians didn’t produce a Tolstoy?
there are a lot of things that can piss me off, today it was this tweet:
and all i wanted to do was to ask this person, why the fuck do we need a racist misogynistic piece of shit as a standout author if we have Shevchenko as our prophet?
but you don’t know who he is? of course, you don’t. that is the thing with imperialism: you destroy other cultures while promoting yours as the only way to legitimise your rule. even if those territories are of higher cultural development. but there is always a way out of it: kill them all. kill anyone who poses an existential threat to your hegemony. throw them into jail. forbid them to write and paint. send them to gulag. kill them. torture them. execute them.
if you don’t know Ukrainian literature, it doesn’t mean that it‘s nonexistent. if you don’t know "a Ukrainian Tolstoy", it means there is a Ukrainian Bahrianyi, who was sent to the gulag but ran away and was the first person in the world to openly criticise USSR in his pamphlet Why I am not going back to the Soviet Union. "I don't want to go back to the USSR because a person there is worth less than an insect"
there is a Ukrainian Symonenko and a Ukrainian Stus. there is a Ukrainian Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylyanska. a Ukrainian Kotsiubynskyi, Ukrainian Drach, Ukrainian Olena Pchilka and Ukrainian Lina Kostenko. and so many more of the bravest people who despite all wrote in the Ukrainian language about Ukrainian people and for Ukrainian people.
there are thousands of beautiful texts that weren’t translated because this would’ve harmed the empire. that is why you are reading Dostoevsky and not Khvyliovyi.
but there are also thousands of texts that were never written. just how many more poems would’ve Stus written if he wasn’t killed by the Soviet regime? how many more texts would have Pidmohylnyi, Semenko, Yalovyi, Yohansen, Zerov written if they weren’t shot at Sandarmokh?
just how many texts have the world missed out on because Khvyliovyi committed suicide as he couldn’t live in the world with Stalin’s repressions. "today is a beautiful sunny day. I love life - you can't even imagine how much", - he will write in his death note as he shot himself with his friends waiting for him in the next room.
or maybe there was a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature waiting for Tychyna? maybe, but he submitted to Soviet authorities and started writing hails for the regime, suddenly forgetting his own literary style and living his entire life in fear. fear of what? fear of getting caught. of getting destroyed just as all of the previous Ukrainian intelligentsia.
I’m tired of my people being silenced. I’m tired of my poets being undermined by "great” russian literature. it’s not worth a single Symonenko’s poem. it’s not worth a single paragraph of Bahrianyi‘s prose.
the greatness of russian literature lies on the bones of Ukrainian writers. to be this high, they killed hundreds and they are still doing it today.
the body of Ukrainian children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko was found in the mass grave in Izium in September 2022.
there will be a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature, and there will be more Ukrainian books. there will be Ukrainian Zhadan and Zabuzhko, Liubka and Izdryk, Deresh and Kidruk. there will be Ukrainian literature.
another funny thing is that this person is Indian and let me tell you: the fact that you stand up for one empire even when your own country has suffered from the doings of another is evidence of deep colonial trauma and I hope you will cure yourself soon
576 notes
·
View notes