A Pseudo-Trotskyist Sect from the USA in the Service of Russian Imperialism [archive, June 2022]

 

How the ICFI Tried to Rewrite the History of the Ukrainian Revolutionary-Liberation Movement

On June 11, 2022, the Russian-language version of the WSWS website of the pseudo-Trotskyist sect ICFI published a piece with an extremely egregious and brazen headline: "Oleg Vernyk of the ISL Promotes Ukrainian Fascist Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists." This is not the first deeply deceitful attack by this small internet group against the positions of the ISL and Oleg Vernyk, as the leader of the Ukrainian group of the ISL — the Ukrainian Socialist League. And one could have ignored this attempt by a small pseudo-Trotskyist "middle class" group from the USA, were it not for the current relevant context of Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine and a certain informational isolation that has developed worldwide regarding the Russian narrative.

Nobody believes Russian state propaganda anymore. In particular, nobody believes anymore that "Nazis" are in power in Ukraine and that the objective of Russian military aggression is precisely the "denazification" of Ukraine. We perfectly understand that in the clash between Russian and Western imperialisms, Ukraine has been assigned only the role of a victim. However, we — the ISL — stand on principle for the subjectivity of Ukraine and its working people, for the unconditional right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people and the struggle to preserve their own state. The ISL does not support the Ukrainian bourgeoisie or Volodymyr Zelensky, and advocates for mass grassroots popular resistance to aggression. So what is the ICFI, and what do these aberrant people from the Internet stand for?

For many years now, the leader of the pseudo-Trotskyist sect ICFI, US citizen David North, has informationally served the interests of Russian imperialism and its state propaganda regarding Ukraine. However, the disinformation work of this propagandist sect was specifically intensified at the beginning of June, when it became obvious that official Russian propaganda no longer has sufficient informational platforms in the American and Western mass media. They are forced to use such low-influence and unauthoritative platforms as the WSWS. At the very beginning of this piece its authors honestly indicate its main task — "to refute the false concepts of 'Russian imperialism' and 'democratic Ukraine.'"

It is quite obvious that, in order to whitewash Russian military aggression, the ICFI must:

a) declare that Russian capitalism is not imperialist,

b) point out that Ukraine is not an ordinary country of an extremely dependent peripheral bourgeois democracy, but rather an outpost of Nazism. That is, this very thesis is the key one in justifying armed aggression both on the part of the Russian Federation itself and on the part of its agents within the left movement.

It should immediately be noted that such a shrill and scandalous headline has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Oleg Vernyk has never, anywhere, promoted Stepan Bandera, nor has he ever, anywhere, promoted Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.  Instead, Oleg Vernyk has always proposed deeply analyzing Ukraine’s national liberation movement in the dynamics of its development, both its left and right wings, without shutting one’s eyes to the complexities and problems of this movement. Moreover, Oleg Vernyk has always pointed to his extremely critical attitude toward the figure of Stepan Bandera, who was the leader specifically of the far-right wing of the OUN and viewed any moves toward its democratization and leftward shift extremely negatively. We will return to this issue later. But now let us figure out — on what basis did the ICFI produce such a loud headline claiming that Oleg Vernyk promotes Stepan Bandera?

From this material we learn that on May 26, 2022, Oleg Vernyk reposted into the broad trade union Facebook group "Labor Defense" a piece posted by the user Ket Sotnyk, which consisted of a photocopy of a historical book from 1948 authored by Petro Poltava. This book is a bibliographic rarity in Ukraine. And precisely because in it, one of the young ideologists of the left wing of the previously ideologically monolithic far-right organization OUN, Petro Poltava, began to promote ideas completely opposite to those of Bandera. It was about these ideas of the 3rd Extraordinary Supreme Congress of the "Homeland Organization of the OUN" in 1943 that Stepan Bandera himself later said they were "Bolshevik," that this congress had been held by "Bolsheviks," and that he would under no circumstances approve the decisions of this congress. Bandera, who at the time was imprisoned in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen, understood perfectly well that what was happening was the emergence within the ranks of the "homeland organization of the OUN(r)" of a tendency toward its sharp democratization, leftward shift, and a call for simultaneous war against German National Socialism and Stalinism. Understandably, this position was met with bayonets by both Bandera himself and the right wing of the OUN(R). Not even the camouflage in the title of this brochure — "Who Are the Banderites and What Do They Fight For" — did not save the situation.

The displeasure of the far right is understandable. But the ICFI’s fear of this brochure must be clearly identified. This 1948 brochure obviously knocks the ground out from under the main thesis of Russian propaganda and its ICFI lapdogs, namely that any Ukrainian national liberation movement should be perceived exclusively as far-right and Nazi. The authors of this opus even dared to quote some key phrases from this brochure: "the 'Banderites' fight for the building of a classless society, for the genuine elimination of the exploitation of man by man… For democracy, against dictatorship and totalitarianism, for freedom of speech and assembly… To ensure that national minorities of Ukraine have all rights." At the same time, these slogans from the brochure were characterized by the ICFI authors as permeated with the "spirit of fascist 'national socialism.'" It is not entirely clear, however, where exactly this so-called "spirit of fascist national socialism" manifested itself in these slogans — whether in the slogan "against dictatorship and totalitarianism" or in the call for "the genuine elimination of the exploitation of man by man" or in the slogan of "ensuring all rights for Ukraine's national minorities"… As we can see, the gentlemen from the ICFI have a rather peculiar understanding of "fascism." However, it fully coincides with Mr. Putin's understanding of "fascism" — the kind he may be fighting against in Ukraine.

 

But the most interesting thing is that Oleg Vernyk, having reposted the photocopy of this book, provided absolutely no commentary on it, inviting the readers of the trade union group to familiarize themselves with such a now-rare publication in Ukraine and to draw their own conclusions. There was no question of any propaganda of either Bandera or the book's author Petro Poltava (Bandera's ideological opponent). The obvious lie of the ICFI is very easily exposed. However, let us look at the further arguments of these exotic pseudo-Trotskyists about Oleg Vernyk's alleged "propaganda of Bandera."

The ICFI authors write: "On June 5, Vernyk published another post with an excerpt from the book by Danylo Shumuk, a former member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU), who, disoriented by the crimes of Stalinism, joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1943."

And again, when Oleg Vernyk reposted a page from Danylo Shumuk's book, he made no personal comments whatsoever, instead inviting readers to independently familiarize themselves with the opinion of the author of this book, who was a sincere communist and who repeatedly fell under waves of Stalinist repression against members of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU) beginning in 1935.

Here it is very important to recall the exact chronology of historical events. In 1938, the Executive Committee of the Stalinist Comintern adopted a resolution on the final dissolution of the Communist Party of Poland, and along with it the Communist Parties of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which were part of it. The Communist Party of Poland contained a significant number of representatives of the 4th International, who had serious influence within the party and conducted underground agitation criticizing the Stalinist Thermidor and advocating for the ideas of Lev Trotsky's revolutionary Marxism. It was precisely this that became the basis for Stalin's dissolution of these parties and repressions against Western Ukrainian communists. And the official basis for these repressions was the accusation that "the leadership of these parties had been seized by fascist agents." Doesn't this sound like a very familiar accusation in the context of the current war of 2022?

It was precisely the communist activists of Western Ukraine who were the first to fall under the hammer of Stalinist repression and were practically all destroyed after the annexation of Western Ukraine to the USSR in 1939 under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Danylo Shumuk miraculously survived, spending long years in Stalinist camps. Obviously, in such a situation of Stalinist repression against the CPWU, he (in the words of the ICFI authors) had reason to be "somewhat disoriented by the crimes of Stalinism." Here I can only respond with bitter irony.

In August 1939, Leon Trotsky wrote his famous work "The Democratic Slaveholders and the Independence of Ukraine" (Bulletin of the Opposition [Bolshevik-Leninists], No. 79–80), in which he clearly and unambiguously wrote the following: "The Ukrainian revolutionary movement, directed against the Bonapartist bureaucracy, is a direct ally of the international revolutionary proletariat… The national-revolutionary Ukrainian movement is a component of that mighty revolutionary wave that is now being molecularly prepared beneath the crust of triumphant reaction. That is why we say: Long live an independent Soviet Ukraine!"

The Stalinist executioners, alas, did not allow Trotsky to live to 1943, and it is now very difficult for us to predict what optimal tactic and strategy Lev Davydovych would have proposed to the Western Ukrainian communists, proceeding from that situation. Let us leave this here as a field for comradely discussions.

But even back in 1939 Lev Trotsky, in his work "On the Ukrainian Question" ("Bulletin of the Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists), No. 77–78"), which is foundational reading for every Ukrainian Marxist, wrote the following: "Of the former trust and sympathies of the Western Ukrainian masses for the Kremlin not a trace remains. Since the last brigand-like 'purge' in Ukraine, no one in the West wishes to attach themselves to the Kremlin satrapy, which continues to be called Soviet Ukraine... It is precisely this merciless persecution of any free national thought that has led to the fact that the working masses of Ukraine, to an even greater extent than in Great Russia, regard the power of the Kremlin as monstrous violence. Under such an internal situation there can, of course, be no talk of Western Ukraine voluntarily joining the USSR as it is now. The unification of Ukraine therefore presupposes the liberation of so-called Soviet Ukraine from under the Stalinist boot... A clear and distinct slogan is needed, one that corresponds to the new situation. I think that such a slogan can today only be: A United, Free and Independent Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Ukraine! A clear and distinct slogan is needed that corresponds to the new situation. I think that such a slogan can now only be: A United, Free and Independent Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Ukraine!"

Do the pseudo-Trotskyists from the ICFI know about this position of Trotsky? They know it perfectly well of course, but consciously prefer to maliciously lie and manipulate, fulfilling the orders of their Kremlin authoritarian-bureaucratic handlers. Let us walk further through the text of these Rashists.

"Another post by Vernyk dated May 26 contained a comment praising the 1953 uprising in one of the GULAG camps, led by Shumuk and other members of the OUN and UPA imprisoned by the Soviet authorities." As we can see, the gentlemen of the ICFI have finally cast off all bounds of decency, have sharply and finally broken with their claim to the heritage of Trotskyism, having sided with the Stalinist executioners against the uprising of GULAG prisoners. The reference is to the famous Norilsk uprising of GULAG prisoners in the summer of 1953. It was the largest uprising in the history of the GULAG. About 30 thousand prisoners took part in it, and a leading role in its organization and execution was played by Trotskyist prisoners.

In the "Memorandum of the Head of the Prison Administration of the USSR MVD Kuznetsov" it is clearly stated that it was precisely the imprisoned Trotskyist Klichenko, who had been twice sentenced for anti-Soviet activity to terms of 25 years, who carried out the main work of agitating prisoners to continue and develop their resistance.There is also surviving evidence that the imprisoned Trotskyist Shymanskaya played an important role in the prisoner uprising. The 1953 Norilsk uprising is an important and vivid event in the history of anti-Stalinist resistance in the USSR. But not for the quasi-Stalinists from the ICFI, who obsequiously extend their helping hand of support to all kinds of authoritarian-bureaucratic dictatorships, from Stalin to Putin.

Further on in the text of the piece its authors descend into outright delirium. In particular, they write: "On their website, the MSL/ISL posted a video of one of their members, Kirill Medvedev, in a mask and bulletproof vest, who is presented as a member of a territorial defense forces unit." Where they got the idea that our comrade Kyrylo, an activist of the ISL/USL, has the surname "Medvedev" was not entirely clear to us. However, we then realized that the authors of the piece had simply confused our Ukrainian comrade Kyrylo with the Russian activist of the "Russian Socialist Movement" (USEC) Kirill Medvedev. It is hard to even call this just another lie of this material. This is simply outrageous illiteracy and absurdity on the part of the incompetent and insane, but extremely biased and fanatically engaged, author-provocateurs from the ICFI.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Ukraine entered largely as part of the Russian Empire, while Western Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The development of capitalism on the territory of Ukraine initiated the accelerated formation of its proletarian class, as well as social-democratic (Marxist) parties and other parties of a socialist orientation. On the territory of Ukraine within the Russian Empire, large proletarian centers were rapidly forming, connected with the development of the coal-mining industry (Donbas), railway transport and the sugar industry (Sumн, Slobozhanshchyna regions), and other sectors. The proletarian class was formed both from former Ukrainian landless peasants and and from the relocation to Ukraine of landless peasants of the central part of the Russian Empire.

In its mass, the popular-vernacular Ukrainian language was used on the territory of Ukraine, which, despite all repressions against it and various prohibitions by the tsarist government, survived and significantly strengthened among the broad popular masses. Lev Trotsky, who was born and raised in the central part of Ukraine, recalled in his memoirs that his native language was "surzhyk" — a variety of the popular-vernacular Ukrainian language with a heavy admixture of foreign-language words. However, higher education in the Russian Empire could only be obtained in Russian, and the Ukrainian language remained at the level of a grassroots popular folk language. The bulk of the urban intelligentsia and urban bourgeoisie, after obtaining higher education, switched to Russian in their everyday communication. A significant portion of the proletariat — that is, former Ukrainian peasants — were also susceptible to this Russification. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a reverse process was also underway. A significant portion of the urban intelligentsia and even the working class, within the framework of their opposition to the Russian autocratic government, began the process of gradually transplanting the Ukrainian language from the countryside to the cities. And this is a very important factor in the analysis of the further history of the Ukrainian revolutionary liberation and workers' movement. In Ukraine, from the very beginning of the 20th century, the revolutionary-class aspect of social liberation and the national-liberation aspect of the struggle for self-determination of the Ukrainian people went hand in hand, that is, they were inseparably and dialectically connected. And any attempt to break this dialectical connection and interdependence was historically doomed in Ukraine to catastrophic consequences and extreme deformations. The entire history of Ukraine in the 20th century is an extremely complex, contradictory, and in many ways tragic history.

The Marxist social-democratic groups that were actively forming in Ukraine, in fact, from the very beginning of their emergence and development, found themselves divided into those that joined the structure of the all-Russian Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) and those that joined the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (USDWP). Moreover, it is important to note that from the standpoint of their approaches to the radicality of resolving the "Ukrainian question," under the decisive influence of Vladimir Lenin, the RSDWP(b) clearly took the position of recognizing the right of the Ukrainian people to create their own independent state. Meanwhile, the USDWP, which positioned itself as more pro-Ukrainian, limited itself to merely the programmatic demand of Ukrainian autonomy within Russia.

Unfortunately, within Lenin's party, the RSDWP(b), there turned out to be a significant portion of activists who only verbally expressed their internationalism, while in reality harboring strong vestiges of Russian great-power chauvinism in their consciousness. Gradually, the informal leader of this faction became Joseph Stalin. This great-power approach of Stalin manifested itself during the preparation of the draft Constitution of the USSR of 1924. In contrast to the position of Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin attempted to push through in the USSR Constitution the principle of "autonomies." That is, instead of a fully-fledged and equal federative union of Soviet republics, Stalin proposed incorporating all republics into Russia as its "autonomies." Lenin and Trotsky decisively put a stop to this Stalinist attempt at a "second edition" of the Russian Empire, and the 1924 USSR Constitution turned out to be democratic and enshrined in its text the federative principle of unification of Soviet republics with the right to freely secede from the Soviet federation.

However, after Lenin's death and the defeat of Trotsky's "Left Opposition," the Stalin faction again gradually, step by step, began to narrow the rights of the union Soviet republics, concentrating ever more real levers of power and governance in Moscow. Most regrettably, Lev Trotsky and his "Left Opposition" in the mid-1920s failed to establish a close alliance with communists of the union republics who were disposed to oppose Stalin's centralizing policies. And this cost all the anti-Stalinist forces in the party very dearly. Practically all communists of the Soviet union republics who had the courage to fight against the great-power and chauvinist policies of Stalin were repressed and shot in the 1930s. Stalin even invented an utterly mendacious term for them — "national-communists." Although it was precisely they who acted as genuine internationalists, fighting against the revival in the USSR of national oppression and inequality among Soviet peoples.

The Stalinist bureaucratic counter-revolution could not help but engulf all spheres of life of the Soviet state. In the most direct way, it manifested itself in the national question, which is traditionally a very painful one in Ukraine. To not understand this and, moreover, to consciously turn a blind eye to it means decisively breaking with the emancipatory tradition of Marxism, which resolutely supports, alongside the main social-class struggle of the proletariat, all other liberation vectors and practices that accompany it, including the national-liberation struggle of peoples.

For us it is entirely obvious which political camp the pseudo-Trotskyist sectarians and Rashist provocateurs of the ICFI have landed in. No matter how hard these people try to put on the mask of Trotskyists, their undisguised crypto-Stalinism and open support for Putin and Co.'s great-power Russian chauvinism completely give them away and rip off their camouflage mask of "Trotskyism."

As we have already shown above, echoing Putin, the ICFI authors accuse Oleg Vernyk and the ISL as a whole of supporting Ukrainian nationalism. We understand perfectly well that these pro-Putin provocateurs are prepared to hurl such accusations at all Marxists who support the grassroots resistance of the Ukrainian people to Russian imperialist aggression. However, what is very important here is the question of the relationship of revolutionary Marxism to all forms and manifestations of such a phenomenon as "nationalism." This question appears especially important and relevant precisely in those countries that relatively recently freed themselves from national dependency and acquired their full-fledged statehood (Ireland, the countries of the former USSR as a result of the restoration of capitalism and the breakup of the unified state, and so on), as well as in those regions of the world where the processes of national-liberation struggle of peoples are still ongoing (Palestine, Catalonia, Western Sahara, the Basque Country, and so on).

Let me recall that in his 1922 work "On the Question of Nationalities or on 'Autonomization,'" Vladimir Lenin wrote: "An abstract formulation of the question of nationalism in general is completely useless. It is necessary to distinguish between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and the nationalism of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a large nation and the nationalism of a small nation. Regarding the second type of nationalism, in almost all cases in historical practice, we — nationals of a large nation — turn out to be guilty of an infinite number of acts of violence."

In the same work: "Nothing so stuns the development and consolidation of proletarian class solidarity as national injustice, and offended nationals are not sensitive to anything so much as to the feeling of equality and the violation of this equality."

Obviously, any nationalism comes into contradiction with proletarian internationalism, and any nationalism is a constraint on the development of the world revolutionary process. However, Lenin justly proposes that we distinguish between different types of "nationalism" in our Marxist analysis. And if the nationalism of imperial or oppressor nations is always and everywhere reactionary and anti-worker, then the "nationalism" of peoples fighting for their national liberation, although it does not coincide with our Marxist worldview of proletarian internationalism, deserves at least an understanding of the causes of its emergence and the logic of its development.

Here it should be clearly noted that it was precisely Stalin and his great-power policies in Soviet Ukraine that led to the triumph of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism in Western Ukraine in the second half of the 1930s. Back in the 1920s, the most popular Ukrainian party in this region was the Communist Party of Western Ukraine. It was precisely this party that was perceived by the Ukrainian working people as the vanguard of their national-liberation struggle against Polish oppression. By the end of the 1930s, this party had been practically completely destroyed by the Stalinists. A folk saying goes: "Nature abhors a vacuum." Who filled this vacuum in the political landscape of Western Ukraine after this crime of Stalinism? Naturally, the radical-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Do the authors of the ICFI know about the true causes of this transformation in the sentiments and political support for right-wing forces by the population of Western Ukraine in the 1930s? Of course they do. But in their onslaught of Stalinist obscurantism and servicing of the Putin regime, they prefer not to notice these obvious facts.

As I wrote above, in the history of this right-wing formation, the OUN, there were in turn very many different transformations, splits, radical changes in programmatic documents, conditional "leftward shifts," "rightward shifts," collaboration with Hitler and subsequent war on two fronts, and more and more other political maneuvering. Including the initiation of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1943 and the mass influx into it of Western Ukrainian communists whom the Stalinist regime had miraculously failed to extreminate completely in 1939. All of this is also part of Ukraine's history. It is, as a rule, extremely difficult to analyze, extremely contradictory, extremely ambiguous. But in any case, it should not serve as some universal anti-Ukrainian bogeyman in the hands of unscrupulous Stalinist provocateurs and imperialist lackeys of Putin from the ICFI sect.

I am convinced that in my article I have touched upon only a small part of the historical Ukrainian problematic that is relevant to us. But this piece can provide an excellent starting point for the development and deepening of Marxist research into Ukrainian issues and the history of the development of Ukrainian Marxism and its role in the national-liberation struggle of the Ukrainian working people for their social and national liberation.

Oleg VERNYK

June 2022 (TRANSLATED IN MAY 2026)

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З усією неіронічною творчістю Олега Верника, що була зібрана в цей блог, можна ознайомитися ТУТ (просто натисніть на рожеве)