As we press forward into the 21st century and witness a US Empire struggle to rein in its imperialist overreach, and an ascendant China rise to challenge the US’ economic hegemony, against a backdrop of scrapping sub-imperialisms, international employer offensives, and rising tides and raging fires, we can be assured that imperial realignment will accelerate. It will accelerate while becoming more openly violent and repressive, and the ruling classes of the world will strike out against any sign of a working-class movement fighting to displace the capitalists from their parasitic position and grasp over all production.
On April 24 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine detained 25-year-old Bogdan Syrotiuk for the crime of political activity in a Trotskyist organisation, Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists: one of the many socialist organisations currently banned by the Ukrainian ruling class. His writings, in his own name and under pseudonyms, expressed a Marxist analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and called for the unity of the working class across national borders in opposition to war and their rulers.
After two years of imprisonment, a now 27-year-old Syrotiuk has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for, effectively, the crime of calling for proletarian unity in the face of war. Syrotiuk wrote analysis for the World Socialist Website, which has launched a campaign and petition against his incarceration.
The International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa (New Zealand) extends its solidarity to Bogdan Syrotiuk, and to all dissidents opposing war and advocating for the self-rule of the working classes, in Ukraine, Russia, Iran, the US, and the world over. The road immediately ahead of us is laden with carceral opposition to our liberation, and only lines of solidarity between our side, the international working masses, and their side, the war-mongering capitalists and rulers, will offer us the tools we need to dismantle those cages.
Photo: Bogdan Syrotiuk, from social media
