Red Youth, Author at Red Youth

Kalashnikov: The designer of the weapon of uprisings and revolutions.

Posted on 4th April 20215th April 2021 by Red Youth History, USSR

Translated from an article originally written in Greek by Dimitris Patelis

(Associate Professor of Philosophy, Technical University of Crete, member of the Association of Revolutionary Theory)

Young comrades have asked me to write something about Kalashnikov, who passed away on the 23^rd December 2013. I had the good fortune to meet the legendary engineer-gunsmith Mikhail Kalashnikov in April 1998 in Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Urals. At 81 then, he impressed me with his incredible vitality, good-natured smile and the sparkle in his eyes. “Speak loudly to me, my son” – he would tell me, “I have been shooting all my life, working in shooting ranges and factories. I am hard of hearing… ”.

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was the seventeenth child of a rural family (eight out of the eighteen children survived). His biography provides a unique and at the same time illustrative picture of the history of the Soviet people, of the triumph and tragedy of the first country of early socialism (see: Patelis’ “Lessons from history. October Revolution: the contradictions of early socialism and the prospects of humanity”), but also the development of military technology (see: “Armed forces and war technique in history. Militarisation of science and technology”). Continue reading “Kalashnikov: The designer of the weapon of uprisings and revolutions.” →

Art in the service of anti-communism? Anything goes.

Posted on 21st March 202121st March 2021 by Red Youth Anti Communism, History, USSR

Expose this foul slander of the Red Army

Mark Kermode’s Guardian review of the latest Soviet-bashing film, ‘Dear Comrades!’, is nothing if not tasteful. (Dear Comrades! review – dreams and disillusionment of a Communist party stalwart, Mark Kermode, Guardian 17 January 2021)

The film’s director, Andrei Konchalovsky, is praised for this “disturbingly handsome feature” which “presents its bleakly crisp black-and-white images in a retro 4×3 frame”, whilst the cinematographer, Andrey Naydenov, is congratulated on his achievement of “an utterly convincing air of mounting chaos, brilliantly captured on multiple cameras”. But all this obsession with aesthetic form is merely to sugar the pill of yet more bitter anti-communism. It is like complimenting Leni Riefenstal on her artful camera angles in “Triumph of the Will”. Continue reading “Art in the service of anti-communism? Anything goes.” →

Memorials of Bourgeois Fantasy

Posted on 21st March 2021 by Red Youth Anti Communism, History, USSR

On the 23 February, one Andrew Roth, put pen to paper to write an article by the title of; “A lifetime sentence’: children of the gulag fight to return from exile.” The story he tells is of families with a “German heritage” being ‘rounded up’ during WW2 and sent to a closed village in the Kirov region, a gulag if you will. The name Gulag instantly throws up images of ragged prisoners being beaten, starved and worked to death because, over many years that is the picture that has been painted for us by people like Mr Roth. In reality, gulags were penal work camps, usually centred around a farm where prisoners could help to grow extra food for themselves and live out their sentences in homes rather than prison cells. The gulags were for criminals where the end goal was for them to be put back into society as useful members. This was a million miles from the chain gangs of the USA or the three men in a cell made for one in Britain. Continue reading “Memorials of Bourgeois Fantasy” →

Tatar Club, Arabic and Latin script, Moscow, 1935

“Soviet Union-Style” Decolonisation Means True Historical Emancipation

Posted on 7th March 202113th March 2021 by Red Youth Britain, Education, History, USSR

The Universities minister and conservative MP for Chippenham, Michelle Donelan, compared recent widespread campaigns by universities to ‘decolonise’ their curricula to “Soviet Union style censorship.” (Universities minister compares ‘decolonisation’ of history to ‘Soviet Union-style’ censorship, The Independent, 28/02/2021)

Speaking to a Daily Telegraph podcast, Ms Donelan said: “It just doesn’t work when governments try to remove elements of history. Look at the Soviet Union, look at China. There are multiple examples where it’s been tried. It doesn’t work.”

The Minister’s words come in response to calls by some of the more vocal IDPOL students scattered across the country to remove certain study materials from the curriculum that are considered “triggering” to ethnic minorities for their glorification of the empire and white-washing of Britain’s blood-soaked history.

Continue reading ““Soviet Union-Style” Decolonisation Means True Historical Emancipation” →

Against Intersectionality: A Warning to Young Communists

Posted on 22nd February 202115th March 2021 by Red Youth Education, Red Youth, Theory

Against Intersectionality: A Warning to Young Communists

In the last few years communists have struggled against the bourgeois academic onslaught of identity politics, with us, the CPGB-ML, going so far as to pass a motion at the last congress making open advocacy of identity politics grounds for expulsion. The reasoning of this is simple: identity politics is bourgeois and divides groups of people, particularly workers, through dichotomy, pitching black people against white people, men against women, able bodied people against disabled people, etc.

This dualistic dead end does not unify workers on common ground, namely that of class, and by extension socialism. Furthermore, it lends itself to leaving the common enemy of workers, the bourgeoisie, utterly unscathed. In fact it merely operates as a means of deflecting the blows of working people away from capitalism and instead leads them to the path of entrenching chauvinism, prejudice and cannibalising their own class, rather than uniting it upon economic lines.

The further danger with identity politics, including intersectionality, is that, whilst utterly depending on bourgeois content (i.e. the prevailing capitalist cultural and academic concepts and ideological framework), it all too often dons the garments of socialist form, yet obscures, relegates or outright discards class.

Continue reading “Against Intersectionality: A Warning to Young Communists” →

The liberal left’s knife in the back for Cuba

Posted on 27th January 202115th March 2021 by Red Youth Anti Communism, Cuba, USA

“We shall fight them on the beaches” said Winston Churchill in his eulogy to Britain’s war effort against the ferocious power of Nazi Germany. We of course, did fight them on the beaches and with the power of the mighty Soviet Union and other allies, we were able to defeat the Nazi hordes and dispel the threat of the invading forces. That was indeed a proud moment for our little island.

Well, another little island has also had to fight an invading force for its right to exist. That island is Cuba. Except, unlike for us, its invader the United States of America never went away. It stayed there, breathing down its neck placing heavy sanctions, and trying with all its might to cripple it. Cuba’s moment of fighting them on the beaches took place during The Bay of Pigs invasion. Even though Cuba won that battle, it was an example of American aggression that they have never forgotten, just as we have never forgotten the Luftwaffe flying over the skies of our island. At the time of this article, the U.S.A listed Cuba as a state sponsoring terrorism. This is laughable considering it comes from a country that has sponsored ISIS, Al-Qaeda and death squads in Nicaragua. Cuba is decidedly not a state that sponsors terrorism. Continue reading “The liberal left’s knife in the back for Cuba” →

Vasiliy Yefanov, An Unforgettable Meeting, 1937

Stalin and the Will of the People

Posted on 18th December 202015th March 2021 by Red Youth History, USSR

Never before has a man carried so high the aspiration for freedom, for the peace and self-determination of the oppressed peoples than Joseph Stalin. His unconditional devotion to the emancipation of the mankind, his ability to mobilise an entire nation to advance towards modernity and to stand up against the odious beast of fascism make him one of the greatest leaders in human history.

Anna Louise Strong perfectly describes this ability in her brilliant book The Stalin Era :

“He had a deep sense of what I can only call the will of the people, he had matchless technique in releasing that will in action. Finally, he had the conviction and was able to give it to others, that his action carried mankind forward to a better day.” Continue reading “Stalin and the Will of the People” →

Under capitalism, ‘individual liberty’ is an illusion for all but the super-rich

Posted on 13th December 202015th March 2021 by Red Youth Britain, Healthcare, Protest

“Extra! Extra! Socialist dystopia to follow Covid 19, in a new world order great reset!”… “Stasi State to usher in the dawn of Covid Crisis”
Or so run the bourgeois ‘free press’ or free market run press, as it should be labelled.

From the Telegraph, to the Mail, to the Guardian, all media fingers have been pointing to socialist countries such as Cuba and China as to what Britain should not become in the aftermath of this crisis, despite their superb management of Covid 19 and low death rate compared to capitalist countries such as the U.S.A and Britain.
The lies, the slander, the typical spiel of hypocritical finger pointing is nothing new in Britain. As a matter of fact, as far back as 1915 socialist hero Robert Tressell was pointing out the effectiveness of capitalist media on the working class in his novel ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”. Continue reading “Under capitalism, ‘individual liberty’ is an illusion for all but the super-rich” →

Biden the red is at the door of the White House with a manifesto similar to the 1936 Soviet Constitution! The American ruling class is shaking!

The political illiteracy of the US election campaigns

Posted on 3rd November 202015th March 2021 by Red Youth Anti Communism, International, USA

Biden the red is at the door of the White House with a manifesto similar to the 1936 Soviet Constitution! The American ruling class is shaking!

American political life can easily be summed up by this maxim: to the right, always further to the right. When a politician like Sanders tries to move the cursor slightly to the center to respond to the ever-increasing demands for equality of an American population asphyxiated by an establishment of unparalleled voracity, he is immediately labeled a bloodthirsty communist. Continue reading “The political illiteracy of the US election campaigns” →