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We didn’t expect that our forum to help refugees in Berlin would be so successful

Ukrainian socialist Taras Salamaniuk talks about anti-capitalism, the anti-war movement in Ukraine and Russia, and how you can concretely help refugees from Ukraine  


20/03/2022

Q: Hello Taras. Thanks for talking to us. Could you start by telling is a little bit about yourself?

A: I’m originally from the Western part of Ukraine, from a city near to the Polish border. It’s a rather conservative, and religious region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union it has moved in a nationalistic direction. I studied sociology in Kyiv and connected with activists in the student trade union, and engaged in direct action. This was around 2010-2011. From anarcho-syndicalism, I became a Marxist. And then Maidan came.

Q: There was a lot of confusion in the West about Maidan. Some people called it a left-wing uprising, some saw it as Fascist. How would you categorise it?

A: I would say that it was neither Leftist nor Rightist. It was a popular uprising increasingly dominated by the Svoboda party and other far right groups. We clearly saw that although the far right did not participate in a lot of protests, they were the most visible. Repression and street violence against the Leftists prevented their profile.

They managed to bring down the Lenin statue in Kyiv and other cities. After that it was about the Ukrainian language. They were quite successful – although Svoboda lost in the election. But they allowed discourse for pro-Maidan people, contributing to splitting Ukraine into anti-Maidan and Maidan.

They were able to do this because the core of the Maidan agenda was just an anti-authoritarian one. Of course it was also about integration into the Euro, but for the people on the streets, the first protest was more about anti-authoritarianism.

Their visible involvement, fueled Russian media propaganda which underlined the involvement of Nazis at the protests. As the liberal opposition in Ukraine did not distance themselves from the far Right, this furthered the split, which continued until the current war.

Q: So, three months ago, before Putin’s invasion, what was the political landscape of Ukraine?

A: Three months ago, Zelensky was quite a weak president. He won the presidency with an impressive majority – the first absolute majority in modern Ukraine, avoiding a coalition government for the first time. But then a lot of people were disappointed that he didn’t manage to deliver on his promises, especially on his promise of peace.

There were hints of a comeback of former president Poroshenk. In the second round of the previous elections, Zelensky had crushed Poroshenko. There was a hint that Zelensky was losing support. People were also getting disappointed and moving out of politics.

There was also some repression against the so-called “pro-Russian opposition”, which was stronger in the traditionally Russian speaking part of Ukrainian society. One of the opposition leaders, Victor Medvedchuk, who named Putin as godfather to his daughter, was put under house arrest. The pro-Russian opposition had a little support but was quite oppressed and lost support after the annexation of Crimea and the Donbass conflict. People who might have voted for them just moved out of Ukraine.

Ukraine politics was at a dead end. Previously there had an equilibrium between the pro-Russian and pro-European camps. This was no longer the case.

Q: Was there any sort of internationalist left wing opposition outside these camps?

No. First of all, the so-called pro-Russian faction is more left wing in economical questions. They are against strong pro-market reforms. They are not really leftists, but they’re a bit social democratic. In contrast, the pro-European camp is rather neo-liberal. 

Polls from three or four years ago show that Ukrainians don’t want to be described as Leftists, to be seen like a Soviet. At the same time, they support some of the central demands of the Left such as the nationalisation of key sectors or a progressive tax system. It is quite paradoxical .It is even more complicated as the Svoboda party is far right, but their economic programme also calls for the nationalisation of key industries.

However, in cultural terms, both the pro-European and pro-Russian camps are conservative. Maybe a bit less among the pro-Europeans, but a lot of them are still homophobic, and so on.

The internationalist Left groups are quite marginal, mainly centred around Kyiv. Most people move to Kyiv for education.. There is a Leftist community of about 1000 people.

In 2010 the Left was more or less united. But then, especially during Maidan, they split into different sections. This was still so three months ago.

I was part of a social movement, to found a workers’ party in connection with an independent trades union. But it was unsuccessful and then tried to help individuals with labour relations. Their main demand was to freeze the conflict.

Another group, more intellectual based (known as The Reds) embraced the Soviet identity more and tried to speak to the original pro-Russian, Russian-speaking camp. They argued that the conflict should not be frozen but resolved and that Ukraine needed to embrace the Minsk agreement and reintegrate Donbass. This argument about freezing the conflict or reintegrating Donbass was a line which split the Left.

Q; So, if I understand it correctly, towards the end of last year we have a pro-European ruling party which is losing support, a pro-Russian opposition, and a tiny Left which is mainly based in Kyiv. And then Putin invaded. How did this change Ukrainian politics?

A: It wasn’t so much pro-Russian politics that were gaining support but the pro-nationalistic politics of Poroshenko. The pro-Russia position was stagnating, due to repression and loss of electorate. They were also splintered and couldn’t agree on how to build a united front against the other camp.

Regarding the invasion, one could say that Putin miscalculated. He probably thought that it was a perfect time to invade due to the political dead end in Ukraine. The brutal force of the invasion shocked me. The vast majority of people in Ukraine was shocked.

Zelensky acted as the president of a country should. He is a bit of a showman but this served him quite well in these times. Every day he makes a video message promoting morale across the country and the vast majority of people have united under his banner against the Russian invasion.

Some of the Left joined the militia in Kyiv where they got rifles and they’re ready to defend Kyiv against the Russian troops. Another Leftist faction opposes the invasion but has remained quite silent. At the beginning they also tried to criticize Ukrainian actions but then – maybe due to some threats, I don’t know – they just stopped and now remain silent.

The same for the so-called “pro-Russian” opposition – who mainly remained silent. There was a demand by Putin that one of the “pro-Russians” Yuriy Boyko should become prime minister, but Boyko very quickly said he wasn’t interested, saying he doesn’t have anything in common with Putin. The mayor of Odessa, Trukhanov, also has a pro-Russian reputation but is now saying that they are defending Odessa to prepare against a Russian invasion. I can’t think of any politician who would publicly saying anything in support of Putin.

This has consequences for local Leftists. Although they didn’t support Putin and some supported Ukrainian self-defence efforts, it’s still dangerous for some of them to remain in the country.

Someone I know, Alexander, was active in anti-Maidan but was targeted by police and some local militia who were originally part of the local Nazi scene. Attacked in his own house, he was tortured, his head was shaved, as was that of his wife. They were beaten up then he was taken to jail. They are accusing him of treason. It’s horrible.

It’s also very difficult to organise his defence. It’s hard to find a lawyer who is able and willing to defend him. If you say now that there are also some Nazis in the militias, you will be accused of helping Putin and his talk of “denazification”.

Q: We’re now getting news reports that German Nazis are now going over to fight. Do you have any information?

A: I don’t have any specific information but I also heard this, it’s quite logical. They have had connections with the Azov battalion. The movement around Bilesky, the leader of Azov is connected with Der Dritte Weg and other organisations, so he’s a real Nazi. But one should say that of course Russia has their own Nazis, and in Donetsk and Luhansk they are also using Nazi brigades in their battalions.

I think that it will be very important to criticize this Nazi involvement after the war ends. Especially if Ukraine is going to be accepted as a member candidate to the EU. What we as Leftists in Germany and the EU can do is put public pressure on our national governments that the Ukraine government examines these cases of torture; to fire Nazis from all official positions that they currently hold in the army; and to withdraw all government funding that they enjoy now.

All this should be done, but of course for people like Alexander who are now facing prosecution, it could be too late. Maybe they will torture him further, or maybe even kill him using the war as a pretext. This is a real danger.

Q: Let’s move onto Germany, because we’re in Germany. What should the German government do and what shouldn’t it do? What are your demands?

A: We don’t have any demands for governments. But I think that all people in our diaspora of Ukrainian Leftists in Berlin would all support sanctions – preferably an oil and gas embargo rather sooner than later- to hit the Putin régime hard. As it’s getting warmer, maybe Germany won’t  be dependent on Russian gas imports.

About weapon exports I would agree with Gregor Gysi responding to Sahra Wagenknecht and other former Putinversteher [ “Putin understanders”] in die LINKE. Now, they are of course opposing Putin’s invasion but they think that we need to blame both sides. I support Gysi because it’s important that the German and international Left should acknowledge and honour the right of Ukrainian people to self-defence. For Ukrainian people to carry out this right, they need some support.

I don’t like the patriarchal belief that adult men can’t leave the country because they all need to fight, while the women should leave with the children. I also don’t like it that some war criminals would be freed from jail to fight. But in general I think that there is an enthusiasm of people to fight and defend their livelihood and their cities against invasion.

After Maidan, no part of the country wants to be part of Russia – see the videos from Kherson and other Southern cities currently under Russian occupation. All across Ukraine people are willing to defend their country and they should get support.

Q: What sort of support?

A: Now, lethal weapons should also be considered. The main thing to do is just stop the aggression and stop the invasion. But the support should be balanced. It’s not only about lethal weapons. It’s about medicine, it’s about humanitarian help. All options should be on the table.

I’m also thankful if people are willing to help civilians, make donations to charities in Ukraine, helping old people and children who are especially affected by this war. All these are important. All little steps help.

Q: In terms of stopping the war, do you have any contact with the anti-war movement in Russia?

A: Yes we do. A comrade of ours, Sasha, is on the border of these two groups. She’s originally from Ukraine, but grew up in Russia. Five or six months ago, she moved to Berlin, but she’s also an active member of a socialist movement in Russia, especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Sasha helps us with our initiative Host Ukrainians and is also organising protests. She has a very important function, as these harsh new laws in Russia, have heavily criminalised all opportunities to criticize or organise protests. From outside Russia, she’s free to post in social media. They also have a call centre to help people who are currently under arrest because of the protests.

This is a very important job, but it’s a thankless one. I really appreciate their effort. It is the only way to remain moral, as a human, to protest this absurdity. But there is such a level of oppression making a lot of people in Russia just afraid.

Now it looks like they are damned to be crushed by the régime. This all could change due to sanctions. Russian society could get fatigued. This is a difficult trade-off for activists: to oppose this absurd war but to remain intact. Maybe you need to go underground and become a partisan guerilla group. They still try to remain legal but it has become more challenging each day.

We really appreciate what Sasha is doing, but as Ukrainian Leftists we don’t know how we could help. We honour their attempts but we don’t know what we can do.

Q: You mentioned Host Ukrainians. Can you say something about the work you’re doing in Berlin for Ukrainian refugees and how people can help you?

A: As activists, we come from different regions of Ukraine. Most of us moved to Berlin to study. We organised events, some public some private, to discuss Ukraine.

Host Ukrainians’ was the most serious initiative. On the first day of the war, we made a call to meet together. We were all shocked and met in my flat. This idea emerged to make a forum for people in Germany who could offer some space.

We reached out to our German contacts. I have been in Germany for 7 years. We all have political contacts. We didn’t expect it to be a huge success, but the next day, we had 100 answers. Now we have something like 1,000, and a quite impressive database of people willing to share their flat with Ukrainians. Especially in Berlin, but we also have people in other cities like Leipzig and Dresden. We are also looking for new people, so if somebody can offer accommodation, we are interested.

We want to accommodate Ukrainians temporarily. To be a bridge when there’s already a lot of refugees, but official institutions haven’t yet managed to accommodate them. So, our database has Ukrainians looking for a place and one with Germans offering somewhere.

Sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes a few hours. We may need to accompany people who are outside Ukraine for the first time not knowing German or English. Some people have special needs like medicinal support, children, etc. The first couple of weeks will be the most difficult time and we try to make our small contribution to help to accommodate people.

There are a lot of other initiatives, but ours is special because we have a special relationship with the German Left. It’s not a big secret that the mainstream Ukrainian diaspora are mostly anti-Communistic. This makes it hard for them to address German Leftists who already in 2015/2016 managed to establish quite impressive networks to help Syrian refugees.

Q: Do people need to be able to speak a certain language to help?

A: We don’t care what language they speak – English, German or whatever language you have. But we are looking for volunteers who speak Russian and English in order to translate. In Ukraine, only five, ten, maybe fifteen per cent know English. German even less.

Evangelical and Lutheran churches are accommodating people, and today I got three requests to translate. In seven years it is the first time my Ukrainian skill is in demand. (laughs)

It’s a really busy time and we are all volunteers. We don’t have the plan to formalise it, but we have free time and want to help. It is important to be active for two-three weeks accommodating people, and we hope that then Berlin and Laender will react to build the necessary capacities.

Q:If somebody wants to help either host people or translate, how do they best get in touch with you?

A: Volunteers to translate can send an e-mail to host.ukrainians@gmail.com. If you know Ukrainian or German it is even better, but if you can translate Russian-English that’s ok. If you can accommodate people, you can fill out this form. This provides the structure to help us process the offers.

Is a Cultural Boycott of Russia justified?

A boycott of Russian cultural institutions is affecting conductors, ballet and even a statue of Engels. Comparisons with similar boycotts of South Africa and Israel do not hold up.


19/03/2022

As sanctions against Russia intensify, it seems that Russian conductors, singers and ballet and music companies have also become targets. Russia’s most famous living conductor Valery Gergiev has had his contract to conduct various orchestras cancelled and his management company has also abandoned him. Anna Netrebko, who has been the New York Metropolitan Opera’s premier in-house soprano for many years now, has also had her contract terminated. She’s even been replaced in a forthcoming opera she was scheduled to be singing in by a Ukrainian soprano!

The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in the UK has cancelled a summer season with the Bolshoi ballet, whilst the Helix Theatre in Dublin cancelled a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake by the Royal Moscow Ballet. And the Russian State Ballet from Siberia has also had its tour of various cities across the UK cancelled. There is also a massive boycott now developing of artists of all sorts going to Russia to perform.

There have even been demands in the UK for the statue of Frederick Engels in Manchester to be taken down. Engels was most certainly not Russian and, having died in 1895, can’t be held in any way responsible for current events in Ukraine. In fact, he was the staunchest of opponents of colonialism and imperialism. It seems that there are some who associate Engels with Putin because he was once a KGB agent in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union formally revered Engels—whilst actually defying everything Marx and Engels stood for, following Stalin’s accession to dictatorship over the Soviet Union. What’s more, Putin has attacked Lenin and the Bolsheviks for giving Ukraine the right to self-determination.

The boycott of the Royal Moscow Ballet is particularly grotesque as it receives no money from the Russian state and includes in its company ballet dancers from many different countries, including Ukraine. The demands being placed on Russian artists and artistic companies are also patently unreasonable given the circumstances: it’s now illegal in Russia to describe the invasion of Ukraine as an invasion or a war. It’s clear people will lose jobs and jeopardise their families’ welfare if they denounce Putin and the invasion. One might argue that they should follow the lead of the very brave peace campaigners in Russia, but that is surely their choice and not one the West has any right to impose on them.

Some managements may argue in addition that if they now entertain Russian artists and artistic companies, they will suffer threats and intimidation, including demonstrations. This is a more serious argument, though not one that is motivating these managements in the first instance. But such a reaction to ballet companies, opera singers, etc, is surely indicative of the frenzy that has been whipped up by governments and the media. It is part and parcel of the mounting war hysteria following Putin’s brutal and entirely unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine which is now taking on a distinctly Russophobic feeling in many parts of Europe. This is escalating Western imperialism, which is threatening to widen the conflict and lead to far greater loss of life.

One justification for this artistic and cultural boycott is that it might put pressure on Putin to moderate his attacks on Ukraine. The central problem with this argument is that there is absolutely no indication that the unprecedented economic sanctions being imposed on Russia are having any effect at all in encouraging peace rather than war. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case. So, there is even less reason to think a cultural and artistic boycott will be any more effective.

There are also massive double standards at work. The New York Metropolitan Opera, for example, has treated its own workers abysmally during lockdown, refusing to pay the people who make sure that operas can actually be staged. But more egregious is the rank political hypocrisy. Israeli conductors and performers continue to be welcomed across Europe despite the daily assaults on Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and the continuous encroachment on occupied Palestinian land by Israeli settlements. And the noted German conductor Christian Thielemann, who in the past has expressed his support for the far right, racist and Islamophobic organisation PEGIDA is still getting plenty of contracts to conduct across the Western world.

The cultural boycott has also been extended to a sporting boycott, whose the double standards are even more grotesque. Russia has been kicked out of all or almost all international sporting competitions. In the UK, the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has felt obliged to sell Chelsea Football Club, which he has owned since 2003. Meanwhile, super-rich Saudis have been allowed to buy Newcastle United, despite the patent lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia, its propensity to cut the heads off people who break its laws and its continuing and very bloody war on Yemen. And Israel remains a member of UEFA despite not being in Europe and being a racist, settler state.

The contrast between the Ukrainian case and Apartheid South Africa is notable. Some of the people demanding economic sanctions on and boycotts of Russia are the same people who resisted them in the case of South Africa for very many years, arguing that it was better to have “constructive engagement” with regimes with which one disagreed. The same is no doubt being said today about Saudi Arabia and other loathsome regimes, but which have the one redeeming feature for Western imperialists—that they’re on the side of Western imperialism rather than neutral or on the side of rival imperialists. Having a lot of oil also helps.

Of course, there is one big difference between Apartheid South Africa and Russia today. The African National Congress, the principal organised opposition consisting of South Africans in the days of Apartheid, stood firmly in support of the widest possible sanctions to isolate the racist regime and weaken it (though ultimately it was the struggle of black South Africans themselves which brought about the downfall of Apartheid).

Similarly, the call for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel has come from Palestinian civil society organisations seeking to fight back against the constant attack on the basic human rights of Palestinians inside Israel, in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza. That campaign extends to a cultural boycott and to including academics and rightly so. Israel enjoys the indulgence of the West in its development of nuclear weapons, its repression of the Palestinian people and the extension of its borders into Syria in the Golan Heights as well as in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian activists are clear that the more successful the BDS campaign, the more it will give them confidence to fight back and resist Israeli oppression. This, in turn, will empower those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in the surrounding countries of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to find ways to express their solidarity for the Palestinian people often in defiance of their autocratic and reactionary governments, most of which, if not all, are firmly in the Western camp.

The Russian situation is quite different; the call for boycotts and sanctions, far from being against what is desired by Western establishment political leaders, is being led by them. It’s all part of the extension of Western imperialism through NATO up to the borders of Russia, contrary to the promises made in the 1990s to Russian leaders after the fall of the Soviet Union. Even more importantly, no demands for sanctions and boycotts have been issued by the most progressive forces inside Russia. As things stand, they rightly fear that laying economic siege to Russia will both strengthen the scope of repression and risk Putin further escalating the appalling events in Ukraine. Moreover, boycotts and sanctions in this instance bear the risk that the confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia will spiral out of control, engulfing surrounding countries and leading to many, many more deaths and displaced people. Economic sanctions combined with cultural boycotts are not a peaceful alternative to war—they are steps on the road to war.

Of course, few on the left will shed tears over hugely privileged and very rich artists like Gergiev and Netrebko having their contracts cancelled and even less over the sanctions on rich so-called oligarchs. But they are easy targets and are being used to justify a much broader set of boycotts and economic sanctions that are hurting the Russian people in general and Russian artists in particular, who are simply seeking to do the things they love to do to bring joy to whomever has the luck to see them perform. Moreover, it seems more important than ever for Russian people facing repression and economic meltdown to know they are not isolated from those of us in the West who oppose imperialism and war. These boycotts and sanctions are all part of an ever-increasing escalation at the end of which lies the threat of nuclear war itself. The left should oppose them, seek de-escalation and an end to the killing. We urgently need peace, not war.

 

“The only thing that you can ever really depend on in Berlin is that it will change”

Ahead of Saturday’s political walking tour, Izzy Choksey talks about Berlin’s radical history


17/03/2022

Hello Izzy. Can we start with you introducing yourself? What are you currently doing in Berlin, and what have you done?

So, my name’s Izzy. I’ve been in Berlin for about nine years now. I come originally from the UK, and I moved here when I was 24 to take up an internship. The internship was a pretty shitty one – I quit it within a couple of weeks. Later, I decided to kind of take a complete career shift.

I was an English speaking person living in the centre of the historical memory of Europe during the 20th century. I previously studied history, and I’ve always considered myself first and foremost a historian. So I decided to become a tour guide.

I started back in early 2015, and I did it all the way up until the pandemic. I worked as a tour guide for five and a half years. I loved it, and I miss it very much. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to do the occasional tour.

Let’s talk about tour guiding as a job. Tour guides are sometimes taken a bit for granted, both by their employers and the people on the tours. What are the working conditions like?

When I was doing it, Berlin was going through a steady sustained increase in tourists every year. You had millions of people coming to the city throughout the year. There was definitely more work in the summer than in the winter time, but there was always work. We made plenty of money and there wasn’t a huge amount of competition between us all.

About the working conditions, I can only really speak for myself. A lot of people I know did it for a long time, half a decade, just like me. You don’t do a job like that for that long If it’s rubbish. It was outside, you are talking to new people every single day. The money was pretty great.

Until the pandemic this was a fantastic job. However, you don’t have any rights. You don’t have any contracts. You’re just a freelancer. And that means that you can be picked up and dropped as is.

How has Covid affected tour guides? It’s a precarious procession. What sort of support was made available?

We got the freelancer grants at the beginning of the pandemic. It was about five grand in a one-time payment. I think you could reapply for that in October 2020. Then a lot of people went on unemployment benefit. I got a job by November 2020, so I was out of the woods.

I don’t think many people foresaw how precarious it became. Tourism just felt like the gift that kept on giving, It didn’t feel like something that would be eradicated overnight. This was a shock that the industry wasn’t prepared for.

We had talked about unionizing for a few years before that, but nothing had ever come of it because it was such a seasonal job. We could work for multiple companies and weren’t locked into contracts. Without this, most likely the pay would be lower. Things like tips come into question as well. I made about half my money from tips.

Many of us were not able to access statutory health insurance. I became a student in 2017, partly because I wanted to learn some more stuff, but also so I could get onto statutory insurance. Before that I was on private insurance which was not good.

I put nothing towards my pension for five and a half years. I wasn’t paying into social security because of the freelancer lifestyle. Much of my money was essentially Schwarzgeld [untaxed semi-legal income].

[Editor’s note: Not only do some plans not cover basic medical requirements, if you get your insurance last minute or after 15 days have passed from the day you booked the trip, you may not be able to get full coverage. You can find more information about obtaining insurance for international travelers, students, workers and immigrants at the VisaGuide world, or the Germany Visa websites].

In “Homage to Catalonia”, George Orwell talks about the liberation of Catalonia in 1937 when people stopped tipping because of the power relationship involved. Did you have a problem working for tips?

In my job, some people tipped and some people didn’t. Sometimes you’d walk away with a very large amount of money, sometimes with slightly less. But it was fairly consistent and I never felt in any way that I needed to change my behaviour.

Other companies were based on a model of free tours, which meant that you pay what you want at the end of the tour, based on your experience. A tour guide would have to pay the company a certain amount of money per tourist, and hope that you get, say, more than four Euros per tourist. Otherwise you’ve lost money.

I never did those tours because I didn’t want to have that power relationship between me and the tourists. For me, getting tips was just a massive bonus. It was something that I really appreciated and made up around half of my income. A bad tour meant that I was potentially losing a nice bonus at the end of the day, but it was not a tragedy because I knew I was getting paid for that tour.

It’s a very complicated relationship overall, and I haven’t really thought about it before. We did base a lot of our income on tips. And that obviously creates a certain dynamic between a tourist and what I was, which was essentially a service sector worker.

You’re trying to explain stuff in the simplest kernels of truth and maybe you’ll inspire someone to go and learn more.

On Saturday you are coming out of retirement to do a new tour. Is there any particular motivation that you had for doing this one?

This tour is going to be about the history of the Left in Berlin. I am fascinated by the subject and wanted to learn more, which is often where the best ideas for tours come from. Berlin is a canvas on which you can paint many beautiful tours.

What’s so interesting about this particular subject matter is that Berlin is a city of change. It’s a city of constant rebirth, of chaos and destruction, which is then reborn as something different. The only thing that you can ever really depend on in Berlin is that it will change. I wanted to see what the Left has changed and how it has changed itself as a result of interacting with Berlin.

Anyone who has a basic understanding of history, especially over the 20th century, can imagine what might come out of that tour.

Just thinking of the last century, we have the First World War, the German Revolution, the rise of Fascism, the DDR, the squatters’ movement and the rebirth of United Germany as an imperial power. How can you structure a tour to fit in all of this?

Firstly, you have to put together all your facts and figure out what the major themes are. At the same time, it’s not an undergraduate degree programme in Berlin history, you’re conducting a four hour tour. You’re trying to explain stuff in the simplest kernels of truth and maybe you’ll inspire someone to go and learn more.

You don’t just look for historical fact, you also look for locations. In this tour, we’re going to go through some of the most historic parts of the city and talk only how the Left was affected by those places. I hope to show places that have influenced and have energized and have changed as a result of leftist politics.

This tour is going to be going from Alexanderplatz to Oranienplatz – basically Alt-Mitte and Kreuzberg. Which are some of the most important locations in this area?

For the first part of the tour, we’re going to do 1848 to 1919. It will go from Marx and Engels Platz to Rosa Luxemburg Platz, where I’ll talk about the German Revolution and the death of Rosa Luxemburg, and how this affected the movement.

I want to show the creation of the schism between the two parts of the left – the SPD and KPD in party political terms, liberals and the far left in more philosophical terms. After talking about Karl Marx’s role in the 1848 revolutions, I’ll address the death of Rosa Luxemburg. What did she stand for and how she was in a schism when a new nation was born during the German revolution?

These are aspects of world history that happened here in a turbocharged way and gave rise to the turbocharged politics of the 20th century.

Another really exciting location that we’re going to go to is the Sophiensäle which has a fantastic history for leftist movements. It’s also a place that is genuinely beautiful to visit and often hidden from the naked eye. It’s not somewhere that most people have on their lists.

Then we’re going to Kreuzberg to talk about gentrification, the squatters’ movement, and more recent struggles. We’ll look at how Berlin has been shaped by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and what reunification meant for this part of the city that was right up against the wall for 28 years, surrounded on three sides, squeezed in with a mostly working class population which came from lots of different places in the world, most prominently Turkey.

We’ll be looking at the workers’ history of Kreuzberg and how it was shaped by the massive changes that occurred on a higher political level.

How much do you think you can use Berlin to talk about more general international politics? Is Berlin just different?

When you’re talking about the history of Europe and North America in the 20th Century, Berlin feels like an obvious place to start, because it saw it all. It was the powerhouse of National Socialism during the 1930s and 1940s. The most murderous political force in human history was harboured here in this city.

That destruction then gave rise to a period of detente and both ideological and physical divide. We see this physical divide in the Berlin wall. The divide was felt internationally, but here there were physical barriers between communism and democratic capitalism.

If you go back further, 19th century Berlin was one of the major places of disruption and excitement, change and reverberating ideas, partly because it went through such fast, rapid urbanization and industrialization.

Prussia was one of the fastest states in Europe to industrialize. Within a generation there was mass displacement on a level that we haven’t seen since. Berlin quadrupled in size within 40 years from 1871 until 1920. These are aspects of world history that happened here in a turbocharged way and gave rise to the turbocharged politics of the 20th century.

You also have the international figures that found refuge here, studied here, learned stuff here, and then went off and did rather radical things elsewhere. Lenin is the prime example of this. Berlin is not just somewhere that teaches us about German history or Berlin history, but also how ideas and political movements are shaped by massive structural changes.

Is this just going to be a history lesson or are their lessons that people today could learn from both the good parts and the bad parts of Berlin’s history?

It’s going to be primarily a history lesson, but I tend to be a quite didactic tour guide, especially when I talk about Fascism. T

The capabilities to fall into Fascist totalitarian dictatorships are present everywhere. You just need that kernel of hate to grow into a political movement and create the basis for taking away people’s liberties then their lives.

Equally, some really exciting movements have happened in Berlin, especially in West Berlin during the 1970s, like the squatters’ movement which said that housing should be for people and not for profit.

These kinds of movements come out of the city. They would never have happened without the specific history that Berlin went through during the 20th century, but they give us an opportunity to see how such movements could be recreated and extended elsewhere.

If Saturday goes well, there are thoughts of doing further tours in Berlin. Where else in Berlin do you think people should know about?

I would like people to know more about the last 30 years, to really offer context about the current situation. One of the places that has seen the most change is Neukölln, where I live. It is a great example of where public policy can go wrong and where public policy can go right.

The history of Neukölln since 1990 is educational. It would be amazing for people to really understand more about the rent crisis that we’re living through, more about gentrification, precarious working situations and the school system, why there are such massive disparities between different parts of the city.

To understand more means you can then create policies that help. Tour guiding is a fantastic opportunity to really get people engaged with the city that they live in, and for them to feel empowered, to give them knowledge to go forth and create change within their districts and within their city.

The political walking tour with Izzy starts on Saturday, 19th March at 2pm at the Martin Luther Statue next to Alexanderplatz (Karl-Liebknecht Straße 8, near the Fernsehturm). Everybody is welcome.

The Refugees We’re Used To…

Worries about “miltary-aged men” coming to Western Europe are partly influenced by racist and sexist stereotypes


16/03/2022

If you haven’t already heard, Ukrainian refugees are different. According to Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, “These are not the refugees we have been used to”. The leader of Spain’s Vox party, Santiago Abascal, agrees. He believes that, “Anyone can tell the difference between them (Ukranian refugees) and the invasion of young military-aged men of Muslim origin”.

“Military-Aged Men”

What is a military-aged man? Presumably it’s any male between the ages of 18 – 60, i.e. most men. Abascal talks about young men but rather than refer to them as simply that, he emphasises their suitability for the military as if to say they ought to stay at home and fight for their country – that being a young man means you cannot possibly be in need of refuge, or that being of a “military-age” makes you a risk to our security.

It doesn’t really matter how his comment was intended because whatever the case may be, it resonates with those of us angered by images of male refugees crammed into little dinghies. Why are young, fit men coming to Europe? Are they coming to take our jobs while their wives, sisters, mothers and children are left to suffer? The first thing we want to know is why the safety of women and children isn’t a priority. The answer might surprise you: it is.

Protecting Women and Children

Take a look at Ukraine: it’s in Eastern Europe and borders several member states of the European Union: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Governments and aid organisations have been working hard to open up humanitarian corridors so that refugees can flee safely into the European Union and other neighbouring countries.

Despite being located in Europe and the presence of direct routes across Ukraine’s borders, women and children are at risk of human trafficking. Warnings of traffickers posing as volunteers and offering lifts to women abound on social media and while many of these posts are unverified, the high risk of sexual abuse, violence and exploitation posed to women and children fleeing war zones is not. The UN has clearly documented the risks involved for women and children fleeing war zones and if the risk is high while fleeing across a single border, imagine fleeing across continents.

Human trafficking is not the only risk that disproportionately affects women and children. It is perfectly legal to apply for asylum in Europe but the funds and documents required to travel make it impossible for a great many refugees to reach here safely. Instead, refugees are forced to embark on a perilous journey across the sea and many do not survive.

A Swedish study from 2012 has indicated that survival rates are low for anyone capsized at sea but that crew members and strong swimmers have better chances of survival. Under these extremely physically demanding conditions, women and children are least likely to survive. Women and children still attempt these dangerous crossings but it is primarily young, fit men who volunteer their lives in the attempt to create a better life for themselves and for their families.

Providing For Families

We also want to know how young, fit, foreign men looking for work in our countries can possibly be justified. The answer to this question can be found by looking at our own society. It has become increasingly common in the West for both men and women to work outside the home in order to provide for their families. Despite this, women continue to take on the majority of child-rearing responsibilities, often taking breaks from their careers or reducing their working hours in order to do so.

For heterosexual couples this may make financial sense, since men still tend to be the major wage earners. Should a situation arise in which families must send a single family member off in search of better economic opportunities, they are likely to send whoever has the most earning power. The result is that even in Western Europe, where the gender wage gap is smaller than elsewhere in the world, it is more often than not the man who ends up working further afield in order to bring the money home. This financial responsibility can be a burden for men because, even as equal numbers of women enter the workforce and the pay gap decreases, there is still an expectation in our society that men should be able to provide.

The greater the gender wage gap, the less practical it is for women to work outside the home and the fewer incentives there are to do so. Where this is the case, the pressure on men to provide financially is enormous. In countries ravaged by war, economic sanctions, foreign occupation or governmental corruption, it is not always possible for men to find jobs that would enable them to provide for their families. It goes without saying that even fewer opportunities exist for women and that women are less likely to have relevant work experience.

Under such circumstances, men have little choice but to seek out countries in which they might be able to earn enough money to put food on the table. For entire families forced to flee their homes, they do not only need money but also a safe place to rebuild their lives. The difficulties involved in travelling have already been mentioned, but it is worth pointing out that for a single person travelling alone the journey is fraught with complications. For entire families, it is a logistical nightmare.

While men gamble their lives in search of better conditions for their families, it is often more sensible for women and children to remain in refugee camps. It is incorrect that most refugees are male: the global population of refugees is divided fairly evenly between males and females. Women are simply less visible because while their fathers, sons, husbands and brothers are out at sea, the women are often in camps waiting on tenterhooks to hear from their male family members. The truth is that photos of bodies washed up on shore often reach our television screens before any news makes it back to the refugee camp.

Muslim Invaders

Another thing we really want to know about refugees is whether or not they pose a threat to us. Kiril Petkov, the Bulgarian prime minister, voices these concerns when he speaks of refugees with “unclear pasts” who “could even have been terrorists”. Abascal is more explicit, singling out men of “Muslim origin” and calling them invaders “who have launched themselves against European borders in an attempt to destabilise and colonise it”.

While his claim that Muslim men are attempting to colonise Europe is a far cry from reality, it nevertheless strikes a chord with people who, in light of a number of terrorist attacks linked to Islamic fundamentalist movements that have occurred in the West in recent years, associate Islam with terrorism. Given the high profile nature of these attacks and the emphasis the media has put on the religious identity of attacks carried out by Muslims, it is clear where this fear stems from.

Our fear is not, however, proportional to the actual threats posed to us by terrorism. According to the 2022 Global Terrorism Index, people living in the West are extremely unlikely to become victims of terrorism since 97% of all deaths from terrorism occur in conflict zones. Muslims are, by an extraordinarily large margin, the group of people most likely to be victims of terrorism, a statistic which they are no doubt devastatingly aware of. Still, with the Western media putting so much emphasis on Islamic extremism it is a difficult topic to discuss rationally. “That’s because they’re in Muslim countries”, people reason when confronted with statistics. “What about terrorism in the West?”

Well even here, non-Muslims are safer than Muslims should a terrorist attack actually take place. The Global Terrorism Index reveals that politically-motivated terrorist attacks, and in particular attacks conducted by the far-right, pose a far greater threat to our security than attacks motivated by religious ideology. Far-right attacks are five times more likely to happen than attacks associated with any religion, suggesting that we should be much more wary of the people describing Muslims as “invaders” than of Muslims themselves.

It is easy to understand peoples’ misconceptions of Islam due to the disproportionate amount of negative attention drawn to Muslims in the media, as well as the masses of inaccurate interpretations of Islam posted by hostile sources online. Prominent political figures only exacerbate the issue, because rather than come up with solutions to actual problems, they can scapegoat Muslims, refugees and economic migrants for an easy win. The reality is that the security risk posed to European countries by accepting refugees from Muslim countries is negligible.

“They should stay and fight!”

Finally, the opinion that young, able-bodied men should be fighting for their countries rather than claiming asylum is one that crops up all too often. We forget that the quality of other people’s lives depend on these young men’s survival and that the wars in which they’re caught up often have little to do with them.

Given that our own society continues to teach men to be providers and protectors, you would have thought we would have more respect for the young men risking their own lives in demonstration of these values. It really doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with these concepts of masculinity, what is important here is to acknowledge the gender dynamics that draw predominantly young, male asylum seekers in our direction and not to dismiss human beings in need of support purely on account of their age, gender, religion, and the colour of their skin.

It is a wonder than anyone can speak of “the refugees we are used to” when so few of us have made the kind of effort we are making for Ukrainian refugees in order to help them and to get to know them. In any case, if we are unable to put people brave and resourceful enough to complete these astonishingly difficult journeys to good use, perhaps the problem isn’t them.

Socialist Women Against War. When Sylvia Pankhurst fought against war and imperialism

How a leading suffragette was radicalised in response to the First World War


15/03/2022

In 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst was already a seasoned suffragette. When the First World War broke out, Sylvia orchestrated her own war against war and to establish her own welfare system in the East End of London.

Sylvia was shocked when her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel decided to support the war, took money from the government and dished out white feathers to men not in uniform.

Sylvia protested loudly against government injustice, about sweated pay and bad working conditions. She also encouraged people to act themselves: ‘The men in power have plunged us into war for their commercial interests. They pass bills in the interests of financiers. What will they do for you?’

She set up a milk distribution centre and four free mother and baby clinics. Doctor Barbara Tchaykovsky, who helped to run the clinics, pointed out that while 75,000 British soldiers died in the first year of the war, 100,000 babies died at home. By 31 August 1914 Sylvia had created her first Cost Price restaurant. During 1915 her team served around 400 meals a day. Sylvia also set up a co-operative Toy Factory to provide employment, and a small nursery, which held parties for local children.

In February 1915 Sylvia set up the League of Rights for Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Wives and Relatives which campaigned for proper allowances for the wives of soldiers, and pensions for widows and dependents.

When Sylvia saw that affluent areas of West London still had supplies of bacon and sugar, she organised a deputation to the Prime Minister. They took with them food from Harrods and the Army and Navy Stores and dumped it on his desk. Sylvia threatened to return with ever larger deputations if he didn’t provide food for the East End. Relief began to get through to Poplar.

In April she found a disused pub, the Gunmakers’ Arms, in the Old Ford Road which she converted into The Mothers’ Arms as a progressive nursery school.

Sylvia campaigned against conscription, joining the National Council against Conscription. In September 1915 she addressed a meeting in Trafalgar Square, organised by socialists, trade unionists and suffragists.

Sylvia’s paper, The Woman’s Dreadnought, published stories of hardship among troops and their families, of soldiers executed for desertion, and cruel punishments. She took up the cause of victimised enemy aliens, striking miners, disabled soldiers, widows, and pensioners. She also published a pamphlet made up of letters written home by a young conscript shot for desertion when shell-shocked.

The women’s paper became the anti-war, socialist Dreadnought. In 1916 a young women journalist covered the Easter uprising in Ireland, and the executions that followed, in the Dreadnought. In 1917 Sylvia celebrated the Russian revolution. Her East London Federation of Suffragettes became the Workers’ Socialist Federation, dedicated to overthrowing capitalism. In 1917, the Dreadnought’s published Siegfried Sassoon’s letter of opposition to the war: ‘I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, upon which I entered as a War of defence, has now become a War of aggression and conquest.’

Two days later his letter was read out in the House of Commons. The police raided the offices of the Dreadnought. The issue of October 6, 1917 advocating a peace referendum among the troops, was destroyed and the type broken up.

Sylvia never stopped fighting against racism, fascism and imperialism.

During times of war it can be easy to be swept up in the militaristic fever, but Sylvia Pankhurst example shows how we can continue to fight for our principles.