Published on March 8 in Russian. Translated specially for the ACG from text by Assembly, an anarchist group in Ukraine.
Even alone, due to the atmosphere of general fear, Ukrainian female workers are able to create trouble for the masters of life. Only one example from Kharkov: some controller of the Kharkov metro automatic checkpoints, according to the investigation, messaged at least 8 times from November 2023 to April 2024 in one of the Telegram chats about enlistment raids at the subway station. The judge found the woman guilty and sentenced her on November 19, 2024 to five years in prison with a three-year probationary period. She was released from custody and her cell phone was confiscated. And how many more such cases have not reached the court? Today, the following text, published two months ago by Dezertér newsletter from the Czech Republic, is more relevant than ever:
“One of the main forces opposing the tyranny of the army and police in Ukraine today are women. Women often try to fight back against the military who try to forcibly kidnap men on the streets to mobilise them to the front.
Women also boldly attack the police, sometimes with their fists, since the police often help the army commit crimes against civilians. Today, an organised anti-war women’s movement is impossible in Ukraine; anyone who speaks out against the war is persecuted and branded a traitor to the motherland. The authoritarian, repressive and fascist state led by the Zelensky’s government and the special services subordinate to it will not allow this. And such a movement will most likely not find serious support in the West, which, like Russia, is participating in the military destruction of Ukraine and its population. Ukrainian women are also betrayed by the liberal Ukrainian feminist movement, which has become an accomplice of Ukrainian militarism, nationalism and authoritarianism.
Despite all this, Ukrainian women continue their unorganised resistance to war and the raping of men as cannon fodder. There are many videos of this anti-militarist female resistance on social media, most of which were filmed by the participants themselves. All these videos are actively circulating on Ukrainian social media, but they are not shown in the official Ukrainian and especially Western mainstream, including the Czech one.
As Czechoslovak anti-militarists, we support all these brave women (mothers, wives, daughters or just random passers-by), all draft dodgers and deserters, because only in this way can we together stop the wars of the powerful. Let’s not fight each other, let’s point our weapons against our generals and rulers who push us into fratricidal wars for power and money. War on the palaces, peace to the huts!” https://i.imgur.com/4lp0L0o.png On March 29, 2024, a video appeared from the Khmelnytsky region an angry women mob smashing an enlistment minibus in the Shepetivka district. This turned out to be somewhat more difficult for its owners than packing one guy with a crowd – they had to call the police. The kindergarten laundry typist Lilia Khrystunova, who explained the smashing of glass by worrying about her mobilised son, was fined by the court for hooliganism
While the footage with busification has already entered the mainstream, having been picked up a week ago by Trump’s entourage, there is still little to read or hear about the place of today’s Day in anti-war history, although after USAID funding was stopped, calls to abolish this “Soviet relic” in Ukraine have also somehow died down. “March 8 is no longer a holiday. They are trying to convince us that this day is just about gender, flowers, and congratulations. They won’t tell us in schools why March 8 is an important date for all people, not just women. And if they don’t tell us, then we should. “Scientifically proven” sexist theories are in fashion now, promoted by popular bloggers, dividing people and justifying inequality. But the history of this day tells a different story. Women have repeatedly proven that their struggle changed the course of history, that they can give many men a head start when it comes to revolution and justice. They are trying to divide us – by gender, nationality, skin color, but the reality is that we are all united in oppression. And that means we have always had and still have a common enemy,” explains the Ukrainian emigrant Telegram channel, also called “Deserter,” that appeared a week ago. Vadim Damier, an anarchist historian from Moscow, wrote about this in more detail in the article “March 8: The Story of One Usurpation”:
“During the First World War, women from working-class families (female workers and workers’ wives) in the belligerent and neutral countries of Europe and America stood in lines for ever-increasingly expensive food products, raised hunger riots and smashed stores to bring home at least a little bread. “Mothers of families, tired of endless lines at the shops, suffering at the sight of their sick and half-starved children, are at the moment much closer to revolution than all the gentlemen Milyukov, Rodichev and Co.; and, of course, they are much more dangerous, since they constitute an explosive mass, for which one spark is enough to explode,” reported the St. Petersburg secret police in January 1917. On February 23 (March 8, new style), women exhausted by the lines joined the striking female textile workers; the crowd poured into the downtown demanding bread.
“If future historians want to know who started the Russian revolution, they should not create a complicated theory,” wrote eyewitness Pitirim Sorokin in his diary. “The revolution was started by hungry women and children demanding bread. They began by smashing trams and looting small shops. And only later, together with workers and politicians, did they begin to strive to destroy the powerful edifice of Russian autocracy.” The Great Russian Revolution began with the women’s revolt of March 8, 1917.
Statists tried to orient the women’s labour movement toward their goals: the introduction of universal suffrage for women. Such ideas were advocated by both representatives of the “middle class” (suffragettes) and social democrats; it was persistently supported by the German social democrat (later a party “communist”) Clara Zetkin. […] The struggle of working women and its glorious traditions were captured by the partisans and incorporated into their ideological schemes and political maneuvers. And after the Second World War, “March 8” was officially recognised not only by the “old” and “new” women’s movement, but also by the authorities of many countries and even the UN. Capitalism swallowed and dissolved the working culture. The task of revolutionaries today is to revive it anew.”
Meanwhile, according to the UN World Food Program, in six frontline regions of Ukraine, almost a third of the population is experiencing food insecurity. “According to data collected by WFP, millions of people are resorting to coping mechanisms, sacrificing their own meals so their children can eat. Others are going into debt to buy sufficient food supplies to feed their families. […]Families in frontline regions are struggling to put food on the table, forcing them to make heartbreaking choices just to get by. As we look forward to sustainable peace in what is considered to be one of the world’s historical breadbasket regions, we must face the reality that humanitarian aid continues to be a lifeline for millions. […]Where supermarkets are accessible and stocked, many families cannot afford nutritious food. The cost of basic food items rose by 25 percent in the last year, with some staple vegetables more than doubling in price,” the organisation tells in a press release marking the third anniversary of the full-scale war. The Kherson region suffers the most from insufficient access to food – 54% of people, as well as the Zaporozhye and Donetsk ones (two out of five people, i.e. 43% and 39% respectively). In order to reduce tension among the people, the government promises to expand the provision of free lunches to all pupils of middle and high schools in the frontline regions who study offline or in a mixed format, and not just grades 1-4, as at the moment. In Kharkov, all offline pupils in underground schools from grades 1 to 11 receive free meals at the expense of the city budget.
Precisely in these same regions the desire for immediate peace at any cost is strongest. And its cost is increasing with every minute…