cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10514053
Russia has built a network linking socialist and anti-globalist groups abroad under the banner of support for left-wing causes. The effort often starts with seemingly benign events such as community cleanups and discussion clubs before developing into street protests, disinformation campaigns, sabotage operations in Western countries, and even recruitment for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Insider has identified several British and U.S. citizens who were recruited to fight for Russia with the help of “communists” and far-left activists.
…
In the name of the left
In late April 2026, the founding forum of an international socialist network called the Sovintern was held at Moscow’s House of Unions. The event was organized by the party Spravedlivaya Rossiya (lit. “A Just Russia”). The name Sovintern echoes the Comintern, the Soviet-era Communist International that Moscow used in order to coordinate foreign communist parties and advance Soviet influence abroad.
The Kremlin did not hide its warm attitude toward this kind of international activity: the event opened with a welcoming address from Vladimir Putin himself. Sovintern’s stated public task was to create as much information content as possible. Each participant was expected to spread common narratives back home, thereby motivating potential future participants to join in the efforts to discredit their own national governments.
Like the Comintern once did for the Soviet Union, the new organization also appears to function as a cover for Russian special operations abroad. In fact, several of its participants are directly involved in recruiting foreign soldiers for the war in Ukraine.
…
One example is the American Communist Party (ACP). The party was founded only recently — on July 21, 2024 — by two Russophile Marxist-Leninist streamers: Adam Tahir, who uses the public name Haz Al-Din (and is also known as Infrared), and Jackson Hinkle. Their left-wing identity does not prevent them from being ardent admirers of the fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.
Historically, communists in the United States have been represented by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), whose leadership once actively cooperated with Soviet intelligence. The founders of the new ACP previously belonged to the shrinking CPUSA and have so far set up small chapters across the United States, as well as a branch in Canada. The party’s official activities are limited to community cleanup days, aid to the poor, and peaceful protests glorifying Stalinism and Chinese socialism. Party supporters also back Hamas and Hezbollah. Several members are even fighting against Ukraine on Russia’s side.
…
In the UK, similar activity is handled by the Workers Party of Britain and its affiliated movement, no2nato. The party is headed by George Galloway, 71, a frequent guest on Russian propaganda shows. Aside from the direct disinformation work of its leader, the party’s members are also on the lookout for potential mercenaries.
…
Until the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia used a network of state-controlled cultural centers and associated agents abroad to recruit agitators and, at times, fighters for proxy military structures. The Insider previously described how this worked using the example of Alexander Ionov, president of Russia’s Anti-Globalization Movement.
After the full-scale war began, most such organizations were expelled or shut down across the Western world. As a result, semi-legal and often highly marginal socialist and far-left cells became disproportionately useful.
…
Recruitment [of foreign soldiers for Russia’s military] continues to this day. In late April 2026, Canadian Ryan Gallant — a member of his country’s branch of the American Communist Party — arrived in Irkutsk via China. Stimson said on his blog that the recruit was a professional helicopter pilot.
Sometimes the path is more complicated. One example is Kalen Pavan, a 17-year-old Canadian cadet who was recruited through socialist chapters and arrived at the Interbrigades headquarters in the Donbas in 2024 … When it turned out that Pavan was under 18 and had lied slightly about his age, he was recruited by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service, and sent to the European Union — first to Denmark and then to Poland — for intelligence work. But he failed the assignment and was detained and convicted.
That example, however, appears to be more the exception than the rule. Those who leave for the war usually do not return home, either because they are killed in “meat grinder assaults” or because they risk criminal prosecution. If a recruit survives, after a while he may become a colleague of recruiters … and begin looking for new recruits himself.
…
what is a tankie? are marxist leninists tankie?
By use, a tankie is anyone vaguely on the left that doesn’t fall for every US state department criticism of other countries.
Historically it was a left com / Trotskyist dismissive term referring to communists that justified the intervention in Hungary, with tanks, in 1956. But liberals don’t understand history or politics, nor are curious about them, and the only real content is to imply that the target is bad and not to be believed.
Those who support AES states.
Those billionaires are so socialist you guys, marx said billionaires will bring in the communist revolution.
I assume you’re referring to the fact that private property exists in socialist countries, typically in small/medium firms, and this creates billionaires and private wealth. Nobody is saying those billionaires are “socialist billionaires,” but instead that marketization under socialism isn’t really capitalism, just like the public sector in capitalism isn’t really socialism, either.
For example, despite being state run and publicly owned, the US military exists explicitly to dominate foreign countries and open up new markets for finance capital, while protecting the gains. Even welfare in the US is largely in the service of capitalists, as it prevents revolution, and therefore maintains imperialism.
The inverse is also true with regards to marketization in socialism. Marx’s analysis of capitalism wasn’t just “capitalism bad,” he had a developed understanding that markets naturally centralize and stitch together production into larger and larger, more interconnected scales. He also saw this as the new basis for planned economy, just like decentralized production became the basis for markets and capitalism.
Markets in socialism play the progressive role of “socializing” the productive forces. You can simply decree all ownership to be collective, but without the developed and socialized industry to accomodate it, black markets and inefficiencies appear that hold back societal progress. Looking at the USSR as an example, they managed to develop heavy industry dramatically, but they ended up with large black markets for light industry. This is because there was a gap in the planned economy, and therefore the base for private production. De jure the economy was overwhelmingly publicly owned, but de facto private industry filled in the gaps.
What China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. have done is legally recognize the already existing private producers, and integrate them into the economy so as to develop them and fold them into the public sector as they grow. It’s a strategy of absorption, not cutting away. This is quite in line with the advice given by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party to appropriate all property by degrees, and focus on developing the productive forces as rapidly as possible.
They’re people who simp for fascists pretending to be communists and think that anyone critical of those fascists has been brainwashed by the west (despite us being critical of the western fascists too)
that seems to be too subjective who is a fascist pretending to be communist? was lenin that? was castro that? were stalin or mao that? And as far as I know putin doesnt even pretend to be a communist
Yeah exactly. Modern Russia is not communist or even socialist in the slightest, if anything it’s a straight up kelptocratic dictatorship and proud of it. China is a totalitarian dystopia that executes political prisoners. If anything leftists should be opposing these governments.
Not unless they look up to and defend to authoritarian imperialist regimes like Russia or China.
Which goes against the whole tenant of Communism. Where the point is to eventually remove any form of authority.
China is a socialist state. In order to get to communism, a global, fully collectivized economy, we need to establish socialism, where the working classes control the authority of the state.
A communist organizes to overthrow the bourgeois state and class and establish a new order in its place. Historically the term has referred to revolutionary socialists, particularly Marxist-Leninists, who have by far had the most success in revolution. The aftermath of revolution has never practically been immediate transformation, but to enact major changes unacceptable in reformist contexts and defend the revolution and its process.
There are no “tenets” of communism outside this context. Maybe you’re referring to Marx’s conception of communism as a classless, stateless society? From each according to their ability, to each according to their need? This was always in the context of a historical process wherein there was first a dictatorship of the proletariat and the development of productive forces to even make communism possible. It is a prediction of what people will do when the bourgeois are no more, when they can demand more from life, over a long-running process.