-From the LRP - cofi site
The comrades of the RWO have taken a courageous and principled stand in defense of the Chechen people and against all forms of chauvinist support for Russia's genocidal invasion. They have taken on the fake- left Stalinist chauvinists who dominate the left movements, boldly advancing our internationalist position with leaflets and slogans at demonstrations and other events. And they condemned the chauvinist stand of the Kiev "permanent antiwar committee" formed around the February 15 protests, whose Stalinist leaders forebade any slogans in defense of Chechnya or against Russia's invasion as a condition of taking part in the committee. Shamefully, the biggest and most cravenly opportunist fake-Trotskyist groups in Ukraine, the CWI and LRCI sections there, joined the committee despite this chauvinist requirement. The RWO continues to play an active role in all anti-war demonstrations and events, but not under the Stalinist yoke of this contemptible bloc.
The RWO-Ukraine has also made a name for itself over the past several years with its consistent and successful work supporting and often leading struggles of workers at important industrial workplaces in the Kiev area. The RWO has played a key role in defending workers and helping them organize small but significant independent unions. In the former Soviet Union, unlike the West, most of the official union organizations are nothing but state or company unions, which forces revolutionaries to adopt different strategies.
While recognizing the need under these conditions to set up new independent unions as an elementary act of workers' self-defense, we by no means rule out the possibility of future work with or within the official unions if there is the potential of shaking the bosses' grip on them. The RWO's union work has led to both recruiting some of the most advanced workers as full supporters and to developing a periphery of worker-contacts who look to the RWO for leadership and political analysis and discussion.
The RWO has maintained political work among youth and students as well, including the organizing of a discussion group at a major Kiev university where our comrades have played a leadership role and also engaged in debate with left-centrist groups such as the supporters of the IBT and IG. In this milieu as well the RWO is succeeding in winning both new comrades and a periphery of active contacts.
Such consistent and ongoing work over a period of years has been key to attracting more and more supporters to the RWO. While the forces of no less than a couple dozen opportunist centrist groups in Ukraine have waxed and waned along with the political fortunes of the various reformists and Stalinists they have tailed in recent years, the RWO has steadily built its forces on a principled basis and has grown both numerically and geographically.
The RWO is now, after the CWI and LRCI, the third-largest left group in Ukraine (outside of the open Stalinists). The RWO consists of several dozen workers not only in the center in Kiev, but also with groups of several workers each in no less than half-a-dozen other key cities in different regions, both in mostly Ukrainian-speaking Western Ukraine and in mostly Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine. The composition of the comrades in the organization is overwhelmingly young and working-class.
Also critically important is the RWO's international work in Moscow. Through interventions at major demonstrations and events there, especially at the November 7 events marking the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the RWO has won an impressive group of COFI supporters in Moscow. The Russian comrades were also represented at the COFI Conference in Warsaw. It is only a matter of time before the RWO-Russia will establish a formal relationship with COFI. It has to be especially noted that the Moscow comrades' revolutionary internationalist stand in defense of the Chechen people is particularly admirable in the face of the wave of chauvinist hysteria which swept Moscow after the theater hostage-taking incident and the Putin regime's deadly storming of it last fall.
The conference agreed that the most important task facing the RWO- Ukraine is the establishment of a regular propaganda press organ. The RWO published a large and impressive first issue of its propaganda journal, Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya, but we all recognize the need to make it a regular publication. In addition, the RWO has been issuing a number of leaflets on particular events and topics as they arise; it is now a goal to make such publications into a regular series of bulletins.
In conclusion, it must be said that for the American comrades of the LRP, who have fought for decades against the stream of political opportunism that has swamped the left, joining forces with a large group of young revolutionary workers from the former Soviet Union, the land of the Russian Revolution, is an inspiring step. It confirms our confidence in the correctness of our struggle. Huge events have greatly widened the impact of COFI around the world. By far, we have more contacts in more countries approaching us than ever before and we expect further additions to our ranks in the near future. The Congress gave us renewed and increased confidence in the fight to re- create the authentic Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution.