“The Prison Within” (2021) is a provocative and intriguing documentary produced by Katherin Hervey, a former public defender and prison instructor. Provocative, because we are presented with adult male inmates in San Quentin Prison in northern California struggling with unidentified and untreated multi-generational trauma. Intriguing because the documentary presents a compelling argument for restorative justice, yet it stops short of sparking a larger conversation about what to do about prisons in a truly civilized society.
The documentary focuses on the Victim Offender Education Group (VOEG) program conducted by the Insight Prison Project (IPP) at San Quentin Prison. The IPP describes the VOEG program on their website as
“…an intensive 18-month group program for incarcerated people who wish to understand themselves better, how their life experiences and decisions led them to prison and how their crimes have impacted their victim(s). The purpose of the training is to help incarcerated people understand and take responsibility for the impact of the crime(s) they have committed. The class culminates with participants meeting with victims for a healing dialogue.”
Though this is not highlighted in the documentary quite as clearly as the purpose of the program, it does give some insight into why the documentary deals with restorative justice within the prison system, as opposed to a society-wide imperative.
The documentary provides quite an extensive discussion into how unaddressed and unresolved trauma helps affect the way victims see the world around them, and how they see and feel about themselves and others. It presents this idea largely through the stories of several men who are in the VOEG program, as they recount the paths that led them to prison.
Poster for film, “The Prison Within” (2021)
We are presented with the real-life cause-and-effects of neglect, abuse and generational trauma, and how they all can turn inward into self-doubt, self-hate and fear, eventually compelling anti-social behavior that inflicts trauma onto others. Unresolved anger at the person or persons who inflicted the trauma was a common theme.
A promising discussion was raised by one man about how he served time in the military, which led him to more violence. But this time, it was state-sanctioned violence. However, the discussion did not expand into how the military reinforces violence as a solution to problems, while also exposing millions of traumatized people to more violence, which produces even more trauma in the form of disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). That is then not treated by the very military that trains people to commit barbarous acts against other human beings. This documentary on justice feels like a lost opportunity to connect militarism with the devaluation of human life and U.S. imperialism.
However, one imprisoned man seems to conflate the systemic racism with the inward and outward expressions of unresolved trauma that his father and even he experienced because of racism. I think that is where the documentary misplaces forgiveness as a response to systemic racism. Racism is based on irrational, illogical fears and emotions based on stereotypes, lies, and propaganda against a group of people that is used to deny them human rights. Trauma is the result of real and tangible abuses, emotions, and fears. Yes, trauma can result because of racism, but can it be said that racism happens because racists are traumatized, as it seems the documentary is attempting to suggest? I think this is the danger in relating to racism, and especially racist violence, as another expression of unresolved trauma.
The documentary presents a difficult-to-sit-with conversation about the ways race and ethnicity shield some people from scrutiny and prosecution while they commit crimes, while others face the brunt of the state. This discussion is difficult because it shows how messy it is to try to put people into “good/bad” categories. Is someone who is the victim of sexual abuse and other traumas a “bad” person if they act violently toward others? If we believe that “hurt people hurt people,” why do we not believe this for people in prison, who are mostly poor and predominantly people of color? And if we do not, why do we condemn and throw away one, but not the other? For many people, confronting these questions can be difficult, and the documentary does a good job of helping viewers think about class and race biases in these matters.
Another very important issue raised in the documentary is fathers not expressing love and acceptance with their boys. The lack of affection and protection from their fathers—even if they were present—while receiving hostility or outright abuse is a recurring theme in many of the stories imprisoned men told. Society so easily falls back on the trope that so many men—especially Black men—turn to crime because they had no fathers or father figures in their early lives. Yet, we hear from these men that emotionally distant or abusive fathers—who often acted that way because they were acting out the trauma they experienced in their youth—that exposed these imprisoned men to their first and lasting traumas.
Yet another issue discussed is male children who are artistic or creative not being accepted because they are not expressing their “maleness” in traditional ways or in ways that are acceptable to the older men in the family. This drives them to seek acceptance by acting in destructive and risky ways that may also be outside of their nature. Further, the documentary explores how rejection teaches young boys to suppress their natural, normal emotions, and conditions them to view others who express those emotions as weak, too.
A very interesting twist on the “hurt people hurt people” idea is presented when the widow of a murdered cop comes to terms with her role in advocating for the death sentence for her husband’s murderer. This aspect of the documentary provides insight into one person’s journey toward peace, but should it be an instructive for how millions in this society view the death penalty as a just form of punishment? Are they all “hurt people” who support the death penalty and even may relish in it in some regards out of unresolved pain and trauma? The documentary does touch on how people in the United States are convinced—basically indoctrinated—to believe the death penalty is not only reasonable, but necessary. Perhaps focusing on an individual journey of healing as a reflection of or as a potential remedy for systemic human-rights violations via the death penalty is a deeply flawed and potentially dangerous premise. Especially considering the work the widow in question is revealed as pursuing or, more precisely, who she serves in her work, as we learn at the documentary’s end.
The film lays out in clear, concise and emotionally compelling ways both the cycle of unaddressed and untreated trauma that leads people to prison—an environment that thrives off and perpetuates more trauma—is unaddressed in prison, and that communities have no tools to address the issue with released prisoners.
But an opportunity to discuss prison’s utility in the just and supportive society we claim to be fighting for—as well as with what to replace prisons—is not present in this documentary.
Surely, abolition cannot be achieved without an agreed-upon alternative to prisons. But if the goal is to not just reform prisons to make them “better,” but to create a society in which prisons are obsolete, the following must be discussed: 1) Methods of accountability and restoration for individuals who commit acts that break the social contract and 2) the state’s responsibility in its part of the social contract to ensure every person’s human rights are respected in the provision of housing, education, jobs that pay a living wage, comprehensive healthcare, etc., so traumas are not systematically inflicted on people as an inherent aspect of the system, but also so individual traumas are addressed as an inherent aspect of the system.
Prison reform is certainly needed to immediately stop the cycle of trauma the prison-industrial complex and the penchant for retribution indoctrinated into the American psyche creates. But any effort at prison reform that doesn’t involve dismantling capitalism, white supremacy and classism will only uphold the system. Although “The Prison Within” makes a few fleeting mentions of expanding treatment and mitigation programs to keep traumatized people from going to prison in the first place, restorative justice is presented inside the narrow construct of reforming prisons to make them “better.” That all makes sense when the discussion is not intended to be about replacing prisons with humane and truly restorative systems.
Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder ofLuqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here andhere) and onFacebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s“By Any Means Necessary.”
Editor’s Note: This podcast was originally published by MintPress News.
The MintPress podcast “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby, and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman fatally shot 22 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Police reportedly refused to confront the killer, locked him in a room full of children, physically prevented parents from getting involved, and even allegedly rescued their own children first.
The massacre has once again brought the United States’ unique obsession with firearms to the fore, with renewed calls to ban assault rifles. But even among gun-control advocates, few realize the connections between the Second Amendment and white supremacy.
Today’s guest is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Originally from Oklahoma, Dunbar-Ortiz is a writer, historian and activist, possibly best known for her 2014 classic book, “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.” She argues that the context behind the Second Amendment is that the newly-independent United States needed “well-regulated militias” of white men to “kill Indians and take their land,” or to form slave patrols that would hunt down Black people fleeing their captivity. It was out of these slave patrols that the first police departments were formed.
Ultimately, she argues, the need for such armed militias arose from the fact that the white colonists were on recently stolen land, surrounded by hostile groups who were trying to get their land back. As she notes, it was a crime to give or sell a gun to a Native American.
An activist for over 50 years, Dunbar-Ortiz has argued that for any progress to be made, Americans must stop worshiping a 234-year-old document written by slaveholders. Today with Lowkey, she also discussed how it was that the National Rifle Association was taken over by reactionary political actors and how it came to be that the United States is a country with 4% of the world’s population but half of the world’s guns.
“The Constitution is so embedded in white supremacy that there is no way to amend it to change that. It is everywhere…This is so obvious if you just face what U.S. history is and not leave so much out,” she told Lowkey.
A revolutionary and a feminist, Dunbar-Ortiz’s life’s work has taken her across the world, including to Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua, where she documented the U.S.-sponsored Contra War against indigenous groups. She is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. Among her other notable books include, “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment”; “The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America”; and “Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.”
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
Just some of the cast of the Netflix film, “Don’t Look Up” (2021)
Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers.
“Don’t Look Up” uses satire to magnify the outrageous responses of fictional U.S. politicians, media, corporations and the population to a fictional comet that is about to collide with Earth and wipe out all life. But the film’s depiction isn’t too far from reality, considering how the real-life U.S. government has failed to address climate change, which could cost all of us our lives.
Leonardo DiCaprio effectively plays astronomist “Dr. Randall Mindy,” mentoring younger female doctoral student “Kate Dibiasky,” played by Jennifer Lawrence. Mindy is portrayed as a typically dull and bland scientist type, with a dull and bland wife and family life. This reflects the stereotype of scientists being boring and uninteresting, and helps to set up for the drastic change Mindy undergoes later in the film when he is exposed to the limelight.
Poster for Netflix film “Don’t Look Up” (2021)
Dibiasky on the other hand is the stereotypical hip, loner Geek Girl, rapping along with Wu Tang Clan’s “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ Ta F’ Wit,” while she scours the stars in her school’s observatory and discovers the comet. But, as brilliant as she is, Dibiasky is portrayed as socially awkward and unsophisticated, with a demeanor that is actually direct, especially considering the circumstances, but is characterized as sullen and snarky, and used against her later in the film.
As the scientists’ discovery is brought to the attention of the president of the United States, played with wacky deviousness by Meryl Streep, their warnings are dismissed and spun in ridiculous ways. But when we consider how real-life politicians approach policy—and even science—not from a people-centered approach, but with a primary focus on polling and elections, the scenes depicting the president with her advisors and cabinet members aren’t so ridiculous after all.
The film also takes a very pointed jab at the media; vapid morning talk shows, in particular. Even those that are allegedly political, with their focus on keeping the banter and topics light, rather than focusing on whatever existential crisis humanity is facing, and there are lots of them, but in this case the impending extinction-level collision of a comet with Earth. But print media is not spared, as the lack of journalistic integrity is critiqued when a major print newspaper also goes with the narrative that polls well, rather than the truth of the story leaked to them that the talk news shows and the government ignored.
The stereotype of the sex-crazed, airhead talk-show personality is played boozily by Cate Blanchette, throwing herself at the (arguably) sexy male scientist, Mindy, while insisting that the serious Dibiasky never return to the show. But, in truth, too many female television personalities do play the role of the pretty, bleached-blond giggler anchoring “news” shows that millions watch every day, without delivering an ounce of real, truthful news about any of the issues that impact those people’s lives. And the film presents the misinformation those regular people receive from politicians and the media effectively in rabid “Don’t Look Up” advocates convinced that the comet is a tool being used by “them” to make people live in fear.
Meanwhile, Tyler Perry portrays Blanchette’s male co-anchor. He plays just as much of an airhead as his female colleague, refusing to deal with the seriousness of the comet, but he does so with a strain of vindictiveness as he makes jokes about the comet destroying his ex-wife’s house. I think there’s something to be said for the lengths some Black people will go to maintain the status quo, even when the lives of others are at stake and they know it. Particularly in the media.
Even citizen activism is touched on in the movie, with the fervent efforts to educate and inform people are drowned out by powerful politicians, the media and the military. And even celebrity advocacy is skewered for the feel-good-but-oftentimes-vanity project that it usually is.
A scene from Netflix film “Don’t Look Up” (2021) featuring from left to right: Jonah Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence
Corporations are not spared in this pointed satire, as a creepy/robotic/absentminded professor/evil genius-like tech company CEO with a cult-like following named Peter Isherwell—played by English actor Mark Rylance—floats a truly diabolical idea to the president on how to deal with the comet. Isherwell’s company, BASH Cellular, is an obvious portrayal of the tech behemoths Apple, Google and Facebook have become. BASH is so ubiquitous, the fictional tech company is able to detect people’s moods and present them with visual content to help them feel better. That isn’t out of the realm of reality, because who doesn’t enjoy a great cat video right now? I sure do. But that the government capitulated to him isn’t ridiculous at all in light of the current corporate control of the real-life U.S. government, and viewers should not miss the film’s condemnation of the illogical, insane, life-threatening capitalist greed in the whole plan. What people may miss is the implied imperialism when the fictional U.S. government breaks a treaty with China, India and Russia, and the coincidental (not at all) mysterious (not at all) disaster that befalls the aforementioned countries’ plan.
It is true that the film is co-written by David Sirota, former-Clintonite-turned-progressive. But Sirota and his crew are spot on with much of the political commentary. Where it misses is the film is very… Eurocentric, with only a lone Indigenous dancer near the end, which might signify the people nobody listened to. But I’m not quite sure. That scene honestly seemed like an afterthought.
Otherwise, “Don’t Look Up” is a funny film because the responses of the fictional politicians, media figures and regular folks are so utterly and breathtakingly ridiculous and portrayed so well by the cast. But I think it also is a horror movie because we know every depiction of the real-life people and institutions those actors play is absolutely true.
Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder ofLuqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here andhere) and onFacebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s“By Any Means Necessary.”
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the largest opposition party in Russia and has criticized detentions stemming from protests that demonstrated against Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine
TF contributor Fergie Chambers got the opportunity on April 15 to conduct an in-person interview in Saint Petersburg, Russia, with Roman Kononenko, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and First Secretary of the Saint Petersburg City Committee of the KPRF. The interview ranged on topics including, the Russian “special military operation,” the nature of the Ukrainian state, the KPRF’s standing within Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity and China. This interview was conducted mainly in English and a little in Russian.
Fergie Chambers: Well, first off, can you tell me about the KPRF’s position on the conflict in Ukraine?
Roman Kononenko: From the very first day, we issued a statement in support of the special operation, and we also use this word, “special operation.”
FC: As opposed to war, invasion or incursion…
RK: Yes, we do not use neither war, nor invasion, nor interference. We called it “special operation,” as soon as it was put in Russia’s official documents. So we deeply believe that the current Ukrainian state is not self-governed, is not independent. It is completely controlled by the so called “collective West.” I mean, the European Union, U.S. and NATO. So we believe that the Ukrainian government is a puppet government and puppet, that they do not actually pursue their national interests in what they are doing. And of course, another reason is this unbelievable growth of Nazism, of fascism. We can discuss whether we should call it fascism or Nazism, but there are definitely Ukrainian Nazis. And many efforts were made by the West during the last eight years to support it. They were investing money, through the Western NGOs, for this, officially under the pretext of building national identity. But actually, this was Nazism. And even now, for example, in the town of Melitopol or in Berdyansk, the Russian military have found books, leaflets, published and paid by EU authorities, and also the other NGOs from the European countries. If we study everything carefully, it is obvious that they were trying to create an image that Russia is an enemy.
At the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) office in Saint Petersburg sits Roman Kononenko, a member of the Presidium of the KPRF’s Central Committee and First Secretary of the KPRF’s Saint Petersburg City Committee / credit: Fergie Chambers
FC: So when you say Russia, specifically, are we actually talking Russian people, as opposed to just the Russian government?
RK: Yes, Russian people. Everybody who speaks Russian, who comes from Russia is an enemy. He may have a nationality or be from, for example, the Republic of Buryatia or Dagestan or Chechnya, but he speaks Russian. And for them, he’s an enemy.
FC: Mm-hm.
RK: Which is, of course, a dangerous situation. So sooner or later, the situation would have obviously exploded.
FC: It was interesting, because I interviewed a man in Kishinev [Moldova] who was the head of the Ukrainian Association of Moldova, an NGO there. And I asked him about Nazism, and he said, you know, “We’re not Nazis,” like you said. He said, “We’re interested in the creation of a national identity.” And the next sentence was, “Did you know that in 2016, there were blood tests that showed that Russians have Mongol blood, and that Ukrainians have European blood?” To say, “We’re not Nazis,” and then immediately to make a comment about blood and eugenics, it’s crazy. And these are the “moderates.”
RK: And also they have visible attributes, images of belonging to the Nazi movement. You know, that’s the official slogan that they use, “Slava Ukraini” [Glory to Ukraine]. Slava is actually kind of copying the German, “Heil Hitler.” This is actually the same or what they say in the Ukraine. This is, “Ukraine over everything.”
FC: As in, “Deutschland Uber Alles” [Germany Above Everything].
RK: Yes. This is copying. They are copying what the Nazis were doing, what they were saying. They are even using the same explanations to explain why Russians are not the people of the same European blood, you know, swastikas, symbols of Azov, and images of Hitler. We have a lot of photos. We had them before the special operation started, and some of them even managed to get to the pages of Western media, but no reaction at all. And also what we have in Ukraine is that these ultra Nazis not only just exist, but they serve the Ukrainian government. They are part of the Ukrainian special forces. They are part of the Ukrainian army. All of them have military ranks. So, former Nazi paramilitary groups became parts of either the National Guard, or the armed forces of Ukraine. And this is another example that the Ukrainian state uses open Nazis: Either uses them, or serves them. That can also be discussed.
FC: And what about the position of the international “left,” or other “left” parties in Russia?
RK: So as to the position of the left. In terms of this military operation, of course, we have different viewpoints. I have not analyzed what the socialist parties are saying. I have not analyzed what some small leftist groups are saying.
FC: You mean in Russia or elsewhere?
RK: I mean the West. We are just reading what the European communist parties are saying about this, this operation and the whole situation. All of them have denounced “Russian invasion,” and all of them are saying that it’s an imperialist war. [Within the context of capitalism, imperialism involves using military force to protect the capital produced through the exploitation of land, labor and resources after that capital circulates outside the countries inside of which the capital had accumulated.] I can name you only one party which published a statement in support of what Russia is doing. It’s a Serbian party, the new Communist Party of Yugoslavia. I think they are just using the older Marxist-Leninist instruments to analyze the situation. [Marxism-Leninism is the communist ideology that emphasizes building a revolution through the development of a small group of people who dedicate their time to organizing the masses, as opposed to a mass-based party, in which decisions may be made in a more deliberate fashion.]
FC: Explain more?
RK: If you read [Bolshevik leader Vladimir] Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and if you read and understand everything literally, then, okay, you could argue that this is an imperialist war. But Lenin always taught us to analyze each situation, taking into account, into consideration, the current situation, the current historical situation and stuff. So, if we take all of the other aspects: Of course, maybe Russia has some of its own imperialist interests. For example, we can take Syria as an example. I don’t believe that Russia wanted to protect Syrian people from what was happening from Daesh, from occupation. Russia was following its interest in Syria. But, had it not been for the Russian interference in Syria, I think today we would not have had any independent, sovereign Syrian state. So we can say that such kind of interference that we that we faced in Syria was of [a] progressive character.
A painting hanging in the KPRF office in Saint Petersburg that depicts the Bolshevik revolution being organized / credit: Fergie Chambers
FC: I’ve heard people argue that even in the sense of Lenin’s definition, that Russia does not qualify as an “imperialist state” in the same capacity as the West, because of the lack of finance capital and export capital in Russia. I’m wondering what you think about that?
RK: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Russia didn’t export a lot of capital, and I think almost the majority of Russian capital, which was exported, it was to Ukraine, and a lot of it was lost in 2014.
FC: What do you think about these allegations that are coming out about Mariupol, Bucha. You know, every day, there’s a new thing: Azov making a statement that chemical weapons were used…
RK: We can see that this Bucha case is a provocation. It never happened, what we saw on Western TV and Ukrainian TV. This was completely staged by the Ukrainian armed forces, and political technologists, because we know that Russian forces left Bucha on the 30th of March. We saw public celebrations in Ukrainian media that, said, “Okay, now we are here in ‘Liberated Bucha,'” and there was no mention about any kind of massacre. Then there were publications in Ukrainian social media that they were starting a “cleanup” of the territory. And only after the Ukrainian “cleanup,” we saw what we now see in the pictures. So, I think they were just peaceful people, who were killed by Ukrainian armed forces or other nationalist paramilitary groups. Because if we look at the pictures or the photos and videos attentively, we can see white armbands. As it is happening in the Russian controlled territory of the of Ukraine, the Russian armed forces ask peaceful people just to put this white strap on the elbow. So it is obvious that, I mean, I think the Ukrainians killed those people for cooperation with Russians and whatever. As to Mariupol, and other cases, now we can see that Ukrainian armed forces are using, in fact, terrorist tactics. As it was happening in Syria, for example, they are using the peaceful population as a live shield. This makes no sense, because, if we take, for example, the war against Nazi Germany, how was the Army reacting? They were building protective lines in front of the city, trying not to let the enemy army to enter the city. Now they get inside the city, among the buildings, on the roofs, in the apartments. And they don’t let the peaceful population leave the city. They want to get a picture of destruction, devastation, and they want to say that many peaceful people were killed. These are terrorist tactics. This is not classical warfare.
FC: Mm-hm.
RK: The Army’s using its own people to create an image of the crimes they are committing.
FC: So, another thing that seems to really fluctuate every day in the Western media is how the actual battle is going. One day, we see the Ukrainians are “humiliating Putin.” The next, that the “brutal Russian army” is laying waste to Ukraine. How do you see it?
RK: We have a saying, that an almost destroyed enemy begins their cowardly onslaught. Of course, here we are. We don’t know everything. Sure, how the decisions were made, and why, we ask a lot of questions. But I don’t have a full military education. I studied in university at the military faculty. This is like, one day a week, you go to study, and then you become a lieutenant. But I’m not a military expert. What happened when they decided to leave the Kiev and Chernihiv region? I still don’t understand. We lost the lives of our soldiers. There were people who were welcoming the Russian army, and suddenly, we left, and we left those people to the Ukrainians who came and then the Bucha affair happened.
FC: So, from your position, you don’t understand the decision to abandon the North?
RK: I cannot understand this.
FC: The only theories I’d heard about that is just that, you know, the idea was to decentralize the Ukrainian forces, which might have been concentrated in Donbass.
RK: Yeah. But to tie them up for some periods in Kiev or Chernihiv, but now they are free to go back to Donbass. It’s strange.
FC: Yes, strange. So tell me, maybe more broadly, what do you think were the primary factors that played into this having to be resolved in a military way, as opposed to being resolved diplomatically? For instance, why didn’t the Minsk agreements work out? Or what forces do you think were most at play in their failure?
RK: I think the agreements didn’t work out because the Ukrainian government was never going to implement them. In seven years, they hadn’t even made a single step toward implementing them. And, from time to time, you would hear high-ranking Ukrainian officials boasting that they are not going to fulfill anything, oficially, openly on TV and media.
FC: Right.
RK: And also, according to the results of what our armed forces found there after the operation started, we could see that they found plans: Military maps and plans of invasion into Donbass and into Crimea. These documents were shown all over our media and social media. Of course, I think that our government had some intelligence information before, because, you know, the military way of solving issues is the last the way you should be using. I think they had some kind of information, which made them think and believe that the only way to solve this was militarily.
FC: And that a larger invasion of the East might be coming in Donbass. And what do you see as the best possible resolution to the conflict at this moment?
RK: I think in the current stage of the conflict, only complete military defeat of Ukraine can be a resolution of this conflict, because even if they sign any kind of truce or peaceful agreement, nothing would end. Looks [like] we have an entire Russian border with an anti-Russian population. I think even if we would sign a peaceful agreement, and leave everything as it is, nothing would end. The shelling of Russian territories would be continued as they happened for years already, and yeah, yesterday they attacked the Belgorod region, the Kursk region and the Bryansk region. We need to put an end to this. Unfortunately, at this current stage, this is the only solution.
FC: When you say complete military defeat, does that imply, a partition of Donbass, as well? And does it also imply the end of Euromaidan [right-wing protest movement]? Does it imply a change of the Kiev government entirely?
RK: Complete capitulation of the Kiev government, and a new government should come. I think there must be some provisional government. Of course, the new government should be democratically elected, but under new conditions, not under control of fascist forces.
FC: How do you think that these kinds of nationalist conflicts arose so strongly after the fall of the USSR?
RK: I really do not know because I do not live there. But I think that, of course, it took them many years to build this so-called national identity. I am stretching “so-called.” A lot was made in this piece of culture in Ukraine, in the spheres of “studying history.” You know, they were creating a complete fake history of an ancient Ukrainian state, which never existed.
FC: Fake, as distinct from Kiev/Rus?
RK: Yeah. There are a lot of crazy theories there. Some even said that Ukrainians dug the Black Sea. This kind of stuff was being spread everywhere, for many, many years. To show that the Ukrainian nation is something exquisite.
FC: What was your relationship like as a party with Ukrainian socialist or communist parties?
RK: Oh, we had very good relations and we still have with the Communist Party of Ukraine.
FC: And what is their situation? I mean, they’re illegal, no?
RK: They are illegal. Many comrades were arrested during the last years. They were always attacked, regularly beaten in the streets by the fascist thugs. Currently, we don’t know where the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine is.
FC: Because he was detained, or because he hid? What’s his name?
RK: [Petro] Symonenko. We don’t know which [detained or hiding]. Since February, the 24th, we don’t have any news on where he is. But also, for example, the leader of the Youth Organization of the Communist Party of Ukraine was arrested.
FC: And what was [the Communist Party of Ukraine’s] political position, prior to Maidan? How strong of a party were they?
RK: The party was quite strong, the second or the third faction in the Ukrainian parliament, with many members. But after the coup, they became illegal. It’s kind of ridiculous, because there was a decision of the Ministry of Justice to ban the party. They went to court, and the trial is still going on. So, in fact, the decision has never been made official, to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine. But in fact, all Ukrainian authorities and governmental bodies consider it like a decision, which is already in power.
FC: So they enforce it?
RK: Yes.
These red plaques mark the headquarters of the Saint Petersburg city branch of the KPRF. The top plaque reads, “Committee of the Saint Petersburg City Branch.” The bottom reads, “Committee of the Leningrad Oblast (Region) Branch.” Both signs say at the top of each, “Communist Party of the Russian Federation” / credit: Fergie Chambers
FC: What’s the relationship like between KPRF and smaller socialist parties in Russia? Is there a good working relationship with any of the other parties? Is there any kind of a left bloc or is it more scattered?
RK: There is no bloc. Can you name me any smaller socialist parties?
FC: No.
RK: Me neither. We have this party that is called Fair Liberals. They are saying they’re social democrats, but they are not, neither in ideology, nor in their practical steps. We never noticed them, so we don’t even identify them as belonging to socialism. But they were members of the Socialist International.
FC: Some Western leftists, and Russian radicals, would accuse KPRF of being a revisionist party, or dismiss it as a relic of the past, a party of only the elderly. What would you say about the position of the party today? [Revisionism refers to a policy of making modifications without adhering to revolutionary principles.]
RK: We are the second [largest] party in the Parliament. We are the biggest opposition party. As to the accusations of being revisionist, we put it into our program that we use the “creative development of Marxism-Leninism,” because Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma. But of course, think I’m not a revisionist. I cannot admit that I’m revisionist. I will never be revisionist. (Laughs) I have been a party member for 21 years already, and I am relatively young.
FC: How old are you?
RK: I’m 40. It’s not a party of old people. Of course, we have many old party members who were members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). But those people who vote for our party are not the people of that age. We are supported mostly by people between [ages] 30 and 50. And the elderly, they vote for Putin’s party.
FC: How has the Party attempted to reach a post-Soviet generation?
RK: We’re just addressing the common problems, because the problems of both younger generations and other generations are very common in Russia. We are talking about social problems and we are proposing our methods to fix the situation. Our measures.
FC: For instance, what are the primary social contradictions at play in Russia from the perspective of the KPRF?
RK: Russia is a capitalist country, yes, with much of its wealth controlled by the oligarchs. We believe that our natural resources should be nationalized, not on paper as they are now. But, in fact should be nationalized and serve the development of our industry, the development of our economy, the development of our, and this is a fashionable term, “human capital.”
FC: In the West, we have heard about some recent nationalization of the Russian economy. When you say it’s “on paper,” what do you mean by that?
RK: For example, oil and gas, in the constitution, it is written there that they belong to the people. But, in fact, those who exploit it are private companies; they simply pay extra taxes, but they take the profits. For example, Gazprom, the biggest gas producing company, is a private company. You know, the several years ago, they put a big campaign on Russian TV saying, “Gazprom is a national heritage.” But this national heritage is a private company. Of course, there is some state participation in its ownership, but it doesn’t even have a controlling share.
FC: But [the state] does have some interest. So it’s different than the way it would operate in the purely capitalist West?
RK: Yes, to some extent.
FC: And when you mentioned, social problems, is that what you’re talking about?
RK: No. Okay. We’ve always had a lot of problems, and these problems have not disappeared since the start of the military operation. There is a big gap between the incomes of the poorest and the richest, which sometimes comes to 30 times different. This is a huge gap. And another thing was the so called “pension reform,” which happened in 2018, when they increased the retirement age. The government did this.
FC: Did you see a spike in popularity around that issue?
RK: In popularity, in support? Yeah, of course. We didn’t have a federal election that year, but we had regional elections, and we seriously improved our results; we received two new governors of the oblasts [regions].
FC: How many governors of the oblasts do you have currently ?
RK: Currently, three.
FC: And seats in parliament?
RK: I don’t remember exactly. Ninety plus.
FC: What’s the rough percentage?
RK: I think 19 percent. But this is second to United Russia, because United Russia controls the state.
FC: And speaking about United Russia, from my perspective, I’m probably more sympathetic to United Russia, from the dialectical lens of an American, than I might be if I was here in Russia. You talk about income, the income gap, you talk about nationalization of resources, you talk about oligarchy. It seems just looking in from the West, that these are problems that the West would like to blame on Putin. But it looks like they’re all things that have improved significantly in the last 20 years, versus the way they were in the ’90s. Would you agree with that? Not that they’ve resolved themselves, but that the material conditions for the masses in Russia have improved under Putin, versus [in] the ’90s?
A painting of theorist and organizer Karl Marx on the wall of the KPRF office in Saint Petersburg / credit: Fergie Chambers
RK: Of course, but they improved mostly between the years 2000 and 2011, because of the high oil and gas prices in those years. And we call them “fat.”
FC: Like a bubble?
RK: Yes, and we’re still facing many issues that are unsolved, and all of these were made by United Russia. We have a lot of problems in the health care system, because during all these years, they were following one general line of so called “optimization.” They were closing hospitals and clinics, to create one instead of two, like to optimize, not to spend a lot of money. And closing some small group hospitals.
FC: In the name of efficiency?
RK: Efficiency, yeah. And, of course, everything exploded when COVID-19 appeared, because, suddenly, it turned out that in many hospitals or regional centers, the infection departments were closed, or “optimized.” So they didn’t even have medical facilities to isolate people, and they had to take them to neighboring regions. Of course, they had to do something very quickly, and they had to create some new facilities. But what happened in the beginning of 2020—in March and April—was that we didn’t have enough [beds] in the hospitals for those who were infected with COVID.
FC: I didn’t know about that. Tell, me, it’s my belief that the “human rights” issue is often a tool of imperialist propaganda, but is the party concerned about human-rights issues in Russia—or civil rights—with regard to United Russia? Do you feel like state repression is an issue?
RK: Yes, we are concerned. I think civil rights are something important. But they are not less important than social rights, right? Than rights for social protection. But when United Russia is attacking, for example, a civil democratic right for people to come out in the street to protest, we are against this attack. We want to protect this.
FC: So you’re against the detention of protesters?
RK: Yes. We are among those who come out in the streets to protest against them, [and] other anti-people measures of United Russia.
FC: Not to protest the special operation in this moment, but other issues?
RK: Yes. But we know many cases of persecution, and persecution is not legal, even according to their laws.
FC: So this kind of persecution for either protests or journalism, around the special operation or other issues, does it usually look like actual hard jail time, or does it usually look like fines?
RK: Almost exclusively fines. None of our members [were] ever sent to jail because of some political activity. I really don’t think.
FC: Because, in the West, there’s this notion that if you step out of line in Russia, Putin’s going to lock you up.
RK: Basically, no. Most probably, you will be arrested, you will spend the night in a police station. Maybe [the] next day, they will take you to court and fine you. That’s the most common outcome.
FC: The other thing, in the West, we never hear about about the Communist Party being the largest opposition. We hear about [Russia of the Future party leader Alexei] Navalny.
RK: Navalny and his supporters, they exist in small numbers, in Saint Petersburg, in Moscow, the two richest and most European cities. And then they do not present any kind of force elsewhere in Russia.
FC: This is something that I’ve noticed, that there’s a big distinction between the Russian voices that the West wants to highlight. The people you hear from in the West represent a small sliver of the Saint Petersburg and Moscow bourgeoisie, who are probably Western educated, who probably have investments in business dealings with the West, you know, and they may live there or be expatriates. Is this accurate?
RK: You’re completely, absolutely right.
FC: And so that, and that contingency, is also kind of representative of this Navalny tendency?
RK: They are the only supporters of Navalny, and they’re mostly young people, those between 16 and, maybe, 20. Why? Primarily, I don’t know why, but they want to say that they belong to some something, which they call a “creative class.” I really don’t know what it is, but they say it exists.
FC: So we see this in the U.S., really going back to the 1960s and ’70s, how youth counterculture became a really big staging ground for CIA activity, even the proliferation of anarchism. And then here, [media outlet] Vice started to come in and report on Russia a lot, and [Russian feminist band] Pussy Riot started showing up everywhere, like a symbol of Russian resistance. Does that fit?
RK: Absolutely.
FC: What’s the relationship of the party to the Communist Party of China (CPC)?
RK: We have quite close contacts. We have [a] cooperation agreement. We sign it every five years, to extend it for five years. We exchange delegations on a regular basis, and we have cooperation in the scientific aspects of studying Marxism-Leninism, as well. So we are quite closely connected.
FC: So maybe more closely connected with the CPC now than the CPSU was to the CPC was after the [1960 ideological] split?
RK: Yes, we are more closely connected. Of course.
FC: And do you see generally see a Russian-Chinese partnership as an important part of sort of historical progress moving forward?
RK: Of course. It’s a part of the historical process. It can give the world an opportunity to diversify the economy.
FC: Is the goal of the KPRF to re-take power in Russia, and to re-establish a dictatorship of the proletariat?
RK: Re-take power? Yes. But we’re not writing about dictatorship of the proletariat, in our official program. We officially put it as “building renewed socialism of the 21st century.” That’s how we call it, trying to take the best of the Soviet period, and trying to take whatever is good now.
FC: So what is the difference between the Soviet period and this concept of “renewed socialism in the 21st century?”
RK: Well, I can tell you, economically, we are not completely against private property, in general. We are saying that small private businesses can exist, like, for example, a small bakery, or a barber shop, or drug store. That’s the primary difference, because, during the Soviet period, everything was state-owned. So we believe that this, that these things could initially help drive the economy, like Lenin already did in the ’20s, the so-called NEP [New Economic Policy aimed for a transition between the post-czarist period of poverty and communism that featured a “mixed” economy, which permitted small- to medium-sized private enterprises while the state controlled large enterprises, like banks, to help provide the capital necessary for the development of productive forces]. So I think we are pursuing the same goal.
FC: As a means to eventual full communism or as just an adaptation to the current times?
RK: Of course. Finally, it must be full communism. But first, you need to build a socialist state.
FC: Similar to [Chinese leader from 1978 to 1989] Deng Xiaoping?
RK: Similar. We’re not going to copy the Chinese model, but…
FC: So I’m assuming that, at this moment, you’re also not advocating for the violent seizure of the state?
RK: Yes, we are not openly advocating for this. It is put in our documents that we should come to power through elections.
FC: And do you think this is realistic? Do you think that the elections here are open?
RK: No, we don’t. They are not honest. Yeah, but we are fighting to make them more transparent, more open, honest and fair.
FC: And so how does that happen? Because if the people controlling the elections are the ones being dishonest about it, how can you push back against that?
RK: We work harder. This is the only way. To put most responsible people in Congress, to control the voting stations. Which is, of course, difficult when the whole state apparatus is against you. But we never exclude the revolutionary way of changing power. But, of course, first you need revolutionary conditions.
FC: So would you say that maybe your focus is on growing revolutionary consciousness in Russia, or reinstituting political education?
RK: Growing class consciousness. Political education, of course. Even so called “civil activism.” There are Soviet words for this. They have written their budgets. We want to form this class-conscious position in as many people as possible.
FC: And are there any kind of broad political education programs that the party is involved in in the country?
RK: Of course, in in every region, we have our own centers of schools, of political education. And, of course, we are offering our own programs here. But political education is not only just collecting people somewhere and teaching them. Political education is explaining things. Explaining, “Why this is happening and what’s the reason for this?” so education can be achieved by means of elementary leaflets, or newspapers. Or social media.
FC: And you still have Pravda?
RK: Yes, we have Pravda. This is a nationwide newspaper, and we also publish two newspapers here in Saint Petersburg.
FC: Where are some of the geographical strongholds of the party?
RK: I can’t tell you exactly, because it differs from year to year. But I think, the central parts of Russia and the Far East of Russia, Vladivostok or Khabarovsk Altai.
FC: Does does Saint Petersburg present more of a challenge because of this kind of Eurocentrism that exists here?
RK: We have many liberals, so-called liberals, in our Russian understanding. Liberals, not in the way the U.S. understands it. Many liberals here, you know, there is a liberal political party, Yabloko, which has some support in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Oh, and for example, if you come to the third biggest city in Russia, Novosibirsk, in Siberia, we have a communist mayor.
FC: Do you still consider yourselves a democratic centralist party?
RK: Yes, of course. Because without the democratic centralism, we believe that there cannot be any party discipline.
FC: Would you re-name Saint Petersburg back to Leningrad if you had the opportunity?
RK: (smiles) I don’t think this is the first thing that we have to do. I mean, sort of a joke. Maybe number 33. Yes.
A painting of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin at the KPRF office in Saint Petersburg / credit: Fergie Chambers
FC: I’m curious about the relationship with the church, and I say this as somebody who is both a communist and Orthodox. I forget what year it was, but I read about [KPRF leader Gennady] Zyagunov and [Russian Orthodox Bishop] Kirill having a rapprochement, or a mutual acknowledgement. What’s the position of the party to the church?
RK: Party leader Gennady Zyuganov is religious. That’s his personal belief. But our party is an atheist party. We are still atheists, as a party. But we acknowledge the right of any party member to believe in God; the only demand is you should not put any religious propaganda within the party. As a person, you have a right to do whatever. And it’s written in our official documents that we are a party of scientific atheism. Not of vulgar atheism.
FC: How do you distinguish between vulgar atheism and scientific atheism?
RK: I think that there cannot be any strict definition of whether it is scientific or not scientific, but you have to fill it. It would be stupid for a communist to go out in the street and shout: “There is no God!” Right. This is vulgar, I think. But trying to explain that, so far, there has not been any proof of such existence. So that may be more scientific. But I’m personally atheist. My wife? She’s also a party member, but she believes in God. It’s okay for us.
FC: Do you think the church has too much of a role in the Russian state now?
RK: It is getting more and more involved in the society. And its role is growing. But, so far, I think it is not as almighty in the state as some people want to depict.
FC: Are there other socialist or communist parties around the world that you have especially important relationships with?
RK: We’ve always had good relations with the Communist Party of Vietnam, with the Communist Party of Cuba. Communist Party of India (CPI).
FC: The Marxist party in India?
RK: Both of them [CPI-Marxist and CPI (Maoist)] because they are different parties, but during the elections, they are part of one struggle. Really, we have international relations with all communist parties.
FC: Do you generally agree that the position of a Western communist ought to be to oppose first and foremost the imperialism of the West?
RK: I think, yes. Most of them, they are opposing imperialism, Western imperialism.
FC: Well, perhaps not in the U.S.
RK: I mean, I’m talking about the Communist Party. I’m not talking about the others, because I don’t know anything about them. Actually, I was never interested.
FC: What about Venezuela, the relationship with the Venezuelan government, with Maduro?
RK: I think we don’t have any official relations, neither with Maduro, neither with the ruling party. We have some contacts, but we cannot call it any kind of relations. Of course, we are saying that Venezuela is suffering from United States imperialism, but we also understand that not everything is okay with the Maduro government.
FC: I did mean to ask you, after the fall of the USSR, how did KPRF reorganize itself? Did it just continue on, or it had to reform itself?
RK: We, the CPSU, could not continue, because [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in 1991. So there were special groups of former party members who worked as small groups, like, “Communists for the Soviet Union.” So then, our party went to the Constitutional Court. There was a long process, which lasted almost the whole of 1992. We tried to prove that Yeltsin’s ban was illegal, and the courts made a kind of split decision.
FC: A split decision?
RK: So it didn’t say that Yeltsin’s ban was illegal; they said it was legal to ban the Communist Party of Soviet Union, to ban the central bodies of the Communist Party of the Russian Socialist Federative Republic. But they did say it was illegal to ban the primary organizations, the grassroots organizations. So the grassroots organizations, they became legalized. I think this decision was made in the end of 1992. And in three months’ time, we organized these small grassroots organizations, and then we, in February 1993, we organized a Congress. It was called the “Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.” And, in that Congress, we created KPRF.
FC: What is the official party position on Stalin?
RK: We have never made any specific decision, or there is no written decision. We’re saying, of course, Stalin did a lot for the country, for the people. But, of course, they were violations of socialist law during this period. So that’s how we evaluate it, officially. And then internally, there are other positions, of course. There are many who would say Stalin is better than Lenin, but then a few who are anti-Stalin.
FC: But no Trotskyists?
RK: (laughs) Of course not.
FC: Who do you think was most the most destructive of the Soviet leaders, most responsible for the deterioration of the USSR?
RK: Khrushchev.
FC: Well, that says a lot. Comrade, this has been extremely interesting. Thank you so much for your time today.
RK: And thank you for coming. It is a pleasure, and you are welcome back any time.
Fergie Chambers is a freelance writer and socialist organizer from New York, reporting from eastern Europe for Toward Freedom. He can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.
