Hello friends!
My name is Aleksej Sachnin. Last year I had the honour of receiving the Robespierre Prize. And of course, I would have liked to come to Varberg this year to say these words to you in person. Unfortunately, I could not do it. For the second time in my life, I became a political asylum seeker. 10 years ago, I was granted asylum in Sweden. And this time I am waiting for the decision of the French migration service. Until I receive my residence permit, I have no right to leave France.
Today I am a small part of the statistics. The UN has officially registered 114 million refugees this year. And more than 70 million internally displaced people. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of millions of people’s lives have been destroyed by wars and crises, but no one has included them in the statistics.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have already claimed tens of thousands of lives and turned millions into refugees. In Russia, I was twice threatened with arrest for opposition activities. Among other things, for communication with European left-wing politicians. Sweden denied me citizenship because SÄPO considered me a threat to national security. I think they saw this threat in my articles in Aftonbladet. Now Aftonbladet no longer publishes them. I hope I won’t have to fight with France yet. But thanks to Lasse Diding and the Jan Myrdal Society, I am a Robespierre laureate. And Robespierre was a well-known extremist and a threat to the security of the kingdom.
In my youth, I dreamed of an era of war and revolution, when you can change the world. But it turned out that the time of change feels like a time of powerlessness.
One of my friends was killed six months ago in Ukraine near Bakhmut. He fought in the Ukrainian army. Another close comrade, a left-wing and anti-war activist, was recently injured near Rabotino in Ukraine – on the southern front. He also became cannon fodder, only on the Russian side. I am tired of finding out the names of my friends on the lists of the dead and wounded.
I correspond with three friends who are in Russian prisons. But I suffer from a feeling of guilt, because many more of my acquaintances are arrested and need support. But I simply cannot bring myself to write to them all. Every Friday the Russian Ministry of Justice publishes the names of new “foreign agents”, and almost every week one of them is someone I know personally. I am very tired of this.
76% of Russians do not have a passport. And I have travelled halfway around the world. This is the second time I have lived abroad. Sometimes when I talk to my friends in Russia, they envy me. They never got to walk around Paris or enjoy the sunset in the Stockholm archipelago. Or to stay in a Lenin Hotel in Varberg. But I am not satisfied with my opportunities. Every day I am afraid that something will happen to my elderly parents in Russia, and I will not be able to get to them. I may simply be arrested at the border.
But above all, I am tired of feeling powerless every day. In Russia, I felt it because of the dictatorship. When we organized the last mass demonstration against mobilization in Moscow a year ago, the police sent some activists to the military registration and enlistment offices. And from there to the war. When such things happen, no one participates in street protests anymore. And you don’t even want to invite anyone. And you feel powerless.
But here in Europe too, I feel almost completely powerless. I hoped to find allies among left-wing politicians, intellectuals, and activists. I hoped to start a peace movement with them. I dreamed that it would become powerful, like the movement against the Vietnam War had once been. And then even Russian soldiers in the trenches would hear about it. And this would help us end the war. And I would be able to return to my homeland.
But nothing like that is happening. The left does not want to talk about the war. Or they say the abstract words they are used to, without thinking about what they will mean in reality. Some left-wing politicians join NATO generals and demand more weapons, more money for the war. They want a NATO victory over Russia. Others – and there are more of them – demand, on the contrary, that arms deliveries to Ukraine be stopped. That is all. I myself have been called “Putin’s agent” and “Putin’s useful idiot” in Sweden, but this time I have to agree: That is exactly what Putin wants to hear. He wants the West to return to the days of Chamberlain and Daladier, to the policy of “appeasing the aggressor”. The large part of the ruling class here in the West also dreams of forgetting the war and returning to “business as usual”.
Instead of a great popular movement against the war, we have politicians trying to make a “wise choice”: which of the two imperialist monsters is better to support. And how to hide this support behind humanistic demagogy. This is what I am most tired of.
In fact, the peace program is not a victory over Russia. But neither is it an agreement with the Putin regime. Peace is no longer compatible with Putin. Perhaps he is no longer compatible with Biden, Macron, Carl Bildt, Ulf Kristersson, NATO. Here, in the midst of a stable political order, it may sound strange. But in Russia this is becoming clear to a growing number of people. Especially to soldiers at the front, who are sent to die and kill for goals and values that are completely incomprehensible to them. These soldiers are not only ready, they are eager to hear the peace program.
I do not mean at all a program of Russia’s defeat. Not a strategy that one must return to that “rules-based world” that Stoltenberg, Biden and others repeat. People remember that it was precisely these rules that made us poor and powerless. Everyone remembers how Yeltsin, according to these rules, shot the parliament in Russia to pieces in 1993 and Bill Clinton and Carl Bildt supported him. Everyone remembers that Putin also got his power thanks to the same “rules”. These are the rules that led to the war. So, no, such a program is not appropriate.
We need a completely different program. A program of self-determination for all peoples. Borders and school curricula should not be set by dictators, bureaucrats and oligarchs. They should be chosen by the people themselves. We need a program to restore our war-torn countries – both Russia and, of course, Ukraine. But it is not the poor who are being sent to die today who will have to pay for this, but the millionaires who prospered thanks to the dictatorship that started the war. This is a program of expropriation of private wealth, instead of sanctions, which only makes butter more expensive for my mother.
If we had such a program, then half a million dirty, chilled, tired soldiers at the front would be much closer to an uprising than you think. The responsibility of the left here in the West is to reach out to these people. To give them guarantees that if they challenge their generals, their freedom and their country will not be stolen from them, as happened many times before in Russia – in 1991, 1993, 2000. And millions of ordinary people here in the West should confirm these guarantees by participating in large peace movements. Now they are silent, not voting in elections or voting for right-wing populists. Who should they vote for? For friends of NATO and Israel? Or for those scoundrels who want to divide the world into spheres of influence with Putin?
I am tired of not having a platform to discuss such a peace program. But then Lasse and Jan Myrdal Society appeared and gave me this opportunity to complain about life and share my revolutionary utopias. After all, the beliefs of Robespierre or Lenin were also considered to have been groundless utopias. Until they were once heard by millions of dirty, hungry, uneducated and rude people. And so, they went out and changed the world, which they were also very tired of.
I hope and wish that the comrades who receive prizes this year or are sitting here in the hall will contribute to the creation of such a program of peace for the people, and not for the ruling classes. Then we will all have a chance to overcome powerlessness and become a force in society!
Thank you!