In early summer the IBRP received the following letter from a group hitherto unknown to us, Radical Communists of Ukraine. We are publishing it with our reply, not only as testimony to the emergence of a range of groups striving for revolutionary clarity in the ex-USSR, but also to extend a warm welcome to the comrades who have since translated the IBRP Platform into Russian and Ukrainian - see the IBRP website. We are even more encouraged that the comrades were able to say, "We were very impressed with the Platform and we are again convinced that our positions are extremely close. It would be great if you may place the translation on your web-site, because due to size of Platform and our limited capacity with technique we have very few possibilities to spread the Platform on paper, while it’s very important in our propaganda work. Of course, we are very interested in all other form for co-operation and unification of our positions." We too look forward to the successful deepening of our relationship and the “unification of our positions.”

Dear Comrades,

We represent a revolutionary Marxist group of workers and students ... from Lugansk. We are in good relationships with the worker movement representatives from the other regions of Ukraine. In l994 our group “Radical Communists of Ukraine” (RCU) had a short-term contact with the Trotskyist “Spartakist” tendency, which was working in Moscow (Russia). We drew the conclusion that the political activity of the “Spartakists” discredited the Internationalist world movement, did not have anything in common with the world socialism and with heritage of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and other theoreticians of revolutionary Marxism. The world working class would get the possibility to start the formation of its own struggle revolutionary party only after having broken with the revisionist and dogmatic “Spartakism”.

In 1996 our organization has endured a deep crisis connected with support by the part of the activists of the left, reforms-directed rhetoric of the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU), and the Stalinist Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU). Still, the illusions in connection with the SPU and CPU exist in vast sections of the Ukrainian worker class. However, those illusions are decreasing, and the “Radical Communists of Ukraine” consolidates its authority through work in the workers’ and youth movements.

During a long period of time the “Radical Communists of Ukraine” has been working in isolation. Due to other work in isolation from the world workers’ movement, we have survived from the crises in 1996. In 1993 we organized as a local Marxist organization and for a long period of time did not estimate the necessity of the integration of the revolutionary communist platform in the party of the world revolution.

The Trotskyist CWI “Militant” group is very active now in Ukraine. We conduct a sharp polemic with those representatives of reformism in the workers’ movement of Ukraine. Apart from the CWI group, which is called the “Worker Resistance”, there is a group of the agents provocateur-Stalinists “Committee of the Working Youth” (Egor Pugachov) which are talking about the synthesis of Communism and Stalinism. This is a lie! It is necessary to raise the fight for the clearness of proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary Marxist program.

Dear comrades! Unfortunately we do not have much information about your struggle and your political program. The Ukrainian working class needs the information about the struggle provided by our comrades in the different parts of the world. We have to become familiarized and acquainted with your documents in order to get the possibility to become closer and to unify our positions.

With comrades greetings.