We wanted to dedicate this issue of Existence originally to the situation in Belarus and how its dictatorial regime is crushing the anarchist movement. Eventually, current events caught up with us when Putin launched his imperial invasion of Ukraine. We felt the need to respond a bit more comprehensively, so we chose "despite the invasion" as the theme of Existence. There is, of course, the question of how relevant some of the information, observations and opinions will be by the time readers get to them.

So we are concerned, on the one hand, with how anarchists in Ukraine and Russia react to the war situation and what support they receive from their foreign comrades. We publish a detailed analysis of the development of the anarchist and anti-fascist movement by Ukrainian anarchists, which was published before the invasion began. We approximate the motivations of the anarchists who decided to defend themselves against the invasion with guns, including foreign fighters.

The reactions of the international anarchist movement are one of the core subjects of our interest. It is in them and their analysis that we see a certain timelessness, and it will certainly be worth returning to them at some point in the future and reflecting on them at a distance. After the invasion began, many groups issued their anti-war statements. But it is clear from them that there are different approaches. Some see the war as a battle between two empires and call for no part in it, others reflect on the need to fight for Ukraine's independence against Putin's invasion. Some emphasize anti-militaristic principles, others on the real reflection of the specific situation. We also approached this new reflection, which is faithful to the dynamic nature of anarchism, in the introductory text, where we deal with the need to listen to the anarchists from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, the question of the goal to be achieved at the moment (repelling the invasion), the questions of the future of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the rest of Europe, all without naive ideas and empty slogans, on the contrary with questions of what we can be helpful to ourselves. We then try to compare the existence of different approaches with the controversy in the anarchist movement at the outbreak of the First World War, where different positions came into conflict, represented on the one hand by Malatesta and on the other by Kropotkin.

In other pages of Existence we return to the police killing of Romani Stanislav Tomáš, when lying by the racist police was proven. We bring an essay by our sympathizer called “Outside the Law”, to which we might raise some reservations, but we find it very interesting. From the history of the anarchist movement we recall the figure of Anatonia Soto and the uprising in Patagonia, or the 150th anniversary of the congress of the anarchist internationale. We remember the personalities who have recently left us. We also dedicate a separate text to Jan Zajíc, who burned himself to death in 1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. We recall the not so distant struggles of the Kurdish troops in the defence of Afrín, or the successes of the Chilean feminists. In one of the statements we return to the covid-19 pandemic and there is a section devoted to the activities of the AF, as well as the events that have taken place within the Czech anarchist movement.

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5.5.2022 Nakladatelství AF

Válka Publikace