hi revleft

[klsv]

how are you?

decided to, finally, sign up after years of lurking around. i think these are some fantastic boards, reading your discussions have teached me a lot, thanks for that!

i'm from the most northern baltic state (don't want to name it for google) with an even smaller movement - basically everything leftist/anarchist is hated around here thanks to the soviet union.

i'd call myself an anarchist-communist, been done so for few years, before that i used to be a fan of "lifestylist" stuff like crimethinc etc, yes i'm ashamed :D

anyway, glad i finally did this!

[Stalin Ate My Homework]

Hi Comrade! What is your view of life when your country was part of USSR?

[Lobotomy]

Welcome to the forum.

[Prometeo liberado]

Welcome Comrade! A little more info on the Left situation if you could, without getting yourself into too much trouble.:thumbup1:

[klsv]

the local left in a nutshell about the local left.
1) anarchists

they have their own center that hosts weekly events and a library. most of the books in the library are in english, which shows pretty well how's the situation over here. no texts in the local language, only way to get them in english is to either order them online or through donation campaigns (yes, you can contact me if you wish to help :D). organizing the baltic anarchist meeting in the upcoming may aswell. sadly our numbers are very, very small.

2) the united leftist party

i think they never got over 1% of votes in any elections, which means they get less votes than they have members (meaning less than 1000 people, out of 1,3 millions we have here). inner-conflicts between two pretty clueless sides (old authoriarians and young bohemians) doesn't show any promise to improve. few months ago a member of the party welked into the defense ministry building, drunk and armed, got shot to death. not the publicity they waned, really.

3) the unorganized bunch

some professors, some hippies, some working class people. also some clueless people claiming to be anarchsits/communists, but not really know what they're on about. sadly, the mainstream media is fast to concentrate on them.

a local marxist movement and a libertarian-socialist organizations are in the making as i've heard but can't see them growing the general left in numbers, sadly.

it's hard to tell the exact numbers of the left here, but it's low enough to turn the few into depressed, demotivated wrecks, wishing to move away, to a place where you don't have to feel like a marginalized clown everyday.

as for the ussr, i'm too young to remember much but recently, there has been this boost of nostalgia towards the soviet time. especially among the unemployed (which didn't really exist back then). sadly,it ends there as the national pride that got hurt by the soviet occupation is more important to your random working class person. that has also resulted far-right growing their numbers.

so yeah, this forum is also a kind of a portal for me to use when i want to feel that i'm not clown mentioned before. anyway, enough of the emo-jibberish now. thanks for the welcomes!

[Ismail]

Out of the three Baltic states it seems you got unlucky and have the one with, historically, the strongest anti-Soviet feeling (which is saying a lot.)

Nationalism is a big problem. I've argued with countless nationalists from the Baltic states, and whenever I point out that their glorious heroic thousand-year-old cultures weren't being annihilated during Soviet times (and that they basically benefited in every economic and social area) they just go "Well yes, but that is because of the valiant efforts of (insert nationality) in its great attempt to build the nation against the policies of the Russian invaders and their communism."

[klsv]

yes, that does sound very familiar. there's also this "oh, so you don't like capitalism, huh? well why not piss off to north-korea/cuba/china" and us vs. them mentality regarding russia. basically, if you're not a hardcore patriot, you're pro-russia, an uselful idiot and whatnot.

[Ismail]

there's also this "oh, so you don't like capitalism, huh? well why not piss off to north-korea/cuba/china" and us vs. them mentality regarding russia. basically, if you're not a hardcore patriot, you're pro-russia, an uselful idiot and whatnot.So basically it's like being a communist in the United States. :p

[ColonelCossack]

Hello