European network in solidarity with Ukraine and against war
Recently, politicians Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza announced a new action on March 1 - dedicated to the assassinations of Navalny and Nemtsov, as well as the anniversary of the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine - under the slogan "Putin, stop killing". We learned from social networks that we were publicly invited to co-organise the action. We thank you for the invitation and want to respond to it as a horizontal movement - collectively, after discussion and a general vote.
Both the November 17 and March 1 actions have been criticised by Russian anti-war initiatives. The criticism is built around the fact that the date, messages and slogan are not discussed with them in advance, but as if "descended" from above, while activists are expected to provide co-organisational assistance and participation. We understand this criticism and join with it.
We are not against "author’s" actions initiated by a specific group of people, but we should not then position them as "general" or "main" in terms of their message. It is not surprising that the initiatives on whose organisational support politicians rely, want to be not only "executors" of actions but also to participate in their conceptualisation. Putin’s power has for decades robbed all of us of the opportunity to be political actors and influence anything. Now we want a more horizontal process and distributed leadership. We believe this is possible.
The last action on November 17 we supported with our "Sent from Russia" platform. Thanks to this, people from Russia had the opportunity to send their messages to the activists’ propaganda in Berlin. We are ready to make this platform available for general use for the March 1 and February actions as well as to help with its implementation: the more voices transmitted from Russia to all actions, the better.
At the same time, the general voting showed that activists and activists of our movement do not want to participate in the march as possible co-organisers, as some are already involved in co-organising other actions on nearby dates, and some fundamentally disagree with the slogan under which the action was declared. Each of our activists makes her own decision on whether or not to participate in the March action.
As a result of the vote, we also refused to sign the critical statement from the initiatives of Free Russians, addressed to the organizers of the rally, as it was also formulated without our participation and does not represent us and our position.
We are convinced that the joint and equal participation of initiatives at the earliest stages of planning major actions is a wonderful and realistic practice that allows people to get more involved and removes future contradictions. We believe that such democratic practices will benefit vertical initiatives as well. But we realise that ensuring horizontality in collaborative action work is not an easy task. In the future, if the organisers request it, we are ready to share our practices and offer our help: to organise an open call before the announcement of the action, to help with moderation and voting, to finalise the results for everyone.
(From FAR Telegram channel translations for December)