The “Sovintern”: A Reactionary International in the Service of Russian Imperialism

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The “Sovintern”: A Reactionary International in the Service of Russian Imperialism

From April 26 to 29, the founding congress of “Sovintern” (short for “Sovetskiy Internatsional,” or “Soviet International”) was held in Moscow. The organization presents itself as an “international network for socialism in the 21st century” (1). According to its organizers (no complete official list has yet been published), this fake Communist International brings together more than 100 allegedly communist movements and parties, nostalgics for the USSR, reformists, “National Socialists,” as well as a host of increasingly dubious nationalist demagogues. What they all have in common is that they are fully committed to the cause of Russian capitalism—and first and foremost the Russian Socialist Party that initiated it, “Just Russia”, as we shall see. This crude, bourgeois counterfeit known as the “Sovintern,” entirely orchestrated by the Kremlin, is nothing less than an instrument of Russian imperialism seeking international support, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine.

The plenary session on April 27, held with great fanfare at the very official House of Trade Unions, was opened with the reading of a welcome message from Putin himself, who expressed his conviction that such a gathering of parties “committed to social justice, sovereign development, and traditional spiritual and moral values” would make it possible to global and regional stability and security, while promoting “jointly address the common challenges to economic and social development”!

Before turning our attention to this nest of opportunistic and reactionary scoundrels, which have willingly thrown themselves into the nets of imperialism in the name of “anti-fascism,” the defense of “sovereignty,” and the struggle against “U.S. hegemony,” let us first examine the Russian party behind this initiative.

The so-called “Sovintern” was launched by “Spravedlivaya Rossiya: Patrioti — Za pravdu” (“Just Russia: Patriots—For the Truth”), a party officially classified as center-left social democratic but which is in reality a conservative and nationalist party, entirely under the Kremlin’s control. It should be noted that “Just Russia” is the result of a 2006 merger of the three main strands of Russian conservatism: the far-right nationalist party “Rodina ” (“Motherland”), led by businessman and current State Duma Vice President Alexander Babakov; the “social conservatives” of Igor Zotov’s “Pensioners’ Party”; and Sergei Mironov’s “Russian Party of Life,” which at the time defined itself as liberal and nationalist. Mironov became the chairman of “Just Russia” and the de facto leader of “Sovintern.”

Although Mironov and Babakov presented the merger of their respective parties in 2006 as a means of challenging Putin’s “United Russia” in the State Duma—denouncing it at the time as the party of “political monopoly” and “bureaucracy”—this was, of course, nothing of the sort. “Just Russia” is a pure creation of “United Russia”, firmly rooted in the longstanding tradition of “controlled opposition”, which involves fabricating supposedly dissident parties from scratch in order to divert the discontent of the masses and lead them down purely legal and democratic dead ends.

In 2006, Vladislav Surkov, the chief architect of Putin’s regime and ideologue of “United Russia,” had informed Mironov during one of their meetings of the need to create a major party capable of attracting votes from the left with strong nationalist leanings. Within the framework of a potential two-party system, “Just Russia” was intended to become the “second pillar” of “United Russia” (2). Although such a plan for an American-style two-party system ultimately did not materialize (“Just Russia” currently holds 28 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, well behind the country’s second-largest party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which holds 57 seats and is another example of “controlled opposition”), this did not prevent Mironov from holding, for nearly 10 years—from 2001 to 2011—the third most important position in the Russian state, after that of the president and the prime minister: that of chairman of the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian parliament).

Just Russia does not even bother to present itself as an opposition party and has consistently distinguished itself through its zealous support for the Kremlin government, backing it in all of its anti-proletarian and reactionary offensives: restricting the right to abortion and access to emergency contraception in the name of defending “traditional family values”; opposing sexual freedoms; attacking migrant workers by seeking to limit their access to citizenship and family reunification, to tie the length of their legal residence strictly to their employment contracts, and to deprive them of any real possibility of freely changing employers; defending the systematic registration and surveillance of undocumented workers by the bourgeois state; and so on.

The role of this party as a mere auxiliary instrument of state power has, unsurprisingly, been further strengthened since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, as “Just Russia” shares Putin’s war aims as well as the Kremlin’s talking points about the “Nazi regime” in Kyiv (as does the “Sovintern” itself) (3). As an example, in 2023 Mironov posted a photo of himself on social media holding a sledgehammer that had been given to him and signed by the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC Wagner), of the same type as the one used by the group in Ukraine to smash the skulls of deserters. (4)

The party’s ultranationalist orientation was further intensified in 2021, when Mironov’s party merged with the “For Truth” party of far-right propagandist Zakhar Prilepin, which was absorbed into “Just Russia”. Prilepin (who addressed the issue of the “special military operation” from the Donbas via a video message broadcast during the “Sovintern” plenary session, and who was presented merely as a “committed writer”) is a former leading figure of the National Bolshevik Party and later of The Other Russia, founded by writer Eduard Limonov. These organizations promoted a syncretic ideology combining Stalinism and Nazism. The National Bolshevik Party went so far as to adopt Nazi symbolism on its flag and to revive Hitler’s slogan: “Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!”

CONSERVATIVE SOCIALISM, BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM

The so-called “Soviet International,” the “Sovintern,” began its activities on April 26 at the Zolotoye Koltso Hotel, a luxury establishment usually frequented by businessmen and bourgeois politicians, located directly opposite… the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs! Whether this was intentional or not, we will never know, but this “coincidence” is particularly fitting given that Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), stated in May 2024 that Russia should draw inspiration from the experience of the Communist International: “Today, as Russia stands at the forefront of global change in the world order, very useful practical lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Communist International” (5). It is obvious that the “Sovintern” seeks to become for the current Russian capitalist state what the Stalinized Comintern was during the era of Soviet capitalism: a mere instrument of influence designed to ensure the achievement of its bourgeois objectives within the rivalry between great powers (and, needless to say, a means for Mironov to secure and strengthen his position within the circles of Putin’s ruling establishment).

As we have mentioned, the plenary session took place the following day at the House of the Unions. It brought together the organizing parties as well as the organizations participating in the initiative. Among the organizing parties were, in no particular order, the Union of Democratic Socialists (RDC), the Movement of Socialists of Serbia, the Party of Progress and Socialism (Morocco), the “Tunisia Forward” party, George Galloway’s self-proclaimed Workers Party of Britain (WPB), the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and the so-called “American Communist Party” (ACP, a recent ultra-reactionary and chauvinist split from the CPUSA, which claims to advocate a so-called “MAGA communism” in support of Donald Trump). Among the members were, among others, EVO Pueblo (formed in 2025 by Evo Morales, who sent a video message), Turkey’s Vatan Partisi (“Patriotic Party”), the Democratic Party of the People (South Korea), the so-called “World Anti-Imperialist Platform,” the Venezuelan and South American media outlet Telesur, the “The Left” party of North Macedonia, the Communist Party of Nepal, and others.

Leaving aside Putin’s message (which at least has the merit of not claiming to represent the struggle for socialism), the screening of Mironov’s video speech, delivered in front of the Russian national flag, opened this abject parade of reformist and collaborationist statements (6). In his speech, he reduced “socialism” to a vague struggle for “equality” and for “human rights” as a “prerequisite for effective democracy”! Drawing on the capitalist development of the USSR, supposedly illustrating “realized socialism,” socialism was presented as a means of promoting economic growth and industrial development while respecting the right to accumulation and prosperity of different nations: “Our absolute priority for the new socialism is a large-scale transformation of industry and the economy. [...] We, socialists, have repeatedly demonstrated our solidarity with the international community (sic!). We are ready to work together. We can protect social rights as well as the genuine national interests (sic!) of our countries.” It would be difficult to find a more striking illustration of the degenerated doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” embraced by these false representatives of socialism and true heirs of Stalinism.

Babakov then took over, referring to the “economic models of Russia, China, India, and all BRICS countries,” presented as “alternatives” to the capitalist world, which was simply reduced to the U.S. financial system. Before an apparently receptive audience, he was able to proclaim (on behalf of the “Sovintern,” or in his capacity as Deputy Chairman of the State Duma?) his complete solidarity with Putin’s and the Russian bourgeoisie’s well-known struggle for the “happiness” of the people: “The President of Russia states that the goal of the Russian economy—and I am certain that you share this goal—must be to improve the quality of life. We support our president when he says that people must live happily. And happiness is, above all, a comfortable living environment. It is not only about having a few additional square meters per person in an apartment. Happiness also means being able to live in a comfortable home and enjoy a pleasant environment.”

A representative of one of the co-organizing parties, the Movement of Socialists of Serbia, offered his own “original” interpretation of Marxism: “I also greet you on behalf of my party, the Movement of Socialists of Serbia, a Marxist and patriotic party (sic) that has been fighting for nearly twenty years for social justice, national sovereignty, and traditional values (!!).” However, a brief moment of clarity seemed to cross his mind when he declared: “Socialism today is in danger, in great danger, threatened by false socialists.”

Participants in the “Sovintern” also heard from a certain Bogdan Tîrdea, a bourgeois deputy from the Socialist Party of Moldova, that “democracy and development are possible only under socialism—not only (sic!) through the market, but also (sic!) through a planned economy; not only freedom, but also justice. When one pursues not only (!) one’s personal interest [commercial, and therefore capitalist—that goes without saying], but also the public interest. Modernity and traditions must be reconciled.” Thus, according to this conception, socialism does not designate the lower phase of communism, which already presupposes the complete destruction of the commodity economy and of individual economic interest opposed to the interests of society as a whole, but rather a simple mixture of market and planning, of personal economic interest and public interest, of bourgeois society and communist society! And this same reactionary scum concluded: “And there is no socialism without the traditional family, a man and a woman, without father and mother, without parents and children (!). There is no socialism without technology, and probably no socialism without God” (!!!).

State, nation, democracy, market, tradition, religion: everything that Marxist socialism stands for the radical negation and destruction of becomes, in the mouths of the charlatans of the “Sovintern,” the very hallmarks of socialism, the attributes of socialism! In The Communist Manifesto, Marx characterized “bourgeois socialism” or “conservative socialism” in the following terms: “The bourgeois socialists want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They desire the bourgeoisie without the proletariat. […] By changes in the material conditions of life, this form of socialism by no means understands the abolition of bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can only be effected by a revolution, but merely administrative reforms based on the continued existence of these relations of production, and therefore change nothing in the relation between capital and wage labor […]. Free trade! in the interest of the working class; protective duties! in the interest of the working class: these are the last words of bourgeois socialism, the only words in which it takes its meaning seriously. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois are bourgeois—in the interest of the working class.” To this definition, almost two centuries old and forged through fierce struggle against false socialists (to which we could also add the qualification of “reactionary socialism”), we have nothing to add. Let us simply note that, in the imperialist era, these forces have been given another name: social-chauvinists—supporters of unity with their own national bourgeoisie, with their own national traditions, against the class interests of the proletariat; in short, agents of imperialism.

There is no need to continue any further the account of this monstrous prostitution of the doctrine of revolutionary communism. This entire farce concluded with the publication of six declarations, all of which followed the same line: support for Russian and Chinese imperialists and their allies against American and Western imperialism. These included statements of solidarity with Maduro, with the Iranian, Cuban, and North Korean governments; a declaration supporting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its war aims; and a declaration against Western colonialism in Africa (which, of course, said nothing about recent Russian and Chinese actions on that continent).

The genuine Communist International of tomorrow, the future World Communist Party, which we are certain will re-emerge in the more or less near future, will arise through open and declared confrontation, both ideological and physical, against global imperialism and all its servants, whether they are open supporters of capitalism or seek to conceal themselves under the guise of “red” parties. The future Communist International cannot arise from the gathering of disparate and dubious forces, each pursuing their own national and bourgeois aims, and which would seek to unite on the basis of the bourgeois principle of free and democratic discussion, as the opportunist parties of the so-called ‘Sovintern’ claim to do.

On the contrary, it will only be built through the rallying of the most advanced, most determined, most ardent and purest sections of the revolutionary proletariat to the International Communist Party, which adheres to the unadulterated Marxist program as upheld by the Italian Communist Left against all the deviations and betrayals of opportunism since the last century.

(2) « Two-Party Politics, Russian Style », London Review of Books, 13/06/2011, https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/july/two-party-politics-russian-style?.

(3) « On the settlement of the crisis around Ukraine », International Socialist Network Sovintern, https://sovintern.org/forum/declarations/declaration-6-en.pdf.

(4) « The Grisly Cult of the Wagner Group’s Sledgehammer », The Intercept, 02/02/2023 : https://theintercept.com/2023/02/02/wagner-group-violence-sledgehammer/.

(5) « Russia must draw on the experience of the Communist International to change the world order, said Sergei Naryshkin », Эхо России, 16/05/2024 : https://ehorussia.com/new/node/30938.

(6) « First International Socialist Forum SOVINTERN – For Socialism in the 21st Century », https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUzL62krCRk.

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