In December of last year, COVID-19 took the life of one of Canada’s most widely respected public intellectuals, Leo Panitch. Leo was a researcher, teacher and author whose work had a profound impact on the thinking of democratic socialists around the world. One of the countries in which Leo took a passionate interest, and in which he exercised considerable influence among leftists, was Greece.

For more than a decade, the Russian economic and political system has ceased to develop. Most of the population is barely surviving. We need to prepare ourselves for a transformation, to set to work wherever we find people who are ready for constructive joint action in the trade unions, in organizations of teachers and medical staff, in social movements. This is what we, the members of the Russian left, are seeking to do.

The saga of US actions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project—a system of offshore natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany—reads like a John le Carré novel. In spite of the desire of Germany and other European allies to have it built and even though it is nearly completed, the US persists in thwarting the project. Canada is also against it. Why?

Alexei Navalny’s courage and tenacity, as well as his tactical skill, cannot be doubted. But a large majority of Russians do not see him as a credible alternative. Although Russians are far from enamoured with the present regime, in the traditional Russian fashion, based on historical memory, they fear what might come to replace it. And they do not have to look far to see the altogether dubious results of populist movements in the former Soviet Union.

Despite Canada’s long-standing support for the Ukrainian army, there has been almost no coverage of recent peace talks in the war-ravaged Donbass. More concerningly, few have analyzed the implications of stalled progress towards ending the civil war, even as the Trudeau government continues to fund a military mission in an active conflict most have all but forgotten.

Canada’s policy of providing Ukraine military aid has been disproportionately shaped by both Ukrainian far-right nationalism and the domestic right-wing lobby in Canada. The far-right in Ukraine holds a degree of military power and a corresponding threat of violence that surpasses that of other comparable European ultranationalist organizations.

In a field of relatively underwhelming candidates, the best possible outcome appears to be a Long-Bailey victory. Though far from ideal, Long-Bailey is at least the best chance the left has of keeping anti-austerity and a radical green industrial strategy in mainstream conversation, and holding the line against those who would use the U.K. election results to silence grassroots democratic socialist movements everywhere.

Blowing off the fog of ignorance that now hides the history of the Ukrainian-Canadian left would help to dismantle a problematic conservative consensus. It would throw light on the Ukrainian left’s historic and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to put into practice a progressive form of nationalism, one that protects the independence of distinct cultural groups within a shared democratic space.

Corbyn had the best policies of anyone in my lifetime who was leader of major western country party. There is no evidence that Corbyn’s policies were unpopular, they poll fine, the issue is that the election wasn’t fought on his policies, it was fought on Brexit and whether or not a man who spent his entire life fighting racism was a racist.

The Labour Party’s election failure in the UK proves that, for the progressive left to succeed, it will have to become considerably more revolutionary. The ‘softly, softly’ approach isn’t working. Since, in some sense, the election was about Brexit, the first thing that strikes the eye is the asymmetry in the position of the two big parties.