[In the summer of 2003 we learnt that the group pretending to support us in Ukraine was in fact fraudulent. See the linked article--IBT.]


Internationalist Group

Comrades,

On pages 42 and 43 in the Fall 2001 issue of your English-language publication, the Internationalist, there is an assertion (presented without any evidence) that IBT comrades in the Ukraine “today again take their place in a front with bourgeois organizations.” This claim is made in relation to our participation in recent demonstrations in Kiev against the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan. But this allegation is entirely false, and it should be known to your comrades in Kiev to be false. We have not been, and are not currently, in any sort of bloc or “front” with anyone in the Ukraine over this issue.

We have distributed our literature at several demonstrations alongside other organizations, and have marched under the following slogans: Defend the Afghanistan People! and Military Victory to Afghanistan! We note that, as the Internationalist reports, your comrades were also distributing propaganda during these same demonstrations. If merely being present at such events constitutes participation in a “popular front,” or a “front with bourgeois organizations,” then surely your comrades are no less “guilty” than we are.

One of the symptoms of the irreversible corruption of the Healyites and Robertsonites is their willingness to employ mendacious inventions instead of facts in their polemics. We suggest that Trotsky’s advice to “be true in little things as in big ones” is a better guide for revolutionaries. We look forward to an early retraction of this false allegation against us.

Bolshevik Greetings,
Alexander Sherbakov for the IBT (Ukraine)