A new peak of anti-communist repression is unfolding in today’s Russia. On 25 November 2025, during the closing hearings at the Central Military Court of the Yekaterinburg District, the prosecution demanded 20 to 24 years in a high-security penal colony for the members of a Marxist study circle in the city of Ufa, accusing them of “terrorism” and “conspiracy to overthrow the government.”
The five defendants, detained since February 2022, reject all charges and have reported torture during their interrogation. Their legal ordeal has now lasted nearly two years, with the first court session held in December 2023.
The Marxist group had been active since 2016. One of its later members, Sergei Shapozhnikov — a former fighter in the armed formations of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” who subsequently received Russian citizenship — informed the FSB that the circle was supposedly “waiting for an unstable situation to seize power and kill police officers and politicians.” No material evidence was ever provided to support these claims.
Instead, the court instructed a panel of “experts” to evaluate whether the group’s lectures and reading material could be considered “terrorist activity.” Their conclusion reveals the true nature of the prosecution: they declared Lenin’s foundational work “State and Revolution” to be a “terrorist manual.”
The report goes so far as to argue that discussing socialist revolution, Soviets and workers’ power constitutes proof of extremism, asserting that the very “lexicographical meaning of the word ‘revolution’” demonstrates a violent intention to overthrow the state. On the basis of this pseudo-scientific interpretation, the prosecution now demands multi-decade prison sentences.
This judicial persecution is unfolding in the same Russia whose leadership claims to be conducting an “anti-fascist war,” and which every 9 May attempts to appropriate the legacy of the Anti-Fascist Victory of the USSR over Nazism — a victory achieved by the socialist system that today is being criminalised.
The scandal has already provoked international condemnation. On 10 March 2025, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) sent an official protest letter to the Russian Embassy in Athens, denouncing this blatantly political and anti-democratic prosecution.
What is at stake here goes far beyond five militants in Ufa. It is the criminalisation of Marxist theory itself — and the attempt to turn Lenin’s “State and Revolution” from a historical and political work into an “act of terrorism.” The repression of revolutionary ideas is always a sign of a system in crisis. And no prison sentence has ever succeeded in stopping them.
Doubt they had concrete plans. Like, almost every single communist will tell you the “plan” is to wait for revolutionary conditions and be ready to seize the moment. That’s literally all socialists that have read theory. All reading groups. All mildly curious people.
Nothing about it sounds like anything other than a few people reading together and discussing the basic foundational stuff.
This is actually very concerning because if Russia goes down the path of criminalising Lenin’s content then European lawmakers will seize upon that to do the same saying “Even Russia itself recognises this content as terrorist and they know communism” blah blah blah.
No this is 4D chess by Putin. Knowing Europe has lost its mind and opposes anything Russia does by reflex, he’s trying to get Lenin to be put in European school curricula to “own the barbaric Russians”
This is an idiotic comment.
I am kidding, Putin is not some cryptocommunist and even if he was this would be an absolutely terrible idea, and even if it worked they’d sanitise Lenin like MLK in the Great Satan. Lenin in fact writes about this exact phenomenon:
Per https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
Idiots reading your remark do not read this.
it’s straight up the 4chan internet hate machine shit again.
I like to think there’s no idiots reading my remark because we’re a communist shitposting forum on the internet. It’s not the type of thing I’d say if I was like talking in a public debate or something, but absolutely would joking amongst friends, and I like to think the vibe we have here is far more the latter than the former.
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another check in the “too much reading is ruinous” box for me, heh
Organizing, agitating, and seizing the moment when conditions are right is the correct plan. The incorrect plan would be adventurism.
yeah but okay “the right moment” all relies on someone else to be doing the adventurism because “the moment” can’t be gauged without weighing the public response to adventurism i.e. seeing how everyone was fucking okay with Luigi
otherwise you’re just repeating a mantra doing nothing until nothing happens, forever, uhhh like what’s fucking been happening
Yeah, random acts of violence (and the public response) are one indicator of the state of things. Hardly the only one, though. They are not, however, (generally) revolutionary acts.
I did say “organizing” and “agitating”. If someone’s “organizing” is doing nothing, then they’re doing it wrong.
I think they can move the needle in the direction of revolution. No doubt that people support violence now more than they did before luigi, and there’s no doubt that supporting violence is a prerequisite for a violent revolution.
They can also move the needle the other direction too though.
Agreed, but so do a many things which also aren’t revolutionary acts. Revolutionaries should be organized and ready to act, not committing sporadic acts of violence with no clear, organized goal.
I just think all the organizing in the u.s. so far has amounted to nothing and will amount to nothing, mostly because previous revolutions and their antecedent supporters had, like, the ability to rob a bank and retreat into the caucuses or whatever, or to kill some landlords and not just get bombed to oblivion. Everything today is live on the internet with a billion cops ready to be imported to do domestic war crime. Idk what the fucking solution to that is but i hope i live longer than capitalism, that is the truest wish in the deepest part of my bones
I wouldn’t say nothing, but I understand the sentiment that the US left has (and especially is) not been as effective as we’d (leftists in general) all like.
What organizers in the US need to do (IMO) is mainly take actions which help remove the boot from the neck of the third world. Once those imperial profits dry up, revolution in the US will become inevitable. Repression can do a lot, but it can’t un-destroy an economy for which the basis no longer exists.
Me too, comrade.
I suspect you’re right, but it would be interesting if it turns out they were actually an embryonic weatherman group.