A message from our comrade Dmitri Petrov

​​My name is Dmitry Petrov, and if you read these lines, then most likely I died fighting against the Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

I am a member of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), and I will still remain this after my death. The BOAK is our brainchild, born of our faith in an organized struggle. We managed to carry it on different sides of state borders.

I tried my best to contribute to the victory over dictatorship and to bring the social revolution closer. And I am proud of my comrades who fought and fight in Russia and beyond.

As an anarchist, revolutionary and Russian, I found it necessary to take part in the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people against Putin’s occupiers. I did this for justice, for defense of the Ukrainian society and for liberation of my country, Russia, from oppression. For the sake of all the people who are deprived of their dignity and the opportunity to breathe freely by the vile totalitarian system created in Russia and Belarus.

Another important sense to participate in this war is to approve internationalism by example. In the days when the deadly imperialism awakes, as a response, a wave of nationalism and contempt for Russians, I argue by word and deed: there are no “bad peoples”. All peoples have the same grief – greedy and power-hungry rulers.

It was not just my individual decision and step. It was a continuation of our collective strategy aimed at creating sustainable structures and guerrilla combat confrontation with the tyrannical regimes of our region.

My dear friends, comrades and relatives, I apologize to all those I hurt with my leaving. I appreciate your warmth very much. However, I firmly believe that the struggle for justice, against oppression and injustice is one of the most worthy meanings that humans can fill their life with. And this struggle requires sacrifices, up to the complete self-sacrifice.

The best memory for me is if you continue actively struggle, overcoming personal ambitions and unnecessary harmful strife. If you continue to fight actively to achieve a free society based on equality and solidarity. For you and for me and for all our comrades. Risk, deprivation and sacrifice on this path are our constant companions. But be sure – they are not in vain.

I hug you all.

Your Ilya Leshy, “Seva”, “Lev”, Fil Kuznetsov,
Dmitry Petrov

Biography

Anarchist, candidate of historical sciences, anthropologist. Worked at the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In Moscow, fought against the city planning policy of the authorities (eviction of dormitories and cutting down forest parks). Helped an independent book publishing house.

Co-author of Hevale, a media project on direct democracy and cooperative economics in the Middle East. Edited “Flowers of the Desert: 10 Years of the Revolution in Rojava” and “Life without a State: The Revolution in Kurdistan”. Translated the study “Kurdistan. Real Democracy under War and Siege”. Coordinated the translation and publication of the memoirs of Kurdish revolutionary Sakineh Jansiz. Visited the region twice as a researcher and member of Kurdish self-defense units.

Due to political persecution and a looming prison sentence, he left Russia in 2019 and moved to Ukraine, where he has been before, including as a participant in the Maidan revolution in 2013-2014.

In February 2022, with the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he joined the self-defense of Kiev. He died in April 2023 on a section of the frontline near Bakhmut as a result of Russian shelling. After his death, it became known that Petrov stood at the dawn of rebel anarchism, was one of the founders of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (anti-war sabotage) and the Resistance Committee (Uniting anti-authoritarian fighters engaged in a war with Russia).

Books

“Future Revolution: People’s Assemblies and the Prospect of Direct Democracy”! Murray Bookchin

The Future Revolution consists of nine short essays in which Bookchin discusses the pressing problems of the modern revolutionary movement, criticizes the failures of past movements for social change, and outlines the contours of the free society of the future in large strokes. Bookchin shows the fallacy of Marx’s predictions and considers the class approach too narrow for understanding modernity and mobilizing the broad masses. He sees great mobilizing power in the issues of environmental destruction, quality of living space, and community participation.

“Sarah. My whole life has been a struggle” by Sakine Jansyz

“Sarah. My whole life was a struggle” by Sakine Jansyz. Her whole life path is an archetypal picture of being a revolutionary. In the autobiography, the heroine grows up and becomes stronger together with the movement. She has to overcome the pressure of her family, society and her own doubts, to face the harsh repressions of the state.

Life without a state: revolution in Kurdistan

There are 2,500 kilometers between Moscow and Damascus in a straight line, but the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, is closer than it seemed. The Turks shot down «Su-24», ISIS bombing of a flight «Kogalymavia», terrorist attack in St. Petersburg subway, more than 30 Russian military dead in the sands — an incomplete list of bloody ties. The preliminary outcome of the Syrian massacre has been over 500,000 dead and more than 5 million refugees.

Flowers of the Desert: 10 Years of the Rojava Revolution

Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) – one of the great libertarian examples of modernity, unfolding in a territory of more than two million people. This volume details how Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan’s principles of democratic confederalism have redefined the women’s question, the system of direct democracy, cooperative economics, ecology, and justice.

Memory

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To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Anti-Authoritarian International, an international anarchist gathering was held in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland for five days. In the city of Saint-Imier there were more than 300 workshops, 48 concerts, 36 film screenings, 11 theater performances, 7 exhibitions and 95 book fair tables – there were more than 4000 participants.

Several events were dedicated to the our project – Dmitry Petrov. (a film was shown, a memorial evening was organized and another tree was planted on Mont Soleil mountain in memory of the international wrestlers from Rozhava).

Remembrance actions were held in Berlin, Bern, Dresden, Warsaw, Kiev, St. Imier, Tbilisi and Batum. In September 2023, on Petrov’s birthday, the Moscow Mutiny documentary about Russian anarchists of the 2010s began screening – almost 40 screenings from Rozhava to Mexico City.

At the shows we often read a letter from Dmitry Pavlovich Petrov – the father of Dmitry “Leshego”:

Brothers and sisters! I am writing about my son. He is my flesh and blood. He is my best friend. And my main opponent. A gifted scholar. A talented author. A brave man. Willing to go all the way. For what he stands for and what he believes in. He’s my hero.

When talking about him, my wife and I don’t use the past tense. Just the present. And the future. He is perhaps the only absolutely whole person I know.He always and in everything follows the dictates of his conscience and the ideas that unite us.At the same time, he is not only an ideological and straightforward person. He is not only a gifted scientist who studied the Russian North “in the field” and Kurdistan in the desert. And not only the author and editor of many articles and several books.

One should read his recent texts and see that he is a strategist of the movement that today opens new horizons. Some may miss the politics in my letter – slogans, mottos, appeals. Maybe words about class warfare, social justice, individual autonomy, resistance to oppression and dictatorship, global uprising and freedom. But is it necessary to repeat what you have read and heard hundreds of times? And what you know very well yourself? And then – this is not a manifesto. It’s a personal letter. To discover new things. To be free to define yourself in a world that does everything it can to prevent it. To be able to make the right choices. To be clear about your values and act on them. To love those close to you. And love those far away. But also to pay attention

Active Distribution Publishing published the English-language memorial “Dmitrii Petrov. A Life in Combat. A biography of a Russian anarchist fighter with a selection of his writings” with Dmitrii’s most important texts.

For his next birthday, friends are preparing memories of him together with Dmitry’s publications (ethnographic, journalistic and activist). You can send your memories of Petrov to in_memory_of_ecolog@riseup.net and https://t.me/in_memory_of_ecolog