Hello ProleWiki! My profile isn't set up yet so come back for more later!
FIRST SET:
1. I wouldn't say for sure, but I might have heard of ProleWiki from socialist content creators on YouTube, like The Deprogram, but it also may have been from comments and recommendations by fellow comrades in progressive communities on Reddit. I've visited the site plenty of times since I had discovered it, read some articles I found notable, like the ones on the Soviet Union, because, as a Russian, I was tempted to see my overseas comrades' interpretations of our history as a proletarian state. My primary aim in wanting to join ProleWiki is translating articles from English to Russian, as I don't think enough translations exist as of yet. I'm also open to writing articles that are currently missing in the future, when I'm sure enough of my grasp on Marxism-Leninism and Marxist Dialectics.
2. I describe myself as a Marxist-Leninist. The path to my current outlook was a long one, but the liberal phase has to have been the longest of it. Almost instantly when I started engaging with political content I took up a liberal world-view, characterized by my support for bourgeois democracy, perceived freedom of speech, press and, of course, entrepreneurship. I can safely say my support for such points was not one of political consciousness, because when asked about *why* I support free markets, I wouldn't really ever give a dogmatic answer, merely claiming "it empowers the people". In the end, this inability of me to defend my own views led to me starting to question them. When the active phase of the Ukrainian war broke out, it signaled a time of change for me. Not having pondered any imperialist conflict prior, I was left appalled by how quick the perceived "peace", or rather absence of active hostilities, both between Russia/Ukraine and Russian/Western capital ended. By the time Russian propaganda apparatus started employing Soviet nostalgist catch phrases in its calls for solidarity between labor and capital, I decided to explore them in their core, by discovering what the Soviet state really was. As my trust in my bourgeois state was already diminished, I didn't doubt it would skew Soviet ideas too. I quickly uncovered the undoubtedly anti-imperialist nature of the Bolshevik party during WW1, diminishing my prior sympathies for the Provisional Government, actions of which I started paralleling to ones of the current regime. What came next was my reconciliation with the historical person of Vladimir Lenin, who I previously viewed as a tyrant and dictator. And what probably came to be the cornerstone of my socialist transformation was, surprisingly, my holiday trip to Baku, Azerbaijan. Already being quite the opposite of my former liberal self, I started paying attention to what earlier I would shrug off as unimportant. At border control I was asked if I was Armenian because my name sounds similar to a very common Armenian name, what already slightly put me off. When we arrived to the hotel, we were offered bottles of water, on which was written in bold: "Karabakh is Azerbaijan. Taste of victory.". I knew plenty of things about this conflict before, but this instance also put a bitter taste in my mouth. By the end of the trip, having been on a couple excursions and city tours, I was left with a feeling of grief, namely due to the fact that this wondrous city and this welcoming people, who wasn't at war back then, were a part of a single country, not an empire, but a proletarian internationalist state. I felt immense solidarity with the people of Azerbaijan, as well as the Armenians of Karabakh and Armenia proper, the feeling of division and difference has completely left me. And as a result, this trip made me fear no more to identify as a progressive, a socialist. I started reading Marxist theory, which eventually, after bumps of left communism and syndicalism, led me to Marxism-Leninism.
3. I have acquainted myself with the principles of ProleWiki. I find especially valuable the strong emphasis on such topics as criticism of social-chauvinist tendencies like "patriotic socialism" and opposition to queerphobia and misogyny. Those two issues are apparent in modern Russian society, sadly including leftist circles. I hope by applying to join ProleWiki I can make a difference in communities I belong to, by educating myself and others in those complex fields.
4. In my understanding, gender is the societal expression of a person, characterized by conveying either conformity or non-conformity to the patriarchal norm, which formed as a result of historical development of human society, namely the historical subversion of women and individual expressions which challenged total integrity of male inheritance. Marxists should support all members of the proletariat in their struggle for liberation, especially those who are most oppressed and whose voices are most silenced. This includes the LGBT, national minorities, native peoples and others, without question.
5. I view Stalin and Mao as nuanced historical figures, and first of all - Marxists, who played an undeniably positive role in development of Eastern Europe and China. As of now, I am much less acquainted with the deeds of Mao than of Stalin, so I am in no position to objectively scrutinize Mao's policies I think. As for Stalin, I would say I object to multiple decisions of his. Them being: signing a peace treaty with Finland during the Great Patriotic War - I think it was unjust to all the victims of the Leningrad blockade and those fallen on the Karelian front. Finland was fighting alongside other Axis powers, all of which were eventually liberated from fascism, but Finland was not; not integrating socialist countries of Eastern Europe as Soviet Socialist Republics - I think it was an insolvency to play into the Western bourgeois concept of "support" countries, which the USSR turned its allies into. Being open to the world and its peoples about proletarian internationalism is what I think could've swayed the opinion of many, as well as fostered a greater degree of solidarity between cultures and nations.
6. I view the countries of Actually Existing Socialism differently, at least because I'm educated on different levels in regards to them separately. I don't know a lot about socialism building in Vietnam and Laos, for instance. For the others, I can say without doubt that they (Cuba and the PRC) play a positive role in the modern world, with their actions being vital to freeing it from Western imperialism. I critically support the DPRK and I can't deny its socialist fundamental, but Kim Jong Il explicitly removing Marxism-Leninism from the Korean constitution and Kim Jong Un continuing this form of what I would call revisionism is what makes it not the greatest example to follow in terms of ideological objectivity and adequacy.
7. Settler colonialism is the practice of colonial expansion involving direct relocation of colonist settlers from the metropolia to the conquered territory with the aim of displacing local population, which is traditionally viewed as and claimed to be inferior or uncivilized. Examples of modern settler colonial states are the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and Israel. Native populations of those countries have mostly been either heavily suppressed or almost completely exterminated, this entails that the working class of the new settler population, in a direct alliance with proletarian organizations of the native population, needs to overthrow their respective bourgeois regimes to impose the interest of the toiling masses and with liberation of native peoples in mind. In Russia, question of national liberation has to be addressed openly and progressively, the paternalistic and chauvinist view of the native populations currently employed by the ruling class needs to be discarded and substituted with the principle of friendship and equality of nations. Rights of native populations to their native land need to be reinforced and voiced ubiquitously. Immigrant populations are to be granted safe refuge before they in their own country can overthrow their local bourgeoisie and return there if they wish to, as most immigrants aren't ones of volition, but of necessity.
8. Palestine is under illegal occupation by Israel, which upholds an apartheid regime and represses opposition to its core state value of Zionism, an ethno-nationalist far-right ideology. The current war in Gaza is one of national liberation, even though Palestine itself does not represent neither Marxist nor socially progressive values. Each nation, no matter how reactionary deluded in its social views, deserves to live peacefully on its native land and voice its will locally and internationally without obstructions. I have some concerns regarding some antisemitic parts of Palestinian society and political structure, because I wish to see Levant a region of equals, where Jews and Arabs may live peacefully together, but I believe those voices are minor and not a major threat currently.
SECOND SET:
2. Same as with my position on national liberation I stated above, the concept of Land Back is what I think should be one of the drives behind communist movements in settler colonial countries, native populations of which would still be deprived of justice even after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie if insufficient resources will be given to their emancipation, which is expected and required by fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. No communist party, for instance, in the US, will be of its full value if it doesn't become a vanguard to native people of the Turtle Island as well as it is one to the white European working class of America.
3. At the very start of my Marxist education I have acquainted myself with the works of Alexandra Kollontai like "Love and the new morality" and "New Woman". I view Marxist feminism as the sole type of feminism that is able to qualitatively improve societal position of women and speed up their emancipation. Instead of offering the working women easy answers to complex questions, like men biologically being at fault for oppressing women, or distracting them with reactionary pseudo-scientific transphobic rhetoric like liberal feminism, proletarian, Marxist feminism seeks and analyzes a material cause for social perils like misogyny. That, to organizations and people espousing scientific, Marxist-Leninist ideas is an undeniable net-positive.
4. I wouldn't describe abolition of the nuclear family a *goal* of the communist movement, but rather a result of societal transformations the world is to face during the withering away of the state. Inevitably, when economic coercion ceases to exist, be it on a scale of a workplace or a family, patriarchy will as well, as will its fundamental causation - private property. The initial subjugation of women by men was caused by material conditions of labor distribution and subsequent inheritance, and the same way it shall end with women no longer being the subordinate due to the already equal objective economic capabilities, which will later take form of the long-due equal economic representation.
5. I would say that the most pressing issue of communists in Russia is commonly misattributed and misguided, taking root in romanticized perception of history rather than in material conditions. Many Russian communists see our current goal in creating a revolutionary organization capable of building up strength to overthrow the Russian bourgeois state in the near future. A noble goal indeed, but one that doesn't face reality as it is, which is ironically close to what it was in the past. As Lenin put it, many communists of his age advocated for a public revolutionary organization, which was to announce its goals and rally the working class to overthrow the Tsar, but their moves were highly adventurist in their nature due to the features of the Russian state they were facing. It was a police state, which didn't bother to crack down even upon liberal elements that don't fundamentally challenge the position of capital. Announcing a public organization to the Russian people at that moment would equate to writing a public surrender letter to the Okhranka, which would inevitably crush it with the powerful oppressive state apparatus it possessed. Same is the case with current situation in Russia. The conditions are in no way ripe for a public revolutionary organization. Russian proletariat is itself misguided and politically ignorant. So what I think stands as the prime goal of Russian communists is political education, agitation and propaganda. Only by educating the proletariat on their objective interests can build a conscious organization of working people and eventually - successful revolutionaries. Streams of thinking in our era are rich in idealism, so only having a confident grasp on scientific Materialist Dialectics can make a qualitative change.
6. From my experience of engaging with non-Marxist anti-capitalist schools of thought, they rely heavily on moral arguments, like some aspect of capitalism being "inhumane" enough so that society is forced to overthrow the system, not that this aspect has objective causes behind it and objective (not moral) solutions to it. Non-Marxist anti-capitalism also differs from Marxism by its utopianism, namely the intent to impose personal or organizational ideals upon society simply because they are viewed as "noble" and positive, ignoring material conditions which make any radical change possible and inevitable in the first place.
OPTIONAL QUESTIONS:
1. I appreciate how profoundly ProleWiki vets the applications to join it. In our day one can never be sure about anybody's sincerity and erudition unless they are asked in great detail. Although this form takes quite a while to fill out, I applaud the effort to keep idealism out of a proletarian resource. As for feedback, I would suggest building up on questions requiring more specific regional knowledge. I liked the questions about my thoughts on Stalin/Mao and Palestine, so I'd love to see some other fields, like imperialist nature of the European Union and electoralism of some of its "communist" parties.
2. I have the ever so slight familiarity with MediaWiki, but not any programming language. If my ability to write or translate quality articles on the resource would depend on this, I would be glad to acquaint myself with them.