The face of the capitalist political establishment in Ireland for the past seven years, Leo Varadkar, has resigned as leader of Fine Gael and from the Taoiseach position. Varadkar has been, without doubt, one of the most reliable servants of the Irish ruling class in the last decade. He was once the man they needed, but the times have now changed.

On 2 March 1921, sailors in Kronstadt took up arms against the young Soviet government. The rebellion was short-lived and crushed by 18 March. But its tale has survived much longer and has been told and retold with very little concern for facts and serious analysis. The present work will not rehash chronological details of the rebellion in depth, which readers can find in great detail in many other works. Instead, it will outline the underlying processes that gave rise to the rebellion, looking beyond mere appearances to its real character, and explain the actions taken by the Bolsheviks against it.

This May, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency is launching the Revolutionary Communist Party. We publish here a draft document that will form the basis for the central discussion at the founding congress, outlining the perspectives and tasks facing communists in Britain.

The following is an open letter from our Portuguese comrades (Colectivo Marxista) to members of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), following the snap elections on 10 March, which saw the ruling left/centre-left alliance defeated. The PCP went from 332,000 votes in 2019 to a historic low of 202,000. The comrades draw some conclusions from these poor results, and offer a dialogue to members of the PCP about how to build the forces of Portuguese communism going forward.

Last Friday, the world was shocked and horrified by reports of an appalling massacre at a packed concert venue in Moscow. According to the latest reports at the time of writing, at least 137 people were killed in this barbaric attack. Men, women and children were slaughtered indiscriminately by a group of gunmen who showed no mercy.

On the weekend 15-17 March, the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) was held in Madrid. This was a historic milestone for several reasons: we had the largest presence and participation of any previous congress; we launched a new organisation; and the comrades came out more determined than ever to build the forces of communism in the Spanish state and around the world.

It was an event that was nothing short of historic: more than 100 comrades from 16 local branches of Revolutionære Socialister – the Danish section of the International Marxist Tendency – gathered from 15 to 17 March for the organisation’s annual congress. Following in-depth discussions about the deep crisis of capitalism and the growing appetite for communist ideas among the younger generations, the congress decided to found the Revolutionary Communist Party at a conference in October.

Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks created the most revolutionary party that the world has ever seen. But is the building of a communist party still a relevant task for today? The role of the party in the struggle to overthrow capitalism is a fundamental question that all thinking communists must understand.

The Portuguese snap elections of 10 March were a political earthquake. The left and centre-left parties that dominated the country’s politics for almost ten years have suffered a painful defeat. The conservative Democratic Alliance (AD) won the elections, although by a very narrow margin. The real victor was the far-right party Chega, which more than doubled its share of the vote. Impressionists warn this heralds a turn to the right in Portuguese society. However, these results are a harbinger of instability and of major class battles to come.

A recent New York Times article, “based on more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe” has laid bare some aspects of US imperialism’s intervention in Ukraine. It details a collaboration between the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence services stretching back to the aftermath of the 2013-4 Euromaidan movement, and continuing up to the present war, including the construction of 12 “forward operating bases constructed along the Russian border.”

Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak issued a grave message outside 10 Downing Street: “democracy is under attack”! What led him to draw this dramatic conclusion? The people of Rochdale (formerly a safe seat for the British Labour Party), voted overwhelmingly for an anti-imperialist firebrand George Galloway, with a monumental collapse of support both for Sunak’s Tories and for Keir Starmer and his Blairite ilk.

George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale by-election is a painful shock for the political establishment. Starmer and the Labour right wing have been dealt a sharp blow – the first of many. Communists must organise to channel this mood of anger.

As we recently reported, comrades of the International Marxist Tendency in Austria are under attack from the state apparatus for opposing the oppression of the Palestinian people. Two comrades have been falsely accused of ‘supporting terrorism’ for promoting the IMT’s statement against the war on Gaza. Below is an update on the legal case against our comrades Alex and Sonja. This is followed by some reports of the incredible wave of solidarity that our comrades have received.

On 16 February in Naples, the comrades of the Italian section of the IMT, Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione (SCR) held a successful launch event at the Sala del Capitolo of the Complesso Monumentale di San Domenico Maggiore, in the city’s historic centre, for the Lenin lives! Campaign – an initiative to reclaim the real revolutionary legacy of Lenin in this, the centenary year of his death.

The announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defence that its forces had full control of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka represents a devastating blow to Ukraine and almost certainly a decisive turning point in the war.