The Greek journalists Dimitris Konstantakopoulos and Dimitris Liatsos discuss for Ideohoros (the space of Ideas) about the international conference of the Left organized in Moscow by the Russian socialist party, the world situation, the crisis of Globalization, the reasons of the global drive towards Fascism and War, the need for an authentic Left
Moscow, April 29, 2026
D.L.: Let me remind you that a year ago we had a similar broadcast. At that time, the International Anti-Imperialist Forum, organized by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, took place, with several participants from Greece. Now, a year later, and on the eve of the celebration of the 81st anniversary of the great anti-fascist victory, another party in Russia, the Socialist Party, is again organizing an international forum where, I would say, many of our compatriots from Greece are once again present.
Russia has always, and the 20th century proved this, but also in the period following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, despite the collapse in all these ideological – one might say – contemplations, we see that now, in the midst of the military operation there on the banks of the Dnieper, many people in Russia, at a higher political level, recognize that the presence and indeed the strengthening of this ideological pole concerning the so-called Left has real value. That is precisely why the “Just Russia” party – the second left-wing party in the State Duma – is taking this initiative to rally and unite what is today called a global socialist consolidation.
I seize this opportunity. Here in the studio today, I have invited one among the large delegation from Greece. Our compatriots who have come here do not represent certain party identities, but are among those who, through their own theoretical path and political presence in Greece, have truly provided credentials in this sphere we generally call the Left. Ultimately, the Left, at least for Russia and for all of Europe, until now has not only meant something on an ideological level, but mainly represents what the global community, what society, the social perception of things, needs. This is very important because I have heard in Russia, from earlier times, and I agree with this: Russia, due to its vast territory and its northern expanses, cannot help but be social. In a sense, that is, Left.
In this sense, many things are happening today, above all what the peoples, mainly of Europe, learned after the Second World War. With the immense prestige acquired by the Soviet Union, winning that war at a tremendous cost in blood – firstly because it was anti-fascist, and secondly because it was existential for the Soviet Union, as they wanted its dissolution. After the war, the prestige of the Soviet Union and of what we call the welfare state was such that it truly inspired very many, and a robust left-wing movement was created throughout Europe. Unfortunately, in the last two or three decades, this movement has not been annihilated, but it has at least diminished very significantly.
So today, I conclude this preamble here, I present to you in the studio the well-known figure, not just a journalist – because he is a journalist – but beyond that, a thinking person, someone who studies, cares, and is pained by the development of global events in a direction that favors societies: Dimitris Konstantakopoulos. A dear friend and colleague, among other things, and I have the honor today to pull him away a bit from this International Socialist Forum to have him here with me in the studio.
D.K.: Thank you very much for your kind words. Thank you also for the invitation.
From 1989 to 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a shock for the whole world, for the Left, for the Right, for the entire planet. A collapse, although in a sense it was also a kind of suicide. In the sense that the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union, the so-called nomenklatura, essentially decided – I don’t know if this happened at one moment or many, all together or partially – to accede to the Western world. With the lowering of the red flag from the Kremlin, a century and half of history of the workers’ and socialist movement seemed to close. A movement that had begun with the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and which literally gave a different shape to the world, through the Russian Revolution, European socialism, the Chinese Revolution, the anti-colonial revolutions, and the victory over Nazism in the Second World War. That chapter seemed to be closing. This was a very great shock for the whole world and also gave an opportunity to bourgeois circles, let’s say, to the bourgeois world, to declare that they had finally won, that history had ended, that we were moving towards an unshakeable rule of markets and democracy. Now, regarding democracy, I have some reservations about what exactly they meant and what it exactly is. After all, we all know that the democracy we enjoy has largely limited any real content and remains more form than substance.
In any case, this was also proclaimed by these circles, following the ideas of Fukuyama, etc. Of course, the more serious among them warned from the very beginning that things might not be that way. The Economist, which is the organ of the British City, not some leftist communist newspaper, pointed out that there was now a void because any balance between Left and Right globally had been broken. The Left was a force that, regardless of one’s opinion of it, tended to defend social rights, societies, etc. Suddenly it was gone, as if one of the supports of the global system had disappeared. I also recall an article in the Wall Street Journal at that time, also an organ of Wall Street, of big finance capital, which said – it was a time when everyone said Marx was finished, Lenin was talking nonsense. There was a trend of nullifying an entire historical tradition, which wasn’t even serious from a scientific and intellectual standpoint, but in any case, that was the atmosphere. And I remember that the Wall Street Journal had written a series of three articles explaining why Marx, Einstein, and Freud were, in a way, the shapers of our world. But these were the more serious bourgeois who were not swept away by this celebratory atmosphere of victory.
What was our experience since then? Capitalism, freed from the specter of the Soviet Union and arrogantly believing it had won forever, showed its most hideous face. First of all, after an initial decade of great economic boom due to the looting of the Soviet space – a tremendous thing that happened not only in the Soviet Union but also in other countries that changed regimes – it experienced a flourishing. However, subsequently, with the first crisis in East Asia in 1998, if I’m not mistaken, it became clear that things were not going very well.
The countries supposedly “liberated” from communism experienced the greatest social, economic, and demographic crisis in the history of the industrial age, of both the East and of the West. Depending on the statistical method, Russia experienced a drop in Gross National Product estimated by some at 55% and others at 85% after the fall of communism. When the US depression, which up to them the worst case, had been accompanied, if I’m not mistaken, by a 29% drop in GNP. This shows the intensity of the crisis. For each year of applying the International Monetary Fund’s prescriptions and reforms, the life expectancy of Russian male citizens fell by one year. In the other peripheral Soviet republics, things were generally much worse. We are talking about a very great catastrophe in the East. In the so-called Third World, wars started very quickly. The wars of the neoconservatives. About a dozen wars. So much for the wonderful new world… And in 2008, we had the great financial crisis, which gradually became a debt crisis of the European Union. To solve it, Greece was destroyed – as an experiment, with the same methods. It has been destroyed because of this.
It became clear that capitalism is not at all that ideal. America and capitalism were given the opportunity to prove their worth, without an opponent. And what they proved is that it is a system heading towards disaster, having led us to the brink of a global ecological, nuclear, or other catastrophe. What is happening is tragic. We find ourselves at the most critical point in all of human history. Something that even an average person without specialized knowledge can ascertain, seeing what is happening in Iran, seeing what is happening in Ukraine, seeing what is happening in the Third World, the South of humanity, and seeing where our civilization is heading. Three years ago, we saw a terrifying, unprecedented genocide in Palestine, which surpassed in savagery the crimes of the SS during the Second World War. And something else happened too. Unlike the Second World War, where there was no internet, we didn’t learn what was happening; it was very difficult to know what was going on in the German concentration camps, especially after a certain point. Here it was live, in real time. This was also an education for humanity. What did our Israeli friends tell us? Accept it, because it is the law of the strong. We will impose ourselves on whomever we want, by any means.
D.L.: And we are showing it to you, so you know.
D.K.: Of course. But from the moment you see it and do not react effectively, it is as if you accept it. Imagine if outside our homes they started murdering children, stabbing women, raping prisoners. Indeed, they crossed every line, to the point of holding demonstrations in favor of the soldiers’ right to rape and torture prisoners to death. Not even the Germans did such things. The Germans certainly took terrorist measures, but they didn’t advertise them. On the other hand, we also see the leadership of Western states. First and foremost, of the United States. Which now also displays elements of extreme irrationality. In this respect, it is very dangerous for humanity.
So, it is this reality that makes many people around the world feel the need for some kind of Left, and indeed for an authentic Left. Because in recent decades, we have also seen phenomena of degeneration and decomposition of the Left, such as those we unfortunately witnessed in Greece. That kind of thing is not the Left. The Left is, first and foremost, a force that fights for social rights, for democratic rights. It is not a Left that merely fights for the supposed LGBTQ+ right to have children but not for the right of the children to grow in a normal, natural environment etc. etc. The so-called Left is becoming more individualistic and “identitarian”; it has begun to transform itself (adapting itself to the bourgeois world) instead of transforming the world.
I believe the idea for this conference, which I had the pleasure of attending, here in Moscow, comes from the circles of the struggling Russia in Donbas. What do I mean by that? Look. There is a tradition. Because when the Maidan coup took place in Ukraine, there were a series of uprisings in Ukraine, spontaneous popular uprisings. People’s Republics were declared, even in Odessa and Kharkov. As a rule, it was official Russia that somewhat restrained these phenomena, hoping to find a compromise with the West, the Minsk agreements, etc. No such compromise was found. No compromise is found with Trump either. So, certain circles in Russia probably realize that they also need the international Left. Because I want to remind you, the Russian revolution was not only a class revolution, it was also a quintessentially anti-imperialist revolution. It happened because, within the framework of imperialism that had been created since the late 19th century as the basic mode of organization, let’s say, through which capitalism tried to solve its crisis, Russia could not develop or even survive in that international context. This was made plainly clear during WWI. That’s why it needed to carry out a socialist revolution, just as China later needed to, just as certain countries of the South needed to. That was the main reason.
Therefore, I think Russians now also feel the need for a global Left. And I must tell you a very striking fact from this conference: I saw many people, especially from Latin America, from Africa, etc., who feel a great need for an international consolidation of the Left. I mean, of course, the authentic Left, not the Left in name only. In contrast, in Europe, we look a bit like a funeral parlor. But we will see if this situation continues, because Europe too will have many problems. We already have.
D.L.: From what you said, you were truly a torrent…
D.K.: Sorry for monopolizing a bit our discussion, but I wanted to give the overall picture…
D.L.: No, on the contrary, I say ‘torrent’ benevolently, because in a few minutes you gave a historical overview from the time of the Soviet Union, its dissolution, and after. You mentioned 2008 – and I want to insist here – that essentially capitalism then, or at least its dominant metropolitan phase, was the one that showed the complete inability of the system just 15-18 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Without an opponent, it brought humanity to a global crisis in 2008. No one was bothering it; it was alone, dancing alone, there was no tango, as Lavrov often says, with someone else doing these things. All by itself, it brought humanity to the brink of disaster. The emergence of China as an economic superpower on the one hand, and the recovery, I would say, of Russia on the other – despite the disagreements that I absolutely agree with you exist even within the Kremlin. As they say abstractly in Russia, there are various towers in the Kremlin, seven towers they call them around the Kremlin walls, representing different approaches…
D.K.: Every country has those. Inevitably.
D.L.: So, a situation was created where today the inherent weakness of this leading group of imperialists to continue dominating the earth is apparent. That is precisely why for two or three decades they have used either small but victorious wars for themselves – because a war between the United States and Iraq or Afghanistan, etc., is unequal; society there cannot resist – or the so-called color revolutions. We saw this in former Yugoslavia, where they did it to Serbia and left nothing standing. In the former Soviet Union, whether in the Caucasus, Moldova, or the most characteristic and blatant example, Ukraine, with two color revolutions. One in 2004. They succeeded then, but later, not controlling the situation, they went on to 2014.
D.K.: There is a strong lobby that is preparing. This lobby has always existed, being prepared even from the time of the Soviet Union, to be able at a given moment to wage a victorious nuclear war against Russia and China. This lobby needs, in various ways, to diminish the world’s contradictions and anxieties. Hence the dissemination of various foolish theories. On this issue, I think General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy already told the ultimate truth. In the event of a nuclear war, whoever survives will envy those who left, those who died.
D.L.: In ’62, still in that phase…
D.K.: Already then. And it is tragic that in 2024, after the period of arms control and the major agreements with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, they are now revising everything. Why are they revising them, if they don’t genuinely want to go towards nuclear war? Why did the Americans revise all the arms control treaties? And they even revised the ABM Treaty, which is the most fundamental treaty the one banishing anti-ballistic missiles, a treaty they themselves had insisted upon. The Soviets initially had reservations, but the Americans insisted on passing it. Because, they reasoned, if you can defend yourself, then you are tempted to launch a first strike, to destroy your opponent without risking retaliation.
D.L.: The theory of a first nuclear strike without response. That’s what the Americans played for a while, then they abandoned it…
D.K.: I don’t know if it’s technically possible or what will happen, but they are trying. I’m not saying they will succeed. I can’t know what technology will do. Besides, as technology evolves, if we don’t move very quickly towards a different social system, the whole thing will become uncontrollable. With artificial intelligence, all that, we are heading towards a completely uncontrollable situation. As with climate change. If there is no rapid, deep change in the entire social and cultural model, I don’t think humanity has any chance of surviving this century. And perhaps the crisis will come much sooner. We are talking about the end of the human species. The technologies we have today actually make war impossible. Fine, you say, we can destroy all of Iran. To give a concrete example, we can destroy all the oil facilities, refineries, everything. But Iran can also
destroy all the oil facilities in the wider West Asia, along with the desalination plants. Then the whole region would become uninhabitable, and the world would experience an economic crisis that my friend Professor Hudson told me would be similar to or worse than 1929. So where are we going with this? I’m leaving aside the ecological cost, which is enormous.
If the peoples do not rise up – and they are receiving massive doses of tranquillisers from the media, and they have politicians who all seem to have been bought, or threatened, or blackmailed with various Epstein lists. I don’t know. In any case, almost no one is reacting. Exceptions are rare. And if we in the West, who live in the heart of the monster, do not rise up… Sorry, but we will have no future.
D.L.: I want to mention here, following what you said, a very specific issue. I believe – and I have said it here on Ideochoros in various broadcasts – that today we are not talking about politicians but about political managers. A manager is someone who takes on a job to do in his country. He may be called Prime Minister, but he is a political manager. Above him, there is a line, a directive. He has the one who placed him there. Of course, it appears he is elected, according to theories, and I hold again what you said earlier about the objections you have, and many of us have, concerning the so-called issues of democracy. What is democracy today, for example, in Europe? In this European Union, we see them running to Moldova, to Romania, to Hungary, or anywhere else, to get rid of…
D.K.: There are constant steps towards totalitarianism, gradual, selective, to avoid causing a great reaction, in all Western societies. For example, the most outrageous thing the European Union has done is that it can decide that Dimitris Liatsos or Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, for instance, who are Greek citizens, can have sanctions imposed on them without any kind of court decision. What do these sanctions mean? That you cannot live. You cannot access your bank account. You cannot have a credit card. You cannot travel. These sanctions… They might possibly be challenged, we don’t know because it’s a recent phenomenon – whether they can be challenged in European courts. But by the time you go to the European court, which is very expensive, and they issue a ruling, years will have passed. Such measures recall the administrative deportation we had in the authoritarian regimes that characterized Greece. The Royal Gendarmerie would issue a decision, I don’t know who, and they would send you to the island, say, of Gavdos. Fine. And you lived there as long as you were told. There is no control over these procedures. And they have done it to prominent personalities too. Like Francesca Albanese, the UN rapporteur on Palestine. They did it… They went so far as Google deleting the email of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who is investigating Netanyahu’s crimes.
Seeing, as you also said, that globalization is not working out for them – that is, domination through soft power is not working, or through almost-soft power (which wasn’t really soft, but anyway, it wasn’t extreme violence) – they are now abandoning even democratic ideology itself. They are abandoning pretenses. They are moving towards what Hitler did in the 1930s: towards war and fascism as a final solution. Because they see China developing, because they see Russia has returned, because they see they have a major internal economic crisis, because they see the Third World rising. They do not want to accept these things.
This could and should be the role of the Left: to create a third force that will dismantle this whole story based on creating a new social and cultural model for how our world should be organized. Because as it is currently organized, its destruction is inevitable – after many years if they are years, or a few decades if they are decades..
D.L.: Dear Dimitris, thank you for this conversation, which truly flowed like a stream. I will close the broadcast by saying this: I retain some of the things you mentioned. First of all, the role of the Left on a global level – and we agree on this – is not mainly an ideological issue. It is about what peoples all over the world embrace, mainly the so-called Global South, as a social phenomenon that will give them the opportunity to liberate themselves, or at least to shake off the yokes that have been on their necks for past decades. The resistance from the forces of imperialism was at a very high level and is falling, falling, falling. Its power is diminishing, diminishing because, as we said, China exists, the impressive military rise of Russia exists with weapons that…
D.K.: There is also the resistance of the Palestinians, of the people, which is more important than any other because it happens without a state behind them.
D.L.: There are the Palestinians, there are the Iranians, there are other peoples who look again towards this sphere that is represented on one level by Russia and China, that is, the development initiative…
D.K.: And for historical reasons
D.L.: And for historical reasons. Because I don’t know about China, but regarding Russia, we both know that what was created after the Second World War was the enormous prestige of the Soviet Union as a country, let’s say, where peoples found warmth, found a foothold to resist in Africa, the Arab world, Latin America, all over the world generally. What we today, in other terms, call a Global South.
I think – and I want to close this broadcast here – that we need such discussions, so that we have the ability to see the big plan unfolding and not get stuck on the details they feed us. The great, the enormous, the even more powerful weapon that imperialism has in its hands, in my opinion, is Hollywood, as I say. That is, the ability to control global information, which they transmit…
D.K.: …and transform it into spectacle.
D.L.: Exactly.
D.K.: If you will allow me, though, I would like to make a clarification that I consider absolutely necessary in today’s conditions. When I speak of the Left, I speak of an authentic Left. And unfortunately, it is absolutely necessary to make this kind of clarification, given everything that has happened.
D.L.: And not a vague, general Left.
D.K.: Not for those who use that label for a policy that has nothing to do with the principles, the visions, the moral foundation of the Left.
D.L.: Societies today truly need social protection, social security. They can find this on their own through awakening, and the Left always had and gave this outwardly: social awakening. From there, this can become a weapon, a shield to protect ourselves. For society to turn not towards destruction, as we said, by those who have no problem destroying humanity, but towards a direction that brings new conditions. But at the same time, to reach these new conditions – we are in a transitional phase – it must always be based on the participation of societies. Without the participation of societies, nothing positive has ever happened in any case, in any country. We see this from the October Revolution and from the Second World War: how societies, despite the fact that several European governments took the side of the Hitlerite army and fought against the Soviet Union – the Finns, the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Italians under Mussolini – and things we also experienced in Greece with the Resistance of the Greek army as much as it could in 1940, and then the creation of the gigantic movement of Greek people’s consolidation, the National Liberation Front (EAM), which left golden pages in the history of the development and resistance of the Greek people against the conqueror in the Second World War.
I say these things and I close this broadcast, thanking you, Dimitris. As this broadcast airs – and I hope you will follow it in depth over a few weeks, because very soon, on May 9th, here on Moscow’s Red Square, throughout Russia, and I think it would be good throughout the world, they honor and celebrate the great day of the anti-fascist victory that characterized the second half of the 20th century. Until then, we will speak again…
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