1. The Russian Maoist Party (RMP) and the Scottish Separatist Group (SSG) consider the principal contradiction of today’s world to be the national contradiction between the oppressor nations of the “developed” imperialist countries on the one hand, and the oppressed peoples of the Third World and the internal semi-colonies of the Metropolis countries, on the other. The recently much spoken-of phenomenon of “globalisation” is nothing else but a new incarnation of the old imperialist world order. Its main distinctive features are a strictly monopolar world held under tight control by the only existing superpower and its accomplices in Europe and Asia, as well as new, more sophisticated and cruel, methods of exploitation and domination over the oppressed peoples.

   Both the historical fates of Russia and Scotland and their current situation have much in common. At the present stage of their development, both our countries belong to the so-called “Second World,” the borderline region between the imperialist West and the “developing” Third World countries, the world of semi-colonies/semi-empires. And if the living standards in Scotland are somewhat higher than in Russia, due to British imperialism from time to time throwing the former country some crumbs of the superprofits it obtains by participating in the neocolonial plunder of the majority of the world’s population, then Russia enjoys much greater independence in the international arena, in many cases acting as a sub-imperialist power.

2. We declare our allegiance to the ideals or freedom, democracy and national sovereignty. We express our solidarity with the national liberation struggles, including wars of national liberation, of oppressed peoples the world over. We demand that the governments of the respective States, which currently control our countries, observe scrupulously the democratic norms, human rights and freedoms they themselves proclaim, and we ourselves will struggle for the greatest possible extension of those rights and freedoms. One of our top priorities is complete freedom of speech and expression, extending to the press and to information exchange.

   At the same time, we are convinced that all these problems are in principle insoluble within the framework of the existing capitalist system and imperialist world order – genuine democracy and genuine national sovereignty are only possible under socialism.

3. The Russian Maoist Party recognises the inalienable right of the Scottish people to create its own independent state: a sovereign, democratic, secular, socialist Republic of Scotland.

   We do not consider, and have never considered, Scotland (Alba) to be part of the so-called “Great British” State, an ethnocratic imperialist State based on the domination of the English nation and reproducing, albeit in curtailed geopolitical borders, the repressive traditions of the British Empire.

   Among our immediate demands is halting English immigration into Scotland, a process that is artificially changing the ethnic balance in Scotland and turning the Scots into a national minority in their own country. We demand cultural autonomy for Scotland, both from England and from North-American-produced mass culture. We demand the full status of a State language for Scottish Gaelic. We demand an immediate end to police persecution of activists of the Scottish national liberation movement and to the censorship of their publications, whether it be in paper or electronic form.

4. The Scottish Separatist Group expresses its concern over the growth of authoritarian and crypto-fascist currents in contemporary Russia, largely throwing the country back to the bad old times of Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite social-imperialism, if not to those of czarist Russia. The SSG condemns the militarisation of the Russian Federation régime, principally aimed at the suppression of home discontent; the disastrous situation of the oppressed national minorities; the crisis situation in what concerns freedom of speech and the mass media; the systematic violation of human rights, even those proclaimed on paper by the authorities themselves, and the dismantling of “civil society” institutions, even in their Western bourgeois interpretation – all this causes alarm.

5. We demand an end to the persecution of working-class activists and independent trade unions, of left-wing and democratic political organisations, of human rights activists, of scientists who are seriously trying to practice the principles of academic freedom and unhindered information exchange. We demand that the Russian government acknowledges the existence of political prisoners in Russia, and that it immediately releases all persons falling under that category. We demand genuine equality for all the peoples of Russia and endorse the just demands of all national movements in the territory of that country, including those of them that are pressing for the State independence of their peoples from the Great Russian chauvinist régime. We also demand genuine equality for the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking population living in the Baltic States and the republics of Central Asia which are being systematically persecuted by the proto-fascist régimes of those countries. We demand an immediate stop to the genocidal war in Chechnya and the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of that country.

6. The RMP and the SSG would like to draw the world’s attention to the increasing frequency of political murders of “undesirable” elements in both Russia and Scotland. In this connection, we demand impartial and objective investigations into the “mysterious” deaths of revolutionary nationalist Willie McRae in Scotland, as well as labour organiser Oleg Maksakov and anarchist/human rights activist Dmitry Neverovsky in Russia.

Freedom, Democracy, Socialism!
Consign the Russian and British Empires and all their accomplices and running dogs to the dustbin of history!