Russian Tensions
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‘Class identity etc. did not prevent English, French or German workers from seeing Britain, France and Germany as in some sense “their country” in World Wars I and II. Tragic it surely was, but it’s an historical fact.’
pgb -But the 2nd International had a chance of stopping the 1st world war ever starting but was betrayed by leftist reformists and you, I fear, would have been one of them.
Zapatistas statement on the war in Ukraine
Guilty of cherry-picking the quotes but you decide if they are not the context of what he wished to say
Karl Liebknecht – Self-Determination of Nations and Self-Defense
https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-k/works/misc/self-determination-nations.htm
“…In the mouth of a Socialist the phrase “defending one’s fatherland” cannot mean playing the role of cannon fodder under the command of an imperialistic bourgeoisie.
Is an invasion really the horror of all horrors, before which all class conflict within the country must subside as though spellbound by some supernatural witchcraft? Has not the history of modern capitalist society shown that in the eyes of capitalist society, foreign invasion is by no means the unmitigated terror as which it is generally painted……It is true Socialism gives to every people the right of independence and freedom, of independent control of its own destinies. But it is a veritable perversion of Socialism to regard present day capitalist society as the expression of this self-determination of nations. Where is there a nation in which the people have had the right to determine the form and conditions of its national, political and social existence…
… So long as capitalist states exist, i.e., so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the inner and the outer life of a nation, there can be no “national self-determination” neither in war nor in peace…
…In a discussion of the general causes of the war and of its significance, the question of the “guilty party” is completely beside the issue…”
Interesting statement from the Zapatistas. I hadn’t realised they had gone anarchist. It maybe the quaint language but I am not sure what they mean by the “resistance• in Ukraine. I don’t think they mean the resistance of the Ukrainian state’s armed forces.
Also interesting on that link is a very revealing interviews with someone from the “Social Movement”;
The “Social Movement” is the name Trotskyists in Ukraine under:
https://rev.org.ua/sotsialnyi-rukh-who-we-are/
As can be seen they have joined up to be part of the armed forces of the Ukrainian state.
Incidentally, they could seek to gain support on the basis that Trotskyy was Ukrainian.
Cuba and Nicaragua support the Russian invasion but they do not support a resolution of Russia in the UN. They want to flirt with both sides of the conflict
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article258973278.html
Reactions of Latin American leaders on the Russian invasion
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/latin-american-leaders-react-russias-invasion-ukraine
PS: Let’s see what stqnd Cuba and Venezuela would take when the USA lift the oil embargo, and the USA reactivate Barrack Obama accord with Cuba
The Belarusian opposition
If the war spreads, so will the resistance to it
Rosa Luxemburg didn’t think much of the Ukrainian nationalism of her day. This from her 1918 pamphlet on the Russian Revolution (https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch03.htm):
“Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was something quite different from, let us say, Czechish, Polish or Finnish nationalism in that the former was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petty-bourgeois intellectuals without the slightest roots in the economic, political or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since the Ukraine never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic poems of Shevschenko. It is exactly as if, one fine day, the people living in the Wasserkante should want to found a new Low-German (Plattdeutsche) nation and government! And this ridiculous pose of a few university professors and students was inflated into a political force by Lenin and his comrades through their doctrinaire agitation concerning the “right of self-determination including etc.”
She seems to have regarded Ukrainian as a dialect of Russian and to blame Lenin for artificially creating a Ukraine — a claim also made by Putin.
Too late now of course. Ukraine, after being an administrative unit of the old USSR, has now become a state and Ukrainian a separate language.
I contributed a paper on Russian nationalism to the State of the Region Report 2021 of the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Sodertorn University, Stockholm, Sweden, entitled ‘The Many Faces of the Far Right in the Post-Communist Space’. A virtual launch of the Report will be conducted on Zoom on April 4, 2022 during 3—5 pm Central European or UK Time. I shall be one of the speakers.
For more details, program and Zoom link and to access or order the Report, please go to: https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2022-04-04-launch-of-cbees-state-of-the-region-report-2021-the-far-right-in-the-post-communist-space
The cost of living in Russia is surging. Official figures show price of some household staples – such as sugar – have jumped by as much as 14% over the past week. Inflation is set to keep rising.
We can expect internal unrest and growing industrial discontent. That means increased repression and perhaps growing resistance.
Can nationalist sentiments be overcome by empty pockets and empty bellies?
No smoke without fire?
“The Kremlin has insisted that Russia’s defence minister – who had not been seen for 13 days – has “a lot on his plate”, amid reports of whistleblower claims of the growing possibility of a coup against Vladimir Putin”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-putin-kremlin-coup-minister-b2043029.html
“the handler of an alleged whistleblower in the Russian spy agency FSB claimed that the risk of a coup against Mr Putin was growing with every week that the war in Ukraine drags on.
Vladimir Osechkin – a man on Russia’s most-wanted list for exposing abuse in prisons – has published 11 letters purportedly sent to him by an FSB insider since the war began, claiming that chaos and discontent have engulfed the Russian security service”The same news was published in daily mail
A Newsweek article explaining Russia’s reticence and reluctance to exercise its full military power.
““As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war).
A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.
‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’”And as for the chemical war scare stories
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-03-22/no-indications-of-imminent-russian-chemical-weapons-attack-in-ukraine-u-s-defense-official“The United States has not yet seen any concrete indications of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine but is closely monitoring streams of intelligence for them, a senior U.S. defense official said.” It quoted the Pentagon official as saying, “There’s no indication that there’s something imminent in that regard right now.”
And this article confirms that Ukraine is winning the propaganda PR war and how.
The legalities of the war debate from the pro-war Russian perspective.
With the customary caveats to be suspect of the author’s own bias this article is a useful summary of the Azov Battalion
And this is another article of a seldom mentioned pro-Russian-front organisation used as a counter-weight to NATO,
the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).What Would a Potential CSTO Intervention in Ukraine Look Like?
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