> Reply to Oleg Sheyin on Chechnya
>
> Joint statement of the League for the Revolutionary Party (United States)/
> Communist Organization for the Fourth International (LRP/COFI) and the
> Revolutionary Workers Organization (RWO, Ukraine)
>
> On February 2, 2000, a statement by Oleg Sheyin, co-chairman of the
> Interregional Association of Workers' Unions "Zashchita Truda" ("Defense of
> Labor") and a representative in Russia's State Duma, about the situation in
> and around Chechnya was published in Zashchita's information bulletin. We as
> revolutionary Marxists must examine such a statement of his seriously and
> critically, and state our views on it before the working class, for several
> reasons: (1) O. Sheyin is the only representative in the Duma who does not
> belong to either a right-wing party or an ex-CPSU party; (2) Sheyin and
> Zashchita have for quite some time now been playing a significant role in a
> number of important working-class battles, including the struggle against
> the Russian government's draft of a new anti-worker Labor Code as well as
> the recent successful struggle against the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom by
> the workers at its facility near Astrakhan; (3) Many workers consider Sheyin
> a workers' leader; (4) Sheyin presents himself as a Marxist.
>
> In our view, this statement essentially constitutes an apology for Russian
> imperialism. One is reminded of Lenin's comment that as soon as you scratch
> some "Marxists," their great-power Russian chauvinism immediately comes to
> the surface.
>
> Let's turn to the text of the statement. At the beginning of the document
> Sheyin quite correctly points out that "in examining any conflict from a
> class viewpoint it is necessary to understand the social basis of the
> conflict and its prospects." But how does Sheyin express his class approach?
> From his point 1, which consists of an arbitrary list of states freed from
> the colonial yoke (Afghanistan, Iran, Algeria, etc.), Sheyin implies that
> the coming to power of reactionary feudal and bourgeois forces was
> inevitable. It follows that because of this danger, the imperialist
> occupation of these countries is itself virtually justified. It is a small
> step from this to arguments made by imperialists about their so-called
> "civilizing mission" in "third world" countries, which Engels sharply
> attacked in his work, "British Dominion in India." We likewise reject
> Sheyin's conclusions, and we maintain that what happened in these countries
> was not inevitable, if the leadership of the reactionary nationalists had
> been challenged by proletarian forces with an internationalist perspective.
> We take the same view about the situation in Chechnya today.
>
> Sheyin's points 2 and 3 are an attempt to explain the reasons and conditions
> of the Russian-Chechen conflict, not in light of social, class, and
> imperialist contradictions both world-wide and regional, but based solely on
> a subjective analysis of the interactions of the Chechen tribal formations
> (teips). Thus Sheyin writes: "The death in 1996 of Dudayev, the head of a
> very powerful teip who had the reputation of an all-national leader, halted
> the process of the further formation of the Chechen people as a nation." A
> basic Marxist analysis connects the problem of forming nations, not with the
> birth or death of one or another "tribal chieftain," but with processes of
> forming a single integrated national market and social-economic processes
> based on that. The point is that the economy in Chechnya has been completely
> capitalist for ages, despite the backward forms of social organization there.
>
> In point 5 Sheyin writes: "Examples of kidnapping people, stealing cattle,
> slavery and genocide against the Russian-speaking population and the
> opposition in general in Chechnya, are generally known and inarguable facts
> in Russia. These were not exceptions, but a rule of life in Chechnya." In
> this section of the document he assiduously passes over in silence the
> numerous atrocities of the Russian imperialist military against the civilian
> population. He sounds like an American racist who inflates the number of
> crimes committed by Blacks against white people without mentioning either
> the crimes whites commit against Blacks or the blood-stained anti-Black
> racism that dominates American society. Moreover, later in his statement (in
> point 9) Sheyin writes: "After tens of thousands of people were killed under
> the bombardments of the Russian army, and those remaining will have neither
> work nor places to live for years if not decades, the basis is laid for
> hatred toward Russia as a state and probably toward Russians as a people."
> Even here, where he does cite Russian atrocities, Sheyin shows as much
> sympathy for the reputation of the imperialist Russian state as for its
> victims.
>
> The victims of carpet bombing and artillery fire were not just Chechens but
> also other peoples of the multi-ethnic population of Chechen and Dagestani
> towns and villages. In his analysis of the events in Dagestan, Sheyin echoes
> the semi-official Russian bourgeois propaganda, which tries to portray the
> events as primitive aggression by Chechen bandits. In reality what took
> place was a complicated and dramatic conflict between the official power in
> Dagestan and forces for self-determination for regions with a mostly
> Wahabbit population, where Basayev and Khattab's (Chechen military
> commanders) detachments were nothing more than forces which came out in
> support of one of the contending sides, as had happened before in Abkhazia,
> Northern Ossetia and elsewhere.
>
> Points 7, 8 and 9 of Sheyin's statement contain his explanation of the
> reasons for Russia's aggression against Chechnya. Sheyin believes that the
> operation was conducted "with the aim of gaining popularity for Putin's
> government and assuring victory for Yeltsin's successor in the presidential
> elections." Another reason, in Sheyin's opinion, was defense of the
> Russian-speaking population of Chechnya. From our point of view, such an
> interpretation does not stand up to a serious Marxist critique: gaining
> popularity for Putin was of course a surface goal of the invasion, while
> defense of the Russian population was a 100 percent government lie.
>
> We believe that the fundamental reasons for any imperialist slaughter can be
> found on the level of a clash of economic interests. In our view, the global
> reason for Russia's invasion of Chechnya is the competition between
> imperialists for control over the transportation of oil and gas from the
> Caspian Sea through the Caucasus, which promises fabulous profits. In
> connection with this Sheyin is of course correct in pointing out in point 10
> that the American imperialists and their Turkish junior partners have their
> own serious interests in the Caucasus region. Russia's regional imperialism,
> however, with its position already seriously weakened in Central Asia, the
> Transcaucasian region, the Baltic region and elsewhere, will hold on to
> Chechnya as long as possible to defend its strategic pipeline through
> Chechnya and oppose various attempts to transport Caspian oil and gas which
> bypass Russian control.
>
> In addition it must be noted that as a rule NATO supports any and all
> imperialist oppression, including Russia's, and only as an exception, under
> extreme conditions of inter-imperialist rivalry (which is not yet the case
> in the Caucasus), does NATO support independence for an oppressed nation
> like Chechnya. That is why Clinton's criticisms of the attacks by Yeltsin,
> Putin, et al. have been so muted.
>
> In our view, Sheyin's overall political error is his narrow, nationally
> limited, and therefore false analysis. In a Marxist analysis, the point of
> departure must be the context of the worldwide political situation and the
> inter-imperialist struggle for spheres of influence - not an isolated
> analysis of the situation in Chechnya alone. Following the Leninist method,
> one must start from the fact that the United States is the dominant
> imperialist power in the world, and Russia is a regional imperialist power,
> the oppressor of many peoples, one of which are the Chechens. Here like
> never before the words of Lenin about the Russian empire as a "prisonhouse
> of nations" are vitally important. And the only correct position for
> Marxists in the situation which has arisen must be, not indirect support for
> the Russian bourgeoisie, as Sheyin does, but support for genuine
> independence for Chechnya as a pre-condition for building a socialist
> society.
>
> What sort of conclusion does Sheyin reach from his "analysis"? In his final
> point 12 he writes: "Left organizations in Russia, in my view, must explain
> to the workers that in Chechnya there is simply a process of imperialist
> re-division taking place, the hostages of which are simple people, and that
> the Chechen problem does not have a military solution." For us, such a
> position is a complete break from revolutionary Marxism and a capitulation
> before imperialism. The point is that the process that is taking place has
> nothing to do with imperialist re-division, rather it is a direct expression
> of the struggle between imperialism itself and liberation from it.
>
> The basic interests of Maskhadov, Basayev and Khattab undoubtedly have
> nothing in common with the real interests of Chechen workers. The task of
> the proletariat, led by its vanguard, is to take the banner of the
> national-liberation struggle of the Chechen people out of the hands of these
> bourgeois-fundamentalist figures and to set the struggle on a revolutionary
> proletarian course. For this to happen, Chechen workers must reach the
> understanding that their enemy is not Russians as a nation, but imperialist
> capitalism; that their ally is not the Chechen comprador ruling class, but
> the working class of Russia and the whole world. But this means that the
> Russian working class must play a leading role in accomplishing these
> critical tasks: organizing mass actions to protest the invasion and in
> defense of Chechnya, uniting with the proletarian and oppressed layers of
> the Chechen masses, fighting for leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle
> against the Putins, Maskhadovs and Basayevs, and the armed defense of
> Chechnya. The proletariat of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other countries of the
> region can and must play an invaluable role in achieving these tasks.
>
> We recognize that the majority of workers in Russia today go along with the
> national chauvinism of Putin and Zyuganov. But that layer of the working
> class in Russia, in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan, that is the most class-conscious
> must make sure that its anti-imperialist, internationalist, revolutionary
> socialist views are heard by all workers - and it must fight for these views
> now. Only thus will we be able to win more and more workers, in Russia and
> in Chechnya, away from nationalism and over to our side as the class
> struggle deepens.
>
> And to succeed in all this requires a revolutionary party of the vanguard of
> the working class. That is the reason we see the formation of such a party
> as absolutely necessary. The party has to fight for internationalism and
> socialist revolution -- against the nationalism which exists today inside
> both the Chechen and especially, as the "Marxist" Sheyin has shown us, the
> Russian proletariat.
>
> We therefore resolutely call for:
>
> Immediate withdrawal of the Russian imperialist army out of Chechnya;
> Full and unconditional independence for Chechnya;
> Exposure of the Chechen comprador ruling class;
> Fighting to unite the Chechen, Russian, and other detachments of the
world
> proletariat in the struggle against international imperialism;
> Formation on this basis of a Leninist revolutionary party of the
proletarian
> vanguard in Chechnya, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other countries;
> Re-creation of the Fourth International.
>
>
> League for the Revolutionary Party (United States)/ Communist Organization
> for the Fourth International (LRP/COFI)
> Revolutionary Workers Organization (RWO, Ukraine)
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