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Professor Leupp,
In your Counterpunch article today, you make the following statement
about the history of Ukraine that the Western journalists are ignoring:
"Good journalism needs to convey to the reader some needed historical
background, including the fact that Kiev was the center of the first
Russian state, about 1000 years ago—before Russian and Ukrainian became
distinctly different languages—and that Ukraine was a mainly Roman
Catholic Russian principality from 1654 to the Bolshevik Revolution,
after which it became a greatly enlarged Soviet Socialist Republic, with
a new, largely Russian-speaking and Russian Orthodox eastern half beyond
the Dnieper (producing today’s deep ethnic-geographical division); and
the fact that the Crimean Peninsula was only transferred to Ukraine from
Russia in 1954."
Now, as far as I can tell, your resume reveals little engagement with
Marxism or Soviet history, so you may be excused for speaking out of
ignorance but in the interests of "good Marxist journalism", there are a
couple of things that you need to take into consideration.
To start with, when you turn the clock back 1000 years ago in order to
make sense out of the current conflict, it makes about as much sense as
if you were defending any conquest. Did it occur to you that this is
essentially the same sort of argument that the Zionists make for the
creation of the state of Israel? That the historical kingdoms of Israel
and Judea gave them the right to carve out a piece of land in the modern
Middle East? Who knows? Using your logic, maybe the Jews have a right to
take over the Ukraine as well since before it became controlled by Slavs
a millennium ago, it was part of the Khazar kingdom, the source of the
modern Ashkenazim ethnicity according to Arthur Koestler and Shlomo Sand.
But more important than these excursions into ancient history is the
question of the Ukraine becoming part of a greatly enlarged Soviet
Socialist Republic after the Bolshevik Revolution and the transfer of
Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. First of all, you should have italicized the
word "after" in referring to the Bolshevik Revolution since all of the
decisions were being made by Stalin rather than by the people being
affected by such territorial/political decisions.
You might want to look at Moshe Lewin's "Lenin's Last Struggle" if you
get some free time away from your normal study of things like
interracial intimacy in Japan. It is necessary reading for people like
yourself who appear to be a relative virgin when it comes to Soviet history.
Lewin details the last testament of Lenin that warned against the return
of Great Russian chauvinism in the USSR wrought by Stalin despite his
Georgian ethnicity. Like Clarence Thomas, he adopted the views of the
oppressive majority despite being a member of the oppressed minority.
Here's Lenin on what was taking shape in the USSR, written on December
31, 1922, just before it became reasonable to think in terms of "after"
the Bolshevik Revolution:
In my writings on the national question I have already said that an
abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no
use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the
nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the
nationalism of a big nation and that of a small nation.
In respect of the second kind of nationalism we, nationals of a big
nation, have nearly always been guilty, in historic practice, of an
infinite number of cases of violence; furthermore, we commit violence
and insult an infinite number of times without noticing it. It is
sufficient to recall my Volga reminiscences of how non-Russians are
treated; how the Poles are not called by any other name than
Polyachiska, how the Tatar is nicknamed Prince, how the Ukrainians are
always Khokhols and the Georgians and other Caucasian nationals always
Kapkasians.
That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or "great"
nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their
violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the
observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality
of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make up for the
inequality which obtains in actual practice. Anybody who does not
understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the
national question, he is still essentially petty bourgeois in his point
of view and is, therefore, sure to descend to the bourgeois point of view.
full:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm
PS: With all the affection being lavished on Putin today by people like
yourself and fellow Mandarin Stephen F. Cohen, I hope that you don't
lapse into the bad habit of referring to the Tatars (not mentioned once
in your article) as Prince and the Ukrainians as Khokols since these are
ethnic slurs after all.
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