> On Feb 19, 2026, at 09:11, Marv Gandall via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: >
... > The Russians invaded Ukraine not to "to take over the entire country...with > the aim of incorporating it into their empire” but to replace the hostile > government in Kiev with a friendly one. This was not an historically unique > action. When a country with the military means to do so feels threatened by a > hostile power or alliance which establishes a forward base on its border, it > will act preemptively when diplomacy breaks down. Well, I gave you references to people who know what they are talking about on this topic. What makes this comment bizarre, Marv, is that Putin himself gave speeches and wrote essays denying the legitimacy of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a people. Once again, I'd consider what is different when making historical analogies rather than what seems to be the same superficially. ... > > > Moreover, it is not only capitalist states which can be expected to react in > this way. "This way" entails making speeches and writing articles that deny the nationhood of the nation being invade. But I think you are about to generalize to non-capitalists states using a sample size of 1: > Much has been said about how Lenin and the Bolsheviks promoted the right of > national self-determination but they not treat it as an inviolate principle. > The Red Army invaded Ukraine in 1918 to depose the government of the > recently-elected Rada in Kiev which was repressing pro-Bolshevik forces in > alliance with the Whites. The Rada was allied with the Central Powers who > promptly intervened to expel the Red Army. Much to the chagrin of Trotsky and > the Bolsheviks, the Rada delegates were seated alongside the Central Powers > at Brest-Litovsk. When the German and Austro-Hungarian empires subsequently > lost the war, the Red Army returned to Ukraine to defeat the > counter-revolutionary forces headed by Petlura and then rolled on across the > border into newly-independent Poland in an unsuccessful effort to replace > Pilsudski’s bourgeois nationalist government. A Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was the end result. Putin has said that was a mistake. > > While I don’t take sides in wars between capitalist powers and instead call > for an immediate cessation of the fighting in which the working class has no > interest and suffers all of the costs, as it does today in Ukraine, Yes, that is the pacifist position taken by most N.American socialists at the time of Zimmerwald conference in 1915. Trotsky expressed that position as the chosen scribe for the pacifist side, but Lenin advocated revolutionary defeatism. I think most of this list take a revolutionary defeatist position. But revolutionary difference is different in wars of national liberation; it's asymmetric. We don't take a revolutionary defeatist position or a pacifist position to national liberation struggle: Revolutionary socialists are not neutral with respect to the capitalist country that has been invaded while the working people of that country fight off the invader. > I would have supported the Red Army invasion of Ukraine and Poland in the > threatening circumstances which faced the Bolsheviks a little more than a > century ago. Any reservations I might have had about the invasion then would > not have arisen from abstract moral or legal principles but would have been > strategic, relating to the invasion’s likely outcome and the wider interests > of the international working class, which is precisely how the question was > properly framed within the divided Bolshevik leadership. I don't think you are taking a Bolshevik position. At least, yours hasn't been the Bolshevik position since 1915, or maybe since 1902. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40760): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40760 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117833155/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
