====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Greg McDonald <gregm...@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 9:00 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] More nonsense from the pro-Russia brigade To: Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> Thanks. So Buketov counterpoises the role of the gendarme to that of a strict economic rationale for Russia pushing a separatist division in the Donbas region. That would be the only possible explanation given that the Donbas is itself an "economically depressed region": "At the same time, Russia has little use for these territories: it has more than its fair share of economically depressed regions. It is the logic of the Gendarme that is at work here: “Punish and let others beware!” And it wants to weaken these countries: without their annexed territories, democratic governments will be unable to build sustainable economies. Heaven forbid that uncorrupt, free, and democratic countries should emerge along unwashed Russia’s borders." I don't know about you, but I am not too terribly optimistic about the possibilities of an "uncorrupt and free" (read: brownish and oligarchic) Ukraine state, whose primary job is to implement IMF austerity diktat. That aside, Buketov's explanation makes some sense. Greg McDonald On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 8:32 AM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > On 6/25/14 7:26 AM, Greg McDonald via Marxism wrote: > >> How about a concrete analysis of Russian activities >> demonstrating its imperialist intent in Ukraine? >> > > This can be summarized briefly in a few sentences. Russia is determined > that Ukraine serve as a "buffer state" after the fashion of the rest of > Eastern Europe in the Cold War. This means that imperialism is mostly a > function of military rather than economic domination analogous to China's > grip on Tibet or Xinjiang. There is also an argument from the Russian left ( > https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/tag/russian-imperialism/) that > Russia interfered with Euromaidan because it feared the positive example of > a mass movement achieving an anti-oligarchic transformation. This was the > sort of conflict seen over Czechoslovakia in 1968, the need to keep the > natives in order. In order to justify its interference in Ukraine, the > Kremlin uses its fans in the West to go on the offensive about Privy > Sektor, Victoria Nuland, NATO, etc. in the same way that much of the left > tried to justify the crackdown in Poland against Solidarity, etc. > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
