Comrade,
I must admit that I am still struggling to work out exactly what you mean
here, since many of the positions which you detail seem more than slightly
confused. However, I will try to answer based on what I have available from
you.
The only war going on related to Russia apart from Chechnya is that of its
bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Period. There is no imperialist war
against Russia. If this were so, the ruling class would be hostile towards
the imperialist bourgeoisie of the West. I am not sure what your definition
of a war is but when the Moscow regime is propped up by the West, that is
hardly war, is it? Sort of like a puppeteer having a war with the puppet on
his hand. Unless of course you mean that imperialism has raped Russia in
complicity with the Russian bourgeoisie. In that case calling for "national
self-determination" - a phrase you abstractly throw about it - should be
replaced by proletarian socialist revolution in Russia and the expropriation
of the bourgeoisie, and the rule of the working class.
Those who led the raping and looting of Russia following the demise of the
Soviet Union were the new bourgeoisie, the so-called "oligarchs", who
emerged from the old bureaucracy. You can check their former careers, they
range from leading regional Communist Parties to being on Central Committees
to leading the Young Communists to high positions in various departments and
front organisations. It is true that imperialism is complicit in the raping
of Russia, and indeed the counterrevolution could not have advanced like it
did without the aid of imperialism, but those who led it were the new
Russian bourgeoisie. It was they who went to "war with Russia" - and
specifically with the workers of Russia.
The Soviet bureaucracy and imperialism were formerly at war, yes. The
reason imperialism was so hostile to the Soviet Union was because it was a
direct threat to its interests, since many revolutions and liberation
movements globally received the aid of the bureaucracy when it suited them.
It also represented a continued threat to the rule of the bourgeoisie; their
hostility was on the same basis as the hatred semi-feudal Europe had toward
Napoleon. Yet you equate the Soviet Union with present-day capitalist
Russia, as though there was a direct continuation from one to the other and
they are the same entity that require the same defence. This is no longer
true, for the seriously deformed workers' state that was the USSR is gone
and isn't coming back, and the largest and dominant republic to emerge from
it, the Russian Federation, is today a bourgeois state which has no interest
in challenging American imperialist interests. Its bourgeoisie, whose
leading figures shall one day hopefully face revolutionary firing squads for
their systematic rape of the country, relies on American imperialism.
To an extent, the class character of the Yugoslav State is irrelevant when
coming to its defence against imperialism. It is a small oppressed third
world state getting ripped to shreds by the imperialist countries. If it
were a case of a war between Britain and France, for example, we could call
for the defeat of both sides and the transformation of the imperialist war
into a civil war, i.e. the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. In the case
of Yugoslavia, we unequivocally came to its defence. In the case of Serbia
at war with Croatia, we support no side and for the turning of guns to the
bourgeoisie, because neither is imperialist but neither are workers' states
with state property to defend either. The point is that if it were a
workers' state of some kind, we would defend its state property and the
colossal advance of a planned economy, whilst calling for the removal of the
bureaucracy; yet these no longer exist, and thereby the character of a
revolution must be social as well as political.
What do you mean the attacks of imperialism have not ceased as regards
Russia? In the sense that Western capital has plundered the country? Capital
plunders all countries; the function of the bourgeoisie is to exploit the
labour of the proletariat. We don't call for self-determination from
capital, we call for its armed overthrow by the working class. This is not a
case of Russia continuing as an independent country being under threat. At
the moment, Russia is sliding at a dramatic rate towards barbarism. It
cannot really be called a single entity as such anymore. Its civilisation is
slowly dying. It is in total reverse socially, economically and culturally.
So miserable is life in Russia that a sizeable portion of its population
escape from it by being perpetually intoxicated with alcohol. Male life
expectancy has declined by ten years in the same number of years. Its
population has dropped by six million since 1990 and is predicted to drop by
a third within fifty years. Its working class and peasantry have experienced
the biggest drop in life expectance in any advanced country during peacetime
in history. In Russia, revolution is a matter of life and death.
We did not defend the right of national self-determination for Chechnya
because Russia's method of suppressing it was excessively brutal, that would
be moralistic. We defend it because we are democrats, and because the
Russian working class will never be free unless Chechnya is - hence the fact
the war was started in the first place, to whip up chauvinism amongst the
proletariat to dent the rising class struggle. However, unfortunately
defending the right of national self-determination for Chechnya is slightly
more complicated now because the place is a pile of rubble; it is a nation
which has been effectively wiped off the face of the earth. And yes, the
imperialists gave their stamp of approval to it, not just in their
disgusting public statements supporting Russia's legitimate right to "fight
terrorism", but even sending military advisors to help them crush the
Chechen people more efficiently.
So please explain what Russia's fight for national self-determination is.
Who is fighting this - the Russian ruling class who have owed their
continued existence to Western capital, who have raped Russia with the aid
of imperialism, a class that stands on a hill of corpses, the workers of
Russia who are dying a slow and painful death?
You have some strange obsession with national self-determination. You even
went as far as to say that the whole point of the October Revolution was
national self-determination. Perhaps proletarian revolution and socialism
had slightly more to do with it? Not only that, but back then Russia was an
imperialist state. For the Bolsheviks to have called for national
self-determination for Russia would have meant "defence of the fatherland"
and they would have supported their ruling class like the rest of the
international social democracy. Actually they called for the revolutionary
defeat of their own country and the transformation of the imperialist war
into a civil war against their own bourgeoisie.
I am getting a tad sick of this vulgar "anti-imperialism" which totally
discards any thought for socialist revolution. Have we given up our struggle
for socialism and workers' revolution, and now we just abstractly oppose
imperialism in general? Perhaps support a few dodgy regimes here and there
if their anti-imperialist credentials come out on top in a balance sheet?
The only gravediggers of imperialism are the workers of the imperialist
countries, not Milosevic or Putin (of all people!) As though our struggle
was to say no when the imperialists say yes, and yes when they say no! Pat
Buchanan can rant on about imperialism, after all. It doesn't have to take a
Marxist.
Cheers
Owen
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