I think the term originated within CPGB (a Marxist-Leninist party in the UK) so Trots had nothing to do with this one.
By the way, Vijay Prashad explained it very well a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY
Red_Scare [he/him]
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Stalin had nothing to do with Hungary though, that was Khrushchev.
1·14 days agoNo worries at all, this reads completely civil. :)
Great points about control over resources, I think you’re right here, this is clearly not the priority for Russia.
CPRF is bigger than Social-Democrats were in Lenins times. I know they won’t try and bring the war home to turn it into a revolution, but I think they absolutely could if a Lenin shows up (cause Zyuganov is evidently not it).
For the Russian people and the Russian soldier this is an anti-fascist struggle.
OK this is a bit much. Russia has been a hotbed for Nazism since the 90s putting even the likes of Poland to shame. Travel guides to Russia have to warn people of colour to stay in hotels on Adolf Hitlers birthday cause Russian neonazis murder people year after year to celebrate the date.
Ukraine somehow managed to out-Nazi Russia after Maidan but still, the idea that Putin invaded Ukraine to fight Nazism is laughable cause he never had any issues with Nazis in Russia.
I find it revolutionary since it challenges the status quo of the uni-polar world.
Was Iraqi invasion of Kuwait revolutionary because it went against US interests?
There is no nation of Hong Kong, they are Han Chinese. There is no nation of Donbass, they are Russians and Ukrainians. The way you’re trying to read that quote from Lenin, every single town, every village, every district is a nation. That’s not at all what Lenin said.
Tibet does have it’s own language, territory, and culture, and so it is indeed a nation.
It is quite apparent that you don’t understand Ukraine, its national-ethnic composition or its history.
language, culture and historical national conception of a minority in the far West of Ukraine.
OK this is laughable. I was raised in Ukraine and I don’t need a Westerner to tell me I don’t understand it, especially one who seems to think Ukrainians are “a minority in the far West of Ukraine”.
There is a continuum of culture and language in Ukraine going from East to West.
I’m aware, thanks. The way I’ve been taught, Dnipro marks the border between Eastern Ukraine, which was always under Russian influence, and Western Ukraine, which had significant Polish influence and cultural ties. But the same goes for Russia. Ukrainian language was spoken all the way to the Don, the Cossack dialect has strong Ukrainian influence, and really entire Southern Russia is a mixture of Ukrainian, Georgian, Abkhasian, Ingush, Circassian, and other influences. Where exactly is the “ethnically and historically correct” border between Ukraine and Russia? I have no idea, maybe it’s along Dnipro, maybe it’s along Don, or anywhere in between.
Where is the legally correct border between Ukraine and Russia? That’s much easier, that was peacefully agreed in 1991. Should Ukraine pursue a return to those borders? Fuck no, that ship has sailed and it’s time for Ukraine to cut its losses and accept whatever peace it can have.
Your post with date-by-date history of the lead up to this conflict is spot on and I’m aware of those events. They still don’t justify invading a brotherly nation. Again, having been raised in the USSR I can’t support Russia’s wars on its neighbours, even if the fault lies mostly with the West.
Look at China, it manages to maintain sovereignty without killing large numbers of people in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and without waging wars on internal separatists like in Xinjiang.
No, the DPR and LPR are not nations, they never claimed that, they consider themselves part of the Russian nation, as did much of Ukraine to some degree before the Ukrainan nationalist re-education project began post 1991
Again, having grown up in Ukraine in the 80s, I can assure you people living there considered themselves Ukrainian, even Russian speakers like me.
Not nations? says who?
Lenin, Stalin, and Marxist-Leninist theory in general.
The people of the LPR and DPR have the right to self determination.
Not any more than people of Hong Kong or Taiwan. Because they are not nations.
Very good and well thought answers, thank you. I upvoted both, no idea why would someone downvote a well researched comment, especially in the reading group / discussion thread.
I’ll reply to both your comments here to keep it in one place. I’ll need some time to think about what you wrote and go over your sources with a fine comb. Just a couple of questions now, and thank you in advance for the help:
It is clear that this attack was coming as preparatory shelling from the Ukrainian side had already begun just a few weeks prior to Russia launching the SMO. I have explained this in a prior comment on another post where i also provided sources confirming that this occurred in the lead up to the SMO: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7112898/6016809
It looks like the only source for amassment of troops is this, are there any other sources, at least a link directly to the Russian ministry of foreign affairs statement it references?
Согласно информации, озвученной МИД РФ, Киев стянул в Донбасс 125 тыс. военнослужащих, что составляет половину всей украинской армии.
Regardless, amassment of troops can be a show of force and more often than not doesn’t lead to an invasion, for instance Russia has amassed troops and held military exercises along Ukrainian border regularly since 2014.
As for preparatory shelling, your post has no sources at all, it only links this article which is not from OSCE and doesn’t link to OSCE source. Do you have a link directly to OSCE report?
The goal of the Banderite Nazis was and is ethnic cleansing. They have explicitly said this. See the sources on this that i gave here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7263447/6081888
The only source is one unnamed guy saying this. I’d like to know who he is and what the context was cause most likely he was calling to kill separatists, not just ethnic Russians. That’s horrible but no different from what you could hear some people say on Russian TV about separatists within Russia.
That’s not enough to claim Zelensky’s govt was going to ethnically cleanse Donbass.
LPR/DPR have nothing to do with self determination because they are not nations. Russia and Ukraine are nations, both have their states, neither is fighting for self determination.
Donbass was not colonised by Ukraine, it’s a region of Ukraine with significant Russian population which is not unusual along borders.
This is a border dispute, of course people living there are affected, but that doesn’t make it a war for self-determination, otherwise all wars fought over territory would be wars of self determination.
Let’s bring this back to the text, it’s the reading group after all:
Anyone who would in all earnest refute the “slogan” of defeat for one’s own government in the imperialist war should prove one of three things:
- that the war of 1914-15 is not reactionary, or
- that a revolution stemming from that war is impossible, or
- that co-ordination and mutual aid are impossible* between revolutionary movements in all the belligerent countries.
The third point is particularly important to Russia, a most backward country, where an immediate socialist revolution is impossible. That is why the Russian Social-Democrats had to be the first to advance the “theory and practice” of the defeat “slogan”.
*I changed “possible” to “impossible” because that’s what Lenin wrote in Russian! The quote makes no sense otherwise. Russian sources: one, two, three.
So point by point:
- This is not a revolutionary war, it’s neither an anticolonial struggle nor a war for proletarian liberation. It’s a proxy war between two capitalist oligarchies over geopolitical power and control over resources, it doesn’t matter that one is the underdog and the other the hegemon. As such this war is inherently reactionary.
- A revolution stemming from this war is possible, perhaps more possible now than it was when Lenin wrote this.
- International cooperation and mutual aid are not only possible but much easier in modern times than they were when Lenin wrote this.
You’re basically saying it’s fine when a reactionary capitalist power invades their neighbours to control them, as long as it’s detrimental to US interests. This is campism and it’s completely incompatible with Marxism-Leninism.
Yes the war was provoked by the US and NATO but this doesn’t absolve Russia from all responsibility and it definitely doesn’t make it a “progressive struggle”. It’s undeniable Russia escalated the conflict 3 years ago and it wasn’t necessary - Russia absolutely had enough power in Ukraine to meddle and pull strings, hell do some assassinations, sanctions, etc.
What did we get out of this?
Over a million people dead, over 10 millions displaced, Ukraine is destroyed, the debt will surpass the GDP this year with state assets already sold off to foreign capital for chicken feed, it’s the most landmined nation in the world (84% of landmine victims globally are civilians, with children accounting for 37%), it’s polluted by depleted uranium which will cause cancers and birth defects for generations, its population reduced by a quartrer and will likely never reach its pre-war levels. You’re sitting on the sidelines cheering cause you just want to see US snubbed.
But the opposite is happening, US has achieved its goals in this war. This war has accelerated the European descent into fascism, it made Europe dependent on the US energy, it triggered European countries to join NATO and to raise their defense budgets by billions. This is exactly what the US wanted and Trump is pushing NATO countries to increase their defense budgets even further.
Regardless. The question is whether this text by Lenin suggests that Russian communists should desire the defeat of Russia in this war so that they can turn it into a civil war, a revolution. The answer is yes, unambiguously. You can disagree with Lenin and that’s fine, but that doesn’t change what Lenin said.
the imperialist hegemon would benefit from a civil war in Russia
Again this is exactly the kind of thinking Lenin is railing against in the very text we’re discussing.
The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany.
This is lesser evilism. Sure, Russia has legitimate security concerns about NATO expansion, this doesn’t make this war a “progressive struggle” though. Ultimately it is just as much about control over Ukrainian resources and Russia simply acts like any capitalist power would. Russia does support some progressive struggles around the world but Ukraine isn’t it.
it gets incredibly complex when it’s about ascendant capitalist countries like Russia.
It really doesn’t though. Russia was a backwards agrarian state barely on its way out of feudalism when Lenin wrote this, he even explicitly acknowledges it right in this text:
Russia, a most backward country, where an immediate socialist revolution is impossible.
If Lenin’s thesis applied to WW1 Russia, it surely applies to SMO Russia.
would likely lead to a civil war, and now is not a good time for Russia to be destabilized
This is exactly the position Lenin critisises in this text. Lenin is quite clear:
A revolution in wartime means civil war
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to diss Christianity as such! I do think Bible itself offers little to Marxists but there’s more to Christian history and tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker-priest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Hagerty
I’ll be honest, I never looked deeper into this. I was a militant atheist for most of my life and I’m only starting to broaden my horizons, hence my harsh initial reply for which I apologise. Old habits die hard I guess. Our enemy is capital, not religion.
Bible is extremely self contradictory, you can fish out quotes to support nearly anything, as proven by history over and over: https://philb61.github.io/
What Bible simply does not offer however, is a direct condemnation of slavery which would only take one short passage. There’s nothing to counterbalance the quote I pasted above, or the quote from the old Testament discussed here: https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/
Given how self contradictory the Bible is, support for slavery is one of the very few points you can get from it with any level of certainty. You can do some mental gymnastics and infer a condemnation of slavery from general statements like “setting the oppressed free”, but then you can make pretty much any other concievable point by selecting the passages that can be interpreted to support your point, and ignoring the passages where your point is directly and explicitly refuted.
No idea why you’re being downvoted comrade.
New Testament was written in the time of widespread slavery and this is what it had to offer:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ, not with a slavery performed merely for looks, to please people, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul. Render service with enthusiasm, as for the Lord and not for humans, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are enslaved or free.
Pretty sure if capitalism existed at that time, it would have the same advice to give wage slaves.
There’s exactly the same sentiment expressed in one of the exhibits in the Berlin Stasi museum (predictably).