I’m not sure how to write this without it sounding like ragebait or a fed post.
But why do most fellow Marxists critically support Russia today?
I can understand having seen Russia as a potential temporary ally or a necessary power that can stand against US / NATO hegemony over the globe. In short I can understand it from a strategic standpoint.
But what about morals of this?
To explain I’ve seen seen Russia as a necessary potential ally in the past too. But that has changed with the Ukraine war and concurrent events in Russia.
The way I see it, even with a CIA coup, a full scale invasion of a country still isn’t justified. It’s bordering on insanity in my mind to start such a war. The way the war and conscription is handled in Russia is also highly critiquable. The way people who fall from grace, also “fall out of windows” too.
The other major event that made me doubt Putin more was part of the leaks that happened with Navalny’s death. Specifically the revelation of how Putin spend hundreds of millions not just on a palace like so many corrupt leaders and dictators do, but essentially what amounts to an own private town.
This is what lead me to believe that Putin devolved into insanity and paranoia from what he used to be, a calculated sensible dictator.
With all this in mind, why should we offer critical support to Russia instead of Ukraine?
Yes you can argue that Ukraine has been taken over via a pro-western coup regime, but they’re still not the aggressors in the war.
I find it morally questionable to support an aggressor in such a clear scenario. And purely strategically speaking with how Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, I find their military capabilities not great either for any conflict with NATO.
Do any of you have any moral reasoning to critically support Russia? Or do you support it out of strategic reasons despite moral objections?
op, this entire post can be boiled down to your need to look up what “critical support” actually means.
That might help if the whole thing wasn’t in bad faith but I’m not confident of that.
I’m not sure how to write this without it sounding like ragebait or a fed post.
You very clearly failed at avoiding that.
I’m reading about this a lot recently. Especially outside of western “free speech media” (read: propaganda outlets), the view is kinda different. Some people from donetsk were reporting their native russian language and ideology being forcefully repressed. I’m not saying that is what actually happened. It is what I heard from people claiming to be from there. Paired with accounts of ukraine being allegedly coup’d twice by the west and building up arms, allegedly to repress separatist movements and preparing to sell off most of the country to the west (something I read today but no idea if it is what happened).
So, in my humble opinion, there is no clear morality to this. Compared with videos of men in ukraine being kidnapped off the street and brought to the front to be detonated by a drone, russia isn’t great either but I dont see the moral binarity that you seem to do.
I would never defend the actions of the Ukrainian government in ending the protests in the east following the Maidan coup. Put putting down the opposition is still on a different level from invading a country.
Putting down the opposition? Being able to speak one’s native tongue isn’t opposition. They were committing genocide to ethnic Russians within their borders. To think Russia had no reason to invade seems more like a libertarian isolationist ideology.
putting down the opposition
With Artillery? For someone so obsessed with morality you don’t seem particularly worried about the morality of shelling people who voted against you.
putting down the opposition
Nazis were shelling civilians in eastern Ukraine for almost a decade for the crime of being ethnically Russian and you’re talking about morals. Go fuck yourself
I wouldn’t call myself a supporter of Russia or Putin. But any country that stands up to U.S./NATO imperialism should have support from Marxists. Ukraine a proxy for U.S. intervention in Eastern Europe. Their military is also full of Nazis who have been trying to exterminate ethnic Russians in the Eastern regions of the country.
Yes you can argue that Ukraine has been taken over via a pro-western coup regime, but they’re still not the aggressors in the war.
Yes they are.
How so? Ukraine deployed the military to its eastern regions to crush opposition protests and possible secessionist movements. But that’s still an internal affair. Not an attack on another nation.
Ukraine was engaged in ethnic cleansing for 8 years with the ambition to become another Israel. By 22, one million people had fled to Russia from Ukraine. After 8 years, Russia intervened by recognizing the breakaway republics and answering their calls for help. Was this technically illigal under international law? Yes, the breakaway republics were not officially recognized by most countries.
Was it provoked by Ukraine? YES. For 8 years, constantly, with full support of the West. Ukraine wanted this war and did everything sans marching into Russia to get it (there were rumbors of incursions into Russia just before the SMO tho, make of that what you will. Considering what the ukrainian forces got away with during that time, it might have been more than rumors). And now the nazis in Kiew cry because they get their shit kicked out of them.
to crush opposition protests and possible secessionist movements
That’s authoritarianism. Zelensky was killing his own people. Freedom and democracy demanded an intervention.
Believe it or not, the moral thing to do when a country is committing a genocide at your borders is to intervene.
Oh boy this is gonna be a spicy comment section.
Essentially, the point is that Russia has no choice. The western empire has expanded eastwards and aims to control increasingly the former “Russian sphere of influence”, which used to be the eastern block for the most part. The west can do this because it has the economic and geopolitical supremacy, and can do this through so-called"soft" power, political power and economic power.
This process progressively weakens the Russian empire in favour of the western empire. This leads to a stronger western empire over time, and this is something patently bad for the entire global south and all nations suffering under the yoke of western imperialism. Fighting against the western imperialism, even by means of military struggle, is considered positive by many socialists, even if done by a reactionary nationalist force. For example Mao famously allied with the Kuomintang during the Japanese invasion, because the priority was the elimination of imperialism, followed by the revolution.
Furthermore, history didn’t begin in 2022. Tens of millions of Ukrainians have suffered the oppression of the west since 1990, becoming the poorest country in Europe and losing millions of lives to poverty, malnutrition, stress, unemployment, alcoholism and suicide since then. If you’re concerned about the wellbeing of Ukrainians, you should primarily be concerned with the western role in the fucking up of the entire country over the past 35 years, which arguably affected it much greater than the ongoing invasion.
This potentially could be a bad opinion for this place, I’m not sure. I’ve talked online with Russian communists in Russia and they were risking arrest to organise against conscription in their own country. My feeling (God I could be wrong) is that this a correct and noble thing for them to be doing as Russians in Russia.
All the anti Putin arguments made in the West just can the flames of imperialist war here. It seems like we’re rehashing all the mistakes of the socdems during WW1 by rallying around our national bourgeoisie instead of calling for revolutionary defeatism.
Russian communist interest can be different than communists from elsewhere, i find it that russian communists are in a very tough spot at this moment because if a civil war in Russia were to happen at this point of time, its very likely that the West would pounce and completely carve Russia. The very nation is at stake here, kinda opposite to how it was at stake with their participation in WW1, the revolution was the only way to save the russian nation in 1917, but what about now?
That is specifically why I’m asking.
I see the majority of Marxists critically or sadly sometimes uncritically supporting Russia in this conflict.
That is something I do not agree with or understand on a moral level. And on a strategic level I do not see Russia as a reasonable or competent potential ally anymore after the recent years. I cannot support Russia without any arguments for it that I’m not aware of, without any cognitive dissonance.
That is something I do not agree with or understand on a moral level.
Why are you bringing morality into this though? Putin is not a communist to my knowledge, so I doubt people are studying his every word to guide their praxis as if he was the second coming of Lenin.
Putin is an ally against Western imperialism and its unipolar world order. That should be THE single most pressing issue to focus on for any Marxist in my opinion.
And on a strategic level I do not see Russia as a reasonable or competent potential ally anymore after the recent years.
Why not? Isn’t Russia literally fighting the West and supporting anti-west movements in the global south? You might be seeing this through a more static lense maybe? As in, thinking that just because he’s an ally now, he’s always going to be an ally. But that’s not really a Marxist mindset. Things constantly change and evolve.
(I’m answering to “test” my knowledge on this as well. I promise I’m not attacking you, only the ideas, to see if what I write makes sense because I too am learning)
There’s a lot to dislike about modern Russia but I’m not sure why a Marxist would strongly object to them for being at war with a US aligned, neo-nazi aligned NATO proxy that was running an ethnic cleansing campaign right on the Russian border.
The issue is you can say all the same about Russia in this case, except for not being NATO aligned.
My objection is starting a war and attempted full scale invasion with the intend of territorial expansion and installing a pro-Russian government (not much different from the CIA couping a pro-Western government to power).
I’m asking for reasons as to why to critically support Russia as opposed to Ukraine and if the strategic advantage is worth the moral repercussions.
To me it’s a case of two condemnable states at war with each other. Where the aggressor is still less moral due to being the invader.
I’m asking for reasons as to why to critically support Russia as opposed to Ukraine
One is allied with the world’s colonial hegemon that has been committing genocides and invasions everywhere, is openly run by nazis, has been involved in helping NATO conquer at least Syria and Iraq, and has been carrying out terror attacks on behalf of the genocidal empire of NATO.
Where the aggressor is still less moral due to being the invader.
Attempting to join NATO, threatening to bring NATO’s weapons and troops to the borders of is targets, and threatening to engage in terror attacks is an act of aggression. Furthermore, Ukraine has also invaders at least Syria and Iraq.
Also, seriously, what’s with the ‘full-scale invasion’?
Full scale invasion is a phrase that you keep using, and it makes you sound like you’re getting all your information from redditors, because it just means invasion but sounds worse, like regime vs government.
The issue is you can say all the same about Russia in this case, except for not being NATO aligned.
First of all, that’s not true. Russia wasn’t overthrown a decade ago but neo-nazis and they weren’t creating neo-nazi brigades within their military and using them to harass minority language speakers while also banning them from public life.
Secondly being NATO aligned is an incredibly big deal. For one, it puts you within the political block that’s committing a modern Holocaust, amongst a bunch of other horrific crimes.
And trying to destroy a Nazi government is much different than the CIA couping a country to install a Nazi government what are you talking about?
I’m asking for reasons as to why to critically support Russia as opposed to Ukraine and if the strategic advantage is worth the moral repercussions.
You sound like a liberal. I’ve pretty much only ever seen good posts from lemmygrad so this is shocking to me.
Now this is just an irrational and insulting response, calling me a lib.
All you’re doing is throwing the word nazi around.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine is run by nazis.
But both have nazis and other fascists running rampant in their society and army. Wagner quite famously had many far right elements. The only difference between Wagner and Azov was that Wagner was a mercenary troop and not directly part of the Russian army.
What you’re describing essentially draws no difference between the two countries, except that one has been aligned by NATO. So again I have to ask, why support Russia in this case? And as it seems from your comment, why so uncritically on top of it?
Russia is not struggling against western imperialism, it’s trying to cling onto it’s past sphere through it’s own imperialism which just so happens to put them up against the expansion of the US hegemony.
As I said before I can understand the strategic interest in Russia winning. But again morally I do not see how this justifies it. Neither government is worse than the other, both filled with corruption, far right elements, oligarchs, oppression and massacres. But only one is defending.
I’m not defending Ukraine. I’m saying they have a right to defend themselves against aggression. As any nation does with the rare exception of countries that commit massive atrocities and genocides (Cambodia, Nazi Germany (ofc tho they were in fact the aggressor), Rwanda, Myanmar).
Furthermore if not a full scale invasion, then what was the push for Kiev when the war started? Its goal was the quick overthrow and surrender of the Ukrainian government and armed forces. After that failing Russia is still occupying probably around 1/4 to 1/3 of Ukrainian lands since the war started. Troop movements and the front lines are objective facts.
All you’re doing is throwing the word nazi around.
nazi is the right word; the ukrainian brigades fomenting the violence pride themselves in following in the footsteps of the 3rd reich and have even adopted their imagery.
it seems like you’re intentionally ignoring this very important point.
Ukraine is run by Nazis. Sorry but you are out of your depth in this conversation. You won’t understand why we critically support Russia until you get your basic facts straight and stop listening to the western propaganda around this issue.
Listen to the voices of people from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions who actually lived through the Nazi terror bombing.
You can hear those voices in this documentary: 8 Years Before
why so uncritically on top of it?
This tells me you’re not here in good faith.
Read the opening phrase of this comment chain.
There’s a lot to dislike about modern Russia
I strongly disagree with almost everything in your post, but I don’t want to get into a huge line by line discussion about everything, so I’m just going to address the emotionally loaded propaganda phrasing that you keep using.
Furthermore if not a full scale invasion, then what was the push for Kiev when the war started?
An invasion. You can just say invasion. You know that that accurately describes what happened, but “full scale” makes it sound more sinister while providing zero information.
What does full scale even mean? Total war like in WW2? Troops in every part of the invaded country? All of the invading country’s armed forces entering the invaded country?
It clearly can’t be any of those because none of those are true. It doesn’t mean anything. Russia invaded Ukraine is a fact. “Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine” is a propaganda line from a Washington Post article.
Real war fans know that Russia’s invasion was actually O scale.
If Putin had recruited an army of Smurfs he could have done the funniest thing ever and made a Z-scale invasion
Damn. It was right there! :picard
How much do you know about the era prior to Russian intervention in Ukraine? As far as i understand it the Ukrainian backed neo-nazi groups were literally shelling ethnically Russian towns, and killing civilians long before Russia stepped in. So i don’t think portraying this as a black, and white agressor vs defender situation is correct. Donetsk, and Luhansk were actively asking Russia to intervene.
Now do i think that is why Russia intervened? Because they are just super nice, and wanted to help? Fuck no. They did it for geopolitical reasons like anything else. To secure the historically single most effective corridor for invading Russia. That doesn’t mean that context is irrelevant though.
This is also functionally a proxy war. It’s the US vs Russia, but the US is using Ukraine as its manpower pool, and bullet sponge. Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to defend itself like it’s done alone. Even with western backing it’s losing.
The war only happened because the US wanted it to happen. They played Russia, but it backfired on them. The US wanted Russia to come in, and get weakened by Ukraine. Didn’t really care how much damage Ukraine took in the process. But Russia is arguably better off militarily today than it was before this war started. It’s also strengthened the ties between China, and Russia since Russia relies on China to be its economic lifeline in spite of all the sanctions.
So to answer the question: Why critically support Russia?
Morally- Tie: Neither side is worth a damn. Ukrainian civilians and Russian civilians are both innocent, and leadership in both countries is irredeemably evil.
Strategically-Russia Wins: Russian victory weakens the US. Aids the long term goal of destroying US empire.
Pragmatically-Russia Wins: If Ukraine maintains its independence it will have a total lack of young people, destroyed infrastucture, and be economically insolvent. It will be turned into a resource extraction site for the west, and likely never recover. It’s neo-nazi government will be backed by the US, and impossible to overthrow via domestic rebellion. Another war could happen at any time. Not just with Russia, but with Turkey, Poland, etc. If conditions arise to allow it. As Ukraine will still not have nukes, and will be weakened significantly.
If Russia wins Ukraine will be taken over, and become part of Russia. Economically they’ll be better off. Likely with significant investment from both Russia, and China in rebuilding their infrastucture. Still used as a resource extraction site, but since manpower will be able to be brought in from the rest of Russia working conditions will likely be better. They’ll now be under the Russian nuclear umbrella. So unless WW3 happens another war isn’t likely. (Yeah WW3 isn’t exactly unlikely, but yknow.) Ukraine also has significant wheat production. To the west this is kind of a meh thing. They have plenty of farmland in the US, and are more interested in minerals. But Russia/China would be quite interested in maintaining wheat output, and would not risk it just to get some minerals. Not just for their own use, but to keep nations like Egypt stable. So the international food supply markets are likely to be more stable in this situation. Which helps not just Ukrainians themselves via jobs, and investment, but anyone in a food insecure region too.
Anecdotally-Russia wins: Idk how much this matters to other people, but personally when it comes to foreign policy stuff I recognize that the info we as civilians have access to is limited. So i look to the positions of organizations i believe have similar long term goals to my own, communist orgs, and also have access to more information. Intelligence agencies, etc.
China: Officially neutral, but leans toward Russian support.
DPRK: Openly supports Russia.
Vietnam: Neutral, Abstains from UN votes about the conflict.
Cuba: Leans pro-Russia.
These have a clear trend. When 0 AES states are supporting the side of Ukraine that tells me all i need to know. The situation isn’t black, and white clearly. But critical support for Russia is the choice that makes the most sense for me. Not that my random poor person trying to survive opinion does much of anything.
If Russia wins Ukraine will be taken over, and become part of Russia
Highly doubt they’d annex the whole country, they’ll absorb the significant Russian-speaking oblasts ofc but the rest would probably be under a Union State member provisional gov (as well as a top market for premium bodyguards to protect officials from 24/7 guerilla attacks)
Beyond that idk what I’d expect beyond a surge in internal support for aforementioned guerilla cell networks likely dominated by gladio’d up OUN-style groups, as well as whatever company makes Lexapro finding a way around sanctions just to make a killing off of the less conservative 60% or so of citizens who hate the new gov but also are too principled to fight it alongside guys with kolovrat face tats
the Soviet collapse and its consequences etc, era of blackest reaction etc
What does morality has to do with this? Marxism is not a moral compass. Sure each of us have our own moral compass that is influenced by our own cultures, but that is not a part of Marxism.
We can disagree with Russia all we want, the reality of the matter is that, at the end of the day, they are still fighting and resisting NATO’s imperialism.
Also, if you’re going to bring morality into this, then you can’t only talk about Russia invading, you also needs to weight in the ethnic cleansing Ukraine was doing, their Nazi military that are now officially recognized, their rehabilitation of figures like Estepan Bandera and their erasing of Soviet symbols in the country.
I think what NATO did to Ghaddafi explains Russia’s behavior. They could no longer treat NATO as a defensive alliance, it proved itself to be an arm of imperialism. If they allowed Ukraine to become a staging ground for NATO bombers it would be begging for color revolution. They couldn’t just wait, they had to act preemptively.
NATO was never an defensive alliance, USSR at the time of its forming had no doubt about that, Warsaw Pact was a defensive alliance created explicitly as defense from NATO. And later history proven this to be 100% correct.
Sure, NATO didn’t transform into a tool of imperialism, it merely revealed itself to have always been a tool of imperialism.
Yeah, but this revelation is repeated every single time NATO does anything, some people like Molotov got it even before its creation and some people like every fucking lib out there never get it even when it’s right in their face like the cake toss.
Putin himself expressed desire for Russia to join NATO as late as 2000, and in 2005 he said that Russia would respect Ukraine’s choice to join NATO. Those aren’t the actions and words of someone who understands what NATO is.
Was this rhetoric? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think the bombing of Libya was when everything changed. Only a few years after that, Crimea was annexed.
But why do most fellow Marxists critically support Russia today?
Because they’re fighting the US through their proxy in Ukraine, it do be as simple as that honestly. The NATO encirclement, the banderite stuff, the ethnic cleansing, etc just further strengthens the support, but the main reason is their alignment with the US, the global imperialist hegemon. The US having to allocate more resources into Ukraine opens up space for progress all around the world.
But what about morals of this?
What does that have to do with Marxism? Even if we appeal to morals, a “bad” moral conflict could be “good” in the grand scheme of things, that being fighting US imperialism. If revolutionaries cared about every morally troublesome decision, there wouldn’t be any revolution.
The US having to allocate more resources into Ukraine opens up space for progress all around the world.
This is the biggest thing, for me.
If the US wasn’t directing all of its effort toward Ukraine and Israel, there’s no way Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel would have been able to make so much progress with such little pushback. And that’s just in the Sahel.
also they could be straight up doing more warmongering in China if they weren’t so tied up in all these conflicts.
The UN is violating a deal they arrqnged with russia to not expand their influence to countries in the Russian sphere of influence. Allowing Ukraine to become a part of the UN poses a significant security risk for Russian sovereignty and National security. Even as things stand now, Ukraine was capable of briefly pushing into Russian lands and raising havoc. If they were a part of the UN, they would’ve been capable of doing much more damage. A country at war is not allowed to join the UN, as it would force all the other countries in it into its mess.
The western world remains the enemy of Russia, even after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I think you mean NATO
Oh, yeah. Rip
I think you’re talking about ‘NATO’ when you say ‘UN’, probably worth an edit.
Edited.
I’m an eepy girl, alright?
I don’t have much time right now, but I know there have been previous threads on this with good answers. Here is some context on Ukraine and the nature of its administration:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7112898
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8044328
And a thing on debunking the idea of Russian “imperialism”:
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Russian_"imperialism"
Can you explain how you:
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are ignorant of the conversations that have been had on this topic for 3 years.
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with a 2 year old account.
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while using “red guard” in your username.
You’re clearly not as unfamiliar with the topic or the ML thought process followed here as your post implies.
I think it’s weird wrecker shit to re-hash topics that were covered in this space already.
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Because UKKKraine cracKKKers love to come around here from time to time
joined 16 hours ago
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What are your principles?
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Aha, an ultra. 1 day old account too. Are you possibly an alt account of the clown who was here a short while ago “warning” us about hordes of ultras? Is this entire post, and the bizarre replies, all just staged by the same individual to set up some ridiculous ultra-trolling?
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Is that an answer to my question? Why do you consider yourself to be “not unpricipled”?
What are your principles?
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And their last interaction with this site prior to this post was a single post made a year ago, and a single comment made two years ago. Now comes in parroting a bunch of lib talking points about Ukraine. Nothing suspicious about that. /S
2 post, 6 comments. I think a stay-behind operative has been activated :P
“Surely this plot will cause the dengists at lemmygrad dot ml to embrace trotskyism”
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