Editorial: An end to the war in Ukraine? (2025)

Editorial from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hopefully the war in Ukraine will end quickly. Ideally, it should end immediately and unconditionally — in the interest of humanity in general and the working class in particular, the killing and destruction should just stop — but this is not how wars end. Unless one side wins outright, there are negotiations based on the perceived balance of force between the two sides.

Russia claims the main issue at stake in Ukraine has been whether or not the country should join NATO, with the rulers of the Russian state arguably perceiving this as an existential threat in the same way that in 1962 the rulers of the USA saw the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. On that occasion Russia backed down and the crisis was defused. In 2022 the US and its allies in NATO refused to back down. So did Russia and they decided to invade.

Normally, wars are fought to win but the US declared that its aim was limited to weakening Russia by forcing it to divert resources into fighting a war without end. Russia has been waging war to win, perhaps not necessarily to conquer the whole of Ukraine but certainly to conquer as much as it can along its frontier and to force Ukraine to sue for peace.

Russia would certainly like to capture Odessa and Kharkov too but it looks as if they will have to settle for the 20 percent of mineral-rich Ukraine that they have already taken, if only on condition that what’s left of Ukraine doesn’t join NATO (or, ideally, the EU either). A block on NATO membership seems to be what Trump has offered Putin as the basis for a settlement, which has come as shock both to the Ukrainian government and the European members of NATO.

The European leaders were also shocked at the US exploiting Ukraine’s weakness to extract free access to rare earth metals there. They saw this as ‘transactional’ and said NATO was about ‘defending democracy’ rather than such sordid considerations. Maybe NATO is not primarily economic but this was no shock to socialists. It’s how we would expect a state engaged in the competitive struggle for profits to behave given half a chance,

Why this change of US attitude? We can only speculate. America seems to have decided that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not after all that strategically important from its point of view, especially when it has other, more important strategic considerations in East Asia and the South China Sea and has arguably been pulling back from many of its foreign commitments for years, the latest being Afghanistan.

Since the complete defeat of the USSR in the Cold War, represented by its break-up into independent states at the end of December 1991, what was left as Russia has not constituted too much of a threat to the US as such. No doubt there are revanchists among Russia’s ruling elite who dream of re-incorporating the parts of the former USSR such as the Baltic statelets, but not necessarily to overrun the whole of the rest of Europe, as claimed by war-mongering generals and fabulating politicians.

The US has decided that that’s not its problem but Europe’s to deal with — and, more particularly, to pay for. European governments, including Labour here, are to increase military spending. Another example of how capitalism wastes resources that, in a different world, could be used to meet people’s needs.

Myanmar and the myth of ‘the national progressive bourgeoisie’ (2022)

From the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

China has financial interests in Myanmar and is demanding their economic zones be secured from the military conflict. For this, China had to maintain diplomatic relations with the current military junta, but is still supplying weapons to the ethnic armed groups that are fighting against the junta. China is also demanding to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi for political discussion. So, it can be concluded that China hasn’t chosen a side so far. However, since China is only interested in its imperial power and economic advantage, the conclusion can be drawn that it will bet on the winning horse in the future.

Russia, on the other hand, has chosen its side. Long before the coup, Russia had been a steady supplier of weapons and maintained a stable relationship with the Myanmar military. Russia still exists as the sole steady weapons supplier for the military junta even during the coup and revolution era. The Moscow leadership also welcomed Min Aung Hlaing, the military junta leader, and some ultranationalist monks to Russia even after the coup. In September, General Min Aung Hlaing and Putin confirmed their strategic alliance at the Moscow-organised Eastern Economic Forum. Since Russia’s imperialism has chosen to support the reactionary military regime, the anti-imperialist idiot Stalinists who are only opposed to Western imperialism are currently facing backlashes from the working class and the public.

Theoretically, the young Mao Zedong was for federalism, according to his article in Ta Kung Pao. However, hypocritically, the authoritarian Mao Zedong in power rejected the self-determination of Tibet, Mongolia, and some other provinces. The hostility to federalism by Myanmar’s military junta is in fact rooted in the anti-federal arguments of Stalin in the first place. Therefore, advocating for federalism while maintaining ‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’ as a revolutionary tactic is irrational at its core and opportunistic. Such opportunism can be found in the Communist Party of Burma and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

Since the Communist Party of Burma is mainly influenced by Mao Zedong’s thoughts, they still buy into the idea of a revolutionary national bourgeoisie. In an article Mao Zedong wrote the following:

‘The national bourgeoisie is a class which is politically very weak and vacillating. But the majority of its members may either join the people’s democratic revolution or take a neutral stand, because they too are persecuted and fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism’.

Karl Marx, in contrast to Mao Zedong and his revisionism, introduced the principles of perpetual revolution in his 1850 letter ‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,’ written in the course of the abortive German bourgeois-democratic revolution:

‘While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers’.

In other words, Marx was advocating a revolutionary method in which the working class must maintain and defend the democratic revolution as much as they can until state power has been seized. In contrast, Mao Zedong substituted the class struggle with his ‘new democracy’ concept, which is revisionist at its core. Mao Zedong’s new democracy states that the political revolutionary alliance between the working class, the peasants, the intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie should be accomplished and protected at all cost. Here, Mao Zedong even distinguished the national bourgeoisie into two camps. According to his article ‘On the Question of the National Bourgeois and the Enlightened Gentry’:

‘The few right-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and oppose the people’s democratic revolution are also enemies of the revolution, while the left-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to the working people and oppose the reactionaries are also revolutionaries’.

Nevertheless, Karl Marx had warned that a kind of political sabotage could be potentially done by the petty bourgeoisie in his letter ‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League’. They, Marx wrote:

‘seek to ensnare the workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat’.

Instead of maintaining this socialist tradition of class struggle, a revisionist party, the Communist Party of Burma, betrays the class war by forming an alliance with the national bourgeoisie.

Hein Htet Kyaw

Putin, power and women (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the media frenzy concerning another spectacular but predictable demise of a British Prime Minister begins to subside there will be those who will try to divine a meaning in all of the populist bluster of the last few years. Like Trump in the USA his attempt to bypass and disregard the political establishment was a resounding failure. The most powerful office of state seems, in the end, to emphasise its weakness when confronted by the real power of the ruling elite. All of the millions who were conned into thinking that voting for populist candidates like Boris Johnson would change anything are forced to the realisation that their votes are meaningless if they attempt to thwart the ruling class and their need for ‘business as usual’. Perhaps Johnson was surprised at just how little power the office of PM brings with it.

A vision of him holed up in a fortified No. 10 defended by the hordes of his northern ‘red wall’ supporters paralleling the Trump militia’s storming of the Capitol building is both comical and disturbing. That the man had no moral compass or political integrity is no surprise to socialists but what we do find unforgivable is his warmongering activities on behalf of NATO in the name of the Ukrainian people. One of his more incoherent statements concerned his assertion that if Putin was a woman he would not have invaded Ukraine. Does he have no memory of the Tory heroine Thatcher glorying in the Falklands War? She may not have instigated the invasion but she loved every moment of it. Indeed many feminists at the time seriously asserted that she was not really a woman at all. So what is the real nature of political power and are female leaders instinctively more benign and less belligerent than their male counterparts?

A friend once insisted that she had no interest in history because it was merely a record of ‘boys’ power games’. Whilst it is true that the nature of the evolution of private property societies and their warrior ethos has promoted patriarchy there have been examples of powerful and belligerent female leaders. From Boudicca and Cleopatra in the ancient world to queens of England including Matilda, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I. There is no record of Queen Victoria objecting to her other title as ‘Empress of India’. Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Tansu Ciller and Chandrika Kumaratunga are all female leaders of the modern era who could hardly be called pacifists. Condoleeza Rice in her role of National Security Advisor in the US played a significant role in prosecuting the illegal war in Iraq and the instigation of the use of torture. The characteristics needed to be a successful politician within the capitalist context are the same for both men and women and gender seems to make no significant difference. Like leading men within the mainstream political parties their primary role is to protect the power and wealth of the parasitic elite. If war is needed to do this they will have no hesitation in beating the drum.

Vladimir Putin has become demonised in the West as a maniacal imperialist despot. But the truth is that his actions would be duplicated by many other capitalist leaders if they felt they had been systematically lied to and threatened by a rival and enemy. Putin represents the pride that Russia once felt in its supposed imperial heyday as the ‘Soviet Union’. Promises undertaken by the US not to expand their empire (NATO) any further east have been broken and rightly or wrongly the Russian elite feel they have been betrayed and insulted. They proclaim that Ukraine was the gateway to the invasion of their country by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler and that they will never allow this to happen again. Meanwhile members of the working class on both sides continue to murder each other in the name of their respective national oligarchs. The idea that this is simply ‘Putin’s War’ rather than an inevitable result of national rivalries and the economic objectives that they serve is just tabloid propaganda.

An unlikely candidate for the role of female peacemaker came in the form of German leader Angela Merkel who, apparently, begged George Bush Jnr. not to continue to pressure Ukraine to join NATO since she plainly foresaw the conflict that this would unleash. The momentum of history has little regard for the illusion of power that leaders try to project. As Merkel’s ‘illustrious’ predecessor Otto von Bismarck once remarked with unusual humility: ‘The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to his coattails as he marches past.’ If we substitute the word ‘progress’ for the reference to God this has an almost Marxian quality to it. Bismarck also knew that a united Germany was inevitable and that his efforts to maintain Prussian hegemony were doomed – it seems that those who are most successful as statesmen/women recognise how limited their power really is.

An analysis of the power of individuals and groups through history leads socialists to believe that leaders are a political anachronism that have no place in the modern world. The global working class must act as a united political force to finally eliminate the mythology of ‘great men and leaders’ and the tribal interests that they represent. Only then can humankind’s true historical destiny be fulfilled.

Wez.

Chechen war (Part II) (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

For too long now, the Chechen people have held that second-class status was often afforded South Africa’s black population. Indeed, in Moscow they are disparagingly referred to as “blacks” and the prejudice can be traced back over 150 years to the time when Tsarists conquered the area.

Stalin’s hate for them was such that he had the entire population deported to Central Asia in 1944, citing charges of Nazi collaboration—a venture that would wipe out some 60 percent of the Chechen population.

In recent years they have been blamed for every social ill facing Russia, from drug trafficking and kidnapping to black-marketeering. It was therefore not really surprising that the latest Moscow bomb attacks got blamed on Chechenya’s aspiring islamist secessionists—in spite of no evidence existing to suggest this—while providing the Russian rulers with another opportunity to send troops into the tiny republic.

Ostensibly, the present Chechen conflict was sparked by the seizing of border villages by islamic militants—the fundamentalist Wahhabi muslims, intent on creating an independent islamic republic made up of Daghestan and Chechenya. In the Chechen republic Wahhabi support has increased recently, chiefly because of high unemployment, despair at a corrupt local elite, frustration with the slow pace of market reforms and at the little effort Russia has made to rebuild the republic after the bungled Chechen war of 1994-6.

The Russian rulers, however, didn’t need much of an excuse to send troops into Chechenya at the end of September. They still feel the humiliation of Russia’s venture into Chechenya in the mid-90s, when 6,500 Russian troops lost their lives fighting Chechen guerrillas and the consequent pull-out sparked by public outcry at home. Moreover, here was a former superpower being whipped by a tiny band of poorly-trained fighters.

In the wake of that particular conflict, though still claiming Chechenya was breaching laws laid down in the Russian Federation constitution, Moscow was embarrassingly forced to accept the republic’s de-facto independence, but not formally.

More importantly, the Russian rulers are all too aware of Chechenya’s real significance. In spite of its size (7,350 square miles compared with the 8.64 million of the former Soviet Union) Chechenya is a veritable goldmine, and all the more important considering that previous successful secessionists—Georgia and Azerbaijan—took with them a wealth of mineral resources.

Chechenya, landlocked on three sides by Russia, includes fertile farmland that straddles the wheat fields of southern Russia. It has key transport assets—rail/road routes that link the Black and Caspian seas and trade routes to other trans-Caucasus republics. Most importantly, Chechenya controls vital oil pipelines that connect the Black and Caspian seas, as well as vital oilfields and refineries. We can add to this Chechenya’s chemical and engineering industries as well as its supply of building materials. All said, Chechenya equals roubles equals profits.

But one wonders why Russia, in recent weeks, has concentrated air strikes on oil terminals, bridges and dams. The strategy seems to be one of destroying Chechenya’s infrastructure and raw material supplies and to seal it off from the outside world. Sounds familiar? By all accounts Moscow has modelled the attack on the NATO strategy in Kosovo, hoping to bring Chechenya to its knees in as short a space of time as possible and with minimum loss of Russian life.

Nine years after the Chechen nationalists first informed Moscow of its secessionist ambitions, and with hundreds of thousands of Chechens now living the meagre life of the refugee in neighbouring republics, stability looks a long way off, and with President Aslan Maskhadov now enlisting the help of the region’s most prominent warlords—such as Shamil Basayev, a veteran commander of the first Chechen war that Maskhadov initially disowned—the conflict looks set to be long and protracted.

With so much mineral wealth at stake, wealth they are afforded no real share in, the Chechens should at least realise that whichever elite—Russian or Chechen, Russian Orthodox or Muslim—calls the shots, they will always come a poor second to the lure of the rouble and the profits that await the real victors. The 80-100,00 who lost their lives in the first Chechen war is a poignant reminder of this fact.

John Bissett

Cooking the Books: Is Russia imperialist? (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

It certainly used to be. As the so-called USSR, Russia had an empire that included large parts of Europe and Central Asia. With its defeat in the Cold War, Russia lost not only its empire in Europe but, when the USSR self-destructed, its empire in Central Asia too. However, the fact that Russia no longer has an empire does not mean that it no longer harbours expansionist ambitions.

According to leaflets handed out by assorted ‘Tankies’, Maoists and Trotskyists in London on May Day, Russia is not an imperialist country. But that’s because they adhere to Lenin’s particular theory of imperialism.

In his 1920 Preface to the French and German editions of his 1917 pamphlet, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin writes:

‘Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries. And this “booty” is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan)…’

His theory, one of the leaflets explained, treats

‘imperialism as a global phenomenon of the leading capitalist powers whose great financial houses, allied to their transnational corporations, seek to dominate, exploit, and rob the whole planet. The imperialist powers exploit not only their own working class but the working class in the semi colonies of the global south, bankrupting their industries and reducing their economies to suppliers of raw materials and primary products to the metropolitan markets. The booty thus won is used to buy off an aristocracy of labour via the trade union bureaucracy…’

However,

‘Neither Russia nor China are imperialist powers, they are not integrated into the IMF and World Bank and cannot extract surplus value from the global south in that way, even if China in particular aspires to do so’ (Socialist Fight).

Another leaflet openly concedes that, nevertheless, Russia is capitalist:

‘Although Russia has been a capitalist state since 1991 it is not an imperialist power in its own right… Russia is not part of the “imperialist club” but a relatively backward, dependent capitalist economy.’

So, on this theory, the world is divided into ‘imperialist’ capitalist states, ‘non-imperialist’ capitalist states and the semi-colonial global South. The first make super-profits from exploiting the last while the non-imperialist capitalist states only make average profits because they are not in a position to exploit the global South, only their own working class.

Where this rather tortuous argumentation is leading to is a justification for supporting Russia in its current war with NATO and Ukraine. ‘Imperialist hands off Russia!’, ‘For the right of Russia to defend itself against imperialist encroachment!’, the leaflets proclaim.

Besides being a flagrant departure from the socialist position that there is nothing at stake in wars between capitalist states justifying the loss of a single drop of working class blood, this also has the perverse result of justifying supporting Germany in WW2 since it too was a capitalist state that did not then directly benefit from colonial plunder (even if it aspired to), was excluded from the international payments system (then based on gold), and was surrounded by hostile imperialist states.

Imperialism, in the sense of capitalist states struggling amongst each other to acquire, keep and control sources of raw materials, trade routes, investment outlets and markets with the strongest in military terms doing best, is not an entirely misleading concept, but it is a product of capitalism. It doesn’t make sense to divide capitalist states into ‘imperialist’ and ‘non-imperialist’ – and even less to take the side of the weaker against the strongest – as all of them are involved in the game.

A Small Victorious War? (1998)

Book Review from the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chechnya: A Small Victorious War. By Carlotta Gall & Thomas de Waal. Pan 1997.

At most times it is possible for most people to find the capitalist system and its executive branch the state merely an annoyance, dangerous if crossed, a block to what really needs to be done but capable of being avoided or pacified, even of being used to advantage. But it is during crises and especially wars that the brutal and bloodthirsty nature of the state becomes transparent.

Carlotta Gall’s book is a particularly well written account of the background and circumstances behind the recent war in Chechnya and shows little of the slackness that many books by journalists have; clearly she has actually been to the place in question. The author shows what caused the war, its course and the all-too-familiar results, in a humane and non-partisan way.

In ordering the December 1994 invasion, Yeltsin was playing the nationalist card to counter Zhirinovsky. He felt certain of a quick easy victory in order to win the impending elections (one senior adviser is quoted as saying “It is not only a question of the integrity of Russia. We need a small victorious war to raise the president’s ratings”). He managed to gain public enthusiasm for the war by a most astounding misinformation campaign. The profit motive however, was not far beneath the surface—a Russian oil company demanded a stable Chechnya to run its oil pipelines through. On the other side Jokhar Dudayev, the Chechan leader, was unpopular due to economic decline and the state’s unstable political circumstances. Dudayev, the anti-Russian Chechan nationalist (who spoke Chechan badly and was married to a Russian), avoided any possibility of compromise, wanting to preserve his corrupt little fiefdom hoping that defiance would improve his standing.

The irony is that this was by no means a small victorious war. It was not small; one military figure said the number of tanks lost during the battle for Grozny (December 1994 to March 1995) was more than were lost in the Battle for Berlin in 1945. It was also by no means victorious: in August 1996 the Chechens occupied the ruins of the town in a swift overnight operation. The Russian government, fearful of starting another Afghanistan-type conflict, decided to call it a day and withdrew its troops.

The arrogant attitudes of the political leaders to the led are fully exposed in the book. Grachev, the Russian defence (!) minister, said during the height of the war “18 year old boys have been dying for Russia, they have been dying with smiles on their faces and we should raise a monument for them”. The ill-fed, ill-equipped conscript soldiers were less thrilled at the prospect; desertion was rife, insubordination answerable by firing squad. The unpredictable, possibly mad, Dudayev was as bad: as Grozny was in its final death throws he is said to have laughed and said “my mood is excellent”.

As to the result—of the one million population in this state less than the size of Wales over 250,000 have become refugees and 50,000 killed. Grozny, a town the size of Bristol or Edinburgh, was almost completely destroyed by house-to-house fighting and 27,000 of its population killed. As is customary the victorious Russian army ran wild after the fall of Grozny; looting, raping, atrocities, unprovoked massacres and murders of civilians were commonplace. Taught to kill and brutalised by the army life such occurrences always happen when discipline slackens after a “victory”. Perhaps the surprising thing is how amazed some people appear to be when this sort of thing happens.

The war in Chechnya as related in A Small Victorious War gives further proof, if any were needed, of the consequences of war in the modern world, but wars are inevitable while politicians are allowed to play with people’s lives and the desire for profit dictates their policy. In other words, they are an inevitable part of capitalist society.

Kaz.

The almost-war in Ukraine (2022)

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article originally appeared on the WSPUS website as long ago as the January 30th of this year, and events in the past week have obviously overtaken both the article and its title. The March issue of the Socialist Standard was going to press when Russia invaded the Ukraine.

From the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

They told us that 16 February would be the day that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. But diplomatic discussions continued. What had happened? Did Putin really intend to go to war? Or were what appeared to be war preparations merely a means to exert pressure and win concessions from the West?

Developments within Ukraine

Ukraine has been in the grip of civil war since the coups of 2014 — the Ukrainian-nationalist coup in Kiev and the west and the counter-coup in the east.

The split between western and eastern Ukraine goes back to the 19th century, when Ukraine was divided between the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist empires. Eastern Ukraine, where the country’s industry is concentrated, is mainly Russian-speaking and depends on economic ties with Russia, while western Ukraine is oriented toward Europe. Yanukovych, who was president in 2010—2014, tried to hold Ukraine together by developing closer economic relations with both the EU and Russia, but the EU insisted that he choose – he could not do both. As a representative of the east Ukrainian capital and its Party of Regions, he could not afford to break ties with Russia. This placed him at loggerheads with west Ukrainians, who aspired to join an idealized ‘Europe’, and in 2014 he was overthrown.

The ‘Maidan’– the movement that overthrew Yanukovych – began with peaceful mass protests against corruption, but developed into a violent struggle between riot police and extreme Ukrainian nationalists. The regime that emerged, with the support and guidance of Western politicians and propagandists, was semi-fascist in spirit despite a thin democratic veneer (for a fuller analysis see ‘Ukraine: popular uprising or fascist coup?’ tinyurl.com/mr3m689x).Its hostility to ethnic Russians and citizens of mixed ethnic identity and a massacre of Russian activists in Odessa struck terror in the hearts of easterners, who responded with the ‘anti-Maidan’ – an uprising against the Maidan.

The anti-Maidan also began with peaceful demonstrations and even shared certain themes with the Maidan, such as a concern with corruption. But it too was taken over by militaristic nationalists – Russian nationalists in this case. The process went furthest in the two easternmost provinces, where there emerged breakaway mini-states called the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, supported and manipulated by the Russian government and Russian nationalist organizations.

The new Ukrainian government conducted an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ to crush the DPR and LPR and reincorporate their territory. The civil war dragged on spasmodically, without decisive results. Two million people fled the war zone and became refugees.

Whole communities in parts of Ukraine resisted the draft, unwilling to sacrifice their sons in a cause of no concern to them. Immunity to nationalist propaganda is especially characteristic of people with mixed ethnic identities, such as Ukrainians long resident in Russia and children of Russian-Ukrainian marriages. Most people in eastern Ukraine see no contradiction in identifying simultaneously as Russian and Ukrainian (in many places they speak a mixture of the two languages called Surzhyk). When interviewed, residents of the war zone are inclined to blame both the Ukrainian and the Russian government.

Russia and its ‘near abroad’

A key security requirement for Soviet leaders was that the USSR be surrounded by a belt of states that were either allies or at least ‘friendly neutrals’ (like post-war Finland). ‘Friendship’ entailed willingness to develop economic and cultural ties, consult regularly with the Kremlin and refrain from offensive propaganda campaigns. Above all, it meant not joining hostile military alliances like NATO.

This attitude was inherited by leaders of post-Soviet Russia, except that now the belt of friendly neighbours had to consist mainly of other post-Soviet states. Due to their shared Soviet and tsarist heritage, these states are felt to be less ‘foreign’ than countries beyond the old borders. The two zones came to be referred to as ‘the near abroad’ and ‘the far abroad’.

It is no longer regarded as essential that all former Soviet republics belong to this ‘friendly neighbourhood’. It is now accepted as a fact of life that the Baltic states are going to remain ‘unfriendly’. However, such tolerance does not extend to the three large inner states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Belarus and Kazakhstan remain ‘friendly’ but since 2014 Ukraine has not behaved in a ‘friendly’ manner.

This has an immediate impact on Moscow’s approach to border issues. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the internal administrative borders between its ‘union republics’ suddenly turned into interstate borders, even though they did not closely reflect the pattern of ethnic settlement. The international community nonetheless soon began to treat them as no less inviolable than any other interstate borders.

The Kremlin too accepted these borders, but not unconditionally. Borders with ‘friendly’ neighbours were accepted, however anomalous they might seem, because border issues were not felt to be important enough to justify spoiling good relations by raising them. Thus, Russia has never objected to the inclusion in Kazakhstan of large areas in the north and east with predominantly Russian-speaking populations, and has lent no support to attempts at secession by Russian nationalists in those areas. Nor did the Kremlin contest Russia’s border with Ukraine until 2014, when the overthrow of Yanukovych was quickly followed by the annexation of Crimea, thereby reversing Khrushchev’s transfer of the peninsula from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine. For the Kremlin, the anti-Russian stance of the new government in Kiev also justified support of the secessionist ‘people’s republics’ in eastern Ukraine.

NATO expansion

The eastward expansion of NATO, especially when it extends to the ‘near abroad’ and right up to Russia’s borders, is a bitter grievance of Russia’s power elite. That is because it violates the security requirement of a ‘friendly neighbourhood’ deeply embedded in their psyche. It is also because it violates the verbal promises made by Western politicians to Gorbachev that if he allowed Germany to unite and united Germany to remain in NATO then NATO would not expand ‘an inch to the east’. These promises were ‘forgotten’ under pressure from American arms manufacturers, whose sales were flagging due to improved relations with Russia and who sought new markets in Eastern Europe. (For a detailed account see Andrew Cockburn, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine, Verso 2021, Chapter 6.)

Hence the feeling of Russian leaders that Russia – and they personally — have been deceived, swindled and humiliated. It is surely understandable that there should eventually come a time when as a matter of self-respect they say ‘enough is enough’ and ‘take a firm stand’ in defence of core state interests as they perceive them.

Russia first ‘took a firm stand’ against NATO expansion when it invaded Georgia in 2008, partly in order to prevent Georgia from joining NATO. As Georgia has still not joined NATO, that war – together with Russia’s subsequent recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — may have achieved its purpose, although Georgia may have remained outside NATO even without Russian intervention. The invasion of Georgia provided a precedent for the confrontation with Ukraine when it adopted the goal of joining NATO.

The recent crisis

Thanks in large part to Western arms supplies, Ukrainian forces in the east grew strong enough to make it seem likely that they would succeed in breaking the stalemate and penetrate core areas of the DPR and LPR. Residents of these areas feared what might then happen to them, especially as the forces facing them contained Nazi formations like the Azov Battalion. Russian commentators too envisioned a scenario like the massacre of Moslems at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war, in which case Russia would be morally obliged to intervene.

Russian spokesmen often promised that Russia would not be the first to violate the status quo. However, a major Ukrainian offensive against the DPR and LPR would be regarded as a violation of the status quo and Russia would respond forcefully to any such ‘provocation’. Kiev took the view that it has a perfect right to move against secessionists on its own territory. So each side would be able to blame the other for starting a war.

However, there was no guarantee that hostilities would be confined to eastern Ukraine. The concentration of Russian forces in southern Belarus, close to the border with Ukraine and just 120 kilometres from Kiev, prefigured a possible blitzkrieg to install a ‘friendly’ government.

Many signs appeared in recent weeks of a deep division within Russia’s power elite over the expediency of invading Ukraine. Two senior army officers, one retired from the defence ministry and the other from the General Staff, publicly warned against the prospect of protracted occupation of a hostile population. The main threats to Russia, they declared, are internal ones like corruption and demographic decline. Prominent civilian experts likewise argued – as Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, was quoted on St. Petersburg Online (fontanka.ru) – that ‘any analysis shows that war is to Russia’s disadvantage’.

The prospect of cancelation of Nord Stream, the pipeline through the Baltic Sea to bring Russian natural gas to Germany, is likely to have pulled the huge gas corporation Gazprom into the anti-war camp.

The main advocates of war seem to have been officials of the security services, more concerned with the threat to the regime posed by Colour Revolutions than with broader national interests.

Even the most ‘democratic’ governments, having decided on war, suppress public expression of anti-war opinion. So the fact that it was possible during the recent crisis in Russia openly to oppose any resort to war shows that Putin was not committed to military action. He may have been keeping his options open until the moment when a decision had to be made. (The high level of mobilization of Russian troops could not be sustained for long: they had to be set in motion fairly soon or else demobilized.) Or he may have never intended to go to war at all, resolved in advance to content himself with whatever gains the crisis might yield.

Russian gains

The Ukrainian crisis was accompanied by intensive diplomacy, involving mainly Russia, the United States and major European member states of NATO (Britain, France, Germany). Much of this diplomacy remains secret. But clearly NATO has agreed to take some account of Russian security concerns and revive the stalled process of European arms control. On January 12, after a hiatus of two and a half years, the NATO—Russia Council reconvened in Brussels.

Western governments have affirmed the continuing validity of the NATO—Russia Founding Act of 1997 and the Minsk Protocols of 2014 and 2015. Kiev and its unconditional supporters inside NATO have been lobbying hard to consign these agreements to oblivion, thereby releasing Kiev from such unpleasant obligations as granting a special status to the areas controlled by the People’s Republics.

Russia has obtained no guarantee against Ukraine joining NATO, but it is conceivable that France or Germany, which take pride in maintaining a certain autonomy from the US, secretly promised to block Ukraine’s admission – requiring, as it does, a consensus of existing members.

The Russian parliament (State Duma) is now asking Putin to recognize the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as independent states, maybe as a step towards their subsequent annexation to Russia (as happened to Crimea).

Our attitude

Socialists need feel no great temptation to take sides in disputes between Russia and Ukraine. In both countries wealth is concentrated in the hands of wealthy capitalists known as ‘oligarchs’ who own the mass media and control political parties. (One difference is that Russia under Putin, unlike Ukraine, has acquired a state strong enough to limit the rivalry and political power of the oligarchs.) Corruption remains rampant in both countries, despite the best efforts of Maidan and anti-Maidan activists. Human and democratic rights exist on paper, but just try to exercise them and you will find yourself at the mercy of nationalist vigilantes and paranoid security agencies. Fascist groups are actively engaged on both sides. The anti-nationalist Left is weakened by the depth of ethnic and religious divisions and the continued association of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ with the Soviet past.

As always, we urge our fellow workers in Russia and Ukraine to reflect. Where do their true interests lie? With ‘their own’ oligarchs and politicians? With the oligarchs and politicians on the other side? Or with one another?

Stefan

Discussion on the Russian-Ukraine War

Sunday 27 February, 10 AM

SUNDAY MORNING DISCORD DISCUSSION 

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE

The event that a lot of us thought and hoped wouldn’t happen, and the repercussions it is likely to have on workers in Ukraine and elsewhere

Hosts: Paddy Shannon / Adam Buick

If you’d like to participate in the talk, just contact Discord Admin for a special invite or email spgb@worldsocialism.org. All welcome. 

Editorial: Sabre-rattling over Ukraine (2022)

Editorial from the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Western capitalist powers – the USA and its allies in Europe – won the Cold War when the USSR finally collapsed in 1991. It was a humiliating defeat for state-capitalist Russia. Russia lost not only most of what it had conquered in Eastern Europe after WW2 but even parts it had held before. On paper the USSR was a voluntary union of so-called ‘socialist republics’, one of which was Ukraine, an area that had been contested for centuries and which afterwards became an independent state.

The Western capitalist powers moved quickly to extend their sphere of influence and signed up as members of the NATO military alliance all the states that had formed part of the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe. They have long had their eyes on Ukraine, Europe’s second largest country after Russia.

A revived and more confident – and openly capitalist – Russia under Putin regards the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO as a threat to its vital interests. Already Russia has taken back Crimea and some Russian-speaking areas in eastern Ukraine. Now it has massed troops on Ukraine’s borders to back up its demand that Ukraine should not join NATO as this would bring US military influence and missiles up to its southern border.

It’s a conflict of interest between two openly capitalist powers. This time, ‘The West’ cannot use the pretext, to disguise its geopolitical aims, of it being an ideological struggle. It is a naked struggle between capitalist powers over spheres of influence. That the Cold War was a case of capitalism versus communism was a sham. And they knew it. When Mikoyan, a top member of the Russian ruling class, visited the USA in 1959 the then US Secretary of State, Dulles, sent a farewell message to him on behalf of President Eisenhower which began: ‘The President is aware that you operate under a system of State capitalism’ (Daily Telegraph, 21 January 1959).

Will it come to war? Probably not as, from a military point of view, Russia could easily overrun most of Ukraine. The Western powers will probably not insist on formally incorporating Ukraine into NATO. They will back down just as the USSR did in 1962 over the Cuban missile crisis, which is the nearest the world has come to a nuclear war. In fact, according to a headline in The Times (13 January), ‘Russia threatens US with a new Cuban missile crisis unless NATO stops eastern enlargement’. This will just be more sabre-rattling as the US could easily conquer Cuba and Venezuela.

So, it’s a stalemate, a balance of terror. This is why no state can refuse to arm itself with the most terrifying weapons it can afford. Under capitalism might is right and disarmament a pipe-dream.

The tensions over Ukraine remind us that the climate crisis is not the only threat to the world and its population. Nuclear war is too, and that threat needs to be removed as well. The only way to do this is to end capitalism and replace it with a frontierless, stateless world community based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. In short, world socialism.

Editorial: The Game of Hell. (1912)

Editorial from the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fall of the Caillaux Ministry through the disclosures of the Morocco scandal is but another lesson in the sordid nature of our masters’ diplomacy. Here in England the same rotten mess is being made, and even the “Daily News,” Liberal though it is, calls for the resignation of Sir Edward Grey. What childish innocence! Just as if one man, and not the whole Liberal party, is to blame. Just as if every Liberal Minister, from the days of Palmerston’s intrigues with Russia, has not been the same. From the Crimea War to Majuba Hill the same old game was played.

Behind it all lurk the figures of the financial kings of England (or of capitalism), the men who come to the rescue of Governments with their money bags, the men who supply the party funds. Mr. Rothschild loaned Gladstone’s Government, millions at 15 per cent. interest to finance the Suez Canal and other Egyptian ventures ; he thereupon was made Lord Rothschild and Gladstone made war upon a people “rightly struggling to be free,” because they didn’t pay the interest quickly enough.

Russia has been the scene of greater wholesale murder for the past century than perhaps any other European country. That does not prevent our Liberal Government from making secret alliances, and welcoming the bloody Czar of Russia. Now a so-called return Parliamentary visit is being made to Russia, but the swindle is already seen. For instead of a purely Parliamentary deputation, there are representatives of all the great financial interests likely to be concerned in the promoting and building of a trans-Persian railway. Behind all the treaties —"to promote better relations" — there is merely the profit grinding commercialism of the Liberal and Tory capitalist.

As we prophesied in our December issue, Persia is to be the ”happy hunting ground” of English and Russian capitalists, and every obstacle to its annexation is cast aside—hence Mr. Shuster's dismissal. The speedy influx of capital in search of plunder recalls the building of the Cape to Cairo Railway that followed the arrival of Rhodes and his fellow buccaneers in South Africa.

Ukraine: The Illusion of ‘Social Slogans’ (2014)

From the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Introduction

Ukraine is now in the throes of full-scale civil war.

On one side – the ‘Maidan’ movement, the new government it brought to power in Kiev, the European and American backers of that government and (behind the scenes) the Western-oriented business magnates or ‘oligarchs’.

On the other side – the resistance movement known as the ‘Anti-Maidan’, a collection of armed groups in the country’s eastern regions (which are also fighting one another), the Russian government with its secret services and the Russia-oriented oligarchs.

Both the Maidan and the Anti-Maidan are basically nationalist movements (Ukrainian nationalist in one case, Russian nationalist in the other). Both feed on ethnic hatred. Both are willing to massacre unarmed civilians identified with the other side. They fight for the interests of different sections of Ukraine’s capitalist class. They have nothing to offer working people except further suffering, bloodshed and privation, perhaps even famine.

Leftists in Ukraine and abroad look for redeeming features in these ‘grassroots’ movements, which they hope might overcome ethnic and regional divisions and merge into a single movement of popular protest against common ills. Some find grounds for hope in the Maidan, others in the Anti-Maidan, yet others in both.

There are indeed some themes common to both movements, such as outrage at pervasive corruption and hostility to oligarchs. But on the whole the negative aspects outweigh the positive ones, and there are no signs of this changing in the immediately foreseeable future.    

It is in this context that we present an article from the internet blog of a Ukrainian anarchist who criticizes the illusions of many leftists about the anti-Maidan. Although we do not agree completely with all his formulations, his general perspective is consistent with our own. 

Stefan

The Illusion of ‘Social Slogans’ – Alexander Volodarsky

Like religious believers who discern the face of Christ in a dog’s backside, a piece of pizza or a bloodstain on a wall, some leftists have discovered a ‘social agenda’ in the Anti-Maidan…

For a left-wing intellectual to believe in a new October Revolution, he has to be shown a Real Worker. The dirtier and the more stupid the better, because in his imagination a Real Worker is always dirty, smelly, covered in scabs, and of course stupid (an intelligent worker awakens an inferiority complex in the left-wing ‘intellectual’). In this respect the left-wing populist is no different from the social racist who stigmatizes the ‘common herd’. The philistines of left and right share the same prejudices…

So the dirtier, the more stupid and the more illiterate the ‘worker’ the more inclined is the left-wing intellectual to believe in his authenticity. But for some that is not enough – red flags are needed to dispel their doubts… It does not matter to them that throughout the world the red flag is used not only by progressive but also by reactionary organisations and sects. It does not matter to them that for many of those who love Soviet symbols those symbols represent a powerful state and empire – and no more. It does not matter to them that nostalgia for Soviet times is not a dream of stateless communism but myth-overlaid memories of familiar rituals, stable rations, shiny missiles and a ‘strong hand’.

But if even the red rags held aloft by the devotees of empire fail to convince the skeptic, then the next argument concerns Social Slogans. The stereotypical worker, covered in dirt, with a red rag and joyfully supporting ‘social slogans’ – there is a picture to gladden all but the hardest of left-wing hearts.

Let us consider what sort of slogans ring out at Anti-Maidan demonstrations. Ritual curses aimed at the oligarchs? Everyone curses the oligarchs – leftists curse them, rightists curse them, liberals and fascists curse them, their own venal journalists curse them. Finally, they curse one another. Hatred for ‘the oligarchs’ is a safe outlet for any social discontent. Does it pose a threat to the oligarchs? Not especially. Does it pose a threat to the capitalist system? No – in fact, it bolsters the system. It is a classical corporative, fascist technique – to divert the energy of an emerging workers’ movement away from criticism of capitalism as a system to criticism of individual ‘fat cats’. The result is either the replacement of one set of oligarchs by another or the strengthening of the state. Neither of these results brings the victory of the workers’ revolution any closer: capitalism as a system remains unchanged.

Let us pass on to the second empty demand – nationalisation. This too is a favorite for everyone from Trotskyists (what sort of Trotskyists would it be without fantasies of ‘nationalisation under workers’ control’?) to neo-Nazis (for whom it means something altogether different, something like Hitler’s ‘Aryanisation of the economy’). For many leftists ‘nationalisation’ is such a fetish that you only have to say the word and they lose all capacity for critical thinking. Is it really so hard to grasp that ‘nationalisation’ in a capitalist state that retains the system of wage labour will not improve the lives of working people but merely replace the individual capitalist by a collective capitalist consisting of state bureaucrats? But leftists continue to copy the recipes of ‘real socialism’ despite the fundamental changes that have occurred since then in both the economic and the political situation.

One of the victories of the Anti-Maidan movement in Kharkov, besides the beating up of defenseless people, is considered to be the inclusion in its programme of ‘prohibition of the exploitation of others’ labour’. That sounds very progressive. But a consistent interpretation of ‘prohibition of exploitation’ must mean ‘prohibition of wage labour’. Does the ‘Kharkov Republic’ intend to prohibit wage labour and transfer the means of production into the hands of the workers? There is no movement in this direction, even at the level of declarations. There are no strikes in the factories; there are no seizures of enterprises; the trade union cells are silent and new ones are not being formed. So by ‘prohibition of exploitation’ the people who signed off on this point meant not a revolutionary change in relations of production but the prohibition of forcing people to overwork or to work without pay and enforcement of the labour norms specified in various legal codes. Prohibition of exploitation is a beautiful soap bubble that has no real political content in the context of the Anti-Maidan movement. Now the Ukrainian Stalinists have something to show their Western colleagues when they next ask for money for their ‘revolution against the fascist junta’ [in Kiev] – a splendid sham achievement for sham revolutionaries.

There are three kinds of social demands: reformist, revolutionary and populist. Reformists try to change the system without encroaching on its foundations, by means of gradual transformations and compromises (among Ukrainian leftists this path was chosen by the Left Opposition). Revolutionary leftists see the solution to the problem in a basic change in the rules of play (in Ukraine only the anarchists consistently take this position).

As for populists, they do not propose solutions. Their goal is to appeal to potential voters with beautiful phrases. A populist can be inconsistent: it does not matter how often he contradicts himself, as in any case his programme is not meant to be implemented. He can therefore parasitise either on revolutionary or on reformist rhetoric. A classic case was the programme of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party. Leftists who are enthused with ‘the people’ and social slogans should recall this ‘socialist workers’’ party with its red flag, appeals to ‘the people’ and unique social agenda. My impression is that were this party to appear again today it would certainly obtain the ‘critical support’ of the ‘broad non-sectarian left’.

Source: http://shiitman.net/2014/04/14/illyuziya-sotsial-ny-h-lozungov/ (in Russian); original posted on April 14, translated by Stefan

Voice From The Back: Once as history, twice as farce (2015)

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The War in Ukraine (2014)

From the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second in our three-part series on wars currently going on due to capitalism

The Ukraine Defence Minister stated 'A great war has arrived at our doorstep, the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War Two' (Independent, 2 September). The war in Ukraine in 2014 rose out of the 'Euromaidan' protests in Kiev in November 2013 when Ukraine under pressure from Russia backed out of a trade deal: the Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. For the pro-European Ukrainians EU membership is seen as synonymous with democracy as opposed to membership of Russia's Customs Union: the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. The divisions in Ukraine are basically a conflict between two groups of the capitalist class over the choice of the external orientation of the country; toward Europe or toward Russia. As a carrot Russia promised Ukraine $15 billion in loans and 30 per cent discount on natural gas prices.

Ukraine is the 'bread basket of Europe' with its extensive fertile farmlands of rich black soil (chornozem black earth) and the vast fields of wheat, barley, rye, oats, sunflower, beets and other grain and oil crops. In 2011, it was the world's third-largest grain exporter, and according to a 2013 forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ukraine is poised to become the world’s second biggest grain exporter in the world, shipping over 30 million tonnes of grain out of the country last year. Ukraine also has a well-developed manufacturing sector, particularly in aerospace and industrial equipment, nuclear power generation and hydroelectric generation, an advanced rocket systems industry plus the old industries from the Soviet period of coal mining, steel, and metals. It also has its own proven, significant, but yet totally undeveloped shale gas reserves.

East or West?

For the Russian capitalist class Ukraine is the 'near abroad' and therefore within the sphere of influence of Russia. On 28 February Crimea (given to Ukraine in 1954) was occupied by Russia. Since the 1700s it has been the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet but since Ukrainian independence in 1991 the base in Crimea has been leased from Ukraine, and the leasing agreement was due to expire in 2017, and unlikely to be renewed. This would have meant Russia not having a warm water port giving access to the Mediterranean and via the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean. A great deal of Crimean real estate is Russian-owned, in late February Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development called on Russian capitalists to invest $5 billion in infrastructural projects in Crimea. Gazprom is interested in rich oil and gas deposits off the Crimean coast, as are such western companies as Exxon, Shell and ENI. In April Chevron signed a 50-year lease to develop Ukraine's shale gas reserves which probably stoked Russian fears about losing its influence in Ukraine and as a major gas market. International Business Times (8 November 2013) wrote that 'Chevron's agreement with Ukraine was supported by the US as part of its national security strategy to help reduce Russia's hold on Europe and Kiev.'

In April pro-Russian separatists in the Eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk declared themselves 'independent' of Kiev as the People's Republic of Donetsk. Russia in a throwback to Tsarist times refers to the disputed areas of south-eastern Ukraine as Novorossiya. In six months of fighting 3,000 people have been killed. This area includes the old heartland of Soviet industry with its concentration of coal and steel production; the Don coal basin known as the Donbass. Essentially Russia wants the Donbass as a 'protectorate' so that Ukraine can never join NATO or fully orient its foreign policy westward. The loss of the Donbass region which accounts for 16 per cent of GDP and 27 per cent of industrial production would be a disaster for Ukraine, whose economy will contract 7 per cent this year and may not expand at all in 2015 according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Russia Today 14 May). In August the war expanded when a new war front opened on the coast where pro-Russian separatists took Novoazovsk, a small town on the way to the strategic port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

The economic war between Russia and Ukraine meant that Russian loans were frozen in January, the price of gas to Ukraine was raised by 80 per cent in April, and Russia insisted that Ukraine pay a $2.7 billion gas debt or it would halt natural gas supplies. Also Ukraine had a foreign debt of $135 billion in 2012 with $13 billion due to be paid in 2014 mostly to European banks, and another $10 billion due in 2015. Standard & Poor cut Ukraine's credit rating describing it as 'a distressed civil society with weakened political institutions' (Bloomberg.com 28 January). In March the IMF authorised an $18 billion loan to Ukraine over two years, and the World Bank coughed up $3.5 billion, both designed to stop Ukraine defaulting on interest payments on its foreign debt. The hryvnia (Ukraine’s currency) has lost 35 per cent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of 2014.

Ukraine has not recovered economically from the world capitalist crisis of 2008-09 and further austerity is required, nay demanded by the IMF as a condition of its loans. The IMF want 'commitment from the country to undertake painful austerity measures, tough reforms and a near-certain recession as a result' (The Times, 25 February) while Reuters called it 'some harsh economic medicine' (5 March). This will mean cutting fuel subsidies, government spending, pensions, and wage freezes for workers. All this will lead to higher gas prices which are projected to rise by 50 per cent in 2014 and by 120 per cent at the end of four years, rising inflation, an increase in unemployment, and a decline in the standard of living for the Ukrainian working class.

The economic crisis hasn't affected the profits of Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine (assets of up to $28.4 billion), his company DTEK controls half of Ukraine's coal, steel, iron ore and thermoelectric industries, and is the largest employer in the Donbass. A Russian oligarch Abramov owns the mining company EVRAZ. The coal industry in Ukraine is affected by a crisis of over production which was identified in the trade magazine Coal Age in December 2013: 'A production surplus in 2013 has hurt the Ukrainian coal industry which needs to reduce the level of production, and in addition, has even decided to temporarily close about 17 percent of all mines in the country. Ukraine is the fourth largest coal producer in Europe after Russia, Germany and Poland. The Ukrainian coal industry is believed to have 4 per cent of world coal reserves, or 33.9 billion Mt of proven reserves. This is enough to maintain the level of coal mining for 2012 in the country for almost 400 years.'

As always in capitalist crises, the working class are made to pay for the failures of the capitalist system. Ukrainian miners in the Independent Trade Union of Miners at the EVRAZ-owned Krivyi Rih iron ore mine in the Kryvbas (iron ore basin) near Dnepropetrovsk in Eastern Ukraine are fighting to defend their interests as workers against attacks by the capitalist class who are seeking to make redundancies, and 30 to 50 per cent cut in their real wages. The miners oppose Ukrainian nationalism and Russian separatist ideology and concentrate on fighting against 'the never-ceasing encroachments of capital' (Marx Value, Price and Profit), but the miners have had to establish self-defence militias to defend themselves against intimidation, and attacks by lumpen elements called 'Tatushka' recruited by the Russian separatists. Essentially these are gangs of thugs organised by mine bosses to crush organised workers before the region can be absorbed into the petro-oligarchy and anarchic-capitalist state that is Russia.

Sanctions

Because of Russia's involvement in Ukraine, the western capitalist powers have imposed sanctions on Russia's capitalist economy with its large energy reserves (oil and natural gas represent 68 per cent of Russia's total exports). These commodities are under pressure as new and cheaper supplies come onto the market, and crude oil prices worldwide hit a nine month low in August. Russian capitalists targeted by western sanctions included the largest bank Sberbank, oil companies Rosneft and Transneft, and Gazprom. Their access to capital markets for any long-term funding was restricted, new exploration projects in Siberia and the Arctic were affected by barring foreign oil companies Exxon and Shell from providing any equipment, technology or assistance to deep-water, offshore, or shale projects with Gazprom Neft, LukOil, Surgutneftegas, and Rosneft. Russian gas is delivered to Europe by pipeline which probably explains why Gazprom's main business is reported not to be on the sanctions list.

Russia is the EU’s third-biggest trading partner with a cross-border trade of $460 billion, and the EU gets a third of its oil and gas from Russia with 40 per cent of that gas pumped across Ukraine. The dominant capitalist power in Europe, Germany, has an economy intertwined with Russian gas and oil exports worth more than $75 billion a year. Larry Elliott wrote that 'a key aim of Berlin's foreign policy for the past quarter of a century has been to re-integrate what used to be the Soviet Union and its satellites into the market economy. Expanding capitalism to the east was seen as both good for German business and for German security. Resistance from German industry makes it unlikely Merkel will agree immediately to Iran-style sanctions that would freeze Russia out of western markets' (Guardian 28 August). The objective of US and European capitalism is energy diversification which means to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas.

The US and EU capitalist blocs are using the military threat of a revived NATO against Russia as part of the western capitalist attempt at influencing the external orientation of Ukraine towards Europe. In September NATO announced the creation of a spearhead 4,000 strong 'rapid reaction' force, with a HQ in Poland and forward units in Poland, Romania and Estonia who have all indicated willingness to host the bases so that NATO would have a continuous presence in eastern Europe. Ukraine has decided to pursue membership of NATO, and clearly the western capitalist powers regard the Russian 'near abroad' as their own sphere of influence. The Lithuanian president said 'It is a fact that Russia is in a war state against Ukraine. That means it is in a state of war against a country which would like to be closely integrated with the EU. Practically Russia is in a state of war against Europe' (Financial Times, 31 August).

The war in Ukraine was no impediment to the NATO military exercise in Ukraine in September known as 'Rapid Trident' at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center at Yavoriv, 60 km from Lvov in Western Ukraine close to the Polish-Ukrainian border. 1,300 troops from fifteen countries including the US, Britain, Germany, Spain, Poland, Norway, and some former Warsaw Pact countries that are part of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme (non-NATO members such as Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics) took part.

Russia went to war with Georgia in August 2008 when Georgia sought to join NATO. Russia could not allow this and Russia halted NATO expansion into the Caucasus. A Ukraine integrated into the EU and NATO would encircle Russia, which was the same reason for war against Georgia in 2008. As always in capitalism the economic conflict over control of mineral resources and trade routes (such as pipelines) will be the cause of war.

Steve Clayton

(Next month: concluding article on the war in Gaza)