Considerations on Russia, Ukraine and Certain Left-Wing Thinking

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a watershed moment in European history. It is a clear attempt to rebuild walls and iron curtains across Europe, reversing the momentous changes that took place in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. That was an epoch-changing event, which ended a 40-year long Cold War between a democratic and capitalist West (Western Europe plus the USA, Canada and Japan) and a Communist world which included dozens of countries on several continents, under the ideological and military leadership of the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, communist parties all over the world were left in a state of crisis. Communist regimes collapsed, and in democratic countries, Communist parties had to adapt to the new reality, most of the time disbanding, joining other political movements, or mutating into broader-based progressive political formations. The few that survived have mostly stayed as small, marginal movements largely isolated from the mainstream left.

More broadly, still today, 30 years later, the story of the demise of the Communist bloc is a major stumbling block for people who refuse to see capitalism and liberal democracy as the ultimate and unavoidable political/economic formula. NATO is seen as the symbol of this western dominance, and Putin is seen by some on the left as a rare example of resistance to this dominance of the Western model.

I believe this is why I frequently meet left-leaning people who justify Russia’s policies - usually presenting them as a response to supposedly aggressive actions by the capitalist West. Russia has become worth defending because it is resisting many of the Western ways. And to build a defence of Russia, they have constructed a castle of arguments. The arguments I hear from them include the following:

1. In the 1990s and 2000s, several western NGOs opened chapters in Russia to help “teach democracy” to the Russians, protect the environment, and promote minority rights, but in reality these groups worked to undermine the Russian government. Putin had good reason to expel such groups.
2. At the same time, NATO countries acted aggressively, expanding NATO membership up to Russia’s doorstep, and denying Russia of any platform where to dialogue with the West.
3. NATO not only expanded eastwards, but in 2008 actually promised membership status to both Ukraine and Georgia, despite Russian objections.
4. In 2004 an “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine overturned the results of the presidential election and ended up with the appointment of a pro-western president. More or less the same happened again in 2014, where a mob of neo-nazis and criminals helped depose the government of Viktor Yanukovych and put in place pro-western corrupt politicians. This was a true coup d’etat.
5. Putin is a rational calculator, who studies his moves well and is not prone to irrational actions. If he is acting the way he is, there is surely a good reason.
6. Putin has a point when he says that Ukraine has deep ties with Russia, to the point that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are actually one single nation.
7. Putin’s demands are reasonable - he just wants to protect Russia against NATO’s aggressive expansionism, and therefore is justified in demanding that Ukraine be declared a neutral zone, never to join NATO and never to have an army of its own.
8. The US has all too often resorted to unilateral actions on the world stage, with no consultation of other major powers. It is thus hypocritical for the USA to criticise Russia for taking its own, much more limited, unilateral actions to defend Russians who are under threat in other countries.

In this vision, Russia has replaced the Soviet Union as the sole remaining power that can resist NATO expansion - seen as the military bulwark of the Western model. This image of Russia is clearly distorted, since that country has itself embraced capitalism, often taking it to extreme forms of exploitation and corruption. It is time to confront these misconceptions:

• In 2004, the Orange Revolution was a Ukrainian protest against corruption in government and perceived irregularities in the presidential election. It resulted in the Constitutional Court ruling to hold a new election, which pro-western opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko narrowly won. This should have been an internal affair of Ukraine. While the different political factions were taking sides with foreign powers, it is safe to assume that their main focus was on what they considered to be best for their country. Unfortunately, both Russia and many in the West saw this as a confrontation between geopolitical blocs.
• The 2014 Euromaidan uprising was a turning point in Ukraine’s recent history, but the events of those weeks remain in many ways controversial. It could be argued that Euromaidan did in fact display characteristics not entirely dissimilar from the US Capitol Hill riot of January 2021. In both cases, an unruly mob attacked government buildings, with the intent of stopping the normal operation of government. In both cases, such actions interrupted a democratic process. However, in history context is important. After the 2014 riot, the country held new elections, which featured members of the traditional political families, supported by the traditional network of oligarchs who had been running the country since its independence in 1991. History was made in 2019, when a new round of elections brought an outsider to the presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky, the best evidence that Ukraine is a vibrant democracy, where voters can actually change the course of their country’s history. That election of Mr. Zelensky is the strongest possible rebuttal to any accusation that the Euromaidan was an antidemocratic plot to subvert the will of the Ukrainian people.
• [edit 13 March, 2022: several accounts have been given of the events in Maidan square and subsequent developments. For instance, the "official" Euromaidan version here, and an anarchist point of view here.]
• There is no evidence that neo-nazis played a significant role in any of these events. Neo-nazi parties do not play any role in Ukrainian politics. Ukraine’s president is Jewish.
• A more balanced account of Ukraine’s recent history is as follows: since Ukraine’s breakaway from the Soviet Union in 1990, the country fell under the control of a restricted group of oligarchs and powerful people. Although the country had a democratic system with regular elections, the system was generally mired in corruption and all political parties irrespective of ideological orientation participated in the system of bribes in exchange for political favours. Zelensky’s election has put an end to this system, at least as long as he is allowed to govern.
• Claims of a deep historical connection if not unity between Ukraine and Russia rely on the fallacy that historical claims should determine current events. If that were the case, I as an Italian, descendent from an ancient Roman family, demand that the subjects of the UK, France, Spain, western German states, Belgium, Netherlands, and all other states bordering the mediterranean sea respect and honour me as their lord by the right given to me under the laws of the Roman Empire. Even if it were true that Ukrainians and Russians belong to the same people, it should be up to the Ukrainian people to decide whether to join Russia or not.
• Putin has never displayed sophisticated intellectual abilities. His past career as secret services officer never demanded an intellectual background, but rather an ability to carry out orders even in hostile circumstances, probably with little regard to form or propriety.
• Putin often quotes the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini who was convinced Russians were a unique ethnicity with the right to have its own space in the world. Ilyin was particularly concerned that Ukraine should remain part of the Russian heartland. General information on Ilyin can be found on Wikipedia, and reviews of one of his most famous books can be found here. An article on Putin’s connection with Ilyin can be found here.
• Putin’s belief that he has a duty to protect Russian speakers in other countries is extremely dangerous and has far reaching security implications not only for all territories where ethnic Russians live, but for the whole of Eastern Europe.
• All arguments based on the notion that Russia is somehow legitimised in demanding that the West agree to make Ukraine a sort of buffer state ignore the key principle of self-determination, whereby each nation should be free to decide its own government, its own international position and its own destiny. To actually expect any country to decide the fate of Ukraine without consulting the Ukrainians is quite simply outrageous.

NATO - defender or aggressor?

When the Soviet Union lost the cold war, America and Europe won the spoils of the conflict. The Soviet Union dissolved, and in the years that immediately ensued, Russia was plunged into a period of internal chaos, economic devastation and social unrest. Criminality was taking over.

At the same time, NATO expanded eastwards, to the point that the organisation now borders Russia in some places. To critics, this expansion appeared to be an aggressive statement which has defied and possibly humiliated Russia. But to the countries that joined NATO in those years, membership was considered crucial for their protection against a risk of Russian resurgence. I remember clearly the days when leaders of countries from Lithuania to Poland and Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic and Slovakia) argued that given historical precedent, Russia could never be fully trusted and therefore NATO protection was necessary for them. For NATO to deny them membership would have sounded like NATO siding with the Russians and abandoning them to their destiny.

NATO was designed from the inception as a mutual defence organisation. The US wanted to organise a bulwark against possible expansionist moves by the Soviet Union. The Soviet camp responded with its own defence organisation, the Warsaw Pact.

NATO still claims to be a purely defensive organisation. Unfortunately, history does not support this claim:

1. In the 1980s, US president Ronald Reagan launched ambitious plans for deploying nuclear missiles in Europe, directly aimed at Soviet territory. These were portrayed as having the aim of bringing the Soviet Union to the negotiating table. Although NATO itself was not party to this American initiative, the perception worldwide was of an aggressive NATO threatening the Soviet Union.
2. The most serious act of NATO aggression came in 1999, when Alliance planes attacked an independent country, Serbia, bombing its infrastructure and imposing a no-fly zone over its territory. This was the only time when NATO clearly violated its own operating principles, as well as international law. NATO countries say the attack was motivated by the desire to protect people in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Milosevich regime. Despite such justifications, the fact remains that NATO did arguably breach many principles of international law with that act.

It should be pointed out that NATO came about in the late 1940s, after the division of Europe into a democratic-capitalist bloc and a Communist one. This objectionable division was willed by Joseph Stalin, and accepted for the West by none other than Winston Churchill.

A more enlightened vision of international relations would be one that upholds the self-determination principle. Recent history shows that NATO has managed to evolve from the old cold-war vision of opposing blocs towards embracing this more enlightened view, while Putin is clearly still entrenched in cold-war thinking.

Given the above considerations and the tragedy of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is now important that all those who oppose violence and dictatorship rally together to stop Putin’s dangerous plans of Russian expansionism. Putin is to all effects a fascist dictator, and a threat to the Russian people as well as of countries and territories which he considers to be part of his “Russian Homeland”.

Would things have happened differently without NATO around?  

There is a thesis whereby NATO expansion in the 1990s and early 2000 is at the origin of the current crisis. I think that argument is deeply flawed.

In 1991, the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. As a result, the country disintegrated, and 15 republics took over its former territory. In addition, as a result of that defeat, all the "satellite countries" previously controlled by the Soviet Union were free to seek different alliances, and those that could, joined NATO. This was a legitimate development that arose from the Soviet defeat. Losing a war generally results in the defeated side having to suffer such losses.

Another 20th century European example is when Germany lost two world wars. As a result of those defeats, the country lost territory to the east (ceded to Poland) and west (giving up any remaining claims on Alsace). This was an accepted settlement. Germany's current boundaries are internationally recognised and fully accepted by the German government, and there is no realistic future scenario where such boundaries will change.

Going back to the present, to claim that NATO should not have accepted membership of former Warsaw pact countries  is disingenuous, and completely ignores the European point of view. Political and economic integration of all European countries was and still is the leading EU doctrine, one that has arguably a natural corollary in the military sphere. 

It is a fact that Europe has so far not extended to the military sphere the sort of integration and mutual cooperation it has pursued in the spheres of trade, finance and policy making. A European common defense organisation would be appropriate and desirable. It is possible that if in the wake of the Soviet demise an EU military alliance had replaced NATO as the dominant security structure for Europe, Russia might have felt less threatened because US troops would conceivably no longer be a necessary presence on the European continent. 

On the other hand, today's invasion of Ukraine appears to stem from the folly of a single man, Vladimir Putin, with the sole goal of pursuing the reconstruction of a mythical "mother Russia" possibly surrounded by neutered "cushion states". If that is the case, then NATO's existence plays a peripheral role in sparking this crisis, and its presence is a blessing for Europe, as the only realistic deterrent for even bolder attempts by Putin to achieve his delirious dreams.

A message to Putin supporters

Putin supporters or justifiers in the West come in two flavours. On the one hand are the people I am addressing with this article - left wingers who might be nostalgic for the old days of the Cold War - Soviet Union vs. USA. They see Russia as another victim of US aggression. But there is a more sinister cohort of people who support Russia’s current political leadership. These are extreme right wing supporters who like Putin’s approach to issues such as ethnic purity, treatment of unwelcome minorities (from LGBTQs to Muslims), and general handling of dissenting voices. [edit 13 March, 2022: an interesting point of view "from the left" can be found in this interview with journalist and activist Lia Tarachansky 

It is high time for all people on the left to part ways from such unwelcome fellow travellers, and face once and for all the truth that today Putin is in fact a dangerous enemy of freedom, minority rights, racial equality, and peace between nations.

Giacomo Valentini
Santa Monica, 6 March 2022 [updated on 13-14 March ]