This article is well worth reading. The author makes the point that the rapid growth of a distinct Ukrainian identity and nationality was of great concern to Putin. Soon it would become, Putin’s feared, irreversible. And thus a formidable barrier to his vision of a greater Russia. This spike in the process of national renewal, independence, and consciousness is traceable to the Maiden revolution in 2014 – a revolution that had been and still is reduced by many on the left – and the communist movement in particular – to no more than a U.S. engineered and Nazi led coup d’etat and counterrevolution with no democratic dimensions.
If you read the statements of many of the communist parties (of which I was a member and leader for many years), they argue that Putin’s actions should be understood as defensive and reactive to NATO’s expansion rather than a reckless and empire aggrandizing gambit by Putin. In their analysis, the Ukrainian people – fighting, dying, fleeing – aren’t invisible, but they aren’t the primary in the narrative either.
Moreover, Ukraine’s fledgling democracy barely appears. Meanwhile, Lenin’s insistence on the right to national self determination – supposedly a core principal of the communist movement – receives no mention, except as an explanation legitimizing the formation of breakaway separatists republics in the Donbass region.
In this interpretation, responsibility for the conflict’s origins and consequences rests on the shoulders of Biden and NATO. Putin, in this telling, was pushed into a corner and had few options but to invade Ukraine. His hand, in effect, was forced. Never was any thought given to the possibility that NATO’s expansion as unwise and provocative as it was might serve as a cover for Putin’s own expansionist/empire building plans. Even Putin’s decision to place Russia’s nuclear forces on alert didn’t seem to stir much concern or reappraisal of his designs and motives.
When they finally opposed Putin’s aggression, and it was late, they, nevertheless, repeated his false political characterization of Ukraine and its government as nothing more than a cesspool of Nazis and fascists. To cap things off, the belligerent and chauvinist statement of the leader of the Russian Communist Party was met, from what I can see, with silence or tacit approval.
Not a good showing.
It’s farfetched to think, I suppose, but I wish Biden in his SOTU message had called out the coalition that elected him for its failure to deliver vocal and public support for the democratic and progressive elements of his political/legislative agenda – especially voting rights and Build Back Better. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Johnson were transformative presidents but only because they had a transformative movement supporting and nudging them and their agendas. Biden so far doesn’t and that explains a lot.
The challenge at this moment isn’t to uncover hypocrises – where you were when the U.S. invaded “fill in the country” – among people opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but rather to encourage and join them in struggle. It looks like the invasion is taking a deadlier and more dangerous turn, making worldwide opposition all the more important. More than a few on the left here – and the communist movement worldwide – are prisoners of old understandings, old logics, and old reflexive positions – and thus are on both sides of this bloody clash. But such a position is becoming more and more difficult to defend as Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine leaves in its wake more and more dislocation, destruction, and death.
I like this column by Rev. Jesse Jackson. My only quibble is that Putin saw the expansion of NATO eastward less as a danger and more as an opportunity to pursue his dream of reconstituting the Russian Empire of old. And the takeover – violent if necessary – of Ukraine was central to that vision. In his mind, Ukraine was never a sovereign state. It was always subservient and subordinate to Russia. It had no legitimate claim to independence, which explains Putin’s visceral hatred of Lenin. In his time, Lenin insisted on the right of oppressed nations of the Russian empire to independent statehood if they so chose. In ordering the invasion of Ukraine Putin, therefore, was only correcting historical wrongs, that is, restoring Russia to its former and rightful glory.
