Neither Washington nor Moscow

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Martin Crick considers how competing geopolitical interests turn to violent conflagration, and how socialists should respond. Published April 2022.

‘A war on western civilisation’, proclaimed one headline. Putin has crossed a red line, and must be resisted argued another. In more measured tones  Mark Rice-Oxley in the Guardian Weekly, suggested that ‘Nazis, genocide, NATO, history: Russia has no shortage of apparent justifications for its war in Ukraine’.  This is, of course, true. Memories of Hitler’s invasion remain embedded in the Russian psyche. Many Russians believe that their country was swindled at the 1990 Berlin summit, where the Soviet side thought they had a guarantee that NATO would not extend its borders, in return for a Soviet acceptance that a united Germany could join the pact. Mikhail Gorbachev dreamed of a common Europe where all countries were members of a single defence pact. 

Street art mounted on a damaged residential building in a town outside Kyiv, April 2023.

So how should we view this conflict? The left’s response to the Russian invasion has been far from coherent to say the least, ranging from wholehearted support for Zelensky and Ukraine, and de facto for NATO,  through to one of our members suggesting that ‘The Ukrainian bourgeoisie in cahoots with NATO  are largely responsible for the current situation.’ There has been much ‘what aboutery’ too. What about US imperialism? What about British imperialism? What about the Iraq war? What about Afghanistan? But two wrongs do not make a right…do they? 

Yes NATO has expanded into Eastern Europe since 1991, and given Russian experiences of invasion from the West their fears are understandable. As the Russian foreign minister put it in 1993 ‘NATO is a four-letter word!’.  We might criticise NATO for this expansion, and the USA in particular for its cheerleading of this expansion as ‘freedom on the march’,  but the fact is that these countries were eager to join, having good reasons to be afraid of Russia. Ukraine, however, is in many ways a unique case. It is the second largest country in Europe after Russia, heavily industrialised and also an important agricultural producer. Without its large population, industry and agriculture  both the Russian empire and the Soviet Union would have struggled to maintain their great power status. It is also strategically situated on the Black Sea, bordering many NATO countries as well as Russia. For the first twenty years after it achieved independence Russia kept a close eye on Ukraine but interfered in its affairs only minimally. The large Russian speaking population and the affinities between the two nations seemed to guarantee that the country would not stray too far from the Russian sphere of influence. 

Moreover, Ukraine has a strong nationalist movement with powerful historical memories of its independent place in Europe pre-Peter the Great. For Ukrainian nationalists the most significant event of the 20^th century was not the German invasion but the Holodomor, the ‘murder by hunger’ inflicted by Stalin in the 1930s.  Democracy is deeply rooted in Ukraine’s  political tradition, dating back to the radical democracy of the Cossack hetmanate of the 17^th century. Since the break up of the Soviet Union it has had frequent changes of government, reflecting genuine differences of opinion as to what direction Ukraine should take. But slowly, as more people have been born in Ukraine rather than in the Soviet Union, then more have come to see Kyiv as their capital rather than Moscow. They have noted the erosion of democracy in Russia by Putin, they have seen what the Russian puppets have done in Donetsk and Luhansk, and pro-Western sentiment has increased. 

Nonetheless support for NATO in Ukraine was far from overwhelming, many fearing, realistically, what the Russian response might be. But when  Russia massed its troops on the border, support then rose dramatically to some 60% of the population. Most people in Ukraine speak both Russian and Ukrainian; there are strong ties and affinities between the two peoples, but outside the Donbas region there are very few voices supportive of this invasion and many now vehemently anti-Russian. Yes there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, as there are in many countries, but the far right occupies fewer than  1% of the seats in parliament. Certainly the Azov Battalion being integrated into the National Guard is not something we would support, but Putin’s wild claims of fascists running the government are surely a ploy to conjure up images of the ‘great patriotic war.’ 

Perhaps the time for theorising and analysis should come after the conflict has ended? The simple fact is that a democratically elected government, whatever our views on the regime, is under attack by another country led by an autocratic ruler who allows no dissent at home, an embittered ex-KGB agent who believes that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest catastrophe of the 20^th century, who denies Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state.  Moreover he has form…Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, the capture of the DPR and the LPR. Having failed in his aim of a swift victory and regime change he now resorts to the tactics perfected in Aleppo, targeting civilians and destroying cities  in order to bring Ukraine to its knees. 

It is perfectly possible to be pro-Ukraine in this conflict without cheerleading for NATO, it has a right to defend itself. Our sympathies must lie with the millions of displaced people, the thousands of dead civilians, the sheer scale of the task of rebuilding the country which lies ahead. If we are to sloganize then I remind comrades of the old IS slogan, ’Neither Washington nor Moscow!’, although perhaps that should now be extended to ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow nor Beijing’. The task of socialists is to argue for a new world order, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a society based on Marx’s maxim, ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their needs’.