By Christian Lourdin, Party of Communists USA.
In November 1943 the Red Army liberated Kiev, led by Nikolai Vatutin, a Soviet general who played a major role in the Stalingrad and Kursk victories. From there on, the Wehrmacht was in full retreat. That is when the 3rd Reich assigned a mission to Bandera’s troops organized in the UPA: stay behind and fight the Red Army!. The UPA scored its very first victory in February 1944 when it ambushed Vatutin and mortally wounded him.
In 1945, the 3rd Reich was finally buried in Berlin, but the “Stay behind” army of Bandera remained in Western Ukraine, thence the 4th Reich was born.
This wasn’t lost on U.S. intelligence who saw in Ukrainian Nationalism the ultimate tool in combating the USSR and rolling back socialism in Eastern Europe. From now on, Ukrainian Nationalism would only grow stronger with U.S. and NATO fingerprints all over it.
It must be noted that in March 1991 when a referendum took place in the Soviet Republics asking people if they wanted to maintain the USSR, Western Ukraine was about 80% opposed, while Eastern Ukraine was about 80% in favor. In 2004 during the so-called “Orange revolution” Ukrainian Nationalism emerged on the public scene for the first time, as Western Ukrainians were out in the streets in big numbers. The 2004 “color revolution” was bloodless, but it was a general rehearsal of things to come 10 years later. In 2014 the 4th Reich finally came to power in Kiev, covered in blood.
The color revolution was financed largely by the U.S., as Victoria Nuland special envoy of the Obama’s White House and main architect of the coup, would admit later on, when she declared the U.S. had spent $5B “to bring democracy to Ukraine”.
The new regime was a fascist one. Its first act was to burn alive 50 trade unionists in Odessa on May 2nd, 2014.
Then the same month, it launched a so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation” against the Donbass, who had erupted in an Anti-fascist uprising against the Kiev régime, under the slogan: “They are Bandera, we are Vatutin!”
Note that the Donbass uprising was sparked in the City of Donetsk, by the local communist party section who called on the people to come out in masse to protect Lenin’s statue standing on the main Square.
The régime installed by U.S. imperialism in 2014 is living fascism. It advocates Ukronazi historical figures such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych and glorifies them as Heroes of Ukraine. For 8 long years that régime carried on a genocidal war against the Donbass that killed over 14K people.
Ever since May 2014 Russian communists had demanded from Russia’s bourgeois government the recognition of the Donbass Republics and military support for their war of National Liberation.
Finally on February 21st 2022, Russian president Putin signed the proposition to recognize the two People’s Republics, Donetsk and Lugansk, introduced in the Duma by the KPRF. The Special Military Operation followed 3 days later. It had the support of all communists in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
It must be noted that on February 17th at the Munich Security Conference, president Zelensky publicly declared, with U.S. vice president K.Harris at his side, that he intended for Ukraine to re-acquire nuclear weapons. It clearly presented Russia with a threat to its National Security, no different than Finland’s artillery being within cannon fire range of Leningrad in November 1939. The Finnish government had flatly rejected Stalin’s reasonable security proposals to move back the frontier in exchange for twice the land further North, and war became inevitable.
Just the same, in December 2021 Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, presented to Anthony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State, a draft treaty to insure the security of Russia and NATO states.
The core of that draft treaty was the commitment to stop any further extension of NATO and to inscribe Ukraine’s neutrality. These proposals, that would have guaranteed peace, were rejected by Blinken. Just like in November 1939 with Finland, war with Ukraine became inevitable.
As all Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian communists do, the PCUSA holds the position that Russia and the Donbass Republics are conducting a just war, an anti-fascist war, a war of National Liberation.
U.S. neocons, including Lloyd Austin Secretary of Defense, and Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, have declared that one of the goals of NATO was to “decolonize” Russia and dismember it, such as they did in Yugoslavia in the 90’s.
As it has been known for a year now, the International Communist Movement has been divided in two camps.
The camp that supports Russia’s Military Operation and the camp that opposes it. PCUSA belongs to the first camp.
Let us see the arguments of the Communist parties who do not support Russia and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Basically they believe that the war in Ukraine is an imperialist war between 2 imperialist blocs and that under no circumstances should communists take sides between two imperialist robbers fighting each other for the bounty on the back of the working classes of each country.
These parties are copy-pasting the positions of revolutionary communists led by Lenin’s Bolsheviks at the start of WW1 in 1914.
Dialectics teach us that, just like in nature where you never swim twice in the same river, human societies are in constant motion. Objective conditions change with time and space, and communists must act accordingly. A slogan correct at one time and in one place may not be correct at another time and in another place. Communists must never fall for sloganeering.
In February 1918 Lenin faced opposition with the so called “left communists”. The occasion was the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany. Soviet Russia was presented with extremely harsh conditions such as the complete loss of Ukraine. “Left communists” advocated against the peace treaty and put forward the slogan of “revolutionary war” against German imperialism, taking the example of the 1792 revolutionary war of the French Revolution against allied feudal European states.
But Soviet Russia had no army yet to do the fighting, so the slogan of “revolutionary war” sounded good but was totally detached from reality, empty and an exercise in phrase mongering.
That is when Lenin published an article titled: “The Revolutionary Phrase”.
Here is an excerpt: “By revolutionary phrase making we mean the repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective circumstances at a given turn invents, in the given state of affairs obtaining at the time. The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase.”
So today, regarding the current Ukraine conflict, we are seeing a group of communist parties engaging in “revolutionary phrase making” when repeating the slogans of 1914.
2014 was not 1914. When the US-NATO-EU bloc put in place an openly fascist regime in Kiev and committed genocide against Donbass who rose up for a just war of National Liberation, how could any honest communist compare it with the imperialist war between the Entente and the Central Powers of 1914?
When after 8 long years of waiting, bourgeois Russia finally decided to agree with Russian Communists demands for the recognition of the People’s Republics and for military involvement on their side, how could any honest communist oppose it?
Is it because Russia is a bourgeois state?
From Marx-Engels to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung and many more, real communists have always known how to look at objective reality in a dialectical way, how to point at the main enemy, and how to act in the best interests of the working class.
In 1849, Engels stood shoulder to shoulder with German bourgeois on the barricades of the German Palatinate to fight feudalism.
When American Colonel Raymond Robins floated the idea to Lenin that the U.S. could provide weapons and food if Soviet Russia would keep fighting Germany, Lenin agreed, even though the proposal was shelved by the U.S. dept. of State who instead decided to send troops to Siberia a few months later.
Stalin attempted a treaty of mutual assistance with Anglo-French capitalists fort 6 and half years. When he realized they were pushing Hitler eastward, he didn’t hesitate to sign a non-aggression treaty with Germany and the USSR stayed out of the war for the time being, until a year and 10 months later, when the alliance with bourgeois states Stalin had been looking for, came to life on its own.
Mao fought a bloody war with the Chinese Nationalists of the Kuomintang from 1927 to 1937. When Japan invaded he had no problem to ally with Chinese bourgeoisie to fight the main enemy. Of course when Japan was defeated in 1945, Mao then turned his guns again on the U.S. backed KMT with the help of the USSR.
So in 2023, why should communists support Russia?
Because if Russia loses and NATO wins, it will be another historical defeat 32 years after the end of the USSR.
Fascism would reign supreme in Ukraine, Donbass would be wiped out.
Crimea would turn into NATO’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Black Sea, Russia’s only warm water access. Hero City Sebastopol would become a major U.S. Navy base. Russia would be dismembered.
Russian communists would be banned and persecuted. Tens of thousands Soviet and Red Army Heroes monuments would be smashed. All communist symbols would be made illegal as they already are in most NATO countries. History would be rewritten like it has been in Ukraine for the last 9 years. The sacrifices of 27M Soviet citizens would be in vain. Their honor and memory would be stepped on, insulted and shred to pieces. A return to socialism would be made impossible for many decades.
NATO would feel energized like never before. Even more than it did after 1991.
NATO would turn into a Mack truck going full speed with no brakes. NATO would act like the Master of the Universe. Next on the list would be China of course, as Taïwan is Chinese for Ukraine.
Would any of that be beneficial to the world’s working class?
Of course not! Any communist with a normally functioning brain would agree.
If Russia and the Donbass Republics win, it can only be positive for the working class. Ukraine will be delivered from fascism. The Ukrainian communist party, that was a powerful force before the Ukronazi regime, will once again operate freely. In Russia proper, the influence and popularity of the Communist parties will keep growing, as they have been the spearhead of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine from day 1. The prestige of the USSR, of its historical leaders will increase tremendously, as the Victory against the 4th Reich will be celebrated and viewed like a continuation of May 9th, 1945. With a Russian victory, a return to socialism will become a possibility.
China’s position will be reinforced immensely. The NATO-US-EU block, weakened by its defeat, won’t even think of turning Taïwan into another Ukraine. The peaceful reunification of the Chinese province of Taïwan with its Motherland will become very likely, with Taiwanese people possibly bringing to power a government friendly to China.
Real communists, the ones who don’t indulge in “revolutionary phrase making”, can only recognize how positive a Russian victory will be for the world working class.