I’m not sure how to write this without it sounding like ragebait or a fed post.

But why do most fellow Marxists critically support Russia today?

I can understand having seen Russia as a potential temporary ally or a necessary power that can stand against US / NATO hegemony over the globe. In short I can understand it from a strategic standpoint.

But what about morals of this?

To explain I’ve seen seen Russia as a necessary potential ally in the past too. But that has changed with the Ukraine war and concurrent events in Russia.

The way I see it, even with a CIA coup, a full scale invasion of a country still isn’t justified. It’s bordering on insanity in my mind to start such a war. The way the war and conscription is handled in Russia is also highly critiquable. The way people who fall from grace, also “fall out of windows” too.

The other major event that made me doubt Putin more was part of the leaks that happened with Navalny’s death. Specifically the revelation of how Putin spend hundreds of millions not just on a palace like so many corrupt leaders and dictators do, but essentially what amounts to an own private town.

This is what lead me to believe that Putin devolved into insanity and paranoia from what he used to be, a calculated sensible dictator.

With all this in mind, why should we offer critical support to Russia instead of Ukraine?

Yes you can argue that Ukraine has been taken over via a pro-western coup regime, but they’re still not the aggressors in the war.

I find it morally questionable to support an aggressor in such a clear scenario. And purely strategically speaking with how Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, I find their military capabilities not great either for any conflict with NATO.

Do any of you have any moral reasoning to critically support Russia? Or do you support it out of strategic reasons despite moral objections?

    • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      29·
      3 days ago

      Getting a lot of mileage out of copying this around.

      я не из калининграда@lemmy.ml (not a native english speaker, I believe)

      i do not support the current administrations internal actions, as capitalism has brought nothing but injustice, suffering, poverty, crime and corruption. but i absolutely do support its foreign policy, especially regarding the ukrainian question. the putin government has evolved to become one of the most effective anti-imperialist forces on the planet and even if you ignore the terrible nature of the terrorist zelensky-regime one has to be grateful to our military for fighting the biggest enemy of mankind, america.

      so lets detail the happenings that led to the current situation:

      (it may be important to note that the current russian administration pushes a slightly different narrative due to sadly being a right wing state)

      banderite collaborators parading in front of nazi officers the banderites (see picture), members of the fascist “organization of ukrainian nationalists” led by stepan andreyevich bandera were a gang of rapists and murderers who collaborated with the invading german hordes and assisted them by conducting acts of terror against civilians. It is important to note that popular support for them was close to zero. after the victory of the heroic red army, the majority of those parasites fled to the west, predominantly to canada. they received funding from american and british intelligence agencies, which were more than happy to welcome “former” nazis into their own anti-communist ranks. another subset of the banderites remained in the ukrainian ssr and conducted a campaign of terror and sabotage against the civilian population. their bloody deeds were supported by the cia and its european puppet agencies through the so called “operation aerodynamic”.

      spoiler

      referendum on the preservation of the ussr. its results were ignored by the anti-communists

      After the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr, the leaders of those fascist gangs were glorified by the ukrainian far-right, with support from the cia. efforts to further their “rehabilitation” were primarily directed by nazi expatriates in canada. outlets such as voice of america portrayed them as “heroes”. (aerodynamic, some of these were manufactured in the U.S under Operation Mockingbird like a lot of U.S state dept. bullshit)

      election before cia intervention. this division between neonazi northwest and pro-russian southeast is visible to this day

      in 2004, the west sabotaged the ukrainian presidential elections and installed their puppet, viktor andreyevich yushchenko, through a color revolution. he was a terrible leader, not only dismantling the remaining aspects of the ukrainian economy and managing to make life even more miserable than it already was, but also granting “hero of ukraine” status to banderite leaders and holocaust perpetrators stepan bandera and roman iosifovich shukhevich.

      (not adding picture of 2014 ukrainian nazis since you have already said you believe in that)

      in 2014, america and the west orchestrated another coup, this time not even bothering to hide the involvement of neo-nazis. the new regime perpetrated unspeakable atrocities against the russian population, whom it consideres “subhuman,” as well as against ukrainian anti-fascists. in odessa alone, 39 people were burned alive in the local trade union building.

      those developments led to the revolution in the predominantly russian populated donbass-area and the creation off the donetsk and lugansk peoples republics, as well as the referendum in crimea that led to the peninsula finally rejoining russia. from 2014 till 2022 the majority of humanitarian aid to the donbass republics came from the cprf.

      the reason for the smo is the ukrainian western-aligned nazi regime violating the minsk accords by refusing to demilitarize, trying to join the fascist nato-block and murdering russian civilians for years on end. the russian government showed itself extremely lenient, to lenient even, as any sensible politician would have staged a military intervention much earlier. if you need further proof for the tyrannical nature of the kievan regime just look at the fact that zelenskiy has banned all opposition parties in his country, refuses to hold elections and effectively rules as a military dictator. furthermore he has outlawed the russian language, made any negotiation with the russian state illegal and is currently selling whatever is left of his country to the highest bidder. combine all this with the fact that the west and its puppets need to always be opposed due to them being a cancer of humanity and you’ll get a pretty good picture of why to support the russian military.

      [Query: Do communists have to support Russia?]

      from @[email protected]

      In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

      Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

      Also, Ukraine really does have a fascism problem and has for a long time, and the coup government has materially supported it.

      next source is from @[email protected] below -

      https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
      14·
      3 days ago

      Russia is not imperialist: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Russian_"imperialism"

      Having some global influence and a capitalist model does not automatically mean you fit the definition of imperialism. You could try to argue current Russia might have the potential to become imperialist given the right circumstances, but short of them losing their sovereignty to the western empire and becoming a puppet state (and therefore only imperialist in the sense that they are part of the west’s empire), that seems like a snowball’s chance in hell. Russia is currently an important actor in a newly forming multipolar world, which is in direct contradiction to having monopolistic capitalist power. And it is “socialism with Chinese characteristics” China, with its fast-moving advances, increasing mutually-beneficial ties with other countries, and powerful forces of production and supply chains that is the dominant force in that multipolar push for sovereignty and self-determination, not Russia. So even if Russia were trying to do some kind of 5d chess maneuver to become a global imperialist power, they would have to go through China to do it, which is where some of their most significant support comes from.

      There just simply aren’t the conditions there, as far as I can tell, for Russia to independently develop into the kind of domineering power that the west has had, part of which was built on the tendrils of colonialism created over hundreds of years and then further developed on the advantageous technological and productive position that the US was in, in post WWII; and those US conditions were owed in part to it suffering so little damage to its own country while other places, like the USSR, suffered incredible losses. Russia is again suffering losses for fighting against the puppet/proxy state Ukraine and its neo-nazi and NATO-backed fascist elements, so that they don’t get NATO knocking at their door, coming for them next. This is not some easy war that simply wins them territory and resources, and loses them little. You don’t have to like Russia’s leadership at all to recognize that this is a part of the ongoing existential fight for sovereignty against a brutally expansionist western empire. It was the west that invaded the USSR in its beginnings, it was the west that sought to destroy the USSR and successfully did so. It was the west that couped Ukraine. It was the west that sabotaged peace deals between Ukraine and Russia. The same west that has been doing constant wars, coups, economic sanctions, and other forms of waging war against the entire world for decades, killing millions, just in post-WWII. Not even counting the damage done via colonialism if you go back further. Any attempt to make equivalent Russia and the western empire is nothing short of the most high grade, top of the line BS, and most likely comes from western imperial sources who are trying to flip the script.

      Critical support means what it sounds like. It means you support but with caveats, not that you give unthinking support. It means you recognize that the world is not a Marvel movie, but instead has complex contradictions and factional crossovers. That it is not made up of perfect victims and cartoon villains, but of varied peoples and cultures who don’t all have the same interests, and you have to engage with and navigate that in order to develop toward global communism and a world free of imperialism. You can despise it all you want, but you still have to engage with the realities of it in all its messiness.