I have been challenged in my critical support of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by Lenin who during the First World War said it was foolish to support Germany against Russia or vice versa, and that the people should seek revolution regardless.
This is written in The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War
The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany.
In all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth
I think the conclusion here hinges entirely on the question, “Is Russia imperialist?” The answer itself, in my opinion, is not so obvious. I see a lot more people drawing a conclusion one way or the other than I do analyzing the economic and material circumstances which form the basis of their conclusion. This is forgivable. The economic situation is complex to begin with, many of the primary sources are gated behind a language barrier. To give the situation a proper analytical treatment, we need various specialists to converge and sort through the details (which is not the most reassuring thing to tell people at the peak of a crisis).
When Russia is held up against the United States, the conclusion that “these are the same thing” is laughable. If we want to determine whether or not Russia is imperialist strictly based on capital exports or the extraction of super-profits, I don’t think it is quite there yet. On the other hand, we can see the manifestation of several prerequisite trends, including the development of industrial monopolies and the concentration and increasing dominance of finance capital.
I find the question hard to answer because contemporary Russia truly finds itself in this sort of “in-between” phase in the development of imperialism, and this conflict has highlighted a few of the traps which can result from treating imperialism as a binary “yes or no” condition and basing all further analysis on that conclusion.
“No war but class war” and working towards the defeat of our local bourgeoisie is solid ground to begin from, but to understand this crisis better and anticipate where it is heading, we need a much deeper analysis than “Russia isn’t imperialist” vs. “but they’re acting imperialistly.”
Is it really that important to know whether or not Russia is imperialist right now to analyze the nature of this conflict? Russia is a capitalist bourgeois state and given the right conditions and opportunity it will become imperialist since imperialism is just the eventual higher form of capitalism. Additionally I do think that this current conflict is very much imperialist in nature. The very reason for this war is to secure the Russian territory from encroachment of western influence and militarization, i.e. the territorial division and redistribution of the world among the big capitalist powers. In the case of Ukraine this redistribution has been going on since 1991 and it’s only now escalating because Russia has become increasingly powerful and is in a position to fight back.
