I was arguing with someone in the V**shite subreddit because I’m a masochist. That was the first time I’d ever heard the term “little green men.” Apparently, not knowing who these guys are disqualifies me from having an opinion on Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, so I’m trying to learn. Who are these people? Did they do something awful and genocidal that I’m not aware of? Or is this person just talking out of their ass?
In my research, I encountered more of Stalin’s infamous deportations, namely that of the Crimean Tartars to the Central Asian SSRs. It seems downright ghoulish to me that he would do that, especially given the death and suffering it caused. Is anyone familiar with the rationale behind these deportations? Is it not as bad as it seems, or is this a black mark on his record? If it’s a black mark, how do we make sense of that while still upholding Stalin’s legacy?
And of course, whenever Russia comes up, the radlibs and the anarchists all flock together to insist that Russia is a colonizing, imperialist power. I’m aware that imperialism is something pretty specific, and not something that Russia can be rightfully accused of. Even so, I have to admit that I’m not fresh on what DOES count as imperialism. Will someone elucidate this for me?
Thanks in advance.
Alright…since others have addressed the topics of the Tartars and little green men, I’ll speak on imperialism.
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage, Lenin explains imperialism is a natural result of capitalism outgrowing it’s national border. Capitalism evolves by the process of owners of businesses extracting surplus labor value from workers (stealing wages) in order to expand their businesses and capture more markets and thus more value. When a business does this and expands into another nation(s) to control it’s resources to satisfy it’s business’ interests, that is imperialism. Invading another nation militarily in not by definition imperialism. It can be done for imperialist causes, or it can be done to secure the sovereignty and/or existence of a state (of a competing bourgeois’ interests) as is the case with Russia and Ukraine, among other reasons as well.
Ukraine’s government is a puppet government, a vassal state of the US bourgeoisie (who are the big bourgeoisie for those who have read Stalin). The US has expanded into Ukraine with the intention to capture markets in Russia due to their economic interests (they have expanded to such an extent they require capturing all of Russia to maintain itself…that is how parasitic the US economy is)
As well, he differentiates capitalism as viewed as occurring in a vacuum within each respective country, and capitalism occurring as it does - within the global economy as 1 interconnected system. As such, if 1 nation goes to expand and doing so results in being eaten by competing capitalist powers, the expansion is not successful. In another hypothetical scenario, regional alliances between imperial powers who are able to project their power but whose interests do not contradict (those who are physically able to work together without resulting in a conflict over mutually necessary resources) can occur. As well, alliances can break apart when this scenario changes from one of harmony to one of conflict. The latter is what happened to the Russian bourgeoisie when they worked together with the NED and CIA to counterrevolt the Soviet Union, and then the latter stabbed the former in the back and expanded into Russian territory. Really though, if the Russian bourgeois had read works and applied the learning, they would have understood this was going to happen and a partnership could never occur as a power vacuum left by the absence of a superpower (and thus a massive resurgence of previously unavailable resources becoming available) necessitated western expansion.
These are 2 of many many aspects he explains far better than I could. I highly recommend reading comrade Lenin’s works Imperialism, the Highest Stage. I can’t count how many times I reference this works in my day to day. It is considered by most to be an essential read for Marxists.
Link here