There is widespread support for Kosovar "self-determination" among groups
in the broadly defined Trotskyist tradition. In general, these groups view
Milosevic and the Serbs as the latest incarnation of Stalin's Greater
Russian domination over lesser nationalities. In this schema, what is
required is a fight to the death against national chauvinism such as the
kind Lenin began to mount against Stalin in the twilight of his life. Lenin
saw Stalin's treatment of the Georgian nationality as a violation of the
Bolshevism and a retreat into Czarist backwardness. He sought Trotsky's
assistance in the fight, which is the subject of Moshe Lewin's "Lenin's
Final Struggle." The Trotskyists see their fight against the Yugoslav
"Stalinists," especially Milosevic, as squarely in this tradition. This
fight is so crucial that it does not even seem to matter to some
Trotskyists that their demands to "Arm the KLA" agree with those of the
more bellicose members of the NATO coalition.
Although I am no longer a Trotskyist, I suggest that a deeper analysis of
Trotsky's writings on these sorts of questions will reveal a more
dialectically nuanced understanding of the interrelationship between the
self-defense needs of a socialist state and those of lesser nationalities.
A review of Trotsky's treatment of "the Ukraine question", which has been
taken by many Trotskyists as ideological justification for their defense of
Kosovar nationalism, might suggest a completely different political
imperative. The real question is whether Trotsky's call for an "Independent
Soviet Ukraine" has that much in common with blanket support for Kosovar
self-determination.
This was not Trotsky's final word on the subject of the rights of lesser
nationalities. During the Hitler-Stalin pact, territory in Eastern Europe
was divided up between the two powers. This had a disorienting effect on
the liberal and social democratic left, which was reflected in the
positions of the Shachtman-Burnham faction in the SWP. They regarded
violation of Finland's sovereignty by both Hitler and Stalin as proof that
the two regimes were equally reactionary and villainous. Trotsky argued
that the right to national sovereignty in such cases had to be weighed
against the broader needs of socialist revolution. Self-determination in
this light might be revealed not as an end in itself, but as a tactic used
to advance the class-struggle under given objective conditions. I will
argue that this elementary truth has been forgotten by the Trotskyist
movement, which has elevated "self-determination" into a kind of universal
principle, like free elections or the right to organize trade unions. For
Marxists, however, there is no universal principle except the need for
communism.
Before examining Trotsky's writings on Ukrainian nationalism, it would be
useful to review the problems of this 50 million strong nationality in the
Soviet Union. Since the Ukraine was the "breadbasket" of the USSR, Stalin's
war against the peasantry was felt most grievously in this republic. During
the NEP, Stalin and Bukharin backed peasant capitalism while Trotsky urged
rapid industrialization based on steep taxation of the wealthier peasant.
>From the very beginning, the so-called "scissors" phenomenon characterized
the NEP. Trotsky first drew attention to this phenomenon of rising
industrial prices and declining agricultural prices, which appeared
graphically as an opened scissors, in the first few years of the NEP. It
was attributable to the discrepancy between a shattered state-owned
industrial infrastructure and a relatively thriving capitalist agricultural
economy. The effect of the "scissors" was to cause the kulak to hoard farm
products in an attempt to blackmail the state into cutting the prices of
consumer goods. When the kulak hoarded crops, the workers went hungry and
misery increased in the towns. This, in brief, was the pattern that would
repeat itself until Stalin declared war on the kulaks.
The peasants had discovered that holding grain was more prudent than
holding money. The state authorities could not make the peasants budge. At
Rostov in the Ukraine the authorities issued an order to have the peasants
deliver 25% of all flour delivered to state mills at a fixed price in 1924.
The state was able to collect only 1/3 of the grain. The peasants withheld
the rest.
Finally, Stalin took action against the peasants and sent armed detachments
of Communists into the countryside to break their power. In retaliation,
the peasants destroyed their livestock and grain rather than surrender them
to the hated Red dictatorship. In the Ukraine such actions precipitated a
terrible famine in the years 1931-32. Although the Soviet state had
converted most of the large Ukrainian peasant holdings into collective
farms, the peasants turned these nominally "socialist" institutions against
the demands of the state. Peasants banded together to withhold produce from
the state. As their resistance mounted, so did state repression. Moshe
Lewin writes:
"Spurred by a flood of orders and pressures, the local agencies now sharply
from their alleged 'rotten liberalism' into another batch of 'sharp
measures of repression,' as our source put it. Although the limits of an
exhausted countryside and poor crops forced the government to lower its
demands in many regions (the Ukraine and the Caucasus had their quotas
lowered consecutively four times), it still needed a big battle to take the
rest. The Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the two Volga regions, and other
grain-producing areas, according to archives quoted by a modem author,
'dropped out of the organized influence of the Party and government,' and
the government responded by transforming these areas into a vast arena of
an unprecedented repressive operation. Stalin, who took over personal
command and shaped these policies, called for 'a smashing blow' to be dealt
to kolkhozniki, because 'whole squads of them,' as he saw it, 'turned
against the Soviet state.' A special Central Committee meeting was held 11
January 1933 to endorse some of the old and to adopt new, measures to keep
the countryside under control." ("The Making of the Soviet System", p. 155)
So when a nationalist movement took shape in the Ukraine, is there any
doubt that it would have had an anti-Soviet character? The OUN
(Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) was formed in 1929 and modeled
itself after the Russian populist groups of the 1870s. They combined
terrorist tactics such as assassination of Bolshevik officials with liberal
and Christian pieties.
In October 1938, the Nazis represented themselves as champions of the
national rights of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain was
only too happy to accede to their demands and the Czech republic was
dismembered. In another demagogic display on behalf of lesser
nationalities, Hitler took up the cause of the Ukrainian nationalists as
well, who were seen as possible allies in a future war against Stalin. In
the small and backward Czech province of Carpatho-Ukraine, a demand for
autonomy was encouraged by the Nazi regime. John A. Armstrong describes the
collaboration between Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists in the Czech republic:
"In October, 1938, the nationalists declared the Carpatho-Ukraine to be a
'free, federated state [in Czechoslovakia],' and eventually Prague
recognized its autonomy, although the economically most valuable part was
ceded to Hungary. Local Ukrainian nationalists, most of whom were members
of, or sympathetic to, the OUN, were organized and excited to more extreme
action by OUN leaders who had been living as émigrés in Germany and who had
been dispatched to the Carpatho-Ukraine by the OUN directory on the advice
of the German intelligence service. A major part of their activities was
devoted to forming a para-military organization, the Carpathian Sich,
which, they hoped, would form the nucleus of an army of an all-Ukrainian
state." ("Ukrainian Nationalism", p. 24)
When Hitler began his invasion of the USSR, the OUN could be counted on as
an ally. In the context of the 1930s, anti-Soviet nationalist movements
would have had an enormous affinity with each other, especially the
Ukrainian movement which defended a people who had absorbed more punishment
than most from the Soviet state. The liberal and Christian ideology of the
1920s became replaced with an outspoken fascist belief in the purity of the
Ukrainian nation. One OUN leader professed, "Nationalism is based on
feelings, which is carried by the racial blood." (ibid., p 38)
OUN leader Richard Iarii was in constant contact with Nazi Admiral Canaris
and the Abwehr. In the summer of 1939, OUN militia leader Sushko had
organized an auxiliary to the Wehrmacht in its approaching invasion of
Poland. Since the Ukrainians were a subject nation in Poland, the
nationalists looked forward to war between their Nazi benefactors and the
British-backed Polish state.
When war finally broke out between the Nazis and Soviet Union, the
Ukrainian nationalists were tossed aside. Their racial ideology precluded
any long-lasting alliance between them and what they regarded as an
inferior Slavic race. This did not prevent Ukrainian leaders from initially
welcoming the invading troops. Reverend John Hyrn'okh, a chaplain of a
pro-Nazi Ukrainian militia, wrote a pastoral letter stating that "We greet
the victorious German Army as deliverer from the enemy. We render our
homage to the government which has been erected. We recognize Mr. Iaroslav
Stets'ko [Nazi collaborator] as Head of the State Administration of the
Ukraine."
Perhaps if the Nazis had been less ideologically driven, they would have
co-opted the Ukrainian nationalists on a permanent basis and defeated the
Red Army. In any case, the more pragmatic US ruling class happily dispensed
with racial bugaboos and enlisted the Ukrainians once again in the crusade
against the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. Ukrainian
nationalists in the United States were a key element in the far-right
coalition assembled in the World Anticommunist League (WACL), run by
General Singlaub. The Ukrainian Cultural Center sent delegates on a regular
basis to WACL gatherings and played a leading role blocking the prosecution
of suspected Nazi war criminals. When the Stets'ko's settled in the United
States, they played a leading role in the anticommunist struggle. Slava
Steks'ko is the author of "Captive Nations," which offered a political
glossary that included the following entries:
--Anti-Semitism: A smear word used by Communists against those who
effectively oppose and expose them.
--Fascist: An anti-Communist
--Nazi or Hitlerite: An active anti-Communist
(Russ Belant, "Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party", p. 72)
When we finally turn to Trotsky's articles on Ukrainian nationalism, we
find very little discussion of such matters. There is the possibility that
Trotsky was unaware of the role of the OUN. It is more likely, however,
that he was interested in making political points against the Stalinists
who were primarily responsible for turning them against socialism.
Concretely, Trotsky advanced the slogan of "A united, free, and independent
workers' and peasants' Soviet Ukraine."
While this slogan outraged the Stalinists and many leftists who regarded
the threat of a Nazi invasion as having more importance than the national
grievances of the Ukrainians, Trotsky reassured them that an independent
Soviet Ukraine would strengthen the USSR because it would have a vested
interest in the defense of the socialist status quo. This independent
socialist country would be a "mighty southwestern bulwark of the USSR".
Even here, Trotsky reserved the final decision to the Ukrainian Marxist
movement:
"This appears to me the correct policy on the Ukrainian question. I speak
here personally and in my own name. The question must be opened up to
international discussion. The foremost place in this discussion must belong
to the Ukrainian revolutionary Marxists. We shall listen with the greatest
attention to their voices. But they had better make haste. There is little
time left for preparation!" (Collected Writings, 1938-1939, p. 307)
Whatever else one might think of this article and others written in the
same vein, it certainly is NOT a call for Ukrainian self-determination.
Trotsky was not in the habit of issuing such classless calls. He was
primarily interested in world revolution and every political slogan was put
forward with this final goal in mind. There is absolutely no connection
between his approach to the Ukrainian question and today's empty-headed
sloganeering on behalf of Kosovar self-determination.
These questions were addressed once again when Trotsky lined up with the
James P. Cannon faction in the largest and most respected Trotskyist group
in the world, the American Socialist Workers Party. Cannon had found
himself on the opposite side of the fence in a debate on the character of
the Soviet Union with a faction led by Max Shachtman, Martin Abern and
James Burnham. During the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression Pact, vast segments
of the American left outside the Communist Party felt betrayed. Nazism and
Stalinism seemed to be equally evil, especially in the way that they
partitioned smaller and weaker countries that shared the misfortune of
being located in between the two powers. Finland especially became a symbol
of the victimization of democratic and independent countries by the two
evil empires.
It is interesting that when Shachtman is first feeling out his differences
with Cannon and Trotsky, he raises the question of the Ukraine. Since
Trotsky had declared in favor of an independent Soviet Ukraine, wasn't he
violating his own principles by backing the Soviet partition of Finland? In
his Nov. 6, 1939 reply to Shachtman, Trotsky explains that the slogan was
raised before the Hitler-Stalin pact and suggests implicitly that the new
situation might dictate new slogans. In a letter written in the previous
month Trotsky makes it clear that the defense of a socialist country
supersedes all other considerations: "At Brest-Litovsk the Soviet
government sacrificed the national independence of the Ukraine in order to
salvage the workers state."
This, of course, was par for the course. The Bolsheviks often compromised
the nationalist yearnings of various groups when it advanced the defense of
the infant socialist republic. On December 2, 1920 two treaties were signed
with Turkey. The first recognized Armenia as a socialist republic while the
second treaty constituted a complete surrender to Turkish territorial and
other demands, effectively turning Armenia into a rump republic. According
to E.H. Carr, "the elimination of an independent Azerbaijan and an
independent Armenia was a common interest of Soviet Russia and of Turkey,
and paved the way to the much desired agreement between them." ("The
Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923", V. 3, p. 298)
When we turn to Yugoslavia, all such considerations seem to be absent in
the various communiqués of the myriad of far-flung global Trotskyist
groups. Tito's Yugoslavia was seen in a totally undialectical manner. It is
dismissed as a "Stalinist" country. What's worse, all the economic deals
with the West cooked up as a defensive measure against Soviet domination
are portrayed as willing concessions to the capitalist system by corrupt
Red gangsters. Stalinophobia gets mixed together with ultraleftism here in
a stunning fashion. Little respect is paid to the survival instincts of a
deeply oppressed people who had struggled to build socialism after their
own fashion. When western imperialism exerted pressure on Yugoslavia, the
secessionist cracks in the system were welcomed as liberatory by many
Trotskyists.
Now that there is very little left of "socialism" in Yugoslavia and Serb
bourgeois nationalism is on the rampage, there are few restraints on
Trotskyism's tendency to welcome further implosion of the state. Calls for
a new multinational socialist Yugoslavia--with a Trotskyist pedigree, one
assumes--is mixed with calls for Kosovar separation. These groups seem
interested in simultaneously assuaging the prejudices of the middle-class
radical movement while upholding Trotskyist orthodoxy, or at least a
bowdlerized version of it.
In reality, the issues are identical to what they were during the fight
with Shachtman, Burnham and Abern. The difference is that they take place
on a terrain where socialism has been thrown totally on the defensive, even
much more so than when the Nazis invaded the USSR. The war against Serbia
is a proxy war against every vestige of anti-imperialist independence in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is a signal to the
Communists in Russia and allied states that Nato will blow them to kingdom
come if they threaten the "stability" of the new world order. Poor Kosovo
has been dragged into this confrontation, but it is of secondary
consequence. Despite the retrograde character of the Serb leadership, its
defiance of Nato's war is as important as the defense of Stalingrad in
1942. If Serbia loses, the forces of war and barbarism will simply drive
forward with their expansionary agenda. And Russia surely will be the next
target.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
