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On 7/28/14 12:21 AM, Dennis Brasky via Marxism wrote:
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/26/strange_bedfellows_putin_the_chomskyite_left_and_the_ghosts_of_the_cold_war/?source=newsletter
I think there's a fairly large bloc of people who have taken the turn to Putin without having read Chomsky or Stephen F. Cohen. These are Trotskyists, or more accurately people trained in the Trotskyist worldview, who are anxious to "defend the Soviet Union" as Trotsky did. They understand that Russia is a capitalist nation and even does some bad things but they see it as the last best hope of the colonial revolution. That is the legacy of Sam Marcy as someone once pointed out here. Sam developed this theory long before Chomsky ever wrote a single article on imperialism.
Probably the best example of this is the unfortunate Roger Annis, who seems to have gone off the deep end. If you follow his blog, as I do out of morbid curiosity, you will see some startling formulations including a defense of Igor Strelkov (Girkin), the Russian who commands the Dontetsk People's Republic militia.
Strelkov has had some bad press recently, over his reportedly savage behavior as a Russian nationalist fighter in Yugoslavia and Chechnya and for his ISIS like conduct in Donetsk, including the execution of some poor soul who stole a couple of shirts.
Here is Annis quoting a "Russian colleague" who makes the case for Strelkov (http://www.rogerannis.com/slander-abounds-in-depictions-of-autonomy-fighters-in-eastern-ukraine-while-mh-17-investigation-stalls-and-kyivs-war-rages/):
"As for Strelkov-Girkins' career, he was an historian and he studied together with a comrade, a well-known specialist and member of the Russian Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (PLSR). Strelkov was unsuccessful in academia. His ideological sympathies are clearly with pre-revolutionary Russia and the White movement. He identifies with people like General Denikin who in 1941 declared solidarity with the USSR, seeing Stalin as a lesser evil compared with Hitler."
While it would be nearly impossible to deny Strelkov's rightwing nationalist affiliations, there's a dodgy attempt to salvage his reputation through a couple of references to his "line of march" coinciding with the left.
What does it mean that he "studied with a comrade" of the Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries? That they sat in the same classroom? In terms of Denikin, the most ruthless counter-revolutionary general in the White Army, what difference does it make that he saw Stalin as a "lesser evil"? I imagine that this is analogous to the Golden Dawn in Greece hailing Putin as an enemy of the EU.
There is every likelihood that the "Russian colleague" who fed Annis this information is none other than Boris Kagarlitsky, a Great Russian chauvinist favored by Annis, Renfrey Clarke and our friends in the Australian Socialist Alliance.
There's an interesting article on a meeting of the Putinite left in Worker's Liberty, a British sect that plays the same role as the CPGB, to gossip in the "trainspotting" mode. Despite that, there are some useful observations here: http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/07/23/popular-front-russian-nationalism. Since the author reads Russian, she has a leg up. She writes:
-->Kagarlitsky has attacked Ukrainian socialists for intervening in the Maidan protests (dominated, he says, by fascist slogans), and for failing to support what he calls “the perfect embodiment of the anarchist concept of the revolutionary order” which he has discovered in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. (8)
And now he writes articles praising Strelkov-Girkin, a Russian nationalist who wants to reduce Ukraine to the borders of historical Galicia, and who fought for the Russian separatists in Transnistria, for Milosevic in Bosnia, and for Putin in the two Chechen wars:
“Strelkov promises to maintain order in Donetsk, and there is no reason not to take him at his word. War will be declared on the criminality, looting and anarchy of the field commanders. Military discipline, which was successfully maintained in besieged Slaviansk, will be established in Donetsk as well.” (9),<--
Using her knowledge of Russian, she translates this item from the Russian press (http://novorossia.su/ru/node/3924):
-->Until the arrival of Igor Ivanovich (Strelkov-Girkin) in Donetsk there was too much democracy here. In Slaviansk if anyone was guilty of serious looting, we simply shot them. That’s why there was no looting and we were very popular with the population.
We had a ‘dry law’ (i.e. a ban on drinking). You need a strong power at a time of war. We are all in one boat – the peaceful citizens and the militia. Strelkov and Borodai must form a strong team.
The colour revolutions (i.e. the popular protests in post-soviet states associated with a particular colour) always take place at a time of elections. Elections – they are our weak point. There must be less of them.” (64)<--
Well, I guess that stealing a couple of shirts will get you a bullet in the head. At least ISIS only cuts off your hand. In terms of "dry law", I can't tell if this is directed at the fighters or the entire population. If it is the latter, no wonder they are isolated.
As for elections, one can understand why Girkin and company would have less of them. I suppose if you need to have them for what Chomsky called "demonstration" purposes, there is a use for them. Then again, when Russia and its supporters organize such an election, the left should make excuses for them since the ends justifies the means. In the 1930s, this meant "defending the USSR". Now it means defending a reconstituted Russian Empire based on the right of oligarchs to buy NYC apartments for $10 million and diamond-studded Rolexes.
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