Socialist Internationalism and the Ukraine War (original) (raw)
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The Securitised 'Others' of Russian Nationalism in Ukraine and Russia
LSE Public Policy Review, 2023
In trying to analyse and understand Russian nationalism, most scholars focus on what Russian nationalism is as an ideology. But to understand Russia's war in Ukraine we also need to understand what Russian nationalism does. This article explores how Russian nationalism has increasingly securitized and repressed three groups: Muslim minorities living in Russia as internal 'others', Ukrainian citizens as external 'others', and Crimean Tatars, as 'others' in between. Overall, I argue that we need to understand the breadth and depth of the repression against these 'others' of Russian nationalism, which now extends to Russia's desire to legitimize its genocide in Ukraine. This argument is also important in terms of policy: as Russia's war against Ukraine continues, there is a real risk that some western actors will listen to or repeat Putin's narrative that Russia is the victim and allow Putin to set the terms of ending war in Ukraine through the idea that Russia is the victim and not the aggressor.
the editors of this collection decided to use the more common, anglicised, version of Russian and Ukrainian words in order to make the publication readable for a diverse audience.
Special Section: The Voices of Russia's Minorities on the Invasion of Ukraine
Inner Asia, 2023
The present block of short papers is a result of the round table The Voices of Russia’s Minorities on the Invasion of Ukraine that took place on 7 July 2022 at the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge. The military participation of ethnic minorities of Russia, especially those from Inner Asia, is often emphasised in discussions of the war in Ukraine in the Russian and international media.1 However, there is still a lack of knowledge about the scale and character of their involvement. For this reason, the round table provided a platform for anti-war activists from Buryatia, Tuva, Kalmykia, Sakha/Yakutia and Chechnya in the diaspora to discuss local responses to the war in Ukraine and what it means for ethnic minorities in Russia.
A New World Is Born: Russia's Anti-imperialist Fight in Ukraine
International Critical Thought, 2023
With Russia's attack on Ukraine the decline of the imperialist rule of the United States and its subordinate allies has accelerated, while the emergence of a multipolar world draws nearer. The author first describes how the structure, toolkit, inherent contradictions of imperialism, as well as the role of fascism, have altered in the last century, then explains the challenges imperialism faces today. This is followed by a discussion of the reasons for the Ukrainian war and the unhuman reactions of the North Atlantic powers. The author argues that only the defeat of imperialism and the emergence of a multipolar world will open the road to socialism at global level.
Debating the Early Soviet Nationalities Policy: The Case of Soviet Ukraine
The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution, 2020
Book synopsis: How did a regime that promised utopian-style freedom end up delivering terror and tyranny? For some, the Bolsheviks were totalitarian and the descent was inevitable; for others, Stalin was responsible; for others still, this period in Russian history was a microcosm of the Cold War. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution reasons that these arguments are too simplistic. Rather, the journey from Bolshevik liberation to totalitarianism was riddled with unsuccessful experiments, compromises, confusion, panic, self-interest and over-optimism. As this book reveals, the emergence (and persistence) of the Bolshevik dictatorship was, in fact, the complicated product of a failed democratic transition. Drawing on long-ignored archival sources and original research, this fascinating volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to reconsider one of the most important and controversial questions of 20th-century history: how to explain the rise of the repressive Stalinist dictatorship.
Ukrainian nationalism since the outbreak of Euromaidan
Ab Imperio, no. 3, 2014, pp. 94-122
The article traces the evolution of Ukrainian nationalism from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014 under the influence of mass protests against the antidemocratic regime of President Yanukovych (Euromaidan) and Russia’s intervention into Crimea and Donbas. The term “nationalism” is used in the article in a broad sense encompassing elite ideology and politics as well as mass feelings and identities. The analysis of elite “nationalism” is based on a close reading of Facebook posts and other texts of the protest activists, and mass discourse is reconstructed with the help of sociological surveys. The author argues that democratic protest against the Yanukovych regime included a nationalistic element articulated as Ukrainian liberation from Russian dictate. He also shows that the transition from peaceful to violent protest was accompanied by an appropriation of the tradition of armed nationalist resistance to the Soviet occupation of Ukraine after World War II. This appropriation, however, was not limited exclusively to ethnic Ukrainians – it reflected and reinforced a rejection of the Soviet mythology of collaborationism of Ukrainian nationalists of the past with the Nazis. At the same time it made evident the deeply inclusive nature of modern Ukrainian anti-imperial nationalism, the most obvious proof of which is the support it enjoys among Ukrainian Jews or even among Jews who have preserved their ties to the country since leaving Ukraine. Russian aggression further contributed to the rise of inclusivity of Ukrainian nationalism, which now embraces many Russian and Russian-speaking citizens. Being alienated from Russia as a state and even as a people by Russia’s aggressive politics, these citizens nevertheless do not exhibit a similar alienation from the Russian language. Hence the new border between Ukrainians and Russians is political rather than linguistic. In the author’s view, this fact confirms the inclusive nature of Ukrainian identity and the nationalism that contributes to its formation.
Alienation , Tyranny and Ethnicity : Notes on Ukraine Under The Revolutionary Yoke
2016
This essay will trace a few sociological antecedents to Ukrainian independence and the modern version of Ukrainian identity. The attempt is to outline some significant aspects of Ukrainian life from the 1870s to Bolshevism and beyond. This author could not resist showing some striking similarities to life in the US as well, as the system's response to nationalism and labor shortages seems to parallel that of the US. The purpose is to lay out, albeit briefly, the distortions that developed within Ukrainian economic and social life that led to the present crisis. In 2010 as in 2016, Ukraine is a failed state. The nation has no stable identity, religion or purpose. As of 2016, her independence is nonexistent, as the Kiev government is staffed by foreigners working for the country's large number of financial creditors. In the US, the private sector is drowning in debt, making any economic recovery impossible. Millions of white males, viciously marginalized by the system, are see...
How Is Internationalism to Be Understood? A Leninist Perspective on Identity Politics
Lenin150 (Samizdat), 2020
To write a theoretical essay in “critical solidarity” with Vladimir Len- in proved to be a much more challenging task than I first imagined. From my initial idea of reflecting on Lenin as an anti-colonial thinker whose thought might be highly relevant to contemporary debate on class and identity politics, I found myself in a position of cultural and discursive resistance to serious engagement with Lenin as a thinker. This resistance originates in the specific post-Soviet context in which the figure of Lenin is hyper- mythologised. The fact that I had to write this text in English was helpful in providing some leverage for distancing myself from that mythologised image of the leader of the world proletariat. However, it still took a significant amount of time before I could arrive at a point in which I could set the right tone to my writing, neither too pathetic, nor too ironic. Faced with these difficulties, I decided to include in this piece a rather lengthy meta-reflection on Lenin’s image in the post-Soviet context and only then proceed to the discussion of his dialectical approach to internationalism and its relevance for the understanding and potential mediation of the sharpened contradictions between class and identity politics. I hope this odd composition of my essay will not be misleading to the reader, but instead offer a heuristic perspective on Lenin and his theoretical legacy.