The Russian Question in the 1990's and Yugoslavia

NORDEN SPLIT AND THE  US SPARTACIST LEAGUE 

Introduction Below are excertps of correspondence between Jan Norden and V.N.Gelis which have been amended for public consumption on the recent split within the US based Spartacist League. 

21st November 1996

Cde. Gelis, On your two questions:

 a) We consider the states that arose out of the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers states to be capitalist states, still very weak but certainly on their way to being consolidated. We agree with, and in many cases helped write, the fundamental ICL statements on the collapse of Stalinism and counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and East Europe, as well as the Workers Vanguard reply to your letter on Yugoslavia and Russia. 

As for b) allegations "that the Robertson regime has run things much similar to Gerry Healy in relation to his treatment of female comrades" not only lack any basis in truth, they are pure slander from people who justify and engage in scabbing. I hope this answers your questions. 

Fraternally, 

Jan Norden

23rd November 1996 

Dear Cde. Norden,

Since the early 1970's, 'Workers Vanguard' has always been a well respected paper from the point of view of revolutionary trotskyism. But that does not imply we do not have serious ideological and political differences. 

We have differences with all the Western far left on basically three main issues:

 a) their characterisation of imperialism and the fact that they vehemently stick to old bankrupt formulas with respect to inter-imperialist conflicts, 

b) we do not believe that what is occuring in the ex-USSR is a solidification of capitalism and we vehemently dispute the notion that capitalism can so easily be restored in areas where it once went bankrupt, as this would overturn the notion that imperialism is a moribund economic system, 

c) the nature of the period is characterised not by the existing leaderships of the working class be they socialdemocratic or stalinist, but by the gradual realisation that stalinism as well as capitalism is experiencing a universal crisis which is leading to development of revolutionary turmoil which will be difficult to control.

This may obviously sound like old hat to someone who has spent most of their adult lives editing a revolutionary paper and has seen a lifetimes of achievement go down the drain, but revolutions have never been created by revolutionaries and vice versa, revolutions have never created revolutionaries. Revolutionaries have existed during particular historical conjunctures whose predetermined fate is almost impossible to surely predict. We believe that if a revolution needs to find its revolutionaries it will, not in a metaphysical sense but in a practical sense, if it is truly to be a revolution of any importance the right people will be found. We disagree wholeheartedly with the notions of the far left, who seek to find solutions outside of the present cul de sac of forces which are not based solely on the working class. We never believed in 'student power' when it was around, we never believed in 'guerilla power', we never believed in fake 'terrorist power' and today we do not believe in NATO. 

We disagree wholeheartedly (and this is where we differ) with neutral positions on the Yugoslav war as we consider it the flip-side of the open support of imperialism. We can never stand in the same camp as the British SWP, or North's tendency on the Yugoslav war. But Yugoslavia in the final analysis is not the issue. The issue is from reading what you have written and the reply of Robertson, the Russian question. If the nature of the period is indeed reactionary, if indeed we have to "wait for better times", then the majority of the Spartacist League may be right. After all they are judging your positions on the appreciation of the forthcoming period. 

If on the other hand, what is coming is not the stabilisation of capitalism, but its biggest ever crisis, if the workers movement can no longer be controlled and dominated by the stalinists then the picture changes. Dynamic class struggle may be the order of the day as has been evidenced by the developments in France. But one may add, so what? We had it all before. But that is a very sterile and mechanistic view of history. Revolutions may indeed come and go, but humanity learns from each experience and develops onto a higher plane. To follow today's trend which is to become part and parcel of those who worship the international news networks (such as CNN) and to believe the USA achieved a stunning victory against Iraq is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire, when they stagemanaged victorious parades of totally fake battles (much in the same way as the USA organised the biggest ticker take parade in its history over its glorious 'victory'). 

Many splits have occurred in the American far left which resemble the splits in Europe. A small clique in an organisation disagrees with a particular viewpoint and decides to eliminate the opposition. Wohlforth was terminated by Gerry Healy. He has ended up praising imperialism in the Balkans. Not a different position from his erstwhile comrades in Slaughters WRP who are rapidly liquidating themselves. To be thrown out of an organisation one has spent a lifetime building is not an easy thing. Workers who are sacked from their posts after spending a lifetime working for feel decimated. Your immediate defence of your past is not a new phenomena. no one wants to spit on their past or admit they made mistakes, especially in the hostile environment they were working in. Everyone in life makes mistakes. You assert that the Robertson regime in no way treated female comrades in the same manner as Healy's. Not being part of either it is difficult to tell from afar, only from the basis of what other cdes. stated about their experiences within both regimes. Maybe having more than one female cde. at a time, as a girlfriend, is 'natural', maybe feting the leader and bowing down to his individual whims, whether they be expense accounts, business flights, special favours such as cleaning party flats when they arrive, preparing documents to fit in with the general party line, are normal run of the mill events within the development of a revolutionary organisation. You may think this is all anti-communist jargon, this is not what the Spartacist League was about, but the question sooner or later needs to be addressed: why all of a sudden did the Spartacist League want to get rid of its most trusted cdes. Either you never fit in with their right-wing turn, which surely didn't happen simply from the moment you were booted out (in such a classic Healy manner; repo squads arriving at night) or you couldn't fit in as they were asking you to put two feet in one boot! 

The Bolshevik tendency left some time ago, Yossi Rad not long ago and you recently. The previous two are clearly to the right of the present Spartacist League, but what will happen in the future is difficult to tell. The Spartacists can quite clearly catch up with their opponents, after all a life on the margins of society is not everybody's cup of tea and maybe some have realised that. But the working class has nowhere to accomodate to as it is being fundamentally attacked. The line of permanent opposition, is the only line consistent with the revolution. Any other line is a line of accomodation, and this I believe from what you write is not your line. fraternally, keep the revolutionary spirit up. 

V.N.Gelis 

A REPLY TO THE US SPARTACIST LEAGUE ON THE SLOGAN "RESTORE THE SOVIET UNION" 15th February 1996 

To the Editor, 

Dear Comrades, In Workers Vanguard (issue no.638) it is asserted that Marxists should not call for the restoration of the Soviet Union and presumably that of Yugoslavia as well. Was the creation of the Soviet Union a historical step forwards and consequently its demise a step back into an era of war and barbarism.? To not support the restoration of the Soviet Union as it once was Stalinist is tantamount to not supporting the restoration in a factory strike which has occurred in which workers have lost their rights (eg. recent Dockers strike in Liverpool, England) The demand and desire for peoples to live in multinational wholes (which imperialism is seeking to destroy in order to rule over them more effectively) is correct. The tragedy as you correctly point out is that the Stalinist fragments will be unable to defend\extend the gains of the workers movement.

 Your current class analysis of the Soviet Union as one of a fully developed capitalist state means that the mistakes of the state capitalists of yesteryear are to be repeated in current phenomena. Eg. your refusal to support the Serbs in ex-Yugoslavia for more than three years of war ande only after the NATO bombardments if August 1995 to take a half-hearted stance in their defence. Your current refusal to support the demand for the restoration of the Soviet Union because the remnants of Stalinism are currently associated with the demand is reminiscent of T. Cliffs refusal to support Korea against America as it was led by the Stalinists. 

The workers movements in Russia which you seem to be so dismissive of lately will inscribe on its banner the restoration of the Soviet Union and the vote for the Stalinists is not a vote for the past (in the same way as the recent large vote for the French left) or a vote for the leader of these parties (like Zyuganov who beyond any doubt are Western puppets) but a vote for a change in the whole of society. 

Just as the recent election in France led to the December events so the recent election in Russia will inevitably lead to social struggle of immense proportions. The struggle between the working class and the remnants of stalinism is where the future coming class battles will emerge and the long-awaited historical accounting of this remains to occur. The road of conflict against capitalism and Stalinism is inevitable. 

Fraternally

V.N.Gelis 

WORKERS VANGUARD REPLIES 

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were multinational workers states based on a collectivised economy but governed by a parasitic bureaucratic caste. These states were destroyed in 1991-1992 through capitalist counterrevolution in large measure fueled by the splintering of their respective Stalinist bureaucracies along antagonistic national lines. What now exists in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans is a multiplicity of bourgeois states, each under the control of its dominant nation and, in many cases, engaged in intercine feuding with one another. The call to "restore the Soviet Union" on the part of Stalinist-derived Russian "patriots" like Gennadi Zyuganov, leader and presidential candidate of the bourgeois-nationalist Communist party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), is in reality a call for a modernized version, of the Russian empire of the Romanovs. Similarly, talk of "restoring Yugoslavia" by the Communist Alliance - Movement for Yugoslavia of Mirjana markovic, the wife of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosovec, can only mean a modernized version of the post-1919 Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

 The progressive character of the former Soviet Union lay in its collectivised economy not in its particular national composition. There is nothing inherently progressive about a state incorporating in its boundaries Russians and Uzbeks, Ukrainians and Chechens, etc. If there were, then the tsarist empire, which Lenin called a "prison house of peoples," would have to be judged no less progressive than the USSR. As is well known, Lenin strogly clearly advocated the right of national self-determination, i.e., the right to form independent states, for the non-Russian subject peoples of the tsarist empire. In this way the Bolsheviks gained the sympathy and support of the non-Russian toilers, which was vitally important for their victory over the White Guard counterrevolutionaries and Western/Japanese imperialist forces in the Civil War of 1918-21. 

At the end of the Civil War, the Red Army controlled most of the territory of the former tsarist empire. However, as we wrote in "Why Marxists Do Not Raise the Call 'Restore the Soviet Union' (WV No. 639, 16 February): "The Bolshevik leadership did not maintain that the various nations and peoples of the former tsarist empire had to be reorganized within the framework of a single federated Soviet (workers) state. Lenin was open to the prospect of an alliance of Soviet states in the region if the non-Russian workers and peasants so desired". Thus, against the opposition of Stalin Lenin insisited that the right of national self-determination be incorporated into the founding constitution of the USSR. 

When the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy disintigrated under Gorbachev in the late 1980's, various non-Russian petty-bourgeois nationalists, notably in the Baltic republics - acting in concert with Western imperialism - demanded secession from the USSR as a cover for capitalist restoration. At the same time, the Russian Stalinist "patriots' increasingly appealed to traditional Great Russian chauvinism. Hence the "red - brown" coalition. The fundamental task facing communists in Russia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics today is to work for proletarian socialist revolution to overthrow these new bourgeois states. Whether future workers states in this region will form a multinational federation and what its configuration would be is a historically open and, at the present time, rather abstract question. What is sharply and directly posed at present is defense of non-Russian peoples against renascent Russian imperialist ambitions, including those would-be Russian imperialists who call for "restoring the Soviet Union". 

Here it is significant that V.N.Gelis' letter does not so much as mention the Chechen war in which the Russian army has already killed tens of thousands of Caucasian people in region conquered by the tsarist empire in the early 19th century. We call for the defeat of the Russian invading and occupying forces and for the right of Chechnya to decide its own fate. The KPRF nationalists, while criticising Yeltsin's handling of the war, predictably oppose the independence of Chechnya. Similarly, the European and American imperialists support the "territorial integrity" of the new Russian bourgeois state and therefore have endorsed Yeltsin's bloody colonial war against the Chechens. Clinton made this perfectly clear on his recent visit to Yeltsin, when he grotesquely drew a parallel between the Russian rape of Chechnya and the Union struggle against the slavocracy in the US civil war, claiming that the common principle was that "no state has a right to withdraw from our union". This clearly refutes Gelis' false asertion that "imperialism is seeking to destroy" multinational states in the former Soviet Union and Balkans. The imperialist powers have inthe past and will in the future support and even create multinatinal state when this serves their perceived interesets. Thus the original Yugoslav state, ruled by the Serbian monarchy, was created by British and French imperialism at the 1919 Versailles Congress. The Communist International rightly recognized that this new Yugoslav state was by its very nature one in which the dominant nationality, the Serbs, oppressed the other South Slavic peoples. During the 1920's, the Yugoslav Communist Party militantly championed self-determination especially for the Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians. Precisely because they did so, the Communists became the only genuine pan-Yugoslav party in the country, with its leadership and cadres containing members of all South Slav natinalities. The victory of Tito's Communist Partisans over the German Wehrmacht and reactionary Serbian and Croatian nationalist forces during WWII laid the basis for the creation of a bureaucratically deformed workers state, in which nonetheless a real effort was made to ensure political equality among the constitutent national republics. However, especially after Tito's death in 1980, the Yugoslav bureaucracy increasingly fradctured along national lines. Thus Serbian Stalinist leader Slobodan Milosevic came to power seeking to create a "Greater Serbia", beginning with trampling on the Albanians in Kosovo. We have take a position of revolutionary defeatism toward all of the contending bourgeois-nationalist forces in the territorial wars - marked by mutual communalist massacres - precipitated by the breakup of Yugoslavia. As V.N.Gelis noted, we did defend the Bosnian Serbs when they came under direct attack by the NATO powers, including last years massive air assault carried out inleague with the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim forces and with the complicity of the Milosevic government. While Gelis argues for support to the Serbs in the wars of ex-Yugoslavia, he offers no principled or other reason for this position. Does he believe that Milosevic's Serbia is still a deformed workers state while Croatia and the Bosnian Muslim polity are nascent bourgeois states? Or does he think the Serbs are a "progressive" people reflecting the pro-Serbian sympathy prevalent in Greece?

 It is a basic principle that for communists the main enemy is the bourgeosie of their own country, which in Gelis' case is the Greek bourgeoisie. However, his positions are in harmony with those of the Greek ruling class. Not only do Greece, Russia and Serbia share the Eastern Orthodox religion, but the Greek bourgeoisie is also driven by its ongoing nationalist conflict with Muslim Turkey, which backs the Bosnian Sarajevo regime. Today, the Greek government is the only member of NATO which has consistently and conspicuously supported the Serbian cause in the wars of ex-Yugoslavia. This fact alone should cause V.N.Gelis and his comrades to reconsider whether their views on the Balkans and the former Soviet Union are governed by the priciples of proletarian considerations or other considerations.

A Reply to the Cosmopolitan 'Internationalists' of the US based Spartacist League by an Opponent of the Transnational New World Order 

The Editor "Workers Vanguard" 'These states were destroyed in 1991-92 through capitalist counterrevolution (USSR and E. Europe) in large measure fuelled by the splintering of their respective Stalinist bureaucracies along antagonistic national lines' (Workers Vanguard June '96) If Russia and the Balkans as you assert have definitely and irrevocably passed into the Western orbit and the restorationist project been completed and finalised we would be obliged under the mere weight of your assertions to state that the project of the October Revolution was maybe premature or even futile. If on the other hand one takes a dialectical approach assserting the restorationist process has started, but not been completed (the class battles to decide the eventual fate of the land of October are ahead of us not behind us) then an anti-state capitalist perspective opens up before us. 

To assert as well that what exists in the former S.Union and the Balkans is a "multiplicity of bourgeois states" is very 'original'. as no further elaboration is required or indeed sought after.

 What level of capitalist development are we dealing with here? An imperialist, semi-colonial or neo-colonial? To define the ex-USSR and ex-Yugoslavia as simply being 'bourgeois states' is on par as saying both Iraq and the US are bourgeois states, this tells us a lot and at the same time nothing. Chechen War Whilst implying that no mention was made of the Chechen war this seeks to conceal the fact (known to the Editor of Workers Vanguard) from your readers that I wrote an article back in early 1995 entitled the "Crisis in Chechnya and Yeltsin's Bloodthirsty Regime" which was published in the KDE's newspaper "Ergatiki Drasi" and in Num.9 of their English language publication. But what is significant isn't the fact that the Chechen war wasn't mentioned in my brief letter but the importance given to this false premise whose purpose is to state: How can we realistically support the restoration of the S. Union, look at Chechnya, all the nationalities want to break away! But the Chechens would not be seeking to breakaway if the restorationists in Moscow had not generalised the current dominant imperialist principle of privatisation everywhere (every gangster loot and siphon off the public wealth to the West), every local ruler disavow the centre. Which in practice is how imperialism is seeking to destroy multinational wholes whose progressiveness lay in the fact that they were historical gains of the working class. 

To assert as well that "there is nothing inherently progressive about a state incorporating Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Chechens etc." is sophistry of the highest order as one could also say the same working class unions in cosmopolitan London or New York:" there is nothing inherently progressive about a union encompassing workers of different ethnic origin". A union may be obliged to fight the state or be incorporated into it. But incorporated unions cease to be unions and instead become appendages of the state machinery, so the demand and desire by workers to restore the unions of old, under new economic conditions (where the material basis of reformism has been eroded) does not signal a return to the past, but a desire for a better present and a revolutionary future.

A dialectical approach instead of sterile mechanism may aid to understanding global processes easier. 

'New' cold-warriors and the ex-USSR 

H.A.Kissinger in a June'96 interview in 'Newsweek' whom the Spartacist League would not like to be associated politically with, states the following: "American idealism tempts isolationism: Russia has historically prompted adventurist domination" doling out imperial powers (to Russia) where there are none and subtracting them were they are (USA). 

You have now subsequently characterised the KPRF as bourgeois nationalist, "representing Russian imperialist ambitions". In other words you believe that what we are dealing with in Russia is an expansionist imperialist power whose aim is to re-colonise the Caucuses, E.Europe, the Balkans then maybe W.Europe and finally the 'land of liberty and equality' the USA! Even the ultra-conservative London based 'Economist' magazine had an editorial in its July edition entitled "Le Defi Americain" and analysed the transnational integration of W. Europe and the necessity of ending the restrictive practice of 'welfare statism'.

 Modern transnational imperialism (under cover of UN sponsored 'peacekeeping' forces) will remain enemy number one whethera small group of cdes. in New York are unable to find principles at stake, when semi-colonial people like the Serbs, overnight became foreigners in their own lands. 'Neutrality', Pacifism and the New World Order A neutral position in the disingtegration of ex-Yugoslavia is in reality the other side of the coin of an open support of UN imperialist backed 'peace' keepers. The pacifist cry for the termination of the war in Yugoslavia through NATO style 'elections' under the barrel of a gun! Whether Milosevic's Serbia is still a deformed workers state or not, is a red herring as Saddam's Iraq or Somalia never were, yet once ostracised by the West and under attack they qualified even for your support. But Europe is much closer to home and more is at stake. Once you have taken a position of revolutionary defeatism on all sides in the Yugoslav war, why then does the nature of the war only momentarily change when NATO launches air strikes and the Bosnian Serbs then qualify for your support? Once the bombing 'stops' do we then call for the defeat of the Bosnian Serb army as the war once again has changed its nature and become inter-capitalist? What do you say about the NATO occupation of ex-Yugoslavia? Trotsky at least was clear when he stated that "Of all the forms of dictatorship, the totalitarian dictatorship of a foreign occupier is the most unbearable". (Trotsky's Writings 1939-40 translated from Greek). 

Where have you started a campaign against the NATO occupation of Yugoslavia? Transitional slogans such as "Not a Penny not a Soldier" for the imperialist war in ex-Yugoslavia! For the military defeat of NATO in Yugoslavia! Trotsky once before WWII characterised the neutralists and pacifists:"To not distinguish the countries which are oppressed is the same as not distinguishing amongst an exploitative class and an exploited one. They who place imperialism and colonial countries on the same level, despite the democratic phrases being used to conceal the event are nothing but agents of imperialism".

 Whole swathes of the so-called far left have openly supported NATO in Yugoslavia and the remainder have become neutralists. only a small number of groups have supported the Serbs, not because of their leaders as is the common allegation, but despite them, as we never believed, from day one we were dealing with an expansionist Serb leadership intent on building a Greater Serbia as was commonly circulated by imperialist propaganda and its 'left' appendages'.

 It was the great 'nationalist' Milosevic who signed the Dayton Peace Accords and the great 'nationalist' Karadisc who is obliged to implement them... Greece and the New World Order The Spartacist League asserts that the "Greek government is the only member of NATO which has consistently and conspicuously supported the Serbian cause in the wars of ex-Yugoslavia" a sentiment derived straight from imperialist propaganda which defies the reality on the ground: Greece is participating in the NATO occupation force through army personell and a frigate as well as having its bases on standby when things heat up.

A proletarian anti-capitalist movement in Greece would not grant the Greek bourgeoisie with extra-terrestrial powers, asserting it can act on its own on the global arena, implying its not totally and utterly dependent on and subservient to the imperialist powers. What 'drives' the Greek bourgeoisie (or for that matter any other bourgeoisie of similar class development) aren't 'expansionist' plans to take over Turkey, Slavic Macedonia or Albania, but decisions taken on its behalf in Washington or Brussels who represent the interests of transnational corporations whose class basis are less and less based on one country but dependent more on intergrated international relations with geo-political considerations taking priority. What does that mean in practice? If war develops between Greece and Turkey, the US will impose itself through a whole gamut of covert and open policies (such as it already done in Iraq eg. no-fly zones, mediation, supporting a reactionary section of the population etc.) We have entered an era when imperialism is imposing a special type of dictatorship (different initially from Hitler's but no less sinister) in the name of the 'international community' using the UN and NATO; economically based on the needs of transnationals whose aim is to supass the nation state; being advanced from three centres, USA, United Europe and Japan.

Which 'Greek' bourgeoisie is the Spartacist League so concerned about leading to a 'nationalist' blood bath in the Balkans? Only self-blinded or intellectual prisoners of dead ideologies can descibe the Greek bourgeoisie as a force for nationalism ready to defend with all its forces its 'national interests'. When it is clear the current bourgeoisie has nothing to lose from a Bosniasation of Greece. One doesn't need always to dwell on the past, but a striking case in point is the fact that the Minister of National Defence under the Metaxas dictatorship, Tsolagoglou became the quisling Prime Minister for the Germans when they occupied Greece during WWII. So much for the Spartacist 'theory' of nationalistic semi-colonial bourgeoisie's in the era of imperialism...

Does the Spartacist League believe Milosevic's Serbia, the Greek bourgeoisie and the Russian rulers to be part of a secret global Christian Orthodox religious conspiracy, like Islam hell-bent on overthrowing Western liberal values? Are we simply dealing with religious and nationalist conflicts just as imperialist propaganda asserts, in order to justify the intervention of the 'civilised' West? Or are we dealing with the implementation of a barbaric New World Order whose eventual aim is to wipe out any trace of any national states, traditions, cultures in the name of multi-ethnic cosmopolitan internationalism?

Proletarian internationalism is not built in the stalinist manner of tail-ending your own bourgeoisie in its battle against 'dark nationalist forces', but in being clear who your opponent is and in which direction they are heading. Your reply was not based on an honest attempt at replying to the points in my letter, but an attempt half-hearted at that, to placate differences which have erupted internally due to your increasingly sectarian abstention from the class struggle, which is reflected in your adoption of ideas and policies of the state-capitalists of yesteryear.

fraternally, 

V.N.Gelis 

September '96