The New Cold War and the Tasks of CommunismThis is a very long piece and I shall post it in daily installments.
No. 11/63, XI.2021
Thirty years later, the term "cold war" is again full of newspapers and on monitor screens. In 1991, the first communist state in the history of mankind was destroyed, and the forces of world reaction in the form of the collective West hoped to strangle the remaining communist countries one by one. But the imperialists never succeeded in doing this. And since 2014, thanks to its stable growth, China began to actively increase its economic influence abroad, including pushing the positions of American and European corporations. And this competition within the framework of the principle of peaceful coexistence is increasingly reducing the potential of imperialism.
China, with the help of its economic projects, is also expanding its political influence throughout the world, which is perceived by the West as an "expansion" that must be stopped by all possible means, and the strengthening of the People's Liberation Army of China is called a threat to the so-called "international security". Of course, the growth of China's political influence should not be considered the growth of the influence of communism, as long as we are talking only about the influence and authority of China as a world power. However, already today bourgeois governments are forced to somehow respond at least to the CCP’s successes in overcoming poverty and stopping the pandemic, which means that the bourgeoisie is afraid that the proletarian masses, looking at the example of China, may think about the class nature of their own governments.
The US declaration of a cold war against China, like for the first time in relation to the USSR, is defensive in nature. Imperialism was afraid of the USSR, and today it is afraid of China and, not being able to inflict a military defeat on the enemy, seeks to restrain the growth of its influence by preventive measures. But there are also differences between the new Cold War and the old one. The rapid development of China creates conditions for the unification of forces around it, aimed at changing the world dictate of the collective West. This formula is one step below the formation of a camp of peace and progress from the countries of socialism and people's democracies, but it may turn out to be more stable in the current conditions.
Now, more than ever, it is clear that the "great powers" of the West, representing an insignificant minority of countries, are trying by inertia to dictate their will to the rest of the world, not wanting to take into account the fact that the international situation has changed. And here their reactionary essence is maximally manifested - restraining the development of the rest of the world, planting the most obscurantist forms of worldviews and decaying examples of bourgeois culture.
After the collapse of the USSR, the United States and its NATO allies, under the guise of fighting international terrorism and establishing Western-style democracies, found a new pretext to fight against movements that set themselves the goal of achieving national liberation. And now that China has become the largest partner of African countries, the West is talking about the need to sharply intensify the fight against international terrorism on the "dark continent". Similar processes are taking place in Latin America, where the United States is trying with all its might to prevent the implementation of China's joint projects with all countries that resist Washington's dictates. Not to mention the pressure on the countries of Southeast Asia, where the West is trying to organize a civil war in Myanmar, as well as set India, Japan, and the Philippines against China, using the Taiwan factor. Now the fight against China is turning into a fight against many countries. The goal is still the same - to divide the world into parts and restore the hegemony of the Euro-American oligarchy. Behind the slogans of freedom and human rights one can feel the vile smell of Hitlerism.
At the moment, communist China is becoming an alternative force to Western imperialism. China declares its interest in the development of other peoples and countries. Will the rise of China's influence help spread Marxism and fight for communism?
Introduction
Comrade Stalin in his report to the activists of the Moscow organization of the RCP(b) pointed out:
“After the victory of October, we entered the third strategic period, the third stage of the revolution, aimed at overcoming the bourgeoisie on a world scale. How long this period will last is hard to say. It is certain, at any rate, that it will be long, just as it is certain that it will have its ebb and flow. The world revolutionary movement has now entered a period of ebb of revolution, and this ebb, for a number of reasons, which I will discuss below, must be replaced by a tide that may end in the victory of the proletariat, but may not end in victory, but be replaced by a new ebb, which, in turn, must be replaced by a new tide of revolution. The liquidators of the current period say that the lull that has come is the end of the world revolution. But they're wrong, just like they've been wrong before
Such are the fluctuations within each stage of the revolution, within each strategic period.
What do these fluctuations say? Do they say that Lenin's thesis about a new epoch of the world revolution has lost or may lose its significance? Of course not! They only say that the revolution usually develops not along a straight ascending line, in the order of an uninterrupted growth of upsurge, but by zigzags, by way of advances and retreats, by way of ebb and flow, tempering the strength of the revolution in the course of development and preparing its final victory.
These words were spoken by Stalin in 1925, after the end of the First World War and the Civil War. But this does not prevent us from assessing the situation in our time, guided by the theoretical provisions outlined in this report.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, we can state the ebb of the revolutionary movement and the stabilization of capitalism in favor of the forces of world reaction, which managed to temporarily get rid of its main enemy and delay its death. At the same time, the destruction of the USSR and the socialist camp did not at all lead to the complete destruction of the world revolution camp. What remains are the PRC, the DPRK, the SRV, the Lao PDR and Cuba, whose existence and development not only irritates world imperialism, but also threatens it.
It is important to clarify what is meant by stabilization. Stalin writes:
“But what is stabilization? Is this not stagnation, and if stabilization is stagnation, can it be applied to the Soviet system? No. Stabilization is not stagnation. Stabilization is the consolidation of this position and further development. World capitalism has not only entrenched itself on the basis of this provision. He goes further and develops forward, expanding his sphere of influence and multiplying his wealth. It is not true that capitalism cannot develop, that the theory of the decay of capitalism put forward by Lenin in his Imperialism precludes, as it were, the development of capitalism. Lenin fully proved in his pamphlet on Imperialism that the growth of capitalism does not abolish, but presupposes and prepares for the progressive decay of capitalism.
We thus have two stabilizations. At one pole, capitalism is stabilizing, consolidating the position it has achieved and developing further. At the other extreme, the Soviet system is stabilizing, securing the positions it has won and moving forward along the path to victory.
Who wins - that's the whole point."
After the destruction of the USSR and the socialist camp, a new stage began in the history of Western neo-colonialism and the struggle against countries that turned out to be defenseless against aggressors. All this time, since 1991, the United States and NATO countries have been organizing military incursions, coups d'état, and overthrowing objectionable governments. Those who put up fierce resistance found themselves under the most severe economic sanctions, trade blockade, and political pressure. Without understanding this general picture, it is impossible to understand the logic of confrontation in any country in the world, taking into account its specific specifics.
As Stalin pointed out:
“Stabilization under capitalism, temporarily strengthening capital, at the same time inevitably leads to an aggravation of the contradictions of capitalism: a) between the imperialist groups of different countries; b) between the workers and capitalists of each country; c) between imperialism and the colonial peoples of all countries.
Of the signs listed by Stalin, two can be distinguished at the moment.
First, objectively, there is an increase in contradictions both between the main Western imperialists in the person of the United States, the European Union, England on the one hand, as well as the Russian Federation, Turkey, Iran as the imperialists of the "second echelon".
Secondly, there are objective contradictions between the proletariat and the capitalists. But, in the absence of a communist activist capable of bringing an element of consciousness into the element of discontent, this confrontation does not go beyond economic demands, and therefore is not dangerous for the bourgeoisie.
As for the third sign - the contradiction between imperialism and colonial peoples - due to the fact that the international agenda has changed significantly since 1926, today there are no colonies in their old sense and they are formally declared "independent countries". But this does not mean at all that colonialism has disappeared, it has also changed in accordance with the spirit of the times. This colonialism in a new guise can be seen in Africa and Latin America, where Western corporations exploit poor countries. Of course, Western "human rights activists" do not see any of this, and if they do, then for show and by the way.
In the current conditions, it should be pointed out that in every communist country a class struggle is taking place under the conditions of both specific internal circumstances and external imperialist pressure. Of course, on the one hand, this strengthens the ties between the peoples of these countries, since without efforts in this direction, imperialism will have the opportunity to split their relations. But on the other hand, the communist countries do not have support among the proletariat in the West, since the local broad masses are under the influence of the oligarchy, which is trying with all its might to cultivate chauvinism and anti-communist sentiments. Due to these circumstances, the communist countries have to strengthen contacts with anti-Western regimes, which strengthens the positions of both sides. For example,
Based on the foregoing, we can conditionally divide the world map into several parts:
1. Communist countries, since the power in all these countries is exercised by the communist party. Within each of these countries there is an internal struggle between progressive forces advocating an uncompromising struggle against capitalism and reactionary forces aimed at ending this struggle. At the moment, these countries are not so much working on building communism as they are busy with the task of surviving in the face of economic and political pressure from the West.
2. The camp of reaction is the countries of the collective West led by the USA. Thanks to the actions of China, this camp also lacks unity, but is still united by the desire to maintain its dominance at any cost.
3. Anti-Western regimes occupy an intermediate position. On the one hand, they are partners with the PRC and other communist countries solely because of the existing contradictions with the countries of the West, since the local bourgeoisie is interested in maintaining their power, and hence capitalism, with all the ensuing consequences. On the other hand, they can successfully trade with Europe and the United States and at the same time have little or no political contacts with them.
The bourgeoisie of these regimes is naturally split into conditional "patriots" who strive to maintain power on the basis of an oligarchic consensus under the established state monopoly, and "Westerners" who rely on oligarchs completely controlled by the West.
Some of these regimes, like those in Venezuela or Syria, are left-wing, semi-socialist. Others, like the Russian Federation, are openly hostile to communism and are only engaged in the policy of pacifying the proletariat and shaping its imperialist thinking. There are also those, like the IRI, who resist Western imperialism, but at the same time are absolutely reactionary by nature due to the dominance of religion. Thus, despite all the differences, these regimes are united in resisting Western imperialism, maintaining capitalism in their countries and cooperating with communist countries.
Speaking more broadly, the participants in the global world political agenda can be divided into two camps:
1. Western. It includes all the countries of the collective West and their satellites around the world. Despite internal political fragmentation, its main striking force is still the NATO bloc. But the increasingly pronounced centrifugal tendencies in the European Union itself, as well as the accumulation of contradictions between the United States, Britain and the European Union, indicate that NATO, despite statements about unity, will not last long in the historical perspective. At the same time, for the survival of the West, it is necessary to destroy the existing system of international relations, since within its framework it is not able to maintain its positions on an equal footing and objectively loses to China.
2. Anti-Western. China plays the main role here as the main economic, political and military force interested in eliminating Western hegemony. Other communist countries are also interested in this, as well as auxiliary forces in the form of bourgeois regimes of an anti-Western orientation. Both the former and the latter are interested in their survival, but the class goals differ dramatically. Before the parties of the communist countries, new tasks arose - to survive in the new cold war and not allow the destruction of the gained gains. Bourgeois anti-Western regimes, by their very nature, are interested in preserving capitalism and at this historical moment are situational partners of the PRC.
Now we are faced with the task of characterizing the current world agenda in a Marxist way and pointing out where history is heading.
Based on the ongoing processes in world politics, one can characterize the current historical moment:
1. The intensive development of China, the growth of its economic and political influence has put Western capitalism in front of a serious threat of being squeezed out of world markets, losing profits, and hence economic and political influence.
2. China, by investing in the development of the countries of Asia, Africa and South America, as well as expanding cooperation with them in the economy and politics, strengthens its influence and thereby removes them from the western zone of influence. Of course, Beijing's policy in some way "binds" these countries to itself. But under the circumstances, it cannot be otherwise.
3. Under such conditions, there is no question of a revolutionary process, but the actions of the PRC, the Russian Federation, the IRI and the DPRK, as well as other anti-Western regimes in the fight against American imperialism, narrow its capabilities and “food base”, which serves the cause of peace.
It is from this point that we should begin consideration of the international agenda and the new Cold War aimed at slowing down the development of China, which, having successfully carried out the exit of its capital abroad with the global Belt and Road project, has stood in the way of the US imperialist agenda and is gathering around itself more supporters. But the new cold war that the United States has declared to China is only a prologue to a new world war, which will be significantly different from the previous two. And full-scale preparation for which it is already impossible to hide.
New confrontation
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's July 23, 2020 speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, which identified the CCP as the main threat to US national security, should not be taken as a declaration of war on communism. At the moment we are talking about the confrontation between the two world powers. Moreover, the PRC does not set as its goal the spread of communism, although it was precisely this that Pompeo intimidated the entire “free world”. At the same time, the confrontation between communism and decaying imperialism has been the general line of world history since 1917. But at the moment the question has been raised of reducing the potential of the main forces of world reaction, which should create more favorable conditions for the struggle for communism in the future.
As I already wrote in an article on the international position of the PRC on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC , Pompeo's speech
“in fact, it is not only a declaration of the Cold War, but also an acknowledgment of the defeat of the US ruling circles in an attempt to achieve the degeneration of the Chinese regime through the “soft power” of market relations and the introduction of bourgeois values. The growing economic, military and political power of China frankly frightens the American oligarchy, which is no longer able to compete in the world market with Chinese corporations. Partly out of impotence, it unleashed the Cold War, which began with the initiation of a series of Maidan coups in pro-Chinese countries and the pressure of those countries that actively trade with China.
The next clear signals that the West sees China as the main adversary were the G7 summit in Cornwall from June 11 to 13 and the NATO summit on June 14, 2021 in Brussels during the European tour of US President Joseph Biden. Thus, the G7 expressed its intention to restrain China's economic development, which "undermines the fair and transparent functioning of the world economy", that is, the economic domination of Western imperialism. Is it worth saying that this statement is a logical continuation of Pompeo's speech? The assessment of the PRC as a "systemic challenge" was developed in the Strategic Concept at the NATO summit:
“China's industrial policy, as well as its strategy to merge the military and civilian sectors, are key components of its systemic challenges. China's ambitions and offensive stance constitute a systemic challenge to the generally accepted international order, as well as to areas related to the security of the alliance."
As reported in the media:
“It notes that the modernization of the Chinese armed forces, covering its nuclear capabilities, naval forces and missile forces, “poses new risks and a potential threat to NATO’s strategic stability.” “China poses serious risks in telecommunications, aerospace and cyberspace.”
In short, in order not to pose a “threat” to the G7 and NATO, China simply has to give up development.
The NATO Secretary General also made another batch of accusations:
“In recent years, we have seen a significant build-up of military power. China is investing heavily in developing its potential, including nuclear, in modern weapons systems. China does not share our values, oppresses the democratic processes in Hong Kong and minorities within the country, uses modern technology, social networks, facial recognition systems to spy on the population on an unprecedented scale. China's actions are increasingly affecting the interests of the members of the alliance."
As reported in the media:
“According to him, “China is approaching us, we see it in cyberspace, in Africa, in the Arctic, China is investing heavily in critical infrastructure on the territory of our countries, trying to control it.” The Secretary General added that we are talking, in particular, about 5G systems. “Therefore, the NATO 2030 agenda is very important for stability, investment in new technologies, security in cyberspace.”
The summits in Cornwall and Brussels outlined the direction of the policy of the imperialist Western bourgeoisie until 2030. The decisive word on the future of NATO should be the strategic concept of the Alliance, which will be presented next year in Madrid. But subsequent events called into question the unity in the ranks of the West, which, of course, will affect the strategic concept of NATO.
The indiscriminate flight from Afghanistan only showed that behind the external image of unity there are numerous contradictions between the United States, Britain and the European Union. In the bottom line, Stoltenberg was forced to state that the alliance needs to investigate the causes of what happened. But the investigation will in no way stop the objective process of his crisis. The collapse in Afghanistan showed that the collective West still imagines itself to be the master of the entire planet, but in fact it is no longer such. And therefore will do everything to prove the opposite. The quarrel with France over the formation of the anti-Chinese bloc AUKUS further aggravated the situation within NATO. The so-called "summit of democracies" convened by the United States, of course, also made its contribution.
Although the role of imperialism in the decay and self-destruction of the CPSU should not be exaggerated, the previous Cold War ended with the destruction of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, as a result of which world reaction, led by the United States, took a course towards building a global "new world order". The court philosopher of American imperialism, Francis Fukuyama, declared the so-called “end of history”, when liberalism will conquer the whole world and soon the last pockets of resistance of the American empire will fall. But the Fukuyamas come and go, and history continues on its way, and no imperialist is able to stop the movement of mankind towards progress and communism, even by killing millions of people. Now, faced with China 30 years later, the United States, through Biden, again rants about the moral right to shepherd the peoples,
“Call it mysticism if you like, but I always believed that there was some divine plan according to which America was located between the oceans, and it was searched for and found by extremely courageous people who love freedom without limit,” these are the words of Ronald Reagan.
“Whether we like it or not, we must recognize that our victory has placed on the American people the burden of responsibility for the future leadership of the world,” and this is Harry Truman.
“Fate has given our country the responsibility of leading the free world,” and this is Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
“What we are trying to do is maintain the order based on international rules in which our countries have invested so much for so many decades for the sake of, I would argue, not only our citizens, but people all over the world, including, by the way, China” , - and these are the words of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, said during a press conference with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on May 4 this year.
As you can see, the Americans still believe that they can think for the whole world and decide for all the peoples and nations what is bad for them and what is good.
And here is what the president of the board of the National Industrial Association, Virgil Jordan, said at a conference of the Association of Investor Banks of America in 1940:
“Whatever the outcome of the war, the United States has firmly embarked on the path of imperialism both in international affairs and in all other areas of its life, with all the opportunities, responsibilities and dangers that follow from this ... Post-war England will, at best, become a junior partner of the new Anglo-Saxon imperialism in which the power of the United States will become the center of gravity. In other words, the economic power, the prestige, the scepter of the empire will go to the USA. We can be frightened by an unfamiliar and forbidden word - imperialism, which applies to everything we do. Therefore, in the spirit of the new fashion, we will cover this word with a vague phrase, like “protection of the hemisphere.”
I think it would be wrong to write about the current confrontation between the PRC and the United States without devoting a few paragraphs to the anti-communist doctrines of the American reaction during the confrontation with the Soviet Union. Therefore, I will quote a short excerpt from O. Feofanov's book "Aggression of Lies" to refresh the memory, to which the reaction is ready to go in order to destroy communism:
“After the Second World War, when the Soviet Union proved its might, its moral and political unity, American imperialism, relying on a temporary monopoly of possession of atomic weapons, came out in 1947 with the Truman Doctrine, known as the “doctrine of containing communism.” And soon after, in March 1948, top secret Memorandum No. 7 of the National Security Council of the United States stated: “The defeat of the forces of world communism, led by the Soviets, is vital to the security of the United States. This goal cannot be achieved with a defensive policy. Therefore, the United States must take the lead in organizing a worldwide counter-offensive to mobilize and strengthen our own forces and the anti-communist forces of the non-Soviet world, as well as to undermine the power of the communist forces.
In the early 1950s, Eisenhower's Secretary of State, J. F. Dulles, formulated the "doctrine of the rollback of communism" or "the liberation of Eastern Europe." These were the years when the USA began to organize and support counter-revolutionary demonstrations in the socialist countries of Europe.
The globalist tendencies of US foreign policy were reflected in 1979 in the Carter Doctrine, or "the doctrine of the protection of vital interests." This doctrine openly formulated the method of reprisal against communism - nuclear war. Declaring that communism is a kind of "deviation", "an abnormal way of life for a person," Carter signed the directive of the National Security Council No. 59 in the fall of 1980, which has since been the military-political doctrine of the Pentagon. The strategic goal of the United States in relation to the USSR is formulated in it unambiguously: it is the destruction of socialism as a socio-political system, and the means of achieving this goal are declared to be the first to use nuclear weapons, to achieve superiority over the USSR in a nuclear war and to end it on favorable terms for the United States ...
It is known that, speaking in the British Parliament in the summer of 1982, Ronald Reagan proclaimed a "crusade" against communism.
In April 1984, the President of the United States signed National Security Council Directive 138, authorizing the legality of so-called "preemptive strikes" abroad, ostensibly to "fight terrorism." This directive became known as the Reagan Doctrine, "the doctrine of neo-globalism." It combines anti-Soviet propaganda with slanderous attacks on the forces of national liberation. Based on this doctrine, local military confrontations are provoked. This is done in the name of realizing the hegemonic, global aspirations of US imperialism.
The essence of the doctrine was clearly defined by Business Week commentator John Pearson:
"Reagan wants to be the first president to achieve what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proclaimed, but failed to achieve in the 1950s: 'roll back communism on a global scale'."
To better understand what is happening now, it is necessary to characterize the confrontation between the USSR and the USA from 1945 to 1991. So the difference between the cold wars of different eras will be clear.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War and World War II, the world revolution camp gained a strategic advantage, as the victory over fascism made the ideas of communism even more popular all over the world. Consequently, in such a situation, the Soviet Union had to go over to supporting revolutionary movements aimed at fighting world imperialism. But instead, after the death of Stalin, the foreign policy of the USSR ceased to be offensive.
To what class changes in politics did the vulgar understanding of the principle of peaceful coexistence lead - this is the denial of the struggle for the destruction of classes both within the USSR and throughout the world. The foreign policy of the CPSU, being a product of revisionism in theory, inevitably led to the betrayal of the interests of the working class and the world revolution in practice. Although it was filed in the manner of following the Leninist theory.
The article "The Proletarian Revolution and Khrushchev's Revisionism ", published in the People's Daily on March 31, 1964, gave an apt description of the idea of Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence:
“In the period from the 20th to the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev’s revisionism with its line on the so-called “peaceful transition”, “peaceful coexistence” and “peaceful competition” took shape in a complete system. Considering his good as a "new creativity", Khrushchev slips it everywhere and everywhere. But in fact, there is nothing new here, it is just a compilation of Browder revisionism, the theory of "structural reforms" and Titoite revisionism, which have undergone some reshaping and embellishment, and nothing more. Internationally, Khrushchev's revisionism manifests itself in capitulation to US imperialism; in the imperialist and capitalist countries, in capitulation to the reactionary ruling classes; and in the socialist countries - in encouraging the development of capitalist forces.
If the CPSU had not been reborn after Stalin's death, there is no doubt that the camp of the world revolution would have preserved its integrity and the struggle against capitalism would have continued. The Soviet Union defeated fascism in the Great Patriotic War and acquired unprecedented international prestige in the eyes of all peoples. But having embarked on the path of revisionism and concessions to capitalism in domestic and foreign policy, the CPSU split the forces of communism, after which it itself went into oblivion. In such conditions, solving the problems of survival, the CCP agreed to cooperate with the United States. The CPC hoped to use this to reduce its own technological gap by increasing the means of production, while the United States hoped to achieve the rebirth of the PRC through market relations. As a result, in 2020 the United States had to admit that they failed to achieve the desired result and declare a new cold war.
old question
In 1917, humanity entered the era of world revolution, which will last until communism is victorious in all countries. At the moment, there is a temporary ebb of the world revolution, and it may seem to some, not very perceptive individuals, that there is no struggle between communism and capitalism. But it is not. The ebb does not mean the end of the struggle. Vice versa. It is during the ebb tide that the forces accumulate that later will produce an “assault”, during which communism will regain its lost positions and go on the offensive against capitalism.
The confrontation continues, but in a different form than before. The American State Department is well aware that it is about confronting communism, and they hope to defeat the PRC in the same way as the USSR. But the circumstances in which China finds itself are fundamentally different from the circumstances in which the Soviet Union found itself. As you can see, the American oligarchy is acting against the Chinese people in exactly the same way as it worked against the Soviet people, but this work has not yet yielded real results.
While China takes a passive position, but the "great rift" that UN Secretary General António Guterres spoke about earlier will happen sooner or later, since the American bourgeoisie still sees itself exclusively as the world's chief sheriff and wants to get rid of the international organizations that hamper its actions, created after World War II. And this rupture cannot occur except through war and the destruction of previously existing international organizations. Therefore, the question of WHAT is the fight for is obvious to us. But this is not so obvious to our opponents.
After the term "cold war" returned to the pages of the world and, in particular, the Russian press, it began to be actively used to characterize the rather chilled Russian-American relations. Thus, the mass consumer of Russian media information did not notice the substitution. Since 1917 there has been a struggle between the dying but still strong capitalism and the young forces of communism. At the same time, in modern popular Russian literature and the media, one can come across an approach according to which the period of the first Cold War between the USSR and the USA is presented as a confrontation between the USA and abstract Russia, which is a lie. But the fact is that the current cold war is inextricably linked with the previous one. Therefore, in the context of this work, it is important to show their relationship and the real reasons.
The Cold War from 1945 to 1991 is an organic consequence of the results of the Great Patriotic War and, more broadly, the Second World War, since German fascism, nurtured with the money of American and European capitalists, failed to liquidate the Soviet Union by military means. Of course, modern Russian historiography is not satisfied with the Marxist formulations and assessments of those events, so its representatives are working on alternative interpretations. As an example of how the public is misinformed about the background of the war of German fascism against the Soviet people, one can cite a fragment of a lecture by the famous historian Alexei Isaev. In an introductory video about the Nuremberg trials on YouTube, Isaev said the following:
“Rosenberg, one of the ideologists of Nazism and one of Hitler's closest associates, received the right to govern the occupied territories. He entered into this work with enthusiasm, producing the very papers that would later become the accusations at Nuremberg. Rosenberg's secret memorandum is dated October 25, 1942: "In the East, Germany is waging a war for the realization of three goals - a war to destroy Bolshevism, a war to destroy the Great Russian Empire and, finally, a war to acquire colonial territories for the purposes of colonization and economic exploitation." As we can see, this is not about fighting communism as an ideology. With all the hatred of the Nazis for the Bolsheviks, for the Communists, this was only the tip of the iceberg in the plans that they hatched.
In modern Russian patriotic discourse, there are many slanderers who are trying to distort the truth about the Cold War period. But even those historians and "public opinion leaders" who pursue the goal of destroying the heaps of liberal lies are also trying to convince us that the war of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany was not at all a struggle of capitalism against communism, but a German war for the destruction of Russian statehood. These are the features of the modern conjuncture. With one hand, Russian historians are fighting against Western falsifiers, and with the other they are engaged in exactly the same falsification. Only the motives differ.
So is it possible to agree with the above characterization of Isaev? Of course not. Its evidence base here is akin to the argumentation of Putin, who spoke out against the ideologization of the feat of the Soviet people, which I wrote about in the article “On the Reconciliation of Reds and Whites.” The fact is that with such an approach, the most important thing remains unclear - what did the Soviet people fight for? Moreover, it is absolutely not clear how one can fight against Bolshevism, destroying the peoples who build communism, and at the same time not fight against communism as such? What kind of twisted logic is this? It turns out that if we remove the semi-forbidden word “communism”, which is so annoying to modern Russian historians, then all the exploits of the soldiers of the Red Army and our heroic partisans immediately depreciate. And what is the difference between the conditional "patriotic" and "liberal" approaches? Yes, nothing. The essence is the same, although the signs are different. In addition, it is overlooked that Hitler declared war on Bolshevism on January 27, 1932 in Düsseldorf, where 300 of the largest industrialists staged a kind of casting for the role of Fuhrer.
“You cannot create a strong and healthy Germany if 50% of the population is Bolshevik-minded,” Hitler said at the time. There is not even a hint of a war against the Soviet Union yet.
In addition, it is impossible not to notice that it is inconvenient for Isaev to think about the war against Bolshevism, he hesitates and moves on to the more convenient Rosenberg thesis about the war against the “Great Russian Empire”.
The Nazis claimed that the USSR was an example of a Great Russian empire, and our real Great Russian imperials believe that Russia within the USSR was a cash cow for non-Russian peoples. They are generally sure that the Russians in the USSR were the oppressed people, either the Bolsheviks, or the Jews, or the Caucasians. This discrepancy between the two varieties of fascists is due to the fact that their original theses about the essence of Soviet power are absolutely false.
Moreover, it is possible to conduct a thought experiment by removing the factor of Bolshevism from the interwar political alignments. Let's assume that in place of the USSR there really is a "Great Russian empire". Would Hitler have come to power in this case, would the Anglo-Saxon imperialists pump money into Germany? Of course not, this would make no sense, because this "Great Russian empire" would threaten their interests only locally, in certain regions. Another thing is the threat of communism, the threat of the creation of the World Soviet Union with the corresponding loss of the property of the oligarchy.
And now to the era between 1945 and 1991. More precisely, how modern political experts “backdating” draw up the confrontation between the USSR and the USA in order to demonstrate how close the approaches of German fascism, American imperialism and the ideologists of the modern Russian Federation are to the answer to the question of why the Soviet people fought in the Great Patriotic War and for that there was a fight in the cold war.
As an example, let's take A. Okorokov's book “USSR vs. USA. Psychological war. Open the chapter "Cold War" and read:
“Thus, we can say that the Cold War grew out of the results of the “hot” war - the Second World War. And for this reason alone, as the historian and political scientist rightly notes, Doctor of History. ON THE. Narochnitskaya, it could not be a confrontation between the "free world" and "totalitarian communism" or the class struggle of world imperialism and the "stronghold of peace and socialism." According to N.A. Narochnitskaya, if, after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Greater Russia could throw off its communist ideology and be reborn as the Russian Empire, the Cold War would still take place. For the reason that its main aspect was not the “fight against communism”, but the fight against “Russian imperialism”, moreover, on the very territory of historical Russia.
The fact that the Cold War was aimed at destroying not the communist regime, but the Russian traditional statehood is clearly evidenced by the later statements of famous American politicians. They belong to the so-called period of the victory of the “Western democracies” over the Soviet Union.”
So, with a light stroke of the pen and the selection of the necessary quotes, it is “proved” that after the Second World War there was a struggle not against communism, which began to spread throughout the world, but against some kind of “Russian traditional statehood”. As if there were never wars in Vietnam, in China, Korea, there was no revolution in Cuba. There, too, did the United States fight against Russian statehood? Not to mention how the United States manually installed fascist regimes in Latin America, just to prevent the communists or left-wing politicians like Salvador Allende from coming to power. Apparently, by providing diplomatic and military support to the Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese and Koreans, the CPSU expanded the zone of influence of a certain “Russian empire”. This is how the opinion of this or that historical character and, even worse, of some political scientist, is presented as a proven fact. With this approach, building an evidence base does not need to be dealt with at all. Today, using this technology, books can be baked like pies.
But the pinnacle of the evidence base in this chapter is a reference to a quote from the famous fascist Zbigniew Brzezinski:
“Even more revealing is the statement of the Secretary of the Trilateral Commission, the famous American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski:
“Russia is a defeated power. She lost a titanic fight. And to say “it was not Russia, but the Soviet Union” means to run away from reality. It was Russia, called the Soviet Union. She challenged the US. She was defeated. Now there is no need to feed illusions about Russia being a great power. We need to discourage this way of thinking ... Russia will be fragmented and under guardianship.
I have always marveled at the stupidity of some people who stubbornly turn a blind eye to what is happening and construct their own alternate reality as they go. Narochitskaya and Brzezinski, apparently, from the category of just such characters. It is useless to look for logic in their reflections; they think about the Soviet Union in exactly the same way. And I know why - because they are pathological anti-communists.
Rosenberg, Narochitska, Brzezinski, being the ideological servants of individual detachments of the national bourgeoisie, view the world exclusively through the prism of consciousness shaped by reactionary ideology. So it was throughout history with the reactionary classes, who perceived the historical rival solely through the prism of their worldview, beyond the boundaries of which they were not able to go.
The open denial that fascist Germany, and then the United States, fought specifically against communism allows one to ignore the objective facts.
In fact, for us communists, it does not matter how the capitalists explain to themselves the struggle against communism, how they interpret and present it. Of key importance are only the facts that show that there are objective laws according to which the capitalist and communist formations function. And modern Russian figures of the ideological front are not able to assess the historical process without reference to the opinions of individuals who, in their opinion, supposedly determine this historical process. This is the stupidity in understanding the history of modern opinion leaders from numerous foundations and institutions named after themselves.
The concept of mixing different forms of class struggle is based on the similarity of the means used by the bourgeois forces. The capitalists fight each other as competitors, the bourgeois states fight each other for domination of the world market by their capitalists. This is also a class struggle between different detachments of the world-class bourgeoisie or the bourgeois classes of different countries, as it is more convenient for anyone to call it. The relations of competition between capitalists, as well as between proletarians, are absolute, while relations of cooperation or neutrality are relative. However, the specificity of the Cold War is, firstly, that the bourgeois classes of most "democratic" countries acted as a united front, and secondly, that the USSR was not a competitor to the Western bourgeoisie. The USSR did not compete with them for the redistribution of the world market, did not interfere in their internal affairs, Soviet enterprises did not compete with American or European ones inside America and Europe, and beyond their borders. On the contrary, the USSR freely sold raw materials, bought goods from Western capitalists, and always strictly fulfilled its contractual obligations. But the imperialists were haunted by the thought of the wealth of the USSR, of the opportunity to feast on Soviet industry, natural resources and the economies of Eastern Europe. The threat from the USSR came exclusively in the political field - the imperialists were afraid of the spread of communism in their countries. This was the essence of the Cold War. But the imperialists were haunted by the thought of the wealth of the USSR, of the opportunity to feast on Soviet industry, natural resources and the economies of Eastern Europe. The threat from the USSR came exclusively in the political field - the imperialists were afraid of the spread of communism in their countries. This was the essence of the Cold War. But the imperialists were haunted by the thought of the wealth of the USSR, of the opportunity to feast on Soviet industry, natural resources and the economies of Eastern Europe. The threat from the USSR came exclusively in the political field - the imperialists were afraid of the spread of communism in their countries. This was the essence of the Cold War.
It would be unforgivable not to point out to gentlemen experts the objective background of the Cold War, which they did not notice point-blank for many years, however, as they do not notice even now. And they won't notice in the future. Because for this you need to understand the historical process much deeper than at the level of evidence of a particular thesis with the help of papers and documents. V. Podguzov, explaining the absurdity of the idea of an appeal in the fight against the bourgeoisie to its own laws, noted:
“In particular, even such a serf of the American oligarchs as Z. Brzezinski is dumbfounded by the consequences that engulfed America after the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, he noted in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, the salary of American business executives was only 70 times that of the average American. Now this difference has grown to 325 times. What can be said about Brzezinski's mental and moral abilities, if he knew that in the USSR the difference between the pay of higher and lower positions did not exceed three times, and in the USA the gap was already 70 times. Was it hard to guess that the US oligarchs were fighting against the USSR precisely in order to remove all upper income limits and cut even more wool from the skins of American hamsters. No, it was necessary, as in the old cowboy joke,
Of course, today's Russian bourgeois politicians and their political scientists do not want to realize the fact that during the Great Patriotic War, and then during the Cold War, the Soviet Union fought not only and not so much for freedom and independence, but with world imperialism as the highest manifestation of capitalism.
From this follows the question: who should the proletariat follow in the future—the bourgeoisie and its ideological servants, or the Marxists? If it is for the Marxists, then we should be able to explain to everyone what the historical moment is and how it is connected with the process of the world revolution. We must be able to explain that there is no fundamental difference between Russian, American, European, Iranian, Turkish and other capitalists. The difference lies only in private interests. And the more the regional imperialists come into conflict with the West, the more they draw closer to the PRC, which only strengthens Beijing's international positions. But this does not at all cancel their essential reactionary nature. At the same time, in the West, the main leitmotif of the current Cold War is considered the idea of “opposing democracy to authoritarianism” represented by China and the Russian Federation, about which, in particular,
“Democracy is under attack today, so the US and the EU must prove to the whole world that this is the best system. We must ensure that the US and the EU provide themselves with global leadership in fighting the pandemic, economic recovery, spreading democracy and human rights around the world.”
This will be discussed in the next section.
https://prorivists.org/63_ncw1/#4
(To be continued tomorrow)