More Putinists than Putin!
Why do Putin's supporters systematically censor his words?
By Yorgos Mitralias
What's so paradoxical about the more or less fervent supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine, is that they are absolutely deafeningly silent about his most important statements concerning this war. That they even censor him! Not just him, but also his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. And why all this? In order to protect them from what they say! Which makes them more royalist than the king, or rather more Putinist than Putin!
Perhaps even more paradoxically, they're in good company, because the same thunderous declarations by Putin and Lavrov concerning their war against Ukraine are almost totally ignored by the Western "enemy" media. Obviously, for quite different reasons, but the result of these two combined "censures" is that almost everyone is unaware of what the Russian instigators and protagonists think and say about their war. The consequence - obviously deliberate - is to leave the field open to all the conspiratorial and other more or less opportunistic and fanciful "explanations" of the Kremlin tenant's motivations, which have been in circulation for two years... thanks to these supporters, but also censors, of Putin and his friends…
That is why all these fine people preferred to censor Mr. Lavrov's earth-shattering declaration that... "Israel pursues objectives similar to those of Russia"! Mr. Lavrov's statement, which is the title of his major two-hour interview with the official Russian news agencies Tass and Novosti on December 28, is explained at length, so that there can be no doubt, by the following argumentation, as summarized by Novosti:
« The declared goals of Israel in its ongoing operation against Hamas militants in Gaza seem nearly identical to Moscow’s in its campaign against the Ukrainian government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said in an interview with RIA Novosti on Thursday.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that the end goal of the IDF is the complete destruction of the Hamas movement in all its forms, as well as the elimination of all extremism in Gaza.Lavrov, however, noted that these goals seem similar to “demilitarization” and “denazification” which Moscow has been pursuing in Ukraine since it launched its offensive in February 2022 » (1).
And lest there be any doubt, here is the original sentence in question by Mr.Lavrov contained in the entire Interview posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website: "You said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Hamas must be destroyed as a whole and as a military force. It sounds like demilitarisation. He also said that extremism must be eliminated in Gaza. It sounds like denazification.". Clearly embarrassed and perplexed by Mr. Lavrov's statements, both his "left-wing friends" and his "Western enemies" preferred to hide them carefully from their audiences, so that they could continue to tell them their (un)truths about both Russia's war against Ukraine and Israel's war against the Palestinians in Gaza. In short, for once Mr. Lavrov told the truth, they censored him..
A few weeks later, on February 8, 2024, Putin gave a very important interview to the famous far-right journalist Tucker Carlson, whom persistent rumors, echoed by the American media, present as Trump's likely running mate in the November elections. Once again, Putinists of all stripes said not a word, while the Western media merely noted that the Russian president "does not want to invade Poland and Lithuania".
And yet, Putin has said some terrible things that should come as a repeated shock to any normally constituted being. Like, for example, when he seems to be rewriting the generally accepted history of the Second World War, of which here is a significant excerpt:
"In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler — it did collaborate with Hitler, you know —Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship and alliance - we have all the relevant documents in the archives, demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Konigsberg. After World War I this territory was transferred to Poland, and instead of Danzig, a city of Gdansk emerged. Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused. Still they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia. (...) So before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler and although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. As the Poles had not given the Danzig Corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1 September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland."(2)
So, if Mr. Putin is to be believed, the real culprit behind the outbreak of the Second World War was...Poland! And Mr. Hitler and his army, who he claims were so friendly to the Poles, only attacked Poland...under duress due to the intransigence of that country's leaders! In other words, Putin takes at face value, adopts and re-proposes to us what Hitler himself said at the time to justify his invasion of Poland! But what's even more mind-boggling is that this outrageous absolution of Hitler and his Third Reich comes from the same Mr. Putin who keeps talking about the need to "denazify" Ukraine in order to justify his war against that country! It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the various Putinists and other apologists for the Russian invasion of Ukraine haven't breathed a word about it...
It's no coincidence that Tucker Carlson, Mr. Putin's American interviewer, formulates his questions by constantly referring to the latter's "historic" televised address of February 22, 2022, in which he presented to his compatriots the reason for the military invasion of Ukraine he was to unleash a few hours later. Well, two years on, both the "left-wing friends" and the "Western enemies" of Putin and his war on Ukraine pretend to be completely unaware of what Putin himself actually said on that fateful day, for one simple reason: so that they can tell their own - often farcical - versions of the story, which bear absolutely no relation to reality. And to dispel any doubts and refresh fading memories, here's what we wrote two years ago to the day, in an article that gave the protagonist of this tragedy the floor, Vladimir Putin, who knows better than anyone else how to tell the profoundly reactionary and imperialist reasons for his war against Ukraine and its people...
Notes
1. See our article "Sergei Lavrov: "Israel pursues objectives similar to those of Russia": https://oaklandsocialist.com/2024/01/22/sergei-lavrov-russian-foreign-minister-israel-pursues-objectives-similar-to-those-of-russia/
2. See the video of the entire interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LmH3ARlnCM
Putin: “Lenin is the author of today’s Ukraine”
Or how all this is the fault of...Lenin and the Bolsheviks!
By Yorgos Mitralias
What would you say if we stopped talking about Putin, his geostrategic projects and his political visions, and if we took the trouble to let the main person concerned, Putin himself, tell us about it? How about stop imagining what he thinks and what he wants to do by invading Ukraine, and instead, give him the floor to explain it all to us first hand?
But, let’s start with a quiz: what do Putin’s Western anti-communist enemies and Putin’s leftist defenders have in common? The answer is that both perceive Putin’s Russia as a certain “continuation” of the USSR. The first to criticize and condemn it, the second to approve and defend it. However, both count without their host, who in this case is none other than Putin himself. So we found and read his historic speech of February 22, in which he explained “at length and in detail”, for an hour and a half (!), the reasons for the war he declared against Ukraine. And the result of this reading was extremely revealing: what Putin thinks and says is diametrically opposed to everything his Western enemies and left-wing admirers say. Putin hates the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks and, in particular, Vladimir Lenin, more than anything else! So let’s listen to what he says at the beginning of his speech, which he warns will be “long and detailed”:
“So let me start with the fact that modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia, or more precisely, by Bolshevik and Communist Russia. The process began almost immediately after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his comrades-in-arms did it in a very crude way to Russia itself - by secession, by ripping off parts of its own historical territories.”
And to make it clearer, Putin adds these phrases worthy of a nostalgic of the tsarist regime:
“From the point of view of the historical destiny of Russia and its people, the Leninist principles of state building were not only a mistake, they were, as we say, even worse than a mistake.”
Having said this, Putin takes his “logic” to the end and draws his final conclusion, which is none other than : “Bolshevik policy resulted in the emergence of Soviet Ukraine, which even today can be rightly called”Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine“ . He is the author and architect of it!” Pay attention to this sentence of Putin because what he is saying to his compatriots is that his war against Ukraine is, no more and no less, a war against “Lenin’s creation”! Obviously, neither Putin’s Western anti-communist enemies, nor his left-wing apologists have shown the slightest inclination to highlight this sentence, and have preferred to bury it and pass it under silence so that it remains unknown and does not create problems for them...
So here we are at the heart of the problem, which takes us back a century, to the first years of the Soviet regime established after the victory of the October Revolution of 1917. What Putin himself says when he warns his compatriots that he will “pay special attention to the initial period of the creation of the USSR because I think it is very important for us”, since he believes that, for them to understand the reason for the war against Ukraine, "we will have to go, as they say, from afar ». And right after that, he clarifies what he means:
“Let me remind you that after the October Revolution of 1917 and the civil war that followed, the Bolsheviks began to build a new state and there was quite a bit of disagreement among them. Stalin, who in 1922 held the positions of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) and People’s Commissar for Nationalities, proposed to build the country on the principles of autonomization, that is, to give the republics - the future administrative-territorial units - broad powers as they joined the unified state.”
By referring to Stalin and his plan, Putin gets to the heart of the matter, which is none other than Lenin, whom he hates to death. And this is what he says:
“Lenin criticizes this plan and proposes to make concessions to the nationalists, as he called them at the time - the”independents". Lenin’s ideas about an essentially confederative state structure and the right of nations to self-determination up to secession formed the basis of the Soviet state: first in 1922, they were enshrined in the Declaration on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and then, after Lenin’s death, in the Constitution of the USSR of 1924 ».
We fully agree with Putin’s description. Except that we applaud the application of these “Lenin’s ideas” - and more particularly, of this damned right to secession - not only in his time but also now, and even everywhere and always, while Putin hates them viscerally. So, he wonders:
“Many questions immediately arise here. And the first of them, in fact, is the main one: why was it necessary to satisfy the ever-growing nationalist ambitions on the borders of the former empire? (...)”why was it necessary to make such generous gifts that the most ardent nationalists did not even dream of before, and on top of that to give the republics the right to separate from the single state without any conditions? At first sight, it is totally incomprehensible, it is madness".
Simple rhetorical question because Putin already knows the answer:
"But it is only at first sight. There is an explanation. After the revolution, the main task of the Bolsheviks was to retain power, that is, at any cost. For this they went to the very end: to the humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Brest, at a time when the Kaiser’s Germany and its allies were in the most difficult military and economic situation, and when the outcome of the First World War was in fact predetermined, and to satisfy all the demands, all the desires of the nationalists within the country ».
Obviously, it is absolutely inconceivable for this war monger that is Putin that the Bolsheviks accepted the “humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk” because they made their revolution to stop and not to continue the First World War butchery. Nor that the so-called... “nationalists” he so despises could be the many nations and ethnic groups oppressed by the absolutist Tsarist state, who claimed their basic right to self-determination and the democratic rights and freedoms of which they had been deprived for centuries. All this is “madness” and “odious and utopian fantasies” for the ultra-reactionary obscurantist and “Great Russian chauvinist” Putin. And that’s why he concludes his return -so revealing and didactic- to the Bolshevik past of Russia, with these so eloquent words» :
“It is very regrettable that the odious and utopian fantasies inspired by the revolution, but absolutely destructive for any normal country, were not quickly expunged from the basic, formally legal foundations on which our whole state was built.”
Conclusion? We have nothing to add when Putin himself is in total disagreement with his Western enemies and his left-wing friends who claim that his Russia is a kind of substitute for the USSR, or that he aims - for example with his war in Ukraine - to revive it! Both the former and the latter are fighting against shadows and telling us lies while making crude propaganda addressed to idiots: there is probably no more sworn anti-communist and more fierce admirer of the tsarist empire than Putin! As for how is it possible that people of the left who call themselves communists and even leninists, manage to transform this inveterate anti-communist and ultra-reactionary oligarchic capitalist that Putin is into a progressive and anti-imperialist head of state, this rather than a “mystery”, is the proof of the long way that remains to be done for the left to become truly radical and therefore credible again...