Ukraine April 2022

The Ukrainian national question and the position of the Bolshevik-Leninists

by Nadia Briante

We will synthetically present next the most important concepts of the work that we are preparing and will publish soon on the Ukrainian and Russian question, which we have been following attentively, not only since 2014 but since 1988-1989 when our current was expelled from the MAS of Argentina for wanting to go and fight in Armenia.

In the first place, we will raise the national problem in Ukraine because we cannot start to discuss the situation of Ukraine today, nor in 2014, if we do not first clarify this key issue, because Ukraine is a nation oppressed, looted and plundered by imperialism, which the bourgeois analysts and a good part of the world left want to hide, denying that there is a real protectorate. And we want to state our position which is continuity to the position of Lenin and the Bolsheviks before the national problem of the oppressed nations.

The national question in Ukraine is not a novelty, it is a historical problem, because Ukraine is a nation that could not be, a nation that arrived late to the constitution of the national states that capitalism developed in Europe in the 20th century, a nation that was subjugated by the Ottoman Empire, by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then by the Russia of the tsars, as part of that prison of nations that was Russia. And that Ukrainian national question could only be solved in the period when the Soviet and Socialist Ukraine voluntarily federated in the USSR.

Against that policy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, which proclaimed Ukraine's right to self-determination and even independence, Putin has publicly ranted in his speeches since 2014 up to today, claiming that "that policy is a time bomb against the foundations of greater Russia" and that "Ukraine's existence is Lenin's fault."

The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the national question

The Bolsheviks, who seized power in Russia in 1917 saw and understood perfectly well the Marxist thesis that "no people which helps to oppress another will be able to liberate itself". It was inadmissible, and why not to say impossible, the struggle to conquer the unity of the working class of Greater Russia with the proletariat of the nations that had been oppressed by the just overthrown tsarism, that is, to unite the working class internationally, without addressing the question of liquidating all policies of national oppression. This policy of "international unity of the proletariat taking into account the national question" is what exasperates the Bonapartist government of Russia and its infamous regime today. The reason is Putin's position is the same as that of the Czars: that these nations were part of the Russian territory...i.e., of Great Russia which oppressed them.

Lenin in his "Letter to the workers and peasants of the Ukraine on the victories over Denikin" (1919) stated:

"In Great Russia the system of landed estates has been completely abolished. The same must be done in the Ukraine, and the Soviet power of the Ukrainian workers and peasants must effect the complete abolition of the landed estates and the complete liberation of the Ukrainian workers and peasants from all oppression by the landowners, and from the landowners themselves.

But apart from this task, and a number of others which confronted and still confront both the Great-Russian and the Ukrainian working masses, Soviet power in the Ukraine has its own special tasks. One of these special tasks deserves the greatest attention at the present moment. It is the national question, or, in other words, the question of whether the Ukraine is to be a separate and independent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic bound in alliance (federation) with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, or whether the Ukraine is to amalgamate with Russia to form a single Soviet republic. All Bolsheviks and all politically-conscious workers and peasants must give careful thought to this question."

Lenin, as well as the whole Bolshevik Party in power, fought, as we have already said, for the international unity of the proletariat against the bourgeois governments and regimes of old Russia and all Europe.
They considered the international union and the fraternity of all the workers decisive, but they warned the workers that "capitalism has divided the nations into a small number of oppressive great powers (imperialist), free and sovereign nations, and an immense majority of oppressed, dependent and semi-dependent, non-sovereign nations. The arch-criminal and arch-reactionary war of 1914-1918 accentuated this division, festering hatreds and resentments. For centuries the indignation and distrust of the non-sovereign and dependent nations towards the dominant and oppressive nations, such as the Ukraine towards nations like Great Russia, accumulated". That is why Lenin then stated: "We want a voluntary union of nations - a union which excludes all coercion of one nation over another - a union which is based on the fullest confidence, on a clear recognition of fraternal unity, on an absolutely voluntary consent".

We Trotskyists affirm today that only that Socialist and Soviet Ukraine could take its destiny into its own hands, but the Stalinism expropriator of the October Revolution of 1917 transformed the USSR again into a prison of nations and Ukraine was once more trapped there.

Before World War II, when Hitler was preparing to invade the USSR, the Fourth International insisted on this question and devoted special attention to the Ukraine, since it understood perfectly well that the oppression of the Ukrainian nation under Stalin's boots, only achieved a drive by Ukrainian workers to flee from Soviet power. This national oppression ultimately guaranteed the return of the imperialist powers in their different variants to try to retake Ukraine. Hence the battle of Trotskyism for a working class, Soviet and independent Ukraine. The USSR had to demonstrate that far from oppressing Ukraine, it gave absolute independence to the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This was the best way for them to continue in power and to maintain the unity of the Ukrainian working class with the Russian proletariat. According to Trotsky, only an independent Soviet Ukraine could be a bulwark in the struggle against Hitler and cover the European flank of the USSR.

The slogan that today must articulate any revolutionary program for the Ukrainian nation, which is that of a workers', Soviet and independent Ukraine, is the only one that allows to carry to the end the struggle against the imperialist plunder and the brutal super-exploitation of the Ukrainian working class. And at the same time, it is the only one that poses an honest unity of the proletariat of the oppressed Ukraine with the Russian working class, also trodden by Putin's boots.
How will the international unity be possible of the Russian workers with the Ukrainian proletariat and the rest of the nations trampled and oppressed, not only by "big" Russia, but also by the imperialist Maastricht and NATO, without fighting for the right to Ukrainian total independence and national sovereignty?

How to guarantee the unity of the working class of the nations of the former USSR without pushing for a decisive fight of the European and Asian proletariat in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Kazakhstan, whose general strike was crushed by Putin's counterrevolutionary boots? How to conquer the unity of the working class in its struggle against imperialism, when this general strike against the big oil companies and the big steel mills like the French ArcelorMittal did not receive the slightest support from the trade unions of Europe, led by the Stalinist scourge and Social Democracy?
It is the overabundance of traitorous leaderships that prevents the unity of the working class. This is the "multipolar world" that the old Stalinist scourge preserved by imperialism after 1989 preaches this time: the existence of multiple counterrevolutionary poles to crush the world proletariat, as the most effective way to maintain the rotting capitalist system throughout the planet.

The struggle for the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms in the territories of the former USSR and the fight for the socialist revolution in Maastricht Europe, cannot even take a step forward without the proletariat of the oppressor nations raising, as one of its key demands the struggle against all oppression by their respective bourgeoisies over the oppressed nations. Only in this way will the unity of the working class of all Europe be won.

Stalinism, which dirtied and dragged the clean banners of socialism to the mire of history, destroyed not only the struggle against national oppression, but also and fundamentally, it brought to a dead end the struggle for the international unity of the working class. That is what the worsening of the crisis of leadership of the European and world working class is all about.

With the capitalist restoration in the 1990s, the Ukraine subdued by the Stalinist boot, has ended up colonized by Maastricht, the IMF and NATO, with the bayonet of "Great" Russia pointed at its head

In the '90s, after the capitalist restoration, Ukraine conquered its "independence", but that was nothing more than an illusion. That Ukraine was born in the 1990s as an "independent nation" inheriting 17% of the enormous foreign debt that Russia had with Citibank and with the imperialist banks. It inherited the Russian military base in Crimea to guarantee the flow of Russian gas through Ukrainian territory to Germany. It emerged already subjected to the business of the Russian "big" bourgeoisie associated with the big imperialist oil companies such as the French Total, the German BASF and British Petroleum. And as if this were not enough, it inherited, also from the Stalinist scourge, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, which left contaminated with radiation, to this day, the richest Ukrainian black lands.

Thus, strangled by European banks and transnational corporations and subjected to the IMF, Ukraine has lost all national independence. Moreover, it does not even have a common language, nor has it succeeded in recreating a common national market. That is why its insertion in the world division of labor looks to the West, to the imperialist Europe of Maastricht, to which it is linked by thousands of economic and financial ties, by the commissions it charges for the passage of Russian gas; and to Russia, to which the Ukrainian steel mills and mines, in the east of the country, are linked to the Russian military and productive industry. And the US plays the role of being the great usurer and creditor, which in 2014 stepped on Ukraine and not only kept the gas (since Biden's son is the president of the companies in Ukraine that manage the transit of Russian gas through the pipelines), even more, when Kerry stepped on Ukraine in 2014 he took the gold reserves of the Ukrainian Federal Reserve.

This historical problem we pose in Ukraine is crux, because the national sentiment of the masses is progressive, because it is an oppressed, crushed, occupied and divided nation, which today defends itself with self-organized pickets, with sticks, hammers and Molotov cocktails from the Russian invasion. It is a nation in which the masses want to be independent and not being able to subsist, after the fall of the USSR, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian workers are forced to flee to the West to work as slave labor in imperialist Europe, and with enormous sacrifices they save a few euros which they send as remittances to their families in Ukraine.

This national sentiment which neither the bourgeoisie, nor imperialism, or Stalinism, or even the war could break, in Trotsky's words, expresses in a labyrinthine way the struggle against their miserable conditions of existence. Historically the bourgeoisie and imperialism tried and try to use it to their advantage. Thus we saw it in 2014, when the bourgeoisie of Kiev channeled the just aspirations of the masses, who hated President Yanukovich, and encircled Maidan Square, and to whom this bourgeoisie promised that the solution to their hardships would come from the hand of an agreement with the EU. As did Stalinism and the pro-Russian bourgeoisie in eastern Ukraine, who usurped and manipulated the more than legitimate national and anti-imperialist sentiment of the masses of the Donbass, which expressed the desire of the masses to escape from the IMF plans of restructuring the mines and steel mills, taking away their jobs and their lives.

Today the position of Trotskyism is confirmed that the national question can only be fully and effectively solved by the working class and its allies, the poor peasants, in power, that is, by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie is linked by a thousand and one deals to imperialism. As is posed for every colonial and semi-colonial country, the Marxist program affirms that only the working class and the poor peasants taking power will be able to carry to the end the democratic tasks of national liberation and agrarian reform and they will do so combining these tasks with socialist tasks. This victorious revolution will be a link and a decisive step of the international and, in this case, European socialist revolution in particular.

That is why in 2014, and today, we affirm that the national question and the sentiment nesting under the decades and centuries-long oppression of the Ukrainian people by the Tsars, Stalinism and now imperialism, can only be resolved, as the October Revolution of 1917 demonstrated, by a SOVIET AND INDEPENDENT UKRAINE, federated of its own free will to the UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF EUROPE. For this it will be necessary to conquer a new victorious socialist revolution in Ukraine and in all the countries of the former USSR. That is why our program, like that of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, is FOR A SOVIET AND SOCIALIST, UNITED, FREE AND INDEPENDENT UKRAINE!

The Maastricht working class has a decisive role to play in this question. The Stalinist scoundrels who lead the trade union centers of Greece, Spain, France, Portugal and Italy, and the pro-imperialist German social democracy, are responsible and partners with their respective imperialist governments in the oppression, plunder and enslavement of the working class of the countries of the old  Warsaw Pact and the whole of Eastern Europe. The Maastricht bourgeoisie has transformed these nations into real sweatshops of workers, in their real "backyard", which they share with US imperialism.

Years ago, in 2009, the Renault workers in Romania rose up to the cry of "we want to earn the same wage as the Renault workers in France!". The bureaucracy of the French CGT prevented unity and the workers of France from taking into their own hands the demand of their brothers in Romania. Because of this policy, things went very badly for the Romanian workers and also for the French workers, from whom the 35-hour work week was taken away, and labor flexibilization, etc. was imposed.
It also went very badly for the Portuguese workers, to whom were applied, as well as to the Greek workers, the imperialist Maastricht and fund-monetarist plans of wage reduction and attack on all their conquests.

It is this betrayal of the leaderships of the proletariat that imposes a deadly alternative on the workers of the former Soviet republics and the workers of the former Warsaw Pact countries: either they remain subjected to the counterrevolutionary boot of Moscow, or to the no less counterrevolutionary boot of the imperialist bourgeoisies of Maastricht and the IMF.

The break of the working class of the imperialist countries of Europe and the USA with their counterrevolutionary governments and regimes and plunderers of the oppressed peoples, is the key and decisive question for the liberation of the proletariat of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics from any oppression and slavery.

In the midst of the war of invasion against Ukraine, most trade unions and workers' organizations, influenced by Stalinism, are at Putin's feet, while he massacres the Ukrainian workers. Others, like the Social Democracy of Germany and the very rich labor aristocracy of the trade unions of that country, live with enormous privileges on the coins that fall from the juicy deals of the German imperialist bourgeoisie with Moscow.

The "fight against NATO" of the trade union bureaucracies of Europe and their social-imperialist parties is just hot air, since none of these workers' organizations has taken a single measure against NATO, since this would mean declaring civil and class war on their own imperialist governments, which they support and defend against the workers.

The most audacious, like sectors of the Trotskyist renegades, call to "disarm NATO". How to do this without calling to arm the proletariat and without minimally calling for a continental plan of struggle that opens the road to a Revolutionary General Strike in support of the Ukrainian nation and its working class? These people preach "peace" when imperialism is disputing its spheres of influence and attacking the proletariat with wars and raw bites.

To pretend, as others say, that NATO arms Ukraine is an offense to the Marxist program. It makes people believe that by putting pressure on imperialism, it can play the role of a "force for national liberation".... Imperialism is only waiting for Putin to finish chastising and destroying Ukraine, so that they will be the ones who then keep the victory, deepening in a new Minsk Pact their plundering of a nation that will be a thousand times more oppressed.

The policy of this sector of the renegades of Trotskyism means becoming a left appendix of the bourgeois government of Zelensky, who on his knees goes out of his way to sell out the Ukrainian national war to Moscow and the US imperialism, as we see in the meetings "for peace" which have begun.

In Ukraine NATO is not fighting; the workers and the Ukrainian people crushed by Moscow are who fight, going beyond the bourgeois and arch-reactionary political leadership of the national war. However, without the support of the Russian and European working class, the Ukrainian proletariat will not be able to take the leadership of the war.

As we have already said, US and European imperialism are preparing, after the crushing of the Ukrainian nation, the  worsening of their plunder of a Ukraine a thousand times subjugated, divided, and plundered.

Likewise, a Russian victory in Ukraine, which would leave it divided and crushed a thousand times, will be a great chastise for the working class of all the oppressed nations of the former USSR republics and today colonies of imperialism in Eastern Europe. The strength of the Maastricht proletariat will be seriously affected.
How will the workers of Romania, Georgia, Kazakhstan or Belarus rise up again, knowing the massacres committed by the butcher Putin? Without an uprising of the Russian and European workers who come to their aid, this will be impossible. This is what is miserably silenced by the treacherous neo-Stalinist, Trotskyist renegade and social-imperialist leaderships in Europe and internationally.

The Ukrainian question is a key question for the European working class and puts on the agenda the struggle to re-found the Fourth International with the historical and programmatic legacy of the Bolshevik Party and not of the Stalinist beast.