Ukraine- Feburary 27, 2022

Statement of the JRCL-RM on Ukrane

Denounce Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine!

People all over the world, rise up in antiwar struggle!

Russian working people, overthrow the Putin government!

Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Revolutionary Marxist Faction)

(1)

Under the orders of war-craze President Putin, Russian forces started a full-scale armed aggression on February 24th in the whole of Ukraine.

Putin called the armed groups of Donetsk and Lugansk from eastern Ukraine to Moscow and recognized the independence of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and the ‘Lugansk People’s Republic’ (February 21st). Under the pretext that Russia was requested by these two ‘states’, he launched military aggression at a stroke against Ukraine. Russian forces rushed into Ukraine from the three directions of the Russian mainland, Belarus and Crimea, while destroying Ukraine’s military facilities and airports by missile and cyber attacks. They gained control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and now they are advancing into Kiev to seize the capital. They are intentionally shooting missiles into apartment houses where citizens live to threaten Ukrainian people.

Putin declared that Russia would achieve the ‘demilitarization and de-Nazification’ of Ukraine. It is apparent that Putin’s ambition is to control the whole of the country and conduct operations to decapitate the existing government, thus setting up a puppet government.

In the face of these brutalities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling on the people to rise in ‘all-out resistance’, while shouting with grief: ‘What is happening here in Ukraine will also happen in other European countries’, but ‘none of great powers helps our country.’ He has issued an order for general mobilization and prohibited all men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country, thus mobilizing them for combats.

The fire of war Putin has set is about to sink Ukrainian people into seas of blood.

(2)

Confronted with Russia, the imperialist US president Joe Biden ignored Russia’s demand for ‘no eastern expansion of NATO’ and said as early as last December that he was not considering sending US troops to Ukraine (December 7th, one day after the summit meeting with Putin). By so doing, the erstwhile ‘sole superpower’ once again revealed its drastic decline, as we the JRCL have already exposed.

The Kishida-led Japanese government is terribly shocked at the emergence of the ‘Ukrainian crisis’ because Japan’s self-sufficiency in energy is lower than 7%. The Japanese PM can do nothing but reiterate that ‘international cooperation’ is needed in response to such attempts as to change the existing international order by force.

On the other hand, despite the fact that Putin emphasized over and over again his position that ‘the collapse of the USSR, together with the eastern expansion of NATO, was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century’, European rulers were not even able to understand what he had meant, for, since the collapse of the ‘socialist USSR’, they have been intoxicated with their blind belief that ‘economic democratization’ would surely lead to ‘political democratization’. That is why they have gone pale at the war of aggression launched by today’s Hitler, Putin.

It was only after it became apparent that Putin was ambitious to effectively incorporate Ukraine into Russia, that American, European and Japanese rulers decided — while supplying some amount of weapons — to exclude a certain number of Russian banks from the SWIFT, the international network for transactions and payments among banks (which links more than 11,000 financial institutions and settles an average of 5 trillion US dollars per day) on February 27th.

It is inevitable that exclusion of Russian banks and companies form the SWIFT network will in turn cause a lot of damage to European and other countries, whose energy supplies depend on Russia. Even so, they could not but decide on it, as economic sanctions such as this are the only measure that they can take to counter Putin, who threatens them by saying, ‘You must be aware that Ukraine’s participation in NATO means for Russia to wage a war with NATO over the possession of Crimea.’ ‘Russia is still a strongest nuclear holder. It’s clear that those who attack on us shall meet miserable consequences.’

In the middle of this conjuncture, Xi-led China is imprudently saying that the Ukrainian issue has a ‘complex’ history and that China understands Russia’s ‘legitimate concerns’ on security (Foreign Minister Wáng Yì). Or ‘Sanctions are never fundamental or effective ways to solve problems’ (China’s foreign ministry). China abstained from voting for a United Nation’s resolution to condemn Russia.

Apparently, Russia and China made advance arrangements with each other on the invasion of Ukraine.

(3)

Ukraine has been wavering between pro-western and pro-Russian governments. What is motivating Putin to incorporate this country is, first, his ‘Great Russianism’, which sees Russia (great Russia), Ukraine (small Russia) and Belarus (white Russia) as one nation. Armed annexation of Ukraine means realization of this chauvinistic nationalism.

The second reason is that, in order to rebuild the ruinous Russian economy, it is necessary to incorporate Ukraine, a large country that has a rich granary with thriving industries supported by Western capital.

Today’s Russia is on the verge of catastrophe in its economy, which can only be called ‘quasi-capitalism’ — as will be referred to later — because of state capitalism that is deformed under the authoritarian ruling system helmed by the Federal Security Service (FSB). 70% of Russian exports are oil (world’s third in production) and natural gas (world’s second), with the rest including weapons and wheat. The Russian economy has barely survived with the high prices of oil since 1999.

This originated in the historical fact that, in the former USSR, the industrial structure was divided by republic and region.

Putin-led Russia is resorting to the same measures as those taken in the era of the Stalinist USSR — such as of setting up a puppet government backed by military forces and of dividing the territory to incorporate its parts into the Russian sphere — and is now moving to annex Ukraine by sinking the toiling masses in seas of blood.

(4)

In his televized address, Putin said that ‘Lenin and his associates [Bolsheviks] created modern Ukraine … by separating, severing what is historically Russian land’, and that ‘[in 1922, whereas Stalin suggested building the country on the principles of autonomisation], Lenin criticized this plan and suggested making concessions to the nationalists’. Putin thus said, ‘Why was it necessary to appease the nationalists?’

But Putin’s abuse at Lenin betrayed that this person is nothing but a snob that pretends to be a tsar of Russia.

As regards national questions, we, as Marxists, should inherit the course of ‘separation, then federation’ and the principle that ‘a nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations’, which is a tradition of Marx and Engels. The state under the dictatorship of the proletariat in the period of transition to socialism must fully accept the right of nations to self-determination, including their separation (for unification), and at the same time must base itself on international ties among the working class by overcoming national differences. And because of this, Lenin argued that the name of the federation should be the Union of the Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia, that representatives of all the uniting republics should take their turn in presiding at the Union Central Executive Committee, and that each republic should reserve the right to freely secede from membership of the Union; he would never make any concessions to these three points.

However, Stalin schemed to integrate not only Ukraine and Belarus but even Caucasian nations into the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). He introduced a rating among nations and classified them into republics, autonomous republics, autonomous provinces and autonomous regions, thereby building up a bureaucratically centralized system. Although Lenin was seized with apoplexy and paralyzed on one side, he contended with Stalin. It was over this issue that he left a will that Stalin should be removed from the post of General Secretary.

Nevertheless, Putin insists that the Ukrainian impudence is attributable to Lenin! Putin was a KGB officer charged with missions in the former East Germany, where he saw firsthand the ‘collapse of the Berlin Wall’. As to his criminal past as a Stalinist, he is not in the least ashamed. No thought or philosophy is relevant to this person. He is no more than a petty Stalin who poses as a tsar.

Workers and toiling people in Russia! Now is the time to overthrow the warmonger Putin government!

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, your country under the rule of Boris Yeltsin, who attempted the restoration of capitalism, suffered from hyperinflation with prices becoming thirty times higher, terrible increase in unemployment, an absurdly uneven distribution of supplies and the collapse of the distribution structure, rampancy of the economic Mafia, and the barter economy — indeed, all the misery in ‘ruinous Russia’.

And here came Putin, who took over power from Yeltsin. To begin with, he engineered plots, blasted buildings in Moscow as many as five times and, by framing up ‘Chechen terrorist attacks’, drove the people of Chechen into seas of blood. He also imprisoned the top of Yukos, Russia’s biggest private oil company backed by Western capital, on suspicion of tax evasion, thus taking over that company. Moreover, by sending so-called Siloviks (such as former intelligence officers, servicemen and security force members) to state-run oil companies and other enterprises, he usurped state properties. He sent those cronies, in addition, to broadcasting stations and newspaper companies. In this way, he has established an authoritarian ruling system helmed by the FSB.

Workers and toiling people in Russia! Without toppling the FSB-helmed authoritarian system with Putin as its head, there is no future for Russia. The path that leads to resurrection from ‘miserable Russia’ can never be found in nostalgia for or a return to the era of Stalin and his descendants who tossed about the latter half of the 20th century world. It lies precisely in the awakening to the falsehood of Stalinism — which is, in fact, pseudo-Marxism — and in the reviving, in this dark 21st century, of the age of the Russian revolution led by Lenin, revolution that gave the world working class hope, courage and their ideals.

Workers and toiling people in Ukraine who are courageously waging resistance against the invading army!

Putin’s aim is to annex Ukraine to Russia or to make it a subject state. Make this point clear and, in addition to resistance, use the weapon of a general strike! Your enemy is the armed forces of Russia that Putin has dispatched; it is not the people of Russia! Call on the Russian workers and toiling masses to bring down the Putin government, to build solidarity among peoples! This is exactly what Putin the evil murderer is most afraid of.

Workers and toiling people of Ukraine, sons and daughters of those who joined the Russian revolution as the Soviet Republic of the Ukraine about a century ago! Call to mind that great revolutionary spirit and, together with the people of Russia, turn the war into revolution!

We call on people all over the world. Rise now in antiwar struggle!

American people! Recollect and be aware that the present war launched by Putin-led Russia bears a close resemblance to that war started by Bush against Muslim people, and that in reality it can be traced back to that war! Keep this in mind and stand up in a resolute antiwar struggle!

We call on European people. Be awakened to it that the situation now developing is quite similar to that during the Second World War where ‘Nazi madness’ devastated the world! Based on this insight, stand up in a resolute fight!

And we call on people in China. Denounce your Xi government in indignation for defending those brutalities committed by Putin, today’s Hitler!

(5)

Russia’s war of aggression that has taken place now in Ukraine must be seen as representing a new phase in the development of today’s world structure into a new East-West cold war, which was drastically laid bare amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The dramatic decline of the militarist empire of America as the erstwhile ‘sole superpower’, the ensuing entry into the era of the US-China confrontation, and its rapid development into a new East-West cold war — in the middle of these seismic changes, a crisis is growing rapidly — crisis that may ignite a Third World War triggered by head-on clashes between imperialist America and China with Russia. This crisis of war, moreover, is pregnant with a danger of becoming a nuclear war with ‘usable nukes’ used in reality.

We the JRCL (RMF) have seen into the crisis of today’s world, revealed its essence, sounded alarm bells, and have consistently been calling on the working class and people all over the world to rise in fightbacks against the imposition of wars, tyrannies and poverty by both imperialist rulers and those of neo-Stalinist China and ‘ruinous’ Russia. In the face of the Hungarian revolution that flared up in the October of 1956, the anti-Stalinist revolutionary movement in Japan thoroughly revealed that the USSR was no more than an anti-Marxist, false ‘socialist state’. Since then, it has been fighting for the overcoming of Stalinism and the creation of a genuine communist movement. And now, we are advancing struggles against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine under the orders of Putin as a descendant of Stalin, while resolutely denouncing the Japanese Stalinist party for issuing only trifling statements in response to the Ukrainian crisis, such as that ‘Russia and NATO are both anachronistic’ and that it requests ‘for a multipolar diplomacy’.

Working people all over the world! Rise in antiwar struggles to break through the crisis of war amid the new East-West cold war! Based on the strategy of ‘anti-imperialism, anti-Stalinism’ for world revolution, let us fight to change this dark 21st century into a proletarian century!

Let us fight together!

(February 27th, 2022)