Photo – Paulo Oliveira, Pexels

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The USSR’s Victory Was Communist, Not Nationalist

by Phil Hall

For modern communists and humane socialists, the situation in Ukraine represents a triple shit show. On one side, there is the right-wing, recidivist Russian chauvinism that denigrates socialism, progressive ideals, and even Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) himself. This Russian nationalism is propped up by a strong state, reliant on a reactionary form of Russian identity and a zombified Christian Orthodoxy resurrected from the grave, despite the fact that the USSR was overwhelmingly atheist.

On the other side, Ukraine is dominated by nationalistic forces led by Banderites; formerly the fascist collaborators who sided with the Nazis during their war against the Soviet Union. Although, it must be said, most Ukrainians do not see themselves as fighting for Banderism, but for the defence of national sovereignty. However, today, these Ukrainian forces also act as proxies for a foreign imperialist power: NATO and the imperialism of the Anglosphere, led from Washington and London, whose giant multinational corporations seek Lebensraum and access to resources denied to them by an increasingly nationalistic Russian Federation government led for many years by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

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as flawed as the USSR was, the great victory over fascism in World War II was a communist victory not a victory for Russian chauvinism.

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Caught in the middle of this conflict, humane socialists and communists face a difficult choice. We reject all three: the imperialism of the Anglosphere and Europe, resurgent fascist inspired Ukrainian nationalism, and Russian national chauvinism and social conservatism. Nevertheless – out of despair perhaps – some socialists defend Russian nationalism and support it, and attempt to justify it on the basis of Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and subsequent Marxist literature that developed his ideas which uphold (ironically) a nation’s right to self-determination and defence against imperialist aggression.

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In this case, since the corporate capitalism of the Anglosphere is the primary aggressor, many communists and socialists (extremely reluctantly) align with the Russian state despite the fact that, just over a decade ago, they actively despised it for its social conservatism, corruption, oligarchic rule, racism, and suppression of basic freedoms, like the freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights.

The Russian Federation today lacks the democratic institutions that have never really existed fully formed in that part of the world. They did not exist in the Tsarist Russian Empire. In fact, despite all the other achievements of the USSR and the initial promise of the Soviets (Councils) properly functioning democratic institutions were never fully established in the USSR. Freedom of speech has always been repressed, from before the Soviet era to the present.

One of the problems of 19th century Marxism is the shibboleth of ‘the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ which dismisses of all the elements of bourgeois democracy as a sham, even those hard won rights to political representation, freedom of association and expression. An independent trade union would have been treated as an insurgency in the monolithic USSR.

Currently, many lazy and intellectually arrogant self-styled socialists and communists support the Russian Federation uncritically and revel in its social conservatism. These ‘traditional’ socialists have no respect for social democracy at all – no respect for the separation of the powers, for the freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary and the independence of social organisations like trade Unions. We can see this evident in their uncritical support for Venezuela under Maduro, and for similar governments elsewhere in the world.

Where ”communists” govern nowadays, in places like China and Vietnam they govern as technocratic elites at the helms of states, they don’t govern through the power of functioning, accountable democratic institutions socialist or otherwise. In Africa, technocratic, nominally socialist, formerly anti colonial, elites barely remain in power by consent – by the adherence of their populations to a social contract – certainly not with the full participation of their people in democratic socialist societies.

This utilitarian philosophy (not communism or socialism as it was idealistically conceived) always seems to prioritise the collective over the individual, and yet, ironically, it is these technocratic elites that govern nominally socialist and communist countries, and not the collective, who determine priorities. They read their Plato and act accordingly – and act in their own interests and those of their families, live the life of Riley and are rewarded by their own tame capitalist class.

In countries like China ‘social good’ and ‘state security’ are prioritised over personal freedom of expression and creativity and personal liberty—the supermarkets may be better stocked but it is not bliss to be alive in this particular dawn. The damage caused to the free human spirit by these patchwork amalgams of technocracy, tyranny, managed democracy and the imposition of zombie cultural values resurrected from their graves is tremendous.

Ai Weiwei, for example, can’t stay in the People’s Republic of China, he has to live in Portugal or London or Paris or Berlin. Facial recognition technology and control and the monitoring of each molecule of humanity was never longed for by any socialist anti colonialist, anti-imperialist I know. Even the apologists for ‘actually existing socialism’ – while getting up on their high horses – much prefer to live in ‘actually existing capitalist’ countries.

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Nevertheless, flawed as the Soviet Union was, the victory over fascism in World War II was a communist victory, not a victory for Russian chauvinism and Orthodox Christianity. The Russian Civil War pitted the Bolsheviks against the Whites, Whites who were deeply Orthodox and Tsarist—just like today’s Russian elite. The forces that collaborated with the Nazis—royalists, right-wing reactionaries, religious institutions—were the same ones who had opposed communism. The Red Army that defeated Nazi Germany was not a chauvinist Russian force bolstered by revived Orthodoxy, rejecting Marx and denigrating Lenin. The Red Army was a communist army supported by the productive capacity of the people of a communist country. This is absolutely not to denigrate the contribution of people of Russian origin, but to say that the struggle and sacrifices cannot be appropriated and claimed by the very people who opposed the USSR; the reactionaries.

There is a degree of overlap: just as a Jew heads the Banderite dominated Ukraine, a former Soviet KGB officer presides over the Russian Federation, dominated by a capitalist oligarchy (though Russia has a large state sector). But Vladimir Putin openly called Lenin a saboteur during the Special Military Operation and compared him to that insurgent opportunist Prigozhin. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his klatch distance themselves from their socialist past. This antipathy towards socialism Putin holds he shares with Zelensky. Those who once opposed communism now rule both the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

The slogans on the victory parades throughout the history of the USSR celebrated the victory of communism and the USSR over fascism, not the victory of the reactionary Orthodox Russian nationalists over fascism. There were never banners proclaiming “Glory to Great Russianism” or “Glory to Ukraine.”

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We are thankful to the USSR and all its peoples and former peoples for liberating us from fascism, but just don’t make us thank some racist, homophobic, antisemitic, Orthodox Christian, misogynistic anti-Communist Russian punk for the victory of the USSR.  

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The Russian workers and peasants who sacrificed to defeat Nazism stood alongside those of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

If we, as socialists, are forced to come down on one side or the other, then it is on the side of anti-imperialism and multipolarity and for the roll back of the monopolistic global hegemony of the corporations of the Anglosphere, we should not be fully on board and on the side of Russian nationalism. We should be thankful to the USSR and all its peoples and former peoples for liberating us from fascism, but just don’t ask me to be grateful to some racist, homophobic, antisemitic, Orthodox Christian, misogynistic anti-Communist Russian punk for the victory of the USSR.

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Phil Hall was born into an ANC family in South Africa. The family was forced into exile in 1963 after his mother was imprisoned and his father banned. They relocated to East Africa, where his parents continued their activism and journalism. In 1975, after a period living in India, they journeyed overland back to the UK, eventually settling in Brighton.

Phil pursued a broad education, studying Russian, Spanish, politics, economics, literature, linguistics, and English grammar and phonology. His path led him to live and study in the USSR, in Ukraine, and later in Mexico, where he married and started a family. Over the next decade, Phil and his partner balanced activism with work before relocating to the UK—a move initially intended to be permanent.

However, professional opportunities took him to Saudi Arabia and then the UAE, where he spent ten years before returning to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in Britain, he founded Ars Notoria Magazine and, alongside fellow humane socialist Paul Halas, launched AN Editions, a small venture dedicated to publishing thoughtful, progressive and exciting new books.