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“The word Chechnya alone was enough to provoke despair.”

By Richard Steinhardt

Parallels are often drawn between Napoleon’s invasion of Tsarist Russia and Hitler’s invasion of the USSR when the point is made that the results of invading Russia through the Ukraine, directly or through proxies, are disastrous. However, the correct analogy to be drawn at present is with the Civil War unleashed in 1918 against the new born Soviet state.

During the Civil War (1918–1922), the Allied intervention saw fourteen powers supporting White generals and nationalist separatists to dismember the former Russian Empire in both direct and proxy wars conducted principally on Ukrainian soil. This analogy is not often drawn in the so called ‘alternative media’ because it is an uncomfortable one for those who, although they may support Russian sovereignty, are also anti-communists.

Interventionists during the Civil War included the Czechoslovak Legion, the United Kingdom and its colonies (Canada, Australia, India, South Africa), Japan, the United States, France, Poland, Greece, Estonia, Romania, Serbia, Italy, China, and Western Ukraine. This list is almost identical to the current foreign powers intervening in Ukraine to support not the Whites but the Ukrainian Banderites, with the honourable exceptions of China, Serbia, and a now-independent India and South Africa.

From this viewpoint, Vladimir Putin, formerly of the KGB and a representative and spokesperson for the old nomenklatura (call it the ‘deep state’ of the Russian Federation if you like) who ousted Yeltsin, is the new Felix Dzerzhinsky. The Dzerzhinsky approach was: identify, neutralise, integrate.

The Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, understood that the war was not merely military but political. They won because they offered ordinary people—Chechens, Ukrainians, Russians alike—land, autonomy, and a future within a unified state. The Cheka under Felix Dzerzhinsky was not merely a repressive apparatus, but also an instrument of state-building. Dzerzhinsky understood that the security of the nascent communist state could not depend on force alone; it required the support of the population. The Cheka combined security operations with political work: literacy classes, village soviets, land distribution, and the provision of medicines and food. This approach preceded and, in Soviet accounts, surpassed the British “hearts and minds” doctrine.

The Extraordinary Commission is not merely an organ of repression. It is an organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot rest on bayonets alone. It must rest on the support of the working people. Where the population is with us, we have nothing to fear. Where the population is against us, no amount of repression will save us. Therefore, the first task of the Cheka is not to arrest but to convince. Not to terrify but to explain. Not to separate ourselves from the people but to become the people’s shield against those who would return them to the yoke of the landlords and capitalists.

Felix Dzerzhinsky Selected Works, Volume 1 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1957), p. 156

The Soviet nationalities policy offered non-Russian peoples what tsarism had denied them: recognition, autonomy, and the possibility of advancement. The Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1921), the eastern part of which was the Chechen District, was an early experiment in autonomy. The policy was grounded in the understanding that autonomy enabled solidarity, that non-Russian peoples would join the Soviet project only if they were convinced it was not merely a new form of Russian domination. The Bolshevik approach to the national question was foundational to the Soviet project.

The proletariat cannot be indifferent to the oppression of nations. It must fight against this oppression. But it must also fight against nationalism—both Great Russian nationalism and the nationalism of the oppressed nations. The goal is not to replace one nationalism with another. The goal is to unite the workers of all nations in a common struggle against the exploiters. This unity is possible only if the workers of the oppressed nations are convinced that they are not being offered merely a new form of domination. They must be offered genuine autonomy—the right to govern themselves, to develop their own culture, to determine their own future.

Lenin The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (Moscow: 1916), p. 34

Lenin and Stalin understood that the Russian Empire had been held together by force, not consent. The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (November 1917) promised equality, sovereignty, and the right of self-determination up to and including secession.

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The selection of Vladimir Putin as Yeltsin’s successor in 1999 was not Yeltsin’s decision alone. It was the result of pressure from the nomenklatura, the siloviki, the regional elites, and the military-industrial complex. Yeltsin’s inner circle and the oligarchs imagined they controlled the succession, but they did not. The security services acted, installing Vladimir Putin, whose loyalty was to the former nomenklatura.

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The collapse of the USSR in 1991 did not eliminate the Soviet elite. The nomenklatura, the Soviet administrative class, adapted, survived, and thrived in the new Russia. By the mid-1990s, approximately 75% of the Russian political elite were former Soviet nomenklatura. The intelligence services in particular preserved their structures, personnel, and operational methods throughout the 1990s. The Yeltsin period (1991–1999) was experienced as a time of foreign corporate predation and national collapse. The privatisation of the 1990s transferred vast state assets to a small group of oligarchs at nominal prices. The state was weak. The economy was looted. NATO expanded to Russia’s borders.

The West recognised the ascension of Vladimir Putin as a threat to the post-1991 order. By 2003, with the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, it was clear that the new government was not a continuation of Yeltsin’s stooge government. Vladimir Putin, with the backing of the old nomenklatura, was restoring the Russian Federation’s sovereignty. Who could ever imagine that that vast array of Soviet chinovniki built up over 70 years would simply disappear in a puff of red smoke? I certainly didn’t.

The campaign against the Russian Federation did not begin in 2014 or 2022 but in 2003. There were ‘Colour Revolutions’ in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005), organised and funded by the CIA to install governments hostile to the Russian Federation on its borders. Billions of US dollars were invested in Russian NGOs, media outlets, and opposition groups that served as transmission belts for Western influence. The law on foreign agents (2012) was a defensive measure to expose this network. There was unrelenting economic warfare, sanctions, manipulation of energy markets, use of international financial institutions to pressure Russia and keep it weak, and a never-ending stream of propaganda vilifying Russia through Hollywood, the mainstream media in the West, cultural campaigns, Pussy Riot, and LGBTQ groups. Russia was banned from the Olympics and accused of subterfuge.

However, through a concerted and well-thought-out strategy, in the spirit of Dzerzhinsky fighting the Civil War, in the face of this onslaught, the old nomenklatura fought and re-established itself.

First, Vladimir Putin, with the backing of the Russian Deep State, subjugated the compradors in hock to foreign interests, prosecuted Mikhail Khodorkovsky and dismantled and absorbed Yukos; the oligarchic networks were acting as intermediaries for foreign capital. Criminal control over state assets was also eliminated and US global corporate capitalism’s claws were removed from the jugular of the Russian economy.

Phase Two in the Russian nomenklatura’s plan was the restoration of effective governance, centralising power through federal districts and presidential envoys. 70% of the corrupt regional governing bureaucrats were replaced in Putin’s first term, eliminating corruption as a system of foreign influence. This was an application of the Dzerzhinsky approach: identify, neutralise, integrate.

Phase Three was to set up systems of accountability and to begin a programme of national investment, consolidating state control over strategic industries related to energy, defence, and infrastructure.

Phase Four was to integrate: to end wars without alienating autonomous regions, separating out extremists and foreign agents from the Chechen population, and Chechenisation, where authority moved to Chechen leaders who were not corrupt or tied to foreign influence. Investment in reconstruction followed to demonstrate that Russia offered a future; and it was very important that the Russian Federation refused to be provoked by atrocities fomented and organised from abroad, like Beslan, into indiscriminate retaliation. Beslan saw 1,128 hostages taken, 334 killed, including 186 children.

The terrorist group that seized School No. 1 in Beslan consisted of at least 32 individuals, including citizens of the Russian Federation and foreign nationals from Arab states. The coordination, financing, and arming of this group required resources and organisational capabilities that exceed the capacity of local militant formations. The Commission notes the possibility of external support from organisations and states hostile to the Russian Federation.

Report on the Investigation of the Circumstances of the Terrorist Attack in Beslan (Moscow: Federal Assembly, 2006), p. 67

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Finally, Phase Five was rearmament, a long-term goal, involving modernisation of the military, restoration of the defence industry, and the re-establishment of Russia’s capacity to defend its interests against foreign aggression.

Between 1994 and 1996, key decisions taken by the Russian Federation leadership included: refusal to negotiate with terrorists; unification of command under the Federal Forces Joint Group; and use of overwhelming force before committing ground troops. The fundamental insight that ended the Chechen war was that the Chechen problem could not be solved by Russians; it could only be solved by Chechens. After the Kadyrovs rose to prominence, the counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya was officially terminated on April 16, 2009, and the National Anti-Terrorism Committee announced that the situation had stabilised to the point where further counter-terrorism operations were not required. The nomenklatura had identified, neutralised, and integrated.

In Ukraine, Western intelligence agencies at the service of global corporate capitalism with its headquarters in the USA saw another opportunity after their failure in Chechnya.

The West decided to use the Brzezinski gambit, re-employed from Afghanistan, and assumed that a protracted conflict would bleed Russia and trigger internal collapse. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s strategy in Afghanistan was to draw the Soviet Union into a protracted conflict that would bleed it and trigger internal collapse. The gambit worked against a Soviet Union that was already weakened, economically stagnant, leadership divided, and population losing faith. The West has attempted to re-employ this gambit in Ukraine, assuming that war weariness will turn the Russian people against their leadership.

Before discussing Ukraine, we must distinguish it from Chechnya. The Russian Federation does not see Ukraine as a foreign country or autonomous region, but as the heartland. Literally! Ukrainians, especially Russian speakers in the centre and east of Ukraine (after centuries of intermarriage, close association and interdependence) do not see Russia as a ‘foreign’ country.

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The Russian Federation, in turn, sees Ukraine as itself. Kyiv to them is not a foreign capital, but the mother of all Russian cities, according to the majority of Russians. Kyiv was the birthplace of both Ukrainian and Russian civilisation, twins. The Russian Orthodox Church was born in Kyiv. According to Russians and Ukrainians with Russian sympathies and connections, Kyivan Rus was the first Rus state. In Putin’s own words:

Russians and Ukrainians are one people. We share a common history, a common culture, a common faith. The borders between Russia and Ukraine are the result of the policies of the Soviet leadership, not the expression of any fundamental difference between the two peoples. The nationalist regime in Kyiv has sought to divide this united people, to rewrite history, to create a false narrative of Ukrainian identity that is defined by opposition to Russia. This project has failed. The Russian people and the Ukrainian people remain brothers. The Special Military Operation is directed not against the Ukrainian people but against the nationalist regime that has sought to destroy our unity.

Vladimir Putin Statement on the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians (Moscow: MFA Press, 2021)

For the people of the Russian Federation and the Ukrainians sympathetic to both the USSR and the Russian Federation, Ukraine has been held hostage to the cancer of Banderism since the putsch sponsored by the USA in 2014. The illegitimate regime is serving as a wedge, a proxy, for aggression by the foreign powers under the control of global corporate capitalism.

Chechnya was the first front, Ukraine the second, and the solution, even if the problem is vastly different in scale, will be the same. In Chechnya, a surgical war was followed by investment, reconstruction, and the empowerment of local leaders that were not antagonistic to the Russian Federation.

Perhaps, for much of what remains of Ukraine, this means an offer of an autonomous future within the Russian Federation. The nomenklatura has applied the Dzerzhinsky approach: identify the compradors and collaborators with those who manipulate Ukraine by proxy, neutralise them, and then integrate the population into a new political order that serves their own economic, political, and social interests and that respects desires for autonomous regional governance in a form of Ukrainianisation.

The West has no weapons to give the ultra-nationalists and few economic levers to operate against the Russian Federation. Its narrative gambit and attempt at swaying the Russian population in its favour failed because the Russian population did not see what the West wanted them to see. Instead of unacceptable mass death and instability and economic failure (with the exception of oligarchs with ties to the West and sections of the metropolitan elite) the Russian population seems to fully understand what is at stake and remembers the devastation wrought by corporate global capitalism in the ’90s. Currently, the Russian Federation population sees right in front of their eyes a system that is stable and relatively prosperous, a state that is strong and increasingly competent, and a leadership with strategic foresight that is in control.

The Special Military Operation is achieving its objectives: the nationalist formations are being destroyed, the Ukrainian military is being neutralised, and the Banderite comprador regime is on the verge of collapse.

The Russian media constantly reaches out to ordinary Ukrainians, reminding them of their shared history with Russia, of the bonds of family that connect them, and of the war in which most Ukrainians fought against the Nazis, not for the Banderite collaborators. The message is consistent: you are not our enemy. We are your brothers. The nationalist regime is the enemy of both Russia and Ukraine. Join us in defeating it.

The nomenklatura has applied the lessons of Dzerzhinsky to Ukraine. The goal is not destruction or extermination (there will be no tactical nuclear bomb dropped on Ukraine) but the identification, neutralisation, and, where possible, integration of enemies. The compradors, the agents of Western influence who have captured the Ukrainian state, are being identified. Those who can be reintegrated into a Russian-sphere Ukraine will be given the opportunity. Those who cannot will be neutralised.

Politically, the same hearts-and-minds strategy that pacified Chechnya is going to be applied: investment, reconstruction, the empowerment of local leaders who are not antagonistic to the Russia, and the offer of a future within the Russian Federation.

Since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, the Russian military has established over 1,500 humanitarian corridors, through which more than 5 million civilians have been evacuated from areas of combat. The Russian military has delivered over 200,000 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians in liberated areas. Civilian infrastructure—schools, hospitals, water treatment facilities—is restored immediately after the territory is cleared of nationalist formations. The protection of civilians is a priority of the Russian military.

Report on Humanitarian Operations in the Zone of the Special Military Operation (Moscow: MOD Press, 2023)

Politically, the Russian media, the reconstruction efforts, and the offer of integration are encircling the Ukrainian population, reminding them of their bonds with Russia, and pulling them back into the Russian sphere. The encirclement is not merely military. It is economic, political, and cultural.

The Russian Federation, in alliance with the People’s Republic of China and within the BRICS framework, is constructing an alternative to the US-dominated global order. The metastasis of Western global capitalism is being contained. From the Dzerzhinsky/Putin viewpoint, the cancer that threatened to spread from Ukraine to the heart of Russia is being surgically removed.

The statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky was quietly been placed outside the Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters on September 11, 2023. The director of the service praised a man he said had remained faithful to his ‘ideals of goodness and justice’ to the very end. Sergey Naryshkin, said that Felix Dzerzhinsky’s statue represented “one of the symbols of its time, the standard of crystal honesty, dedication and loyalty to duty.”.

Referenced:

Dzerzhinsky, Felix. 1957. Selected Works, Volume 1. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, p. 156.

Lenin, V.I. 1916. The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Moscow, p. 34.

Putin, Vladimir. 2021. Statement on the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Moscow: MFA Press.

Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. 2006. Report on the Investigation of the Circumstances of the Terrorist Attack in Beslan. Moscow, p. 67.

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (MOD). 2023. Report on Humanitarian Operations in the Zone of the Special Military Operation. Moscow: MOD Press.

Razvedchik, 2023, No. 4 (5), December. SVR Russia [Publisher]. Available at: http://svr.gov.ru/upload/iblock/c9d/Razvedchik052023.pdf

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Richard Steinhardt is a committed socialist and a radical humanist and has published in the Morning Star and a variety of other communist and socialist publications. He believes that human conscience and understanding should always precede dogma.