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In 1697 Tsar Peter the Great set out on a great journey across western Europe, seeking the support of European monarchs in his confrontation with the Ottoman Empire. Unsuccessful in securing alliances, he returned instead laden with ideas acquired in his travels through Britain and Holland, which he promptly put into action in modernising Russia. The most visible symbol of this new nation was Saint Petersburg, the intended new capital of his empire. By 1858, an English visitor to the city described it as one of the handsomest cities in Europe, with a street of residences so large that 50 extend over an English mile.

And so it was that Russia progressed from a country dominated by the palaces of a wealthy few and an underclass of slaves, to a modern European country dominated by the palaces of a wealthy few with an underclass of serfs, progressing to Communism a system dominated by the state-owned palaces of a wealthy few with a large and state-mandated underclass and then finally to Putinism, a system dominated by the stately houses of Oligarchs and well, you get the picture.

Despite the best efforts of Peter and his successors, Russia has never been quite like the rest of the West. And despite the best efforts of Putin and his regime, western leaders have not quite grasped this point.

Up until the moment Russian troops crossed Ukraines borders, a loud contingent insisted that Putin was simply bluffing. A day after President Biden told the world that Putin had already decided to invade, Vice-President Harris remarked with a degree of incredulity that were talking about the potential for war in Europe, pinning hopes on a narrowing window for a diplomatic resolution. Paris decried alarmism in Washington and London, insisting there was no immediate likelihood of Russian military action, while President Macron touted an assurance that there would be no deterioration or escalation; the head of Germanys foreign intelligence service was so caught off guard that he was actually in Kyiv when Putin launched his invasion. Even Ukrainian president Zelenskyy insisted there was no higher escalation than the one which existed last year.

Putin had told us time and time again what his ambitions were. In 2005, he described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century which stranded millions of our citizens and compatriots outside of the borders of Russian territory, and stated his dedication to the Russian nations mission to bring further civilisation to the Euro-Asian continent. In 2007, addressing the Munich Security Conference, he laid out his grievances with a unipolar world with one master, one sovereign which was not only unacceptable but also impossible in todays world and his particular distaste for Natos Eastern expansion.

In 2008, he ordered his troops into Georgia over the merest suggestion that it might join the organisation in the future. Dmitry Medvedev, who served a term as President with Putin as Prime Minister, told Russian troops that if they had faltered back in 2008, the geopolitical situation would be different now, and a number of countries which [Nato] tried to deliberately drag into the alliance, would have most likely already been part of it now.

In 2014, Putins soldiers took the Crimean Peninsula, and set up separatist regimes in Donbas. In a speech delivered to the Russian parliament, Putin laid out his view of our shared history and pride, and of Crimea as an inseparable part of Russia stolen by Bolsheviks after the revolution. Speaking to the Valdai Club in the same year, he described the unipolar world as a means of justifying dictatorship over people and countries. And in 2021, Putin published an essay titled on the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, setting out in detail his view that modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era, a puppet state controlled by the West, capable of true sovereignty only in partnership with Russia.

Putin does not see Russia as just another nation on Europes fringe, but a great power fallen from its height, robbed of its rightful place in the world, and shorn of its integral territory. His ambition is to right this. Viewing these actions through the framework of western values was doomed to produce the wrong result.

Doomed also is any attempt to shift Russian political culture that identifies the problem solely with Putin. We are rightly wary of suggestions that national character dominate foreign affairs, but we should be open to the point that no matter what political systems we impose on a people, so long as there is cultural continuity there will be a strand of continuity in outcome. Putin clearly shares this view, describing a powerful and illiberal state as far from anomalous, but instead a source and guarantor of order, a role laid down in Russias genetic code, its traditions, and the mentality of its peoples.

Efforts to produce political change in Russia need to reckon with this dynamic. It is abundantly clear that the end of Putin will not be the end of Russian nationalism, and there is a risk that his successor may find themselves in greater debt to the countrys hardliners. Putin believes in the civic Russian identity, claiming pride in being part of the powerful, strong, multi-ethnic people of Russia, and expressing distaste for attempts to preach the idea of a national or monoethnic Russian state. His regime has made use of nationalist rhetoric when it has been useful, and side-lined it on other occasions. In any struggle to succeed it, more overtly nationalistic appeals may prove a powerful tool for those looking to build support. Repeating yet again the mistake that the overthrow of just one leader will see Russia finally join the West could prove extremely costly.

Read more from the original source:
Russia has never been a part of the West - The Spectator

The past few years have seen the rise of political extremism at home and abroad. Violence is the hallmark of extremism, violence by mobs or by armies. We have become very familiar with violence. At home the trend erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, with the climactic assault on the U.S. Capitol and the anti-climactic violent riots after the George Floyd murder. But were lucky. Our democracy has mostly weathered the storm and the threat of civil war, which was considered a serious possibility by many, has receded.

We can only hope that the 2022 elections, unlike those of 2020, do not set off another firestorm of subversion and denial, no matter who comes out on top. And that the 2024 presidential election is held in a peaceful and fair way. Democratic Europe hopes for the same. But on the margins of Europe, the pressure has slowly mounted and gained strength. Finally, the forces of chaos became too powerful for civilization to resist and the Russian invasion of Ukraine exploded.

Those twin scourges of the 20th century, communism and fascism, which we had assumed were safely dead and buried, have been resuscitated. Once again, they have the power to motivate people and they have returned to haunt the twenty-first-century.

We can best see the union of communism and fascism in Russia. Communism found its secure home in Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. The birth of the communist Soviet Union in 1917-1920, which included many nationalities such as the Ukrainians, was bloody and violent.

Thousands died so that Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other communist satraps could have their communist regime.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, whose rulers were almost all Russians. This was the battle of the century, the life and death struggle of communism and fascism. Communism, with ample help from capitalism, won the war. But not until the fascist Germans had killed 27 million Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, and others, by reliable count. Almost all the killing occurred in what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands, in his book about the war between Adolph Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine is in the Bloodlands. The present war is the latest chapter in the bloody saga of that unhappy territory.

Strange, given this history, that we now find a convergence of communism and fascism in Russia. Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer and incarnation in one personality of tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and communist tyrants such as Lenin and Stalin, has led Russia out of her communist past, not into liberal democracy as many had hoped, but into a new version of fascism. However, his communist KGB mentality remains. Russia is again the repressive and highly efficient police state it was under communism. The Lubyanka prison in Moscow is again filled with enemies of the people. On top of that, Russia is also now a fascist dictatorship.

Fascism is reactionary, built on notions of religion, national identity and racial superiority. In spite of his KGB training, Putin attends church, and the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow has endorsed his war. The war is premised on the doctrine that a nation has to recover its lost brethren, as Hitler wanted to do with the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, and as Putin claims he wants to do with the Ukrainians.

Putin says the Ukrainians are really Russians, if only they would just admit it.

If they wont admit it, then he will beat them until they do. Gone from Putins rhetoric are communist bromides like the class struggle. Putin has thrown out the communist idea that nationalism is a distraction to divert the exploited masses from the class struggle. Putin has embraced fascist nationalism, aided and abetted by the oligarchs, the new nobility, much like Hitler was enabled by the Krupps and other wealthy industrialists in Germany.

All of this is a done deal, and like the snake that swallowed its own tail, the extremes of left and right, communism and fascism have joined, and are now one and the same beast.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Go here to see the original:
COLUMN: The Convergence of Communism and Fascism | Joe Barrera - Colorado Springs Gazette

The past few years have seen the rise of political extremism at home and abroad. Violence is the hallmark of extremism, violence by mobs or by armies. We have become very familiar with violence. At home the trend erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, with the climactic assault on the U.S. Capitol and the anti-climactic violent riots after the George Floyd murder. But were lucky. Our democracy has mostly weathered the storm and the threat of civil war, which was considered a serious possibility by many, has receded.

We can only hope that the 2022 elections, unlike those of 2020, do not set off another firestorm of subversion and denial, no matter who comes out on top. And that the 2024 presidential election is held in a peaceful and fair way. Democratic Europe hopes for the same. But on the margins of Europe, the pressure has slowly mounted and gained strength. Finally, the forces of chaos became too powerful for civilization to resist and the Russian invasion of Ukraine exploded.

Those twin scourges of the 20th century, communism and fascism, which we had assumed were safely dead and buried, have been resuscitated. Once again, they have the power to motivate people and they have returned to haunt the twenty-first-century.

We can best see the union of communism and fascism in Russia. Communism found its secure home in Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. The birth of the communist Soviet Union in 1917-1920, which included many nationalities such as the Ukrainians, was bloody and violent.

Thousands died so that Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other communist satraps could have their communist regime.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, whose rulers were almost all Russians. This was the battle of the century, the life and death struggle of communism and fascism. Communism, with ample help from capitalism, won the war. But not until the fascist Germans had killed 27 million Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, and others, by reliable count. Almost all the killing occurred in what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands, in his book about the war between Adolph Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine is in the Bloodlands. The present war is the latest chapter in the bloody saga of that unhappy territory.

Strange, given this history, that we now find a convergence of communism and fascism in Russia. Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer and incarnation in one personality of tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and communist tyrants such as Lenin and Stalin, has led Russia out of her communist past, not into liberal democracy as many had hoped, but into a new version of fascism. However, his communist KGB mentality remains. Russia is again the repressive and highly efficient police state it was under communism. The Lubyanka prison in Moscow is again filled with enemies of the people. On top of that, Russia is also now a fascist dictatorship.

Fascism is reactionary, built on notions of religion, national identity and racial superiority. In spite of his KGB training, Putin attends church, and the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow has endorsed his war. The war is premised on the doctrine that a nation has to recover its lost brethren, as Hitler wanted to do with the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, and as Putin claims he wants to do with the Ukrainians.

Putin says the Ukrainians are really Russians, if only they would just admit it.

If they wont admit it, then he will beat them until they do. Gone from Putins rhetoric are communist bromides like the class struggle. Putin has thrown out the communist idea that nationalism is a distraction to divert the exploited masses from the class struggle. Putin has embraced fascist nationalism, aided and abetted by the oligarchs, the new nobility, much like Hitler was enabled by the Krupps and other wealthy industrialists in Germany.

All of this is a done deal, and like the snake that swallowed its own tail, the extremes of left and right, communism and fascism have joined, and are now one and the same beast.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Go here to see the original:
COLUMN: The Convergence of Communism and Fascism - Colorado Springs Gazette

There is so much misunderstanding of the relationship between religion and communist views. More often than not, people only associate communism with atheism due to misquoting Marx in his comment of religion being the opium of the masses. Due to misquoting and misinformation, the general thought has been that no one of religious faith or practice could possibly be a communist and vice versa. This is simply not true.

As members of the CPUSA, our guidance and understanding of how to make lasting change for the better is Marxism. Its a systematic approach to understanding society how it works, how it develops, and how it can become more just. Theres nothing in Marxism as a way of understanding society and social change that is incompatible with whatever religious faith you may hold. The views, voices, and efforts of progressive people of faith are in harmony with the goals of our Party, especially in regard to seeking peace and justice for all. The doors of the Communist Party USA are, and always have been, wide open to people of faith. This openness is made even clearer in our vision of the CPUSA that includes all people regardless of religion (or none), race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ability.

Join the Religion Commission!

We have people at all levels of the Party who are active in their communities of faith and its because of this that a commission was created several years ago for religious members of the Party to work together. The Religion Commission of the Party functions as the opportunity for members to come together to discuss their faith journey and how it brought them to the Party. We also discuss the work we want to do within our communities of faith on behalf of the Party and vice versa.

The Commission meets monthly to discuss upcoming projects we want to work on, articles members are writing on behalf of the Commission, and meetings for book discussions that involve religion and Marxism. We are an active part of the Party that seeks to remove the stigma and misinformation about religious communists. We hope to bring the perspective and concerns of the faith-based community to the Party while also promoting the Party in our own faith communities!

So, if you are curious in seeing your faith in action with the mission and values of CPUSA, then the Religion Commission welcomes you! We hope you take the opportunity in contacting us, and we hope to see you at our next meeting!

For more information, contact the Recording-Secretary of the Religion Commission at religion@cpusa.org

Image: Oliver Hammond (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Originally posted here:
Person of faith? The Communist Party welcomes you! - Communist Party USA

HISTORYThe Party: The Communist Party of Australia from Heyday to Reckoning Stuart Macintyre Allen & Unwin, $49.99

In late 1941, after the Soviet Union entered World War II, a symphony concert audience in Sydney heard something remarkable. The orchestra began with the customary God Save the King. Then, the conductor suddenly switched to that anthem of the communist movement The Internationale.

This represented a turning point. No longer was this song reproduced in scratchy recordings or sung in meagre choruses in half-empty halls. The Communist Party was still illegal but its respectability and popularity began to soar. Three years later 23,000 had joined the party. This was the heyday of Australian communism with access to the wartime government and control of the countrys key trade unions.

In the post-war years, many so-called Red Army communists melted away. In The Party, the sequel to The Reds (1998), Stuart Macintyre demonstrates how blind devotion to the Soviet Union created irreconcilable problems for the party as the Cold War deepened.

Its opponents, rapidly increasing in strength and stridency, could point to its divided loyalties and its alien ideology. Worse, in the event of a third world war, which seemed imminent in the early 1950s, communists would become a fifth column for the Soviet Union. Potential treason was darkly hinted at.

Police break up an election meeting of the Australian Communist Party at a Bondi Junction hotel in April 1951. Credit:Norm Herfort

In this context, the Menzies government sought to ban the Reds. All the while, ASIO, convinced that this enemy within posed a threat to national security, intensified its surveillance, job vetting, passport control, harassment, and infiltration with informants. Its files on individual communists, which Macintyre has used adroitly, thickened.

Assailed by the government, vilified in the press, and condemned by the broader community, the party remained steadfast. As Stalin had reminded communists, they were people of a special mould. Fortified by the belief that history was on their side, their faith in the righteousness of their cause, the virtues of the Soviet experiment, or the wisdom of Uncle Joe, was rarely dented. Until 1956.

Macintyres discussion of Khrushchevs revelations of Stalins crimes and the impact on Australian communists is brilliantly synthesised, combining prodigious scholarship with nuanced analysis. Notwithstanding the leaderships denial and suppression of discussion, party members who eventually read the secret speech were shocked to the core and left in droves. When the Hungarian revolt of late 1956 was crushed by Russian tanks, the internal fractures deepened and the decline of the party accelerated.

From the mid-1960s, the party embarked upon de-Stalinisation: a new, independent path without the ideological direction, rhetorical shibboleths or financial support from Russia. After condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the first communist party in the world to do so it began, writes Macintyre, clearing away the dogmas that had brought it undone.

Originally posted here:
The enemy within: How the Communist Party ground to a halt in Australia - Sydney Morning Herald