To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
April 5, 2022
by Joseph Green, Detroit
Workers’ Voice
Much of the discussion in the left over the Russian invasion of Ukraine deals with NATO expansion and the relation of Russia to NATO. But the war in Ukraine is not a war between Russia and NATO, but Russia and Ukraine. And how Russia acts towards Ukraine is mainly due to the attitude of the Russian government to neighboring countries that used to be in the Soviet Union. To understand the war in Ukraine, it’s important to understand how the Russian government has handled relations with these countries since 1991; whether this was a response to threats from these countries or itself was what spoiled relations with these newly-independent countries; and whether the actions of the Russian government didn’t also betray the interests of the Russian working people as well as that of other former Soviet peoples. The invasion of Ukraine is simply the latest chapter of a long story.
Below is outline of how the Russian government has acted
towards the newly-independent countries, focused mainly on Eastern
Europe and the Caucasus. It is a large and complicated
history, and we would welcome further comments on this subject and
additions to the timeline.
The Soviet Union broke up into 15 separate countries (14
newly-independent republics plus the Russian Federation). In Ukraine
there was a referendum on independence on 24 August 1991, with an
overwhelming yes vote. But right from the start, the government of the
Russian Federation worked to undermine the right to self-determination
of the new republics.
The Confederation of Independent States (CIS) was founded in December
1991 and embraced most of the newly-independent republics. The many
ties that had developed between the different peoples of the region,
economic, social, and historical, could have led to friendly relations.
But the leadership of the Russian Federation sought to use the CIS to
establish Russian domination over its
neighbors. All the republics faced major economic and
political difficulties, including whether the autocratic traditions
from the USSR would be democratized. The urge for domination by the
Russian state interfered with dealing with these issues. Both the
neoliberal pressure from Western imperialism and the constant
intervention from Russian imperialism caused major suffering.
The CIS eventually gave rise to the Eurasian Economic Union, the Union State (of Russia and Belarus), and the military alliance — Russia’s version of NATO — called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The Russian government fomented differences among various of the republics; carried out military interventions and then posed as the supposed peacemaker; and blocked various movements towards democratization. Many of the methods of Russian imperialism are similar to those used by Western imperialism, and sometimes they collaborated in imposing on weaker countries.
The bourgeois nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes president of
Georgia in May 1991. Russia provides strong backing for a coup, which
finally overthrows him seven months later in January 1992. This leads
to several years of civil unrest; combined with the separatist
insurgency in Abhazia, this results in Georgian president
Shevardnadze welcoming the stationing of Russian troops in
Georgia.
Here again Russia manipulates a local national conflict outside its
borders with the aim of extending Russian influence. The Russian 14th
Army, still present despite Moldovan independence in 1991, helps arm a
separatist movement in the small Transnistria region of Moldova. Then,
in June 1992, under a new commander, General Alexander Lebed, the 14th
Army intervenes to prevent Moldova from defeating the
secessionists, but without removing Transnistria from Moldova. Lebed
also stops further Russian arming of the secessionists. (It can be
noted that the secessionists were mainly led by forces associated with
opposition to then-president Boris Yeltsin of Russia.) After things
calm down, the Russian military forces remain, acting somewhat like
Western imperialist peacekeeping forces that stay forever in various
countries.
A territorial dispute leads to a bloody clash between the Ingushetia and Ossetia. Russia basically sides with Ossetia but the Ingush Republic continues to cherish hopes that Russian President Yeltsin will make good on his promises to back the Ingush claims. This is one of the reasons why Ingushetia, which is next to Chechnya and had a similar history in that both the Ingush and the Chechens had suffered criminal ethnic cleansing by Russia, don’t join Chechny in demanding full independence from Russia.
Russia provides military support to the efforts of Abkhazia to break away from Georgia. It trains a number of Chechens to take part in the Abkhazia insurgency, but later faces blowback in that some of them used this training to fight for the independence of Chechnya during the first Russo-Chechen war.
Georgian leader Shevardnadze takes Georgia into the CIS. Both former Georgian President Gamsakhurdia, overthrown in January of the previous year in a Russian-backed coup, and then, for a time, Shevardnadze, had rejected Georgian membership in the CIS, but there’s a price to be paid for Russian peacekeeping troops to help prevent the Georgian government from being overthrown by backers of former President Gamsakhurdia.
Moldova joins the CIS after being pressured by a punitive Russian agricultural tariff imposed as punishment for staying out, and faced with the uncertain situation with Transnistria.
The first Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armena and Azerbaijan lasts six years, with Russia eventually serving as a mediator.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances guaranteed the independence and borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in exchange for these states giving to Russia their nuclear arsenals, which were part of the old Soviet arsenal. Russia, the US, and the UK were parties to this memorandum, and pledged not only to respect the existing borders, but to refrain from using economic or military pressure to influence the internal policy of these countries. Since there is once again talk of security guarantees for Ukraine through agreement between the big powers, it is worth noting that the Budapest Memorandum has been honored only in the breach. No one refrained from economic pressure, and from 2014 on, both the borders and the very existence of Ukraine as an independent country has been put into question.
This is the period of the first Russo-Chechen war. (1) With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Chechnya sought independence, but after a couple of years of on-again and off-again conflict and the “half-force” option, Russia resorted to all-out war in 1994 and carried out the utter devastation of the Chechen capital of Grozny and throughout Chechnya. The war ends in 1996 with a unsatisfactory settlement that cripples Chechnya and paves the way for the second Russo-Chechen war.
The Primakov (Moscow) Memorandum is an agreement, under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and thus by agreement with Western imperialism, that supposedly maintains Moldova and the separatist region of Transnistria in a common state, but with Transnistria having many of the rights of an independent state and special relations with Russia. It also keeps Russian troops in Moldova, now as part of the Joint Control Commission.
In the Second Russo-Chechen war, Russia devastates Chechnya again, often fighting repeatedly over the same territory as it keeps changing hands. Despite heavy resistance, Russia prevails and ends Chechen independence. Russia installs a brutal pro-Russian government in the Chechnya, one which is willing to use Chechens as mercenaries for other Russian interventions. It’s during this war that Putin becomes first acting prime minister and then acting president of Russia, and he begins repressive steps against Russian workers at the same time.
The “Orange Revolution” was a series of mass protests in Ukraine which prevented then-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych (the same corrupt politician who was later overthrown again during the Maidan uprising of 2014) from stealing the 2004 presidential election. More generally, it was an attempt at democratization, as the Ukrainian political system gave vast powers to the president. It failed to achieve most of its goals, as the Orange administration which came to power for several years was a government backed by the financial oligarchs, as the previous government had been. But the sight of mass protests for democratization, in Ukraine and elsewhere, resulted in the Russian government and other oppressive regimes denouncing “color revolutions” as Western imperialist plots that were evil attempts at “regime change”. The fake anti-imperialists who justify supporting dictators, such as Syrian president Assad, against mass uprising have largely taken up the same denigration of “color revolutions”.
The Russo-Georgian war takes place in which Russia backs the separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. As fighting intensifies between Georgia and the separatist areas, Russia carries out a major invasion of Georgia by land, air, and sea, including the brief occupation of cities outside the separatist republics. Russia then formally recognizes the separatist republics and maintains troops in them after the war.
Russia acts to undermine the Maidan uprising against the corrupt and
repressive administration of Viktor Yanukovych. It acts to fan
sectarian hatreds; it seizes and occupies Crimea through military
action; and it intervenes to help separatists forces take
over parts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the eastern part of the
Donbas.
Also, Transnistria asks to be annexed by Russia, although this is not yet done; so much for the Primakov Memorandum.
The Minsk Protocol, and the subsequent Minsk 2 follow-up, were international agreements forced on Ukraine by Russia and the OSCE; they were basically an agreement between Western and Russian imperialisms. They essentially called on Ukraine to accept Russian military gains in the Donbas and legalize them, and to accept Russian interference in Ukrainian government, albeit slightly hidden by going through their separatist proxies. In return, Ukraine was supposed to get an end to the fighting and a veneer of keeping the separatist regions in Ukraine. Despite the promises in the Minsk agreements, Russia never stopped intervening in the Donbas and never respected the border between the Donbas and Russia, and the fighting continued, sometimes fiercer, sometimes more relaxed. The Minsk agreements thus settled nothing, and led towards the eventual resumption of full-scale fighting.
Syria is not a former Soviet republic, but what happened there had an important effect on the Russian government attitude towards other countries. Russia had a history of influence in Syria and a long-standing military base there, and it felt threatened by the popular uprising against the Ba’ath dictatorship headed by Bashar al-Assad, an uprising that was an important part of the Arab spring. Starting in 2015, Russia intervenes militarily to prop up the Syrian dictatorship, and it carries out savage bombing in Syria, paying special attention to destroying hospitals, schools, water supplies, etc. Here again the imperial ambitions of the Russian government required suppression of a democratic movement, and as a result, apologists for Russian imperialism have savagely slandered the democratic movement ever since.
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh war takes place between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia had sold arms to both sides prior to the war. Although Armenia is part of the CSTO along with Russia, Azerbaijan received much better and more ample weaponry from Russia because it had more money to spend. As a result of the war, Russian peacekeeping troops are maintained in the region.
A CSTO contingent including Russian troops enter Kazakhstan in order to suppress a mass worker’s uprising against price increases and in favor of a number of demands for democratization.
Russian troops enter Belarus as part
of preparations for war on Ukraine. Russia then uses bases
in Belarus to engage in the war on Ukraine. It also helps prop up the
Lukashenko regime, which had been the target of mass
protests in 2020-21 which denounced Lukashenko’s fraudulent reelection
in 2020 — more than 35,000 protesters were
arrested. On February 27, a referendum amends the Belarusian
constitution and, among other things, removes provisions
that had aimed at Belarus having a neutral status or being a
nuclear-free zone.
Russia declares that Donetsk and Luhansk are independent countries. The Russian government regards that this applies to the entire area of the Ukrainian administrative regions of Donetsk and Luhansk although the so-called “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk only control a fraction of it.
Russia begins a full-scale invasion of Ukraine from the North, South, and East. It expects to take the capital Kyiv and other major cities in a few days, but the offensive bogs down. Then, faced with stubborn and successful resistance by Ukrainian forces, the Russian troops begin devastating one town and city after another, just as Russian forces had done in Chechnya and then Syria. Residential areas, schools, and hospitals are hit in an attempt to break the Ukrainian will to resist; atrocities are committed in some occupied towns; agreed-on humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to escape the fighting are repeatedly blocked.
[1] Or rather, the first Russo-Chechen war of the latter twentieth
century. There were previous wars before Chechnya was annexed by Russia
in the mid-19th century. Also of significance is that, in 1944 the
entire Chechen population --and also the entire Ingush population --
had been deported to central Asia, in secret and with great loss of
life, in one of several criminal ethnic cleansings carried out by order
of Stalin. It is hard to find words to describe the horror of these
attempts to wipe out the national existence of entire peoples. It was
not until 1956, several years after Stalin’s death, that Chechens were
allowed to begin to return to Chechnya. The entire population of
Crimean Tatars had also been deported en masse from their homeland in
1944, at a time when Crimea was part of Russia, and they were not
allowed to return until the late 1980s. Given this history, it’s
probably not surprising that the Crimean Tatars prefer Crimea be in
Ukraine rather than Russia; they have faced repression again since
Crimea was annexed to Russia in 2014; and their political body, the
Mejlis, now operates in exile in Ukraine. <>
Picture: The Russian devastation of Mariupol
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