To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
April 26, 2022
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
The journal Monthly Review and its editor John Bellamy Foster try to appear very restrained and scientific, as intellectual leaders of the left. But what their politics really leads to can be seen on the website MR Online, which MR and JBF are responsible for. MR Online not only refrains from criticizing Putin’s invasion; they try to justify it, predict its coming victory and revel in that. (1) Along the way they dismiss any accusations of war crimes committed by the Russians and demean the Ukrainian people and their government. Supposedly, according to them, Russia is poised to win a great victory and to emerge stronger than ever economically despite Western sanctions.
*MR Online* dismisses any accusation of Russian war crimes and accepts without question official Russian statements. One example is the article, “Staged massacre in Bucha.” (2) This article, posted April 7, says the whole thing was made up. It’s hard to dismiss the mounds of bodies found in Bucha, so the author says these didn’t exist before the Russians withdrew from Bucha, and afterwards the victims must have been killed by the advancing Ukrainians. This story doesn’t correspond with what satellite photos show (3), and more importantly doesn’t correspond with what eyewitnesses say. This article doesn’t pretend to any objectivity, referring to the Ukrainian government as “the Ukronazi regime.”
Russia dismissed the claims of a massacre by its troops. Right away
the Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying there had
been absolutely no violence of any kind against civilians in Bucha. But
Russian troops had shelled the town before entering! Well, I guess
that’s not considered violence. Anyway, leaving that aside, they
insisted there was nothing to investigate. But as time went on, more
and more bodies turned up. Among others, the group Human Rights Watch
launched an investigation.
Their results were released on April 21. (4) Unlike MR Online, Human Rights Watch doesn’t simply accept any statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense. They sent investigators to Bucha to talk to eyewitnesses. They interviewed scores of people and witnessed the unearthing of bodies. Their report is horrifying to read but also realistic sounding and, unlike Moscow’s claims, is evidence from people on the scene. Some examples:
* A woman named Iryna, 48, told of her husband’s execution by
Russians on March 5. An interesting part of her story is that the
Russians first demanded, “Where are the Nazis?” When Iryna and
her husband could not tell the Russians where to find any alleged
Nazis, the Russians concluded that they themselves were guilty and
should be punished. Iryna’s husband was taken outside and shot. This
shows what sort of mentality Russian soldiers have, the sort of stories
they were told by Russian commanders, which reflect the rhetoric of
their commander-in-chief, Vladimir Putin. If Putin did not personally
order these people killed, he at least did the ideological work for it.
* A man named Artem, 37, went out to his garage to get some stored food. While he was inside the garage, some Russian soldiers came by looking for food and valuables to loot. They entered the garage and immediately a shot was heard. When family members later went to investigate, they found Artem dead.
* 0n March 20, some residents saw a man walk by in a jogging suit.
Shortly afterward they heard him arguing with some Russian soldiers and
heard a shot. When the coast was clear, they went out and found the
man’s body.
* During the fighting for Bucha on March 17, the home of a Ukrainian couple, Vasily and Tanya, was set afire. They and Tanya’s father went outside to put out the blaze. Russian soldiers took Vasily aside for questioning. Shortly afterward a shot was heard, and Vasily’s body was discovered later.
Why weren’t more bodies found before? The answer is provided by funeral home workers who collected bodies during the occupation. One man testified that he regularly collected bodies on the streets, and he showed investigators where they were buried. Most had been bound and then shot at close range.
There are more such examples. The investigators were also on the scene as mass graves were unearthed. Their report is full of realistic details. (5) MR Onlines reprint of the “staged massacre” article is an unconscionable bit of lying journalism. The editors of Monthly Review tried to cover themselves a little bit by printing a disclaimer at the end of the article:
“Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful.”
Their reprint is disgusting, nonetheless.
Another article on MR Online that toes the Russian line is one by John Bellamy Foster, the editor of Monthly Review.
(4) Foster’s article has no disclaimer, so presumably it represents the
official line of Monthly Review. Foster characterizes the war as a U.S.
proxy war, simply a continuation of the attacks the U.S. has been
mounting against Russia for decades. He overlooks the years of friendly
relations between the U.S. and Russia, including their cooperation in
imperialist endeavors, e.g., in Syria. And Foster ignores Russia’s own
imperialist activities, its attempts to recover as a world superpower
and its interventions in various formerly Soviet republics such as
Kazakhstan and its wars in Chechnya and Georgia; not to mention eastern
Ukraine and Crimea.
Ukraine is depicted as the crux of the whole U.S. imperialist drive.
It was the goal the U.S. has been working on for decades. Everything
depended on taking over Ukraine, which would give the U.S. access to
the Nazis’ “avenues of invasion” into Russia. Supposedly the U.S.
desired this long border with Russia as a launching pad for invasion
and dismemberment of Russia. How does Foster know this? Well, Zbigniew
Brezinski said something to that effect last century. And Brezinski was
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor! So, whatever he said must be
the godawful truth. [Oh, yes, everyone remembers the remarkable
successes of imperialist foreign policy in the Carter administration –
Iran, etc.] “Taking” Ukraine would enable the U.S. to starve
Russia into submission (But doesn’t Russia, as well as Ukraine, export
lots of grain?) and to “dismember” it. And the Ukrainians, it seems,
have nothing to say about being “taken” by the U.S.
It’s true that if a pro-Western government remained in power in Ukraine, a shift toward buying Western goods, as opposed to those from Russia, might occur; and this might well mean greater austerity. But it’s also true that Russia had been raising prices on its oil and gas and demanding payment for past loans. Either way, Ukraine faced a difficult economic situation that was going to require either austerity for the masses or an upsurge in the working people’s struggle. But Foster isn’t interested in a realistic appraisal of things. He's only interested in his fantasy history, to justify Putin’s invasion.
Foster goes so far in this regard as to assert that Russia is taking great care to avoid civilian casualties. This is just outrageous. Russia is bombing civilian buildings and infrastructure all over Ukraine, killing thousands, razing the large city of Mariupol, and forcing the evacuation of millions. This is called “being careful”. Geez, thank goodness they’re being careful! I would hate to see them being sloppy! I guess their “caution” slipped a little bit in Bucha, Mariupol, Krasnoyarsk, etc. Come on, JBF, get real!
This article is a mirror image of the sort produced by anti-communist propagandists in the U.S. during the Vietnam war that talked about the domino theory, that Vietnam was a major domino, and after it fell would come the rest of Indochina, then Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. The only thing that matters in world affairs is the struggle between the major powers. There’s no mention of Ukraine’s right to self-determination or the Ukrainian people’s desire to be free, independent, and at peace with other countries. For Foster, the Ukrainian people are only proxies, nameless pawns, in the U.S. imperialist war game. They have no right to a peaceful existence if Russia says they need to be attacked.
Shame on Foster and Monthly Review!
(1) “The Ukraine conflict is a U.S./proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively” -- interview with Scott Ritter. MR Online, posted April 14, 2022. Originally published by Strategic Culture Association on April 9, 2022. .
(2) “Staged massacre in Bucha”. MR Online. Posted April 7, 2022. Originally published: Orinoco Tribune April 5, 2022 by Mision Verdad.
(3) See Malachy Brown, David Botti, and Haley Willis, “Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims", April 4, 2022, New York Times.
(4) See the report by Human Rights Watch, “Ukraine: Russian Forces’ Trail of Death in Bucha”..
(5) Horrific photos of the dead can be seen in “Graphic photos from Bucha, Ukraine show civilians dead in the street after Russia withdraws”, USA Today.
(6) John Bellamy Foster, “The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine; a presentation given on March 31, 2022 to the advisory board of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research”. MR Online. Posted April 9, 20212. <>
Picture: MR Online says that the Bucha massacre was fake news, but investigators say otherwise.
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