Putin's bots and whataboutery

A fortnight into the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s mafia state the erroneously termed “social media” are awash with whataboutery. What about Palestine? What about Iraq? What about Afghanistan etc.? Such stances are the political equivalent of not being able to chew gum and cross the road at the same time.

It shouldn’t take much intellectual effort for people who regard themselves as socialists to denounce the actions of one imperialist power and also condemn similar actions by another. The “what about” brigade are effectively excusing dreadful crimes against humanity which the Putin dictatorship is committing in Ukraine by saying its rivals do similar so we shouldn’t be bothered too much.

The “what about” line is precisely the that used by Putin cronies like Sergey Lavrov when they appear on TV to “justify” their colonial reconquest of Ukraine, amplified by a big element of whataBOTery — many such Facebook posts coming from obvious trolls.

The 300 staff in the GRU BOT factory in St Petersburg are working overtime pumping out this crap and finding a ready audience amongst the far right, Trumpists, anti-vaxers and unfortunately some people who regard themselves as leftists but have succumbed to various forms of conspiracy theory — the curse of the digital age.

Yet opposition to Russian imperialism has been a major part of socialist internationalism.

In the mid nineteenth century two socialists wrote many articles on the subject, subsequently published as The Russian Threat to Europe. The authors concerned were Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. In this day and age they would no doubt be condemned by some as “dupes of imperialism”. During the Crimean War they said:

“But let Russia get possession of Turkey… and she becomes superior to all the rest of Europe put together. Such an event would be an unspeakable calamity to the revolutionary cause…In this instance the interests of the revolutionary Democracy and of England go hand in hand”.

Engels would later refer to the Crimean war as a “sham war” fought half-heartedly by the Britain. Marx believed the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston was not conducting the war effectively because he was a Tsarist sympathiser. Marx also accused him of taking bribes from Russia. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! Marx would rather trust revolutionary movements championed by the working class, than put any faith in the British ruling class to seriously challenge autocratic regimes.

Marx’s and Engels’s antagonism towards the Russian state stemmed from the role it played in suppressing the democratic revolutions which broke out across a broad swathe of the European continent in 1848. Russian military intervention was particularly important in defeating the Hungarian Revolution against the Hapsburg Empire.

The defeated Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth was welcomed as a hero among the working class in Britain, whilst the Austrian general Haynau, whose reputation for brutality spread throughout Europe, was famously horsewhipped by brewery workers who chased him down Borough High Street in Bermondsey chanting “Down with the Austrian Butcher!”

The labour movement in Britain was similarly outraged when Britain established a military alliance with Tsarist Russia — “triple entente” — in 1907. The words socialists most associated with Tsarist Russia were Knout (a scourge-like whip), pogrom, and Siberia.

The October Revolution served to change attitudes towards Russia when a state established by a workers’ revolution was achieved. Russia would no more intervene in Europe to suppress revolutionary movements, but instead support them. (Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks’ attempt, opposed at the time by Trotsky, to stimulate a revolution at bayonet point in the Russo/Polish war proved a big mistake.) The ascent of Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s effectively ended the decade or less of socialist government in Russia. Stalin led a counter-revolution and restored the imperialistic traits of Tsarist times. He betrayed the Spanish revolution and subjected the countries of Eastern Europe to decades long repression under police state regimes.

Such behaviour was not just personified by one man. Three years after Stalin’s death the Russian army put down a revolution in Hungary against the dictatorial regime they’d set up. Peter Fryer, the Daily Worker (forerunner of the Morning Star) correspondent reported what was essentially a working class revolution, only to have his reports spiked.

As with Ukraine now, the Hungarians in 1956 were denounced as “fascist” for their stance against the invader.

The Trotskyist movement in 1956 knew whose side they were on. Nowadays some claiming that legacy are not so sure. At least in the days of the USSR the fiction could be maintained that these were the actions of a “socialist” country.

Today it’s a regime of gangster capitalists ruled by someone reputed to be the richest man in the world who sadly cannot enjoy his ill gotten gains, but instead chooses to inflict untold misery on others.