Shortly before Putin’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine Socialist Appeal poured scorn on all those warning of the risk of invasion.
It has made no self-criticism of that, nor of its history of denying Ukrainian rights and soft-pedalling Russian imperialism.
Socialist Appeal is these days a noticeable presence on some demonstrations. Unsurprisingly it has turned up to no pro-Ukraine protests. I didn’t see them even at the Stop the War Coalition demo in London on 5 March.
SA has not published much on the war itself — as opposed to denunciations of the Tory government, its stance on refugees and so on. It does have a long statement — “The war in Ukraine: for an internationalist class position” .
Ignoring the actual issues in the war that is actually happening, the statement brandishes the slogan from World War 1, “The main enemy of the working class is at home”, as if the war in Ukraine is like World War 1 (rival imperialisms contending for areas to dominate) rather than a subject nation resisting its historic oppressor.
It denounces the Western powers’ history in vivid colours: “bloody history… bombing and invading… slaughtering civilians… organising fascist military coups… assassinations”. Contrast the way it describes the ongoing, extremely bloody Russian war in Syria: “Russia intervened on Assad’s side and determined the outcome of the civil war. Syria was important for Russia… The outcome was a serious setback for US imperialism”.
And so on throughout.
Amid all the wild-eyed denunciation of Nato expansion (in fact Nato will not allow Ukraine to join, though Putin’s war may well prompt Nato expansion), Ukraine is blandly described as “Russia’s historical borderland”. Like Britain’s historical borderland in Ireland?
The statement does condemn Putin’s “intervention”, even calling it a “reactionary imperialist war”. But it doesn’t call for Russian withdrawal! This is not because Socialist Appeal is opposed, exactly; their Russian co-thinkers have said it elsewhere. But they evidently see it as not important.
As for Ukraine’s national rights, absolutely not. “Reactionary Ukrainian nationalism on one side, and reactionary great Russian chauvinism on the other…” “any attempt to rule the country on the basis of nationalism (be that Ukrainian or pro-Russian)…”
Socialist Appeal talk as if national oppression and national rights are irrelevant. That is a wider trend in their thought. But here there is more: they actively don’t want to support Ukraine.
The Socialist Workers’ Party is stronger in denouncing Putin’s war. It does call for Russian withdrawal. But as before the war, it is not that interested in Ukraine’s rights.
In the fortnight before the invasion Socialist Worker carried generic “No war” headlines with the same explanatory strapline: “Biden and West want to dominate eastern Europe”. As if our worry should be about Nato invading Ukraine, rather than Russia.
Its “Five reasons why we oppose the war in Ukraine” says nothing about Ukraine’s rights, and focuses heavily on Nato.
Meanwhile SWP leader Alex Callinicos comments: “We mustn’t be afraid to say that the US and its allies helped to create the conditions for this disaster. They pushed Nato close to Russia’s borders when Putin was weak. They allowed pro-Western Ukrainian nationalists to entertain the fantasy that they could join, feeding Putin’s resentment and paranoia.”
Once again, Russian imperialism, its long history and its resurgence under Putin, disappears.
Socialist Worker advocates “a movement in Ukraine independent of the Nato powers”. In fact there are labour and popular movements in Ukraine. For now, they are united, to one degree or another, for better and worse, behind the Ukrainian government, but they are not catspaws of it, still less of Nato. We advocate Ukraine’s workers develop their movements further, that they should not trust Nato and indeed that they should not trust the Ukrainian government. That does not settle the issues in the war — issues which SW simply evades.
In addition to focusing on the threat of a direct Western intervention that is not happening, SW expends thousands of words denouncing Western government’s arming Ukraine.
Ukraine should reject Western weapons? Should it get weapons from anywhere? What would the SWP’s ideal “independent movement” do to fight back against the Russians?
Of course the SWP are not pacifists. They just don’t care much about whether Ukrainians can defend themselves against Putin’s assault.