Putin’s War in Ukraine Marks Rebirth of Stalinism in Russia, Chubais Says

Paul Goble, originally on Window on Eurasia

Sevastopol, Crimea after Russian occupation: Stalin, a man who killed millions of people, is now greeting the city and its guests

Staunton, June 16 – The Russian authorities have unleashed and are conducting a war in Ukraine, “a new type of war without declaration or a front line” and one that is simultaneously “destroying all official Soviet and post-Soviet myths and clarifying the real nature of the political regime in Russia,” according to Igor Chubais.

Chubais, a Moscow professor and commentator and the elder brother of UES head Anatoly Chubais, says in a blog post yesterday that as a result of what Putin is doing in Ukraine, “everyone must understand that a reborn and updated Stalinist regime is operating in Russia” (aboutru.com/2014/06/i7333/).

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Putin’s Tactics in Ukraine Now Recall Stalin’s Actions There in World War II

Paul Goble, originally on Window on Eurasia

Staunton, May 11 – “The criminal actions of Putin’s spetsnaz forces in Ukraine” are modeled on the actions of Stalin’s special force in Ukraine during World War II, according to a review of a 2012 Russian study of “Stalin’s Commandos” and their operations against Ukrainian partisan forces, according to Gennady Poberezhniy.

Yesterday, Andrey Illarionov posted a review by Rutgers political scientist Gennady Poberezhniy of Aleksandr Gogun’s “Stalin’s Commandos. Ukrainian Partisan Formations, 1941-1944”. 

Seven Decades Ago, the Soviet Union Entered the War as the Chief “Accomplice of Hitlerism”

Oleksandr Paliy for UP Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 12:01

When the current Russian government throws angry accusations of “accomplices to Nazism”, it should have first removed the plank from its own eye.

One could start with the fact that through the SS Division “Galicia”, which was indeed formed as a collaborating military force, came through barely 22 thousand Ukrainians. At the same time, the collaborationist formation of Russian “Vlasovs” alone numbered from 0.5 to 0.8 million Russians, and their membership at the end of the war exceeded 120,000 people. This occurred despite the fact that the entire territory of Ukraine was fully occupied by the Fascists, while only a small western part of Russia suffered occupation.

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 2

How Russia ‘fought against fascism’ – from 1920 until 1941 

Soviet and Nazi officers

For more than twenty years, Moscow’s closest ties in Europe were with Germany – starting in 1920 when Berlin supplied intelligence about the Polish Army to the Soviets. (And twenty years later, Stalin returned the favor when he had his radio stations in Minsk broadcast signals to the Luftwaffe to guide them to their Polish targets.) Everyone now knows about the secret 1939 Nazi-USSR Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, but even as late as October, 1940, Stalin was still  negotiating terms to join the Tripartite Pact with Italy, Japan, and Germany.

Karl Radek, fervent Stalinist and one of the authors of the new Soviet Constitution, wrote

“… only fools could imagine we should ever break with Germany… No one can give us what Germany can.”

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 1

The F-word is almost entirely meaningless today. “Fascism” has mostly become a perjorative word, used as an insult – and a scare tactic by Russia meant to paralyze opponents. In 1944, George Orwell wrote

“almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist'”.

It is now probably the most misused and overused term of our time.

“Anti-fascists” = fascists

But even more, it is becoming clear how “the fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists” ( a quote attributed to Winston Churchill). A quick look at the ‘antifascist’ crusaders in Moscow will suffice: police state in Russia, murdered opposition journalists, information monopoly on its own citizens, brutall suppression of its own minorities, military invasions of neighboring countries in “its sphere of influence” etc….