Russia is a bourgeois state but the interests of its national bourgeoisie happen to be against the interests of imperialism.
Dialectical materialism doesn’t work on a premise of “based” or “not based”, rather it’s more like “there are based things that align with proletarian interests, we currently need those so we support those, the other ones are cringe bourgeois garbage”.
“there are based things that align with proletarian interests, we currently need those so we support those, the other ones are cringe bourgeois garbage”
I.e., critical support. Or describing countries and people in terms of “70% good, 30% bad” (for example) instead of simply good or bad.
Critical support for reasons listed here. They’re also infinitely closer to returning to socialism than anywhere in the west is to ever becoming socialist in the first place, especially with the war introducing new contradictions (declining material conditions, being permanently divided from the west, state acquisition of private industry, etc.) and yes, China being their main ally and trading partner.
It’s good to see that even bourgeois dictatorships gave up on joining the imperialist boys club and recognise that they are better off joining the China-led world of fairer trading, cooperation and diplomacy. But that doesn’t make the Russian Federation cool, and we would all prefer that it wasn’t reactionary nationalists taking the decisions
It’s good to see that even bourgeois dictatorships gave up on joining the imperialist boys club and recognise that they are better off joining the China-led world of fairer trading
I wouldn’t say they recognised the best path but that even if they gave half of their country away they still wouldn’t be allowed in the imperailists’ club. So they literally had no choice but taking the path they took.
Hopefully they get better from it, but considering how long they stuck to the idea of joining the west, and the possibility that they might still want to, a lot still needs to happen for them to get better.
Yup, I’ve said almost the exact same thing before:
Over 20 years go Russia—at the time lead by Putin—wanted to join the imperialism club, but the US rejected them: Ex-Nato head says Putin wanted to join alliance early on in his rule. Now Russia, rejected by the Global North, has no choice but to join with the Global South as allies instead. This shift in allegiances has been massively accelerated by the sanctions of this war.
Was the UK based because it helped the USSR fight Hitler?
No, I don’t think so. However that doesn’t mean that anything would have been gained if leftists had been sabotaging or speaking against the UK-Soviet alliance during WWII.
Nope.
I’m not really a big Russia fan. I think that Russia is an indicator of the shift from unipolar to multipolar capitalism, but don’t support everything Russia does
Same can go for countries like Iran
I’ll copypasta myself again:
Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?
In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.
Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.
I think that on geopolitics Russia is worth supporting, especially because they side with China and other ML states a lot
