Russia’s invasion of Ukraine divides the left into completely opposite camps. It shows even more blatantly that the left no longer has a unifying ideological base.
The main dividing line in the world today is between those forces that seek to strengthen the rule of law as an essential element of democracy and to develop international law, and those that oppose these efforts. The latter are represented today by kleptocratic, imperialist Russia and its supporters, the former by the common front against Russian aggression.
Both on the right and on the left, there are forces that unreservedly support Ukraine and forces that support Russia. The political right-left divide no longer defines social progressiveness. More important is the ability to argue and deal fairly and objectively with your opponents, to give them credit where it is due, and to cooperate with them on issues where you agree.
The left and the right have different views on many key issues of everyday politics. In this respect, of course, both the left and the right will continue to exist.
However, philosophically and historically, the left has lost its footing – socialism has failed in all its forms, and the democratic market economy has proved to be the only form of society capable of development.
This is not a criticism of left-wing people and parties as such, but a recognition of the facts of the nature of our times.
It has been said that the war in Ukraine is the beginning of a new era. To understand the world-historical significance of Ukraine’s defensive struggle and the common front that supports it, it is not enough to discuss only the war itself.
What is needed is a debate on issues that go beyond the war, such as the past era, the causes of the rise and fall of socialism, the emergence of the democratic market economy and the development of the rule of law – and a precise definition of the key concepts involved.
The mainstream left in the West has joined the common front in support of Ukraine. However, some prominent left-wing intellectuals and representatives of the peace movement and socialist organisations have stuck to the explanation that the main threat to world peace is US imperialism, not Russian kleptocratic imperialism.[1]
As a result, every effort is being made to shift the responsibility for Russia’s unilateral attack on Ukraine onto the USA.
The explanation goes something like this: The USA benefits from the war. It wants to prevent the formation of a multipolar world because it threatens its dominant position. The USA is therefore waging a so-called proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia, while Russia is rightly “defending” a multipolar world and its geopolitical interests against the expansion of NATO.
As a reminder, multipolarity in itself does not make the world any safer. What matters is the internal and external policies pursued by these different poles.
I refer, for example, to two famous left-wing intellectuals, the American linguist and social activist Noam Chomsky and the former Greek finance minister, politician and activist Yanis Varoufakis.[2]
Both have great merits in their careers. For decades, Chomsky has been a distinguished critic of US domestic and foreign policy and has certainly suffered for his opinions. Varoufakis, for example, as a finance minister, consistently defended the interests of the Greek people suffering the consequences of the country’s debt crisis.
They also condemn the Russian invasion. Chomsky has rightly said that whatever the reason for the attack, it is a criminal act contrary to international law and human rights.[3] He also approves the sending of defensive weapons to Ukraine. Varoufakis wrote in March 2022: “Today we must stand with Ukraine, unconditionally. And we must say it out loud: Putin is a war criminal whose campaign sits in the same category as the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland or the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.”[4]
But when one starts to justify the cause of the Russian attack on the grounds of US imperialism, it inevitably leads to incomprehensible positions. In practice, Chomsky and Varoufakis end up repeating the lies propagated by Russia.
Similar more or less strident views are expressed by numerous commentators and activists in the various left-wing media and, for example, in the American left-wing organisation DSA. But they are equally voiced by many conservative academics and politicians – which just reflects the nature of our times.
One of the key claims is that Euromaidan, the events on Maidan Square in Kyiv in late 2013 and early 2014, were a coup orchestrated by Washington and carried out by the far right.
This is what journalists of Monthly Review[5], among others, write. Noam Chomsky has also given an interview with a similar view.[6]
In fact, Euromaidan was a genuine uprising. The above claim does not recognise the Ukrainians’ own will and their right to choose their alliances.
For almost the entire existence of their present state, the Ukrainians have been striving towards democracy and Europe, not towards Russia and the Eurasian alliance. The Orange Revolution of 2004, the Euromaidan and the current war of defence are all part of the same democratic uprising and struggle for independence. This struggle has its roots in the times of the Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia.
The peaceful mass demonstrations of Euromaidan were triggered by President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject the promised Association Agreement with the EU and to tie Ukraine more closely to Russia.
The protests involved millions of Ukrainians and spread from Kyiv to the rest of the country. Unable to suppress them, Yanukovych’s regime gave the order to open fire on the protesters in February 2014. The protesters threw Molotov cocktails and paving stones to defend themselves against the violence. The uprising ended in victory for the protesters: Yanukovych was ousted, new presidential elections were held, and presidential powers were reduced.
Ukrainians call the events the Revolution of Dignity, which tells it was about their dignity and civil rights, not about a quest for power.
KyivPost deputy editor Katia Gortshinskaya wrote in December 2013:
“In a way, this is a war. It is a war for a new civilization in Ukraine. Based on values such as solidarity, dignity, respect for an individual and clear and equal rules of the game for all. This is no longer about Europe or integration – it’s about who we are and where we want to go.
This is about a nation being born. Mutilated by years of misrule, impoverished by looting, it emerges slowly from the ruin. This process is massive and we don’t know how well this birth is going to go. But it’s happening now and here, in Kyiv, and it’s both painful and awesome. The only place to truly feel the pain and grandeur of this national awakening is to stand there right on Maidan.” [7]
The description is a poor fit for a coup manipulated by foreign powers.
Another key argument is that there was a civil war in Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. This so-called Donbas war started in 2014 when armed pro-Russian separatists, military-backed by Russia, seized government buildings in the Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states.
It is also insisted that peace talks should be started immediately and that, in order to achieve peace, Ukraine should not reclaim “every inch of its territory”, i.e. Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, because “it is unrealistic”.
This is, among other things, what the well-known American left-wing activist Medea Benjamin argues on Democracy Now.[8]
Firstly, Russia signed agreements in 1994 and 1997 in which it undertook to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and borders, and not to use or threaten to use force against it. These agreements are still in power and cover the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as well as Crimea. Russia has openly violated them.
Secondly, the fighting in eastern Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea took place immediately after the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s consequent loss of control over Ukraine.
Thirdly, the fake referendum on joining Russia in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions last autumn was held under attack, at gunpoint, as was the referendum in Crimea in 2014, where it was held under the occupation of the little green men.[9]
The UN has condemned both the illegal annexations and the referendums, as has the EU.
In the 1991 referendum, the majority in Donbas, as well as in Crimea supported Ukrainian independence.[10]
Fourth, there is indisputable evidence of Russian military involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Reports from 2015 by UN human rights monitors[11] and the independent American think tank Atlantic Council[12], among others, testify to Russian troops and camps on the Ukrainian border and Russian heavy weaponry on the Ukrainian side.
The Russian officer and commander of the eastern Ukrainian separatists, Igor Girkin (Strelkov), himself admitted Russian military involvement in an interview with the Russian newspaper Zavtra, published in November 2014: “I was the one who pulled the trigger of this war” and “if our unit hadn’t crossed the border, in the end everything would have fizzled out, like in Kharkiv, like in Odessa”.[13]
Russia and many left-wing intellectuals justify the invasion on the grounds that NATO has expanded eastwards in violation of the promise the West made to the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.
Putin has invoked the verbal promise made to Gorbachev by then US Secretary of State James Baker and President George H.W. Bush that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, such a promise was never written into the final agreement signed by Russia and the West in September 1990.
It is absurd to expect Ukraine, against the will of its people, to rely on a verbal agreement made more than 30 years ago in a completely different world and with a completely different Russia.
NATO’s eastward expansion has been the result of the growing threat of Russian imperialism, not the other way round.
Many left-wing journalists, such as Oliver Eagleton, argue that the war could have been avoided, or at least stopped in its tracks, if the West had been more willing to negotiate with Russia.
It is claimed that Zelenskyi was ready for a negotiated settlement with Russia soon after the war started but that Boris Johnson pressured him to break off the negotiations, saying that Putin should not be negotiated with.[14]
Indeed, negotiations were held as soon as the invasion began, and a framework agreement was reached. But it did not collapse under Western pressure. It failed because the invasion quickly developed into a situation where Zelensky no longer had a mandate to negotiate peace and territorial concessions. He already knew what war crimes Russia had committed in Butsha and Irpin, even though they had not yet been reported in the media, and that the Ukrainians would never accept territorial concessions.[15]
It is total blindness to believe that Russia sought genuine negotiations before or after the invasion. Russia’s so-called “diplomatic solution” means the West’s acceptance that Ukraine as a country and as a nation can be destroyed or rendered unviable.
Numerous analysts have shown that Russia began preparations to set up a puppet government in Ukraine as early as the beginning of 2021.
The Minsk agreements were concluded in 2014 and 2015, at a time when Russia had already seized Crimea and Donbas. Why would it have negotiated them again? The aim of Russia was simply to legitimise the invasions by invoking the Minsk agreements.
Slovenian left-wing philosopher Slavoj Žižek recalls that in the Second World War, before German attacked the Soviet Union, some leftists swallowed German “anti-imperialist” rhetoric and advocated neutrality. Today, he argues, one cannot be a leftist if one does not unequivocally stand behind Ukraine – and this is a question of existence for the left.
Žižek asks whether this means that the left should simply take the side of the West, inclusive of the rightist fundamentalists who also support Ukraine.
His answer is:
“From the rightist standpoint, Ukraine fights for European values against the non-European authoritarians; from the leftist standpoint, Ukraine fights for global freedom, inclusive of the freedom of Russians themselves.”[16]
The main reason, in my view, is that the left has failed to understand how the formation of global society in and from the second half of the 20th century has changed the world. Two crucial changes have taken place: traditional imperialism has given way to financial imperialism, and international law has developed.
Despite its imperialist history, the USA is a democratic country with the rule of law and freedom of expression. Although there has also been a constant tendency towards totalitarianism, it has been capable of reform. The strong anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the civil rights movement, for example, are proof of this.
By opposing Russia’s imperialist invasion, the US political leadership is involved in creating global public opinion against all future imperialist attacks – including those made by the USA.
Without the rule of law, without the struggle between political interest groups and without civil society, imperialism is totalitarian. It can operate without restraints.
[1] Pertti Koskela: When will Russians rise up against the Kremlin’s war of aggression?
[2] Petition To All Who Care about Humanity’s and the Planet’s Future signed by both Chomsky and Varoufakis.
Noam Chomsky: A left response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bill Fletcher Jr, The Real News Network, April 8, 2022.
Varoufakis: The US wants to turn the Ukraine war into a permanent conflict. DiEM25 Communications, October 26, 2022.
[3] Noam Chomsky: A left response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bill Fletcher Jr, The Real News Network, April 8, 2022.
[4] What we must do in the face of Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine – a personal view plus a heartwarming Manifesto by Russian comrades. Yanis Varoufakis, 5. March 2022.
[5] Notes from the editors, Monthly Review July 1, 2022.
[6] Noam Chomsky: A left response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bill Fletcher Jr, The Real News Network, April 8, 2022.
[7] Birth of a nation, Katya Gorchinskaya, Kyiv Post, February 20, 2016. (Originally published on December 12, 2013.)
[8] Medea Benjamin & Nicolas Davies: Negotiations “Still the Only Way Forward” to End Ukraine War, Democracy Now, October 12, 2022.
[9] Open Letter to Noam Chomsky (and Other Like-Minded Intellectuals) on the Russia-Ukraine War. Bohdan Kukharskyy, Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ilona Sologoub, e-Flux Notes, May 23, 2022.
[10] 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, Wikipedia.
[11] Evidence Grows of Russian Military Involvement in Ukraine, Lisa Schlein, Voa News, June 01, 2015.
[12] Hiding in plain sight: Putin’s war in Ukraine. Maksymilian Czuperski, John Herbst, Eliot Higgins, Alina Polyakova, Damon Wilson, Atlantic Council, October 15, 2015.
[13] Russia’s Igor Strelkov: I Am Responsible for War in Eastern Ukraine. By Anna Dolgov, The Moscow Times, November 21, 2014.
[14] Liz Truss Doesn’t Care About Stopping the War in Ukraine. Oliver Eagleton, Novara media, October 7, 2022.
[15] No, the West Didn’t Halt Ukraine’s Peace Talks With Russia. Russian diplomacy was always a smokescreen. Volodymyr Artiukh and Taras Fedirko, Novara Media, October 17, 2022.
[16] Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine. Slavoj Žižek, Opinion, The Guardian, June 21, 2022.
