1000 years of BLOODY RUSSIA

A year after the annexation of Crimea, Putin’s Russia is looking ever more like an expansionist fascist state. “Putin has brought Nazism into politics,” Nemtsov told a reporter hours before he was shot. As the regime aims to destroy critical thinking, years of round-the-clock propaganda–hugely intensified by the Ukraine campaign–has taken its toll on Russian society. Many Russians are ready for war: this can be seen in the numbers of men who left their homes to fight in Ukraine as volunteers (alongside regular Russian troops). Life has become dangerous for those Russians who–despite daily brainwashing and state control–preserve a clear mind. Yet, despite dragging Russia into the past and starting a European war, the Kremlin still has friends in Europe. Putin needs their help to dismember Ukraine and to stop democracy from reaching Russian borders. The Russian leader seeks support to realize his vision, in which any country that was once under Soviet or Russian rule should serve Moscow. Currently, Putin’s team of loyal dictators in Belarus and Central Asia are safeguarding his Eurasian dream. But now that Russia is in confrontation with the West and its economy is a ticking time bomb, Putin wants to divide the EU and create pro-Moscow lobby groups in Brussels. This not only involves supporting Europe’s far-right and far-left parties, but also courting entire mainstream political elites. Recently Putin has even attempted to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, “What is so bad about it that the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?” he said. In 2013, he tried to justify the 1939 invasion of Finland because that invasion was necessary to correct border “mistakes” according to him. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact led to the clearly aggressive invasion of Finland, yet it is often presented as a defensive measure. In reality, Stalin thought he could utilise Hitler to achieve certain goals such as the destruction of the West, and if that meant jointly crushing Poland too, which Stalin had long hated anyway, so be it. The motives of Stalin were in fact, far from defensive. Hitler could be used as an ally in the interim, and Stalin certainly benefited from having Hitler as an ally between 1939 and 1941. Russia’s Neo-Nazis put many of Hitler’s ideas into a context of Russian nationalism and patriotism, which in turn perversely means glorifying Stalin, the USSR, and russification policies also (See of note, Aleksandr Dugin). Putin has helped develop this pattern of nationalism by placing Stalin into a “patriotic context.” This nationalist outlook has made Russian nationalism attractive and by extension the most ugly form of nationalism attractive. This is a problem that the Russian people, as well as the rest of us, are going to have to deal with. Regardless of whether Putin thinks or wants you to think he is an opponent of fascism, he and the nationalist ideas he advocates, are certainly not a real solution to Europe’s or indeed Russia’s “fascist problems.” Given Putin’s willingness to use Neo-Nazis elsewhere in Europe to his own advantage, the above should be telling. After all, the ideology that has been dubbed “Putinism” also has a basis in fascism itself.