Re: [A-List] Petras on Beslan - fire away/National Factor . . . certain aspects

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>This is not ancient history. Yeltsin and Putin were both trained as
Communists. Despite their conversion to market economics, they retained the kind of
Great Russian chauvinism that marked Soviet bureaucratic socialism. This
chauvinism took many different forms, some more virulent than others. In the case of
the Chechens, it was the most extreme. The entire population was evicted from
its homeland and sent to Siberia during WWII because they were supposedly
pro-Nazi. This was a typical Stalin reaction to nationalist resistance. Instead of
seeing it as based on legitimate grievances, it was seen as a plot hatched by
Hitler. Think of it as the Mad Hatter logic of the Moscow Trials applied to
an entire nation.<

Comment

It is more than less accurate to state that above author and I were trained
as communists . . . yet both of us have radically different opinions . . .
political histories and assessments of American society. Some of the sharpest
divergence is on the national question in American history . . . African American
Liberation and Social Revolution . . . possibly the question of Atzlan . . .
the Question of the Southwest . . . the Black Belt South . . . the Alaskan
Eskimos . . . the peculiar circumstance of the Philippines and a host of
"dependencies" and administrative zones under the political and military hegemony of
the mutltinational state that is the State of the USNA.

We probably have identical view concerning the Indian Factor in American
history for very different reasons.

I refer to the state of the American Union as a multinational state . . . you
may see it different . . . despite the fact that we were "trained as
communists." Not all of our differences are "class differences" . . . in the eternal
scheme of life.

Is it accurate to say that Yeltsin and Putin were trained as communists? What
does this mean? That they took several courses on Marxism and political
Leninism? It is not more accurate to state that President Putin received his
fundamental training in state security . . . and Yeltsin as a political hack?

I tend to be trained in the kind of communism where I was taught to always
error on the side of caution in discussing any question outside the immediate
sphere of our multinational state system . . . because of my imperial status and
former status as a member of the labor aristocracy. I am not scared to
discuss the issues of the day . . . but have to be very careful and proceed with an
eye on changing political polarities so that I do not drift into the
ideological orbit of our most powerful bourgeoisie.

The wrong sentence about . . . say China . . . will place me in the
ideological orbit of our rather aggressive and powerful imperial bourgeoisie.

In history . . . figuratively speaking . . . I was on the jury during the
Moscow Trials and voted for conviction . . . although I was not born until
September 28, 1952. The Moscow Trials . . . whose connection to the event that is
Beslan is "way over my head" . . . but nevertheless is not an impressive
argument for me . . . since I voted for conviction.

In the case of the Chechen and their eviction from their historic homeland .
. . this was not the only case of "social engineering" in the Soviet Union.
The issue written about was the event called Beslan . . . and even here I almost
went to far in describing the economic center of gravity that is going to
compel communist, fascists, social democrat, bourgeois nationalist and or any
religious fundamentalists . . . as a representative oof state authority . . . to
enter the political and economic orbit of the Russian State.

I believe that Soviet history is fair game for communists world wide because
the Soviet Union no longer exists. When it did exists . . . it was not fair
game . . . especially with communists in the American Union . . . or we risk
entering the political and ideological orbit of our own bourgeoisie. This is
precisely what happened to a generation of communists . . . who morphed and
completed their political evolution as anti-Soviet communists.

This is not a moral question or question of democracy but one of communist
politics and strategy.

Every so-called revolutionary (Marxist) political grouping in American
history has more than less crashed and been destroyed on what is called the national
question. Yet . . . "many trained communists" in the American Union . . .
extract for themselves the inalienable right to claim the "right" . . . and
correct understanding of the National Factor in every corner of earth. Most
communist in America do not even agree that the concept "American Union" is
historically and politically valid . . . because the imperial bourgeoisie liquidated
this concept from the ideological sphere.

This "Great Russian chauvinism that marked Soviet . . . socialism" . . . is
to slap the Soviet proletarian brigade in the face. Georgia, the Ukraine, and
all the old Republics and Autonomous Regions of the former Soviet Union were
not colonies. The issue is not the persistence of bourgeois ideology . . . but
this outright attack against the land of socialism.

See . . . the question is not political errors and we communist workers
committed millions of errors because we conducted a billion trillion individual
acts of survival and engagement with internal and external enemies. On what basis
can a communist in the American Union . . . call we who laid down our lives
in the battle against European led German fascists . . . "Great Russian
chauvinists" in connection with melting out punishment to collaborators with our
enemy?

Compare what is written above with what is stated in the New York Times:

>At the close of World War II, Stalin had the entire Chechen nation exiled to
>Kazakhstan for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Khrushchev allowed them
>to return to their homeland but they continued to chafe under Russian rule.
>Because Chechnya, unlike the Ukraine or Georgia, had never enjoyed the
>status of a nominally independent republic under the Communists, the
>Chechens were denied the right to secede from the Russian Federation after
>the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The National Factor is historically specific and general formula will run one
into the waiting ideological arms of the imperial bourgeoisie.  Left wing
front ideological front men for the imperial bourgeoisie describes the "trained
communists" in the American Union raising the banner of Chechnya Liberation and
Self Determination of Nations.

It is always best to error on the side of caution.


Melvin P.