Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- intro and part one

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/26/2004 1:01:35 AM Central Standard Time, comvoice@xxxxxxxxx writes:

1817-64:

. These are the years of the fierce series of rebellions and conflicts called the Caucasian War, in which the Chechens play a major role. Ultimately Russia subjugates the Caucasus through devastating many of its peoples. A substantial part of the Chechen population are killed, while many Chechens and other Caucasian mountaineers are deported from their regions to elsewhere in the Caucasus, or forced to leave the Caucasus entirely and settle in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). The tsarist forces could not achieve victory over the Chechens so long as the forests provided cover for ambushes and guerrilla tactics, so the Russian army systematically cuts down the main Chechen forests. The Chechen landscape is permanently altered.

 . . .. Shamil also seeks to build up state or governmental institutions among the Chechens, something which the Chechen tribes had not previously had. Contrary to romanticized pictures of such revolts, he doesn't shrink from harsh, dictatorial measures to enforce his decrees and preserve unity against the Russians.

1877-8:

. On the occasion of a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, there is a new anti-Russian uprising in the North Caucasus, led by Haji Mohammed in Chechnya and Ali-Bek Haji in Dagestan.

1890s:

. Oil is discovered in Grozny, Chechnya's main city, which by 1900 becomes second only to Baku (presently the capital of Azerbaijan) as an oil city in the tsarist empire. Later, Chechnya will be important both for oil extraction and refining in the Soviet Union. Still later, oil extraction will decline quite far by 1980, being less than half the output of 1911, but Chechnya will retain its significance for the Soviet Union as a producer of special aviation oils, as a major refining center, and as part of a major network of oil pipelines.

 

 

Comment

 

It is very easy to speak of and demand a class analysis of social forces and in the heat of the moment forget to present the economic analysis, which in fact is the meaning of the word class analysis. Class analysis means the social and political relations of economic units in their interactivity with themselves and other economic units - with the property relations within, in the social and ideological sphere.

 

Classes are in the last instance riveted to how people are organized and group together on the basis of a definable stage in the development of productive forces - a given state of tool, instrument and machine development + human labor sitting on a definable energy grid.

 

1. Everyone on earth remotely familiar with human history agree that it is written on a parchment of genocide in blood ink. This is especially true for the Western hemisphere as the premier model of development for the past seven hundred years.

 

2. Imperialism has been and remains the general form of human advancement in the sense that more developed states (economic units) subjugate lesser developed peoples and bring them into their framework and trajectory of economic development.

 

3. Imperial logic as the export of more developed productive forces takes place as military conquest in history and is not peculiar to the epoch of bourgeois property and industrial relations of production. Thinking, ideological proclamations and passionate appeals to justice cannot halt this very real historical progression  . . . did not alter this historical trajectory and will not halt this historical progression tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

 

4. The period chronicled above is the period of the formation of what would be called the national question and the economic relations during the 1850s - 1900s became the basis for Lenin's party and Lenin personally to formulate what is called the national question as an attribute of Leninism.

 

5. The chronicle above is absolutely devoid of economic analysis or class analysis that is the material that would allow us today to try and unravel what the Communists - Bolsheviks, in Russia were responding to and why they put forth various political forms of resolution of the national question, short of the formation of independent national or rather multinational state structures.

 

In as much as Chechnya is composed of more than one historically evolved peoples we are not talking about the formation of a national state structure in the first place, but rather a multinational state structure, that in theory would have existed in a federated stated structure not unlike that of the USNA.

 

6. The question that emerged in the discussion of Chechnya was not whether it is morally proper for the peoples of Chechnya to be beat up by the guardians of the Russian State or their own rotten and reactionary leaders, but rather what is the current form of resolution of the national factor for us today as opposed to in the time of Lenin and the relevance of the slogan "right of nations to self determination" to today.

 

7. Class analysis of Chechnya today means what is the class differences between Putin as guardian of the Russia State and the class striving of the various political groups and leaders of Chechnya today . . . not in 1980 or 1926 or 1890 or 1850 . . . today in the real word of politics and economic consolidation. What are the economic classes in motion in Chechnya today and how are the class demands of the proletariat - the lowest stratum of society, being expressed in the political and ideologically sphere since the overthrow of Soviet power and the triumph of the bourgeois property counter revolution.

 

I absolutely agree that those who call themselves Marxists and communist must look at class and economic factors, which are twofold: Chechnya as a former autonomous region and how the various classes within the former autonomous region respond to their actual economic needs today in the real world.

 

8. It is of course a bad thing when a two year old child stubs their toe and cries; when people are homeless, when people are jailed in mass, when people are starved to death; when people have bombs dropped on them or become victimized by the seven deadly sins. However if one is to measure how the actual resolution of the national factor was conceived by the Russian revolutionaries and then fought out as policy  . . .  and measure the national factor called Chechnya, we must place it in history in relationship to how the national factors were "resolved" and evolved in various large states on earth.

 

One can bring the question real close by comparing how the ruling class of America and the ruling peoples attempted resolution of their/our national factors between 1722 (your date) and 1980 (the late date indicated in the above chronology). Actually the chronology begins 1550 - 1604.

 

The issue in my estimate is political policy, the behavior of the oppressing peoples as the organization of state authority, imperial conquest by more powerful states and  . . . then  . . . the political juncture in which communists came to power in 1917 and attempted a different resolution of the national factor during the era of Russian and then Soviet imperial authority - imperialism.  

 

What is being ascertained - in my opinion, is the relevancy of the slogan "self determination" as political doctrine for communist workers and Marxists in the year 2004 and not the era of political Leninism.

 

There is the apparently unpleasant question of the economic and political logic of the proletariat in Chechnya versus the various bourgeois champions of independence within Chechnya.

 

Shall we begin with the European landing in the Americas, slavery or the genocidal wars against the Indians. The desire is not to dismiss the slaughter of peoples during the period of history outlined but to determine the evolution of policy in respects to the national factor in the real world as opposed to abstract concepts of democracy in ones head.

 

"I believe the various peoples (plural) of Chechnya have been given a bad break by history" . . . seems to be the thinking and I say "really?" The overwhelming majority of the people of earth have been given a bad break.  

 

All ruling states and peoples murder, which is the daily meaning of society moving in class antagonism and the state as guardian of property.

 

I strenuously object to comparing Chechnya with Iraq or the Palestinian peoples which is monstrous.

 

Where is the class analysis? What is the class difference between Putin's government and state policy and that of the current leaders of Chechnya? We cannot behave as if the world of 2004 is the world and period of national colonial revolt of the petty bourgeois masses against bourgeois imperial authority or the closed colonial system (the period of post Second Imperial World War to victory of the Vietnamese against American imperial intrusion. Even here American imperial intrusion was not to reinforce a closed colonial structure but a war against communism).  

 

Political reality never jibs well with ideological proclamations. What is the position of the communists in Chechnya? What is the state and stage of development of its proletarian movement? What is the position of the communists in Russia - not Putin, towards the national factor that is Chechnya?

 

Where's the beef . . . or rather class and economic logic? Screaming oil is not a class or economic analysis of social forces. Chechnya has oil . . . really! OK . . . Chechnya has a commodity that can be traded on the world market.

 

"The Russians or rather Putin, wants Chechnya oil." Really . . . no sh*t.

 

"Chechnya  or rather the various people of Chechnya were beat up and oppressed in history."

 

Wow . . . how insightful.

 

Where's the beef . . . or rather class and economic logic? What is the resolution of the national factor in today's world under the world bourgeois regime?

 

Melvin P.