Hi Susan–
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He suggests that pointing to two political tasks makes one secondary. I don’t agree.

Mike’s reply suggests that the issue of the Ukraine’s right to self-determination has been settled. He seems to believe it was resolved by the breakup of the USSR and the establishment of an independent Ukraine at that time. Putin’s annexation of the Crimea as well as his armed support to the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk certainly put that conclusion into question. Leaving the events of 2014 aside, the current invasion of the Ukraine is brutal proof that the Ukraine’s right to self-determination is far from fully secured.

I would add that Lenin clearly believed even five years after the victorious proletarian revolution of 1917, the right to self-determination of the Ukraine and others in the former Tsarist prison house of nations had not yet been fully secured. That explains the political weight he gave to one of the final fights he waged before his death.

Putin certainly does not agree that the Ukraine has any such right. The invasion is intended to settle the matter and reestablish Russian control. I refer Mike and others to this post on World-Outlook.

“’Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia,’ Putin said. ‘This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution, and moreover Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia—by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory.’”

https://world-outlook.com/2022/04/05/why-lenin-bolsheviks-backed-independence-for-ukraine/

Mike poses the question: “Are there independent proletarian units battling the invaders?”

Does he believe Ukrainian workers and farmers should wait to resist because such units do not exist? And until such units do exist, that such resistance does not deserve support? That is a position far more comfortably taken from the sidelines than in the battle that is taking place today.

Again I encourage others to study the political method used by Trotsky in the article I posted earlier in this discussion. I also believe a thorough review of Lenin’s writings on self-determination is necessary. Lenin did not restrict his support for that right to colonial nations as Mike’s comment appears to argue. The debate in the Marxist movement – as Mike knows as well as I do – began concerning countries in Europe, not only the colonies.

I recommend these theses written by Lenin in 1916. The excerpts below should be read in the context of the entire document. The point is not to trade quotations, which is often a sterile exercise, but as with the article by Trotsky, to try to learn from the method being used.

The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
Theses

“The fact that the struggle for national liberation against one imperialist power may, under certain circumstances, be utilized by another ‘Great’ Power in its equally imperialist interests should have no more weight in inducing Social Democracy to renounce its recognition of the right of nations to self-determination than the numerous case of the bourgeoisie utilizing republican slogans for the purpose of political deception and financial robbery, for example, in the Latin countries, have had in inducing them to renounce republicanism.

To transplant to the International the point of view of some of the small nations—particularly the point of view of the Polish Social-Democrats, who, in their struggle against the Polish bourgeoisie which is deceiving the people with nationalist slogans, were misled into repudiating self-determination—would be a theoretical error. It would be the substitution of Proudhonism for Marxism and, in practice, would result in rendering involuntary support to the most dangerous chauvinism and opportunism of the Great Power nations.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm

1. As I stated, my view is that the number-one task of socialists in the United States and other imperialist countries is to oppose the war moves of our own government. Geoff appears to make this the number-two task – the first being to oppose Russia’s attack on Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination. When it comes to political line in a fast-moving world event, however, emphasis and tone can be decisive. That is even more so when it’s a case of a shooting war in which one’s own government is involved to one degree or another.

2. An accurate read of the class forces involved in the war is needed. Geoff states: “An actual war is being fought. Ukrainian working people – and others – are putting up fierce resistance to Putin’s army.”

I don’t dispute that many Ukrainian working people are doing what they can to fight the Russian army, in some cases heroically. But is the war really being fought primarily by Ukrainian working-class forces? Are there independent proletarian units battling the invaders? No, it’s being led and fought by a bourgeois government and a bourgeois army. Pointing this out is not meant as an insult; it’s simply a statement of fact.

One can certainly find examples where the world’s working class has had the obligation to support the military forces of a capitalist regime. The two most common type of examples are:

* Where an oppressed colonial or semicolonial nation is fighting an imperialist power seeking to impose its domination. During the 1930s, such was the case with Italy’s war on Ethiopia and with Japan’s invasion of China – then ruled by Chiang Kai-shek. Socialists supported Ethiopia and China in these wars. More recently, the US wars on Iraq in 1991 and 2003 imposed the need to defend Iraq, notwithstanding the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

* Where a reactionary capitalist force is seeking to topple a bourgeois regime in order to target and destroy the working-class movement. Such was the case in 1917 Russia, when the Bolsheviks gave military backing to the Provisional Government in opposition to the Kornilov coup. Or during the Spanish Civil War, when vanguard working-class forces backed the popular front government in its military struggle against Franco’s fascist forces.

Neither of these two situations holds in Ukraine today. It’s true that Ukraine was oppressed historically under tsarist, and later Stalinist, rule. During that time, revolutionary socialists called for its self-determination and independence, and continue to support these things against threats by the Putin regime. But it’s not irrelevant that Ukraine has been an independent capitalist state for thirty years.

In analyzing working-class tasks today, one can’t abstract the Ukraine-Russia war from the global picture. The US and NATO war moves (massive military support to Ukraine; sanctions against Russia; deployment of NATO troops close to the border, etc.) are real, and are a genuine threat to working-class interests around the world. One has only to look at the devastating effect on Cuba of the anti-Russia sanctions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine helped open the door to these moves, which is another reason it should be condemned.

But at a time when a massive and shrill propaganda campaign is being waged by politicians and the media throughout the world, it’s incumbent on all revolutionary and working-class forces to oppose – as their number-one task – to center their fire on their own rulers and oppose the imperialist war moves.

As for Marty’s comments: In his last point, the question is posed wrongly. It’s not a matter of “what we tell Ukrainians,” but rather what we demand of Washington (and other imperialist powers). And our demand should be along the lines of “US hands off.” Support should not be given to Washington’s war moves under any guise.