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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 172 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 172, February 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The election of hypernationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Russia places the finishing touches on the long standing Western strategy of developing a nuclear armed fascisto-Communist threat to take the place of the old Cold War red bogey.
Citing demagogic threats by Zhirinovsky to launch nuclear attacks against Japan and Germany (both of them at present non-nuclear states), emphasising also the willingness of the reconstituted Russian Communist Party to collaborate ‘on specific issues’ with Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party, much of the mainstream media has hastened to reinforce the impression of the ‘red-brown alliance’ as the number one menace to the future of Europe.
Comparisons are being drawn between the climate of Weimar Germany and the climate of present-day Russia. In Russia Yeltsin’s prime minister Gaidar has called for the formation of a ‘broad anti-fascist alliance’, including Communists.
Analysing the plausibility of the threat from Zhirinovsky we must distinguish the several components in it. Firstly the nationalism: there is no doubt that Zhirinovsky and his party are nationalist, anti-Semitic bigots.
They differ however from the fascists of the 1930s in that they do not question the multi-party parliamentary framework in which they are operating. This is a significant difference between all species of present day European fascists and the anti-parliamentary fascists of the 1930s.
Second the question of nuclear weapons. Zhirinovsky has a big mouth and is very free with his promises to launch future Hiroshimas and Chernobyls. However, one very pertinent question which must be raised concerning the Russian nuclear arsenal is to what extent it is in fact controlled by Russians.
The testimony by the last head of the KGB at the recent trial of the August 1991 putschists has revealed that the first group of plotters against Gorbachev were motivated very largely by concerns that the United States was beginning to gain control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The role of Russian nuclear weapons in American long term strategic planning probably has very much to do with their potential as an instrument of coercion against the Communist leadership of China.
Political conditions are doubtless not yet ripe for them to be deployed for this purpose. For a start, Russia is not yet a member of NATO. Their interim function seems to be to assist the revival (on a selective basis) of Cold War stereotyping so as to facilitate the imposition of bloc discipline on the populations of the NATO member states.
Russia is going to have to earn its membership of NATO by demonstrating willingness to direct its nationalist hatreds eastwards rather than westwards.
Revolutionary socialists have nothing to gain from joining in the chorus of horror at Russian red-brown fascism. Instead of denouncing Communists as allies of fascists, socialists should be urging them to respond to Yeltsin’s and Gaidar’s invitation to join the ‘anti-fascist alliance’. The Communist condition for joining in the fight against the fascists should be for Yeltsin and Gaidar to agree to the destruction of the Russian nuclear arsenal.
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