“To imagine that a social revolution is conceivable without revolts of small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without the revolutionary outbursts of the petty bourgeoisie, with all its prejudices, without the movement of non-class-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against the oppression of the landlords, the church, the monarchy, the foreign yoke, etc. – to imagine that is tantamount to repudiating social revolution. Only those who imagine that in one place an army will line up and say, ‘We are for socialism’ and in another place another army will say, ‘We are for imperialism’ and believe that this will be the social revolution, only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic opinion could vilify the Irish Rebellion (Easter Day Rebellion) by calling it a ‘putsch.’
“Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.” (The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up, Collected Works, Vol. XIX)
This quote shows up the hypocrisy of the IMT and other Trots in refusing to give even critical support to Ukrainian self-determination, and their smearing of Maidan as ‘fascist’, or even asserting that Ukrainian nationalism is nothing more than a tool of Western imperialism. Lenin supported the Irish nationalists even though they were also supported by German imperialism for its own cynical ends. Trotsky supported Algerian independence from France even if a hypothetical independence movement was sponsored by Fascist Italy. But according to Woods, Taaffe, North et al, Ukrainian independence is to be opposed as inherently reactionary, because it is backed by Western imperialism, and acts as a break upon a potential reunification of the former USSR on a socialist basis.
Imagine if a Ukrainian Marxist movement, instead of standing aside from the Maidan revolution and condemning it in sectarian fashion, had taken an active part in it and sought to inject it with socialist content. Maybe there wouldn’t be a preponderance of bourgeois reactionaries at the head of the Ukrainian national movement. Instead, by shunning it as inherently reactionary and politically impure, all the likes of the IMT have done is guarantee their impotence. I don’t expect to see a Trotskyist section in Ukraine any time soon.
Out of bitterness over the collapse of the USSR, many ‘Marxists’ and ‘Leninists’ are either hypocritically ‘neutral’ in the fight between Ukraine and Russian imperialism, or actively supporting Russia. They want Ukrainian workers to be slaughtered by an imperialist autocracy out of spite at the demise of the old workers’ state, and anger that most Ukrainian workers prefer bourgeois liberalism in the form of the EU to socialism or Marxism. Both Putin and Alan Woods are in agreement that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest disaster in world history. They now stand on the same side in the war on the Ukrainian nation.
“and anger that most Ukrainian workers prefer bourgeois liberalism in the form of the EU to socialism or Marxism.”
The interesting thing is that, in spite of its problems, such as austerity, the EU has probably been much better overall for workers than the Soviet Union was. Thus, it makes strong sense for Ukrainian workers to want their country to join the EU, even quite apart from the element of multi-year Russian aggression against their country. The EU is much wealthier, much less corrupt, and much more productive (in terms of, for instance, elite science production, as measured by its Nature Index score) relative to Russia.
In Ukraine, Putin made the same mistake that Hitler made in regards to Central Europe in the 1930s: He simply didn’t know when to stop. Had Putin annexed Crimea, Donbass, and perhaps the Crimean Corridor back in 2014 and simply permanently stopped there, then he could have been hailed by Russians as a great leader, and this might have ironically been good for Ukraine as well since it would have removed the most reactionary, pro-Yanukovych (or pro-Communist) voters from Ukraine, placing them in Russia instead. But Putin instead insisted on playing games with Ukraine with the Minsk Accords, insisting on an interpretation of them that no Ukrainian government would accept, and quite ignoring the fact that the Minsk Accords were signed at gunpoint to begin with–thus, in Ukrainian eyes, giving them no more legitimacy than Germany, even in the Weimar era, gave to the post-WWI Versailles settlement, which they also, correctly, argued was signed under extreme duress on Germany’s part.
When Russia invaded the rest of Ukraine in 2022, it indicated that its belief in national self-determination–for Crimea, for Donbass, et cetera (with it even there being dubious due to the rigged referendums, et cetera)–was a sham since it was unwilling to extend this principle to the rest of Ukraine and its desire to be pro-European and pro-Western.