Was the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance just a Soviet version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    81·
    3 years ago

    Crushing color revolution attempts is “an imperialist move”? Also it was Poland that started the 1920 war in hopes of rebuilding its former empire and ended up stealing land that was not majority Polish by population.

    The USSR was not imperialist at any point in its history. The worst you can accuse them of is revisionism (starting with Khrushchev) and perhaps “great nation chauvinism”.

    • hanabatake
      38·
      3 years ago

      Treating half of Europe as puppet states and sending the army to cancel reforms is imperialist. Prague 1968 is a reform movement that was initiated by Dubček the head of the party. It is not a color revolution. The operation is controversial, even for communists country, even for country of the Warsaw pact ! Albania left the Warsaw pact after the event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

      I am sorry but the Brezhnev Doctrine is an imperialist doctrine.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine

      The goal of USSR was to impose progressively communism to the (bourgeoisie of the) whole world. Because, communism in one country could only lead to proletariat dictatorship. So to move further toward communism, they had to have a communist world. USSR imperialism is an imperialism of an other nature than the american one or the european one. Trotsky wrote about it

      Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism

      The cold war is an influence war and an aggregate of proxy war between two imperialist states. How can it be understood otherwise ?

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
        10·
        2 years ago

        That Trotskyist definition of imperialism is not one that is recognized by most communists. Lenin’s definition of imperialism necessitates monopoly capitalism and capture of markets for capital export. The USSR did not fulfill the Leninist definition of imperialism. The so-called “reform movement” you speak of was nothing more than a Gorbachev-like attempt at smuggling liberalism in through the back door in order to destroy the socialist system.

        The USSR was 100% right in defending socialism in Eastern Europe. The Cold War was nothing less than global class war, a struggle between an imperialist capitalist camp and a socialist anti-imperialist camp.

        (Also, Trotsky was not even alive anymore by the time the Cold War started, not to mention he got a lot of things wrong about the USSR, i don’t think he is the best person to cite on this issue…)

        • hanabatake
          22·
          2 years ago

          The Cold War was nothing less than global class war, a struggle between an imperialist capitalist camp and a socialist anti-imperialist camp.

          Yes, I agree

          (Well, most of the comunits where I live are troskyists, so it is a pretty consensual point that USSR is imperialist. But) it seems so weird to me to consider the USSR not imperialist because it does not fit the leninist definition. It would be as if I was saying the Roman republic was not imperialist because it did not fit the definition of Lenine.

          The leninist definition is incomplete because it does not aim to carecterize imperialism. It is an analyze of how “late stage capitalism” leads to imperialism. It describe a process of implementation of imerialism in capitalists country. The whole book is not about how a communist state could be imperialist.

      • SaddamHussein24@lemmygrad.ml
        83·
        2 years ago

        Ah yes, a wikipedia expert. Go read “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” by Lenin and learn what imperialism actually is. Its not what wikipedia says. Stupid clown.

        • hanabatake
          21·
          2 years ago

          I see, wikipedia is not good enough for you. No problem, I happen to read other things than wikipedia. This brochure of Lenin is very interesting. And it makes very clear why you think the USSR is not imperialist. I do agree that Lenine’s USSR was not imperialist. However neither USSR disappeared with Lenine, nor did the communist thought.

          There are also implications of their analysis for our understanding of the Cold War and its place in the last half-century of history. Panitch and Gindin (2012: 12), rightly in my view, did not regard USSR as a capitalist state, but rather as a different form of exploiting class society. The USSR was imperialist in the classic, general historical sense i.e. a territorial imperialist, both internally in dominating other people, such as in the Ukraine, and externally in its post-war control over Eastern Europe. The Cold War was undoubtedly a conflict between imperialist blocks, and between different modes of production. There is no doubt about the real threat of global war that it entailed, or its terrible impact on labour movements.

          https://www.workersliberty.org/blogs/paulhampton/2013/12/29/review-making-global-capitalism-leo-panitch-and-sam-gindin

        • hanabatake
          21·
          2 years ago

          Also, you seem to be implying that the roman empire is not imperialist which is not what Lenine had in mind