Russian president Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has now entered its second year. The war has developed quite differently from what many expected. The resistance of Ukraine’s people, determined to defend their right to self-determination, has been fierce and shows no sign of ebbing. The Russian military has proven far weaker than many supposed it to be. A year later Ukraine has fought Putin’s invasion to a stalemate.
This is a resolution adopted by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in November 1919. Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin drafted the original text. The resolution can be found in Vol. 30 of Lenin’s Collected Works under the title “On Soviet Rule in Ukraine.” World-Outlook is publishing it because it is relevant to the world-wide discussion and debate on Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow’s brutal attack on a sovereign neighboring republic smacks of the Great Russian chauvinism prevalent under the czars, the barbaric monarchy that ruled the Russian empire for centuries before it was overthrown by workers and peasants in 1917. That same chauvinism animated the reactionary policies re-established by the late 1920s in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) during the counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin—a regime Russian president Vladimir Putin faithfully served decades later as an officer of the KGB, the secret police. The resolution illuminates the stark contrast between the position of Putin and Russia’s capitalists today, with that of the workers and peasants’ government Lenin led after the Russian revolution.
March 28, 2022—In the face of fierce and effective resistance by Ukrainian forces, signs are appearing that the Russian military may be adjusting the goals of its brutal invasion. “Russia says its main goal is Donbass, suggesting scaled-back ambitions in Ukraine,” Reuters reported March 25. Russian president Vladimir Putin originally aimed a substantial military convoy at Ukraine’s capital city with the goal of capturing it and, if possible, installing a compliant regime that would accept his false assertion that there is no Ukrainian nation; that Ukraine is nothing other than a “creation” of Russia. Achieving that goal has proven impossible, for now. Frustrated by the inability to score a quick, decisive military victory, Putin intensified a brutal air and artillery assault on the Ukraine, one that is intended to terrorize the civilian population. That offensive has created an enormous humanitarian crisis, but it has not broken the will of the Ukrainian people despite the fact that one in every four Ukrainians have been forced from their homes.
Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is an anathema to humanity. Russian troops, tanks, air force, and other military hardware should get out now. The Ukrainian people defending the country’s independence deserve international solidarity—already shown by protests condemning the invasion inside Russia, Georgia, and elsewhere. It is also necessary to clearly see Washington’s hypocritical claims that it tried to avert war through diplomacy. We should demand that U.S. and NATO military forces pull out of Eastern Europe and the broader region. The Pentagon has doubled the number of U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, redeployed an aircraft carrier there from the Pacific, and increased the number of U.S. troops in the region. It is opening up new NATO bases in Eastern Europe. The newest, a “highly sensitive U.S. military installation” according to the New York Times, located near the village of Redzikowo, in Poland, is only about 100 miles from Russian territory. These moves are aimed at expanding U.S. military domination in Europe and countering Russian economic interests. They pose a genuine threat to world peace while offering Putin a pretext for his brutal invasion.