It gets a bit tiresome going over this so many times so excuse the short answer.
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Russia https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism
https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/
The short of it is, no. Russia is NOT imperialist. It does not fit Lenin’s criteria.
It tried to join the imperialist bloc of western NATO nations after the fall of the USSR several times but was rebuffed and rejected bluntly. It then tried coexistence, integration and as we can see that has all fallen apart.
Throughout the post-soviet period Russia has maintained friendship with nations of the global south including China, Cuba, Venezuela, and other members of the group of resisting nations to western hegemony and imperialism including Iran.
Russia acts as a counter-weight to western imperialism. It is by action anti-imperialist. This was not its choice but the consequence of historical realities and choices made by the west as well as its own choices.
Russia is in fact a victim of the ruling imperialist bloc’s violence and attempts to destroy it and subjugate it’s peoples.
Russian capitalists have no choice but to be part of this alliance against imperialism. It’s either that or be destroyed and made either very junior partners with a tiny share of the plunder or liquidated entirely as a class by the western bourgeoisie in favor of their nation being split up and ruled by various comprador types.
A thread from Genzhou (archived) on this: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/232591
Shortest socialist answer
To add onto this, I really like Losurdo’s analysis:
Immediately after World War I — after the defeat of Tsarist Russia — Russia was in danger of being balkanized, of becoming a colony. Here I quote Stalin, who said that the West saw Russia like they saw Central Africa, that they were trying to drag it into war for the sake of Western capitalism and imperialism.
The end of the Cold War, with the West and the United States triumphant, once again put Russia at risk of becoming a colony. Massive privatization was not only a betrayal of the working classes of the Soviet Union and Russia, it was also a betrayal of the Russian nation itself. The West was trying to take over Russia’s massive energy deposits, and the US came very close to acquiring them. Here Yeltsin played the role of “great champion” for the Western colonization effort. Putin is not a communist, that much is clear, but he wants to stop this colonization, and seeks to reassert Russian power over its energy resources.
Therefore, in this context, we can speak of a struggle against a new colonial counter-revolution. We can speak of a struggle between the imperialist and colonialist powers — principally the United States — on the one side, and on the other we have China and the third world. Russia is an integral part of this greater third world, because it was in danger of becoming a colony of the West.
kinda they export capital goods, their corporations behave in imperialist ways sometimes and im sure their capitalist would love to be an empire, however they are not part of or atleast not at the core of the global imperialist capitalist system that exists today they are a victim of it and of organizations like the imf and the world bank not the beneficiaries, and while they export capital goods they do so at about the same rate as brazil and south korea for example countries which no one would refer to as being part of the core. so no
however russia is a settler colonial country and is imperialist in that way and while i get that the problems faced by indigenous people in russia are rather minor compared to countries like the usa or canada its kinda fucked up that most leftits wont even acknowledge this reality.
Just because a state is pluri-national does not automatically make it settler-colonial. By the same logic you could claim China is settler-colonial, but that would be a misunderstanding of what a settler-colonial state is. The Russian Federation is not the Russian Empire. National minorities have their own republics since they were liberated by the Bolsheviks. The socialist aspect of the USSR is gone but the national autonomy of ethnic republics has remained in the structure of the Russian Federation. This does not mean that ethnic minorities never face any social injustice, and of course there is still a struggle against Great Russian chauvinism, but the USSR was not perfect in this respect either although it made great efforts to rectify such injustices wherever it could.
by what definition is Russia settler-colonial?
I’d say all capitalists are imperialist so yeah
Nope. Ghana and Haiti are capitalist countries. Are they imperialist?
If you can’t answer why that’s not the case, then you have a lot more reading to do. At the very least you should not be answering questions.
I do have a lot more reading to do to be fair but i dont think ghana and haiti aren’t imperialist for the same reason that russia isn’t. They are more victims of imperialism no?
I guess what i was trying to say was that all capitalists have imperialist aspirations and/or capitalism eventually leads to imperialism
I guess what i was trying to say was that all capitalists have imperialist aspirations and/or capitalism eventually leads to imperialism
In capitalism broadly, not necessarily in individual states. Weaker states and every state is a weaker state in the face of the historically unprecedented US hegemony may never be able to achieve that at least as long as the stronger state and its hegemony are intact (things which may take decades to really crumble).
Remember, these things are historical processes guided by material reality. Constrained by it too. The US couldn’t become the hegemon it was before WW2 without using a lot of force against other European powers, but after WW2 it assumed the mantle more or less peacefully.
Wrong. It does not meet Lenin’s definition of imperialist and importantly in action and practice we can see it clearly aids and acts de-facto as an anti-imperialist counterweight to the US-led NATO imperialist order.
On god? I’ll look into it.
I was aware that russia acted as oppsition to american/western hegemony but figured it was only as an alternative imperialist force but imperialist none the less. I admit to not knowing that much about russian foreign policy but figured that a capitalist country would be bound for imperialism because imperialism is profitable
Please do, I’ve linked other sources in my main reply in this thread but the article itself has some good discussion.
To boil it down though without even getting into Lenin and more complex discussion (which you should look into), a simple heuristic is this: How are they acting? What are they doing? Are they plundering like the west is? Joining them? Doing so separately or are they opportunistically selling to the anti-imperialist bloc which regardless of motives (inability to sell to imperialists and forced to sell to non-imperialists) means they’re helping them. Their UN vote record while not perfect (neither is China’s) has far more skepticism and vetoes in recent years of US attempts to use the UN to justify aggression against victims of imperialism and the anti-imperialist bloc. Who are their friends? Their friends are the resistance, their friends are historical victims of imperialism. Their enemies are the imperialists. The capitalist who sells us weapons for the revolution will be the last one we take to face justice simply because they are of use to us and helping us even if out of greed. Intent here does not matter, results do. And the results are Russia has been a steadfast friend of many countries the US has tried to isolate. They’ve gone to bat at the UN for them, they’ve sold them arms, they’ve done many things diplomatically and otherwise to assist them.
Russia’s bourgeoisie found themselves in the 90s in a world with a sprawling hegemonic capitalist empire built off the corpses of centuries of European colonialism which it had inherited after WW2 and the dividing of the world. They had no where to go, they couldn’t go colonize Africa, they were too weak and the French, British, Americans wouldn’t have allowed it. They couldn’t colonize the Americas or Asia. They found themselves in a position dictated by the currents of history, by choices made by others and had to make do. This forced them into our corner. They tried, oh they tried to get in with the US, to be buddy-buddy, to be friends, to in the early 2000s support the US at the UN so they’d let them into NATO and they could be part of that capitalist world order but the US said no. They were rejected, kicked to the curb, marked for elimination so they could be carved up. As Blinken said if you’re not at the table you’re on the menu, Russia was not allowed a seat at the table, it was very much on the menu, its vast resources and people desired to be plundered, their government and bourgeoisie suppressed and strangled with most of the profit taken for the west.
While it is true that capitalism tends towards imperialism, it doesn’t mean that all capitalist nations are imperialist automatically. Imperialism requires a developed M->M’ circuit (finance capitalism) which necessitates the export of investments abroad to maintain rate of profit, which is why it is the final stage of capitalism. Only Western nations have achieved this, just take a look at where the biggest asset management firms are located (London, New York). Saying that all capitalist nations are imperialist is akin to saying that all socialist nations have already reached communism. That is just not how stages of development work.
