#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #RUSSIA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL AL #329 - Russia: Orderly denazification starts with Putin (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 To justify the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has presented himself for months as the

"denazifier" of the country. Beyond the pretext put forward, it is indeed Russia
that has experienced a murderous expansion of far-right movements and Putin's
political base is that of ultranationalists. ---- For more than two months, the
Russian armies, under the order of Putin, have been putting Ukraine to fire and
blood. The main justification for the invasion, repeated ad nauseam by the
Russian authorities, is the danger, for Russian territory, represented by
Ukraine, whose government and population would be plagued by fascist groups, and
which would have to be "denazified". ". We have already addressed the question of
the Ukrainian far right and its reality[1]. Yet if any country has seen a
meteoric and murderous rise of ultra-right or neo-Nazi movements, it is Russia.
And if these movements are less active today, their theoretical influences and
their militants irrigate the current conflict up to the speeches of the Kremlin.

Just as in Ukraine, the collapse of the Soviet state led to a strong development
of virulent nationalism in Russia from the beginning of the 1990s. advocating the
return of the Tsar and the celebration of the Orthodox Church (such as the
nationalist group Pamiat), others clearly asserting their fascist and Nazi
inspiration, such as the Russian National Unity party (RNE), which peaked at
100,000 members; ultranationalist parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party of
Russia (LDPR), or even a red-brown tendency combining nationalism and cultural
traits of Sovietism, the most famous of which is the National-Bolshevik Party, of
Edouard Limonov and Alexandre Duguine, which significant cultural influence; as
well as other smaller formations.

Finally, the country experienced, from the end of the 1990s to the first decade
of the 2000s, an explosion of the skinhead movement, the number of which was
estimated at between 50,000 and 70,000 individuals at the end of the 2010s. This
set of movements shares in its overwhelmingly anti-Semitic, racist, Russian
supremacist rhetoric. Above all, they are characterized by murderous violence
against minorities and political opponents. Result : hundreds of injuries, dozens
of deaths each year, including several anti-fascist activists[2].

Putin keeps control
Putin came to power in 1999, and quite quickly built an authoritarian power,
tightened around a circle of followers whom he placed in key positions. The
attacks that shook Russia in the months following its coming to power enabled it
to begin the second Chechen war and to ride the nationalist current. It has,
moreover, been supported from the start by the institutional extreme right
embodied by the LDPR, or else the Rodina party, whose creation the Kremlin
participated in in 2005. terror with the greatest impunity until the end of the
2000s, when he banned, year after year, certain formations that had become a
little too turbulent (such as the Movement against illegal immigration - DPNI)[3].

But if these prohibitions, as well as greater police firmness, are gradually
reducing street violence, they are part of an increased repression against any
opposition. At the same time, it is accompanied by an ideological integration of
the theses of the extreme right by the power: ultra societal conservatism, in
particular against the LGBT, promotion of " Great Russia " and its imperial
permanence from tsarism to the USSR, militarism and pacing of the opposition.
This trend is also embodied in the appointment of several far-right
intellectuals, such as Alexander Dougin, to advisory posts in the Duma or the
Kremlin, or even in political and financial support for the whole of the European
extreme right, including of course the French RN[4].

Russian fascists in Donbass
If their street assaults are now more closely monitored and their main
organizations disbanded or weakened, fascist militants of all persuasions will
also have a use for Putin. It is in particular in their ranks that are partly
recruited mercenaries who will go to fight alongside the Syrian forces of Bashar
el-Assad in the Syrian civil war. One of them, Dmitri Utkin, notorious Nazi, will
be the co-founder of the sadly famous company of mercenaries called " Wagner
group ", very useful for the unofficial operations of the Kremlin.

Russian far-right groups will also come into their own in the post-Euromaidan
events in Ukraine in 2014. Without being in the majority, we will find supporters
of the Rodina party, or even national-Bolshevik groups in the anti-Maidan
demonstrations in Odessa, or who will actively participate in Donetsk and Luhansk
in the separatism of the Donbass regions. Thus, several original leaders of the
separatist republics are former executives of fascist groups, such as Pavel
Goubarev, former member of the RNE party, or Zakhar Prilepin, former leader of
The Other Russia (the organization which succeeded the National-Bolshevik Party)
. The separatist republics will be advised directly by Dougin, and militarily
supported by groups of volunteers from Russia, most of them organized by the
ultranationalists, such as the Interbrigades, formed by the national-Bolsheviks
and which would number more than 2,000 fighters.

Putin, who invokes resistance to the Nazi armies of the Second World War to
justify his invasion of Ukraine, cannot therefore be more cynical, when we see on
what forces and what realities his base is based, that of the ultranationalists
and the supremacists. Participating in its defeat, and therefore in that of the
Russian far right, is a beautiful denazifying perspective!

Hugues (UCL Saint-Denis)

To validate

[1]See "Ukraine: Internazionale solidarity? in April 2022 Libertarian Alternative.

[2]For more detailed information, refer to the brochure co-edited by No Pasaran
and Barricata, Antifascists in Russia today, winter 2008-2009.

[3]"The Russian extreme right demonstrates in Moscow", Lexpress.fr, November 4, 2010.

[4]"The European far right gathered in Russia", Lepoint.fr, March 22, 2015.


https://unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Russie-Denazification-bien-ordonnee-commence-par-Poutine
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