Dimitrios Patelis | Revolutionary Unification (Greece)
Contents
• On the character, forces and legacy of WWII
• Imperialist propaganda and distortion of history.
• Imperialism and fascism in WWII & WWIII
• On the character of the frontal struggle during WWIII. On the Specificity of the Russian ruling class.
• Conclusion
The Second World War (WWII) was the most terrible military conflict known to mankind. It erupted as a result of the interplay between the contradictions rising from the end of World War I, as a means of consolidating and reshaping the balance of forces at the international level, distributing and redistributing the world’s wealth and power, and resolving the contradictions between the imperialist powers of the time, on a field permeated by the waves in the wake of the first early victorious socialist revolution. After the defeat of the counter-revolutionary forces of internal reaction and external multinational intervention, the imperialist powers never hid and never gave up their plans to crush the USSR.
On the character, forces and legacy of WWII
The aggression of the fascist and militarist regimes established in a number of countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, etc.) led to WWII. The fascist (anti-Soviet, anti-communist) “Anti-Comintern” aggressive axis was formed under nazi Germany, fascist Italy, militarist monarcho-fascist Japan and their allies. This axis, strengthened with the complicity and support of the “democratic” imperialist countries, became, with the war it unleashed, a mortal enemy not only of the USSR but of all progressive humanity and, above all, of the international revolutionary workers’ movement.
The economic and political support for the rise of fascism by the monopoly capital of the time (Ford, Standard Oil, Dupont, etc.) is now well known, as is the continuation of economic transactions with Germany during the war. For example, the “investment” of the bank in which Prescott Sheldon Bush (father of US President George H.W. Bush and grandfather of President George Walker Bush) was an executive, in the rise of nazism and the extraction of monopoly super-profits from the slave labour of Nazi prisoners through Brown Brothers & Harriman and Thyssen’s UBC Bank is quite revealing.[1]
Thus, the imperialist powers showed astonishing understanding and tolerance of the nazi remilitarisation of Germany and their supposed “neutrality” during the Spanish Civil War, which turned Spain into a testing ground for nazi and Italian fascist weapons systems and tactics. They sympathetically “gifted” Austria to Hitler (along with the Vienna railway junction) and, through the Munich Agreement, horribly betrayed Czechoslovakia, first by surrendering the Sudetenland (1938), paving the way for the conquest of the entire country, and preventing its government from accepting Soviet aid (in collaboration with the Polish government, which did not allow the passage of Soviet troops to its aid). Together with the nazis, they generously supplied Finland with troops and war materiel during the conflict with the USSR.
The British and the French engaged in a parody of diplomatic manoeuvres, trying to secure Soviet support in the event of war without making the slightest commitment on their part, while maintaining secret contacts with the Hitlerites. Faced with the imminent danger of being isolated in a war with Germany and its allies, without having completed the rearmament of the Red Army (planned at the end of the Third Five-Year Plan), the USSR, with the Non-Aggression Pact (23/8/1939), achieved a temporary postponement of the war, which broke out in the centre of the capitalist world. The British and the French also sacrificed their anti-Soviet ally Poland in order to finally create a German-Soviet border so that the long-awaited attack on the USSR could be launched, while they theatrically declared war on Germany (3/9/1939) without firing a single shot for nine months…
On 22 June 1941, Germany, backed by the economic and military potential of the entire European continent united under its occupation and/or influence, attacked the USSR. Historically, this was the 1st European Union! The young Soviet Union became the main target of the axis, taking on the heavy task of the anti-fascist struggle, which radically changed the character of the war: it became a life and death struggle of the first socialist country against the most aggressive strike force of the world of capital. Its peoples, with their enormous sacrifices, were the decisive factor in the defeat of fascism in Europe and the world. The evacuation of the European USSR of productive units and population and the transfer of all infrastructure beyond the Urals, with the attacking nazis at the gates, was a tremendous achievement.
According to the Victory in Europe day Announcement of the U.S. Department of Defense “The conflict began in 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland […] The war had been raging for almost five years when U.S. and Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. The invasion signaled the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler and nazi Germany. In less than a year, Germany would surrender and Hitler would be dead. The areas of Western Europe liberated by Allied forces would become thriving democracies, while those liberated in the East would be occupied for decades by Soviet forces. U.S. forces participated in the celebrations in France, a nation that had borne much of the brunt of the fighting.”[2]! The audacity of the leaders of the current Euro-Atlantic axis knows no bounds. They officially and shamelessly spread the most monstrous lies in order to rewrite history according to their anti-communist propaganda needs, to promote the miserable lie about the “shared responsibility” of nazism and socialism (“Stalinism”) for the war, to erase from people’s memories the historical truth about the character of the war and the decisive contribution of the USSR to the anti-fascist victory.
In the end, who bore the brunt of the crushing of the then anti-communist, fascist “anti-Comintern” axis? 61 countries took part in WWII, in operations conducted on the territory of 40 countries. The USSR caused 77% of Germany’s total losses in the war. The death toll was high: over 55 million (some estimates put it at over 80 million), including 27 million Soviet civilians and military personnel. The victims of the Chinese people numbered at about 35 million. The exact number of victims of the atrocities of Japanese imperialism in Korea, the Pacific and Indochina is not known. The number of victims is an indication of the contribution of each country to the war. For example, 7% of the then population of Greece sacrificed themselves by writing glorious pages in the history of the struggle for national liberation that was spearheaded by the communists. The UK had 450,900 dead (military and civilian), the USA had 419,400 dead throughout the war (less than the number of deaths in road accidents in the same period).[3]
Revolutionary thought must highlight the historical dynamics of the interaction between the extensive and intensive development of capitalism and early socialism in relation to the rising and fall of the polarisation of the two global socio-economic systems in the light of the interrelation between global revolution and counter-revolution. It may be that the planned mobilisation for war, and the hasty acceleration of events, exacerbated the fundamental contradiction of socialist construction, imposing forms of formal versus essential socialisation, extensive development versus intensive, etc., which manifested in the post-war period, as well as in the form of bureaucratisation. The historical imperative, however, was inexorable. Could the USSR have survived and prevailed without the unprecedented pace of industrialisation it had achieved, without the unimaginable feat of transferring all industrial production east of the Urals, under conditions of total war, without the mass self-denial of its peoples, who believed in the victory of socialism and threw themselves into a life-and-death struggle with the technologically and economically superior (in the early years of the war) war machine of the Reich?
The post-war reconstruction from the ruins of a literally flattened country and its transformation into the world’s second industrial and military superpower, with the simultaneous beginning of the “Cold War”, is monumental. It was in this context that the formation of the socialist camp and the rise of the peoples’ struggle against colonial and neo-colonial dependency took place, largely on the basis of the geostrategic balance of forces and the presence of the Red Army.
With the anti-fascist victory, the global early socialist system and the anti-colonial and national liberation movements, which were strengthened and oriented by it in different ways, were born.
The USA emerges from WWII almost unscathed and greatly strengthened, but the extensive development of global capitalism is substantially limited. The pure and unchallenged global domination of the pole of capitalist powers over the dependent world is dynamically disrupted by the alternative historical perspective, which is no longer an abstract possibility, but is actively realised. We now have three worlds: the “first”, the “second” and the “third”. The course of the latter becomes a great historical contest. Complex systems of interactions are emerging within and between them.
This is not a mechanical, quantitative, extensive geographical contraction of an otherwise unchanging capitalism. It is a change that has qualitative and substantial effects on both poles of this new expression of the antithesis between capital and labour, on the two interacting and antagonistic camps, but also on the contested space in between. It is a change in the field of extensive development that inevitably leads to an intensive restructuring of the mechanism of exploitation on a national and international scale (“Cold War”, transition from colonialism to neo-colonial forms of economic exploitation, state-monopoly regulation, “welfare state”, etc.).
This was followed by a multitude of local (overt and covert) heated conflicts, which led to the militarisation of the economy and the application of geopolitical tactics for the rapid acquisition and defence of the maximum “living space”, as well as a “buffer zone” for socialism, and so on. The resources available to the USSR for the armaments that ensured the “balance of terror” are unimaginable.[4]
Imperialist propaganda and distortion of history
Today, it is the undisputed victors of the Cold War and the current representatives of the US-led axis, the nazis of our time, who are methodically escalating the Third World War (WWIII), who are doing everything they can to rewrite history, to erase from the memory of the people the decisive contribution of the USSR, of the communists and the left-progressive people, who gave everything to liberate humanity from fascist brutality. The audacity with which a barrage of disinformation has been unleashed, aimed at distorting the historical truth, desecrating the victory and vilifying the very forces that contributed decisively to the outcome of this war, is astonishing. The scribblers, “historians”, journalists, politicians, etc., amateur revisionists of history, whether they are on the payroll, or “volunteers”, using Goebbels’ methods of brainwashing, with infinitely more effective means of mass manipulation than those of the nazis, are striving to prepare the ground for the full implementation of the objectives of the present strike force of world capital, objectives similar to those pursued by Hitler… This tidal wave of lies, wrapped in the glamour of the Hollywood myth, seeks to spread the image of the American “rushing to liberate Europe and save humanity”… The ghosts of the past are intertwined with the nightmares of the present and the future…
As if it were not the imperialist “allies” who bred and nurtured the monster of German nazism and the axis, the main aim of which was the extermination of communism, “Judeo-Bolshevism” and the acquisition of a colonial “hinterland” in the East for German capital, which was given the short straw in the division of the global imperialist plunder. As if they were not the ones who exhausted all diplomatic and conspiratorial means to turn this abomination against the first victorious early revolution of the 20th century, the young USSR, in order to nullify any subsequent attempt at the revolutionary emancipation of humanity. As if they were not the ones who hoped to achieve this goal to the end, and to that end they kept postponing the opening of the second front, which they did safely in June 1944, when the Red Army was already advancing and they were worried that they might lose the entirety of Europe… Did they not show their true colours when, in August 1945, without the slightest operational necessity and in the face of the overwhelming defeat of Japan (especially with the entry of the USSR into the war against it), they used the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as brutal war criminals? Would the imperialists (fascists or “allies”), have hesitated to use the atomic bomb to intercept the Red Army, which at that time did not have such a weapon of mass destruction, had they developed it earlier?
That’s why they want to brainwash the people with the insidious concept of the equation: nazism = socialism-communism = USSR = “totalitarianism”… In order to destroy the hope that the October Revolution, the anti-fascist victory, the early socialist revolutions and the anti-imperialist movements of the 20th century as a whole gave to the people, and above all: to prevent the imminent glorious revolutions of the 21st century, which will be their end… They try to convince us to abandon any idea of a struggle for dignity, for the liberation of humanity from exploitation and oppression, because it would supposedly lead to “dictatorship” and “totalitarianism” like that of Hitler… They try to convince us that the brutality of “globalised” imperialism of the multinational corporations is a one-way street for humanity… They try to convince us that the only “realistic” way of life is voluntary slavery…
Imperialism and fascism in WWII & WWIII
There is a relationship of continuity-discontinuity between WWII and WWIII. As I have shown in previous writings, global conflicts are an inherent element of the imperialist stage of capitalism, manifesting themselves with a periodicity corresponding to that of large-scale structural systemic crises. This periodicity also includes waves of revolutions and counter-revolutions.
The crushing of fascist Germany and its allies by the forces of the anti-fascist coalition in 1945 was a great defeat for fascism. After WWII, fascism was temporarily weakened but not completely eradicated.
The character of the current war may share some similarities, but it is qualitatively and essentially different from the two previous ones, due to the era, the context and the character of the powers that are de facto involved in it. Therefore, the attitude of the progressive, anti-imperialist and communist forces cannot be determined mechanistically, through metaphysical analogies, as if nothing had changed since 1914 or 1940 until today…
The current stage of imperialism, is the stage of transnational monopoly imposition, of the attempt to completely subordinate humanity to the most powerful international multi-branch monopoly groups, the Transnational corporations (TNCs) to the most powerful in terms of capital, to the imperialist countries and their transnational organs. The sphere of circulation (export of goods and capital) no longer plays a dominant role in the structure of the relations of production of the present stage of imperialism. This role is now played by the sphere of production itself, distributed on a planetary scale and rooted in the technologies and organisation of this production. At this stage, the division of the world between the most powerful international multi-branch monopoly groups and between the most powerful imperialist countries in terms of capital (which are the main TNCs countries of residence) on the basis of inequality and the extraction of monopoly super-profits on a global scale has been completed, while a rapid shift of power is taking place with the rapid progress of the PRC and the emergence of a new pole led by the latter and Russia (BRICS, etc.): the pole of the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism.
WWIII is leading to the rapid shrinking of the parasitic capacities of the pole of the traditional imperialist centres. Imperialism leaded by USA, despite the rampant push towards fascism in the countries of its territory, no longer has the need to establish outright fascist regimes in the frontline imperialist countries (as in inter-war Germany) with the claim to develop an antagonistic military-industrial complex and armed forces competitive with those of the USA, independent and self-sufficient. This would challenge the de facto US hegemony in this axis. The regime in the imperialist countries and the satellite countries of its near periphery today succeeds in effectively manipulating the working class and the wider popular strata through consensual means and ways.
Fascism today is even more deeply linked to the ideology and practices of extreme neo-liberalism, social Darwinism and “post-modern” irrationalism. The US-NATO-EU imperialist axis is instrumentalising and “exporting” fascism and nazism to install its subordinate regimes in countries that until the 1980s were part of the USSR, Yugoslavia or other countries that passed through phases of early socialism in Europe, South Korea, etc.
During WWIII, fascism functions as an instrumentally useful and expendable “strike force” in proxy wars against those who resist the continuation of its domination, against the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism. This is evident in the way the imperialists are treating the people of Ukraine today (as “cannon fodder”) against the people of the rebellious Donbass since 2014, and against Russia and its allies since 2022. The same fate awaits tomorrow the peoples of Poland, the Baltic States, South Korea, Taiwan, Greece and other Balkan countries, etc. This is also the role of the Zionist racist formation of Israel, the war arm of the US-led axis, which has been the brutal occupying power in Palestine for 7 decades, launching repeated genocidal operations against the Palestinian people, while acting as an aggressive imperialist bulwark and arm of the axis in this strategically important region.
During WWII, the formation of an anti-fascist front at national and global level to crush the fascist/anti-communist/anti-Comintern axis constituted a strategic objective. The USSR, the Third International and the global communist movement concentrated their forces on this objective. The Soviet foreign policy and diplomacy exploited the inter-imperialist contradictions with extraordinary skill in order to divide the imperialist world of that time, to inactivate a significant part of the imperialist powers (Great Britain, USA, France, etc.) and to integrate them in the anti-fascist alliance against the axis. During WWII, the strategically important frontal policy, the victorious policy of alliances, had to prioritise anti-fascism/anti-nazism and only through this to pursue the anti-imperialist and socialist aims of the communists.
During WWIII, inter-imperialist conflicts cannot play an important role due to tectonic rearrangements in the global balance of economic, political and military forces. Any continuation of the parasitic imperialist function of the Euro-Atlantic axis, any prolongation of its declining course requires, for existential reasons, the open consolidation and subordination of the former colonialist and the present neo-colonialist imperialist powers into a unified, united, aggressive axis led by the USA. This is evident in the imposition of ultimatums, the humiliation of the EU and Germany in terms of energy, etc. with new forms of cannibalism, economic and military strangulation and coercion by US imperialism (destruction of gas pipelines, de-industrialisation, subordination of the military-industrial complex to US purposes, increasingly direct involvement and transfer of the costs of supporting the nazi regime in Ukraine to the EU and NATO countries, etc.).
These conditions also radically change the character of today’s fascism/nazism, transforming it into an instrument of war, intervention and coups d’état, into an “exportable” model of transnational monopoly imposition of regimes that act as subordinates, outposts and strike forces of the unique and deadly aggressive unified US-NATO-EU axis.
On the character of the frontal struggle during WWIII. On the specificity of the Russian ruling class.
Therefore, in contrast to WWII, today, during WWIII, the strategically important frontal policy, the victorious policy of alliances, must give priority to the consistent and militant anti-imperialism, to the prioritisation of the aggressor united US-NATO-EU axis as the №1 enemy of humanity, whose tool is the current versions of fascism. Therefore, it is only through the consistent frontal anti-imperialist struggle that anti-fascism/anti-nazism today gains meaning and is organically linked to the socialist aims of the communists. Those who do not put forward consistent anti-imperialism in today’s struggle are objectively acting in a disorientating and undermining way.
This is impossible to understand through the irrational metaphysical dogma of the “imperialist pyramid”, which the present leadership of the KKE boldly proclaims and which presents all the countries world as “imperialist”! In this way it denies the very existence of the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism in the contemporary world. Today, this party is quick to denounce any mention of a front with these forces as “opportunism”!
Individuals and organisations which considered the participation in the anti-fascist alliance of the imperialist frontline countries during WWII (as a result of the masterful policy and diplomacy of the USSR) as tactically correct in every way, today, as WWIII escalates, tremble even at the thought of countries that the imperialists want to dismantle, conquer and completely colonise (for example, Russia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, Brazil etc.) and countries to which their stereotypes do not allow “certificates of socialist purity”…, joining the pole of the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism.
The attitude of the present bourgeois regime of the Russian Federation (RF) towards the war deserves special mention. The achievements of a great revolution cannot be completely erased from history. However, after the counterrevolution and the restoration of the capitalist state, little remained of the achievements of early socialism in the present RF and in the other countries that emerged from the dissolution of the USSR. The RF is not the unionist Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the “Eurasian Economic Union” (EAEU), [RF, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, the leadership of which―after its defeat by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh―has set its sights firmly on full integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions], does not represent a renaissance of the USSR, despite the propagandistic cries of the axis to the contrary.
Because of their own position and role in society, these bourgeoisie, in order to achieve and secure comparative advantages in the next negotiations, can shamelessly concoct “ideological mixtures” that are abhorrent in their eclecticism, with elements of neo-liberalism, anti-communism and the exploitation of popular nostalgia for the USSR, patriotism and imperial monarchism, nostalgia for the tsarist White Guard with a little praise to Vlasov[5], mixed even with elements of actual fascism[6]. All this is fully inscribed in the “logic” of bourgeois practice and the ideologies of―according to V. Putin―“conservative pragmatism”…
The anti-fascist uprising in Donbass, the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic war (with sanctions, manipulation of the prices of hydrocarbons, etc.) acted as steps in large-scale operations, with tactics that allowed the Euro-Atlantic axis to increasingly encircle Russia, with the ultimate aim of minimising or even neutralising the deterrent power of the strategic nuclear arsenal inherited from the USSR. This mechanism led to the escalation of the war with the “special military operation” in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 as an existential response to the aggression of the US-led axis.
How will the regime of the present capitalist Russia and the other targeted powers be able to stand their ground? What will the rallying point for the people be, under what banner will they counter-attack? What will the ideological basis be? The patchwork of neo-liberalism, white-guard monarchism, nationalist-fascist admiration for Vlasov and 19th century obscurantism of Eurasian mysticism proposed by the leadership? Even elementary anti-fascism (in the conditions of global structural crisis and WWIII) is lacking without a consistent struggle against the financial oligarchy, against the capitalist system that inevitably produces fascism and war.
The ruling class of today’s Russia is trying to take advantage of the glory of the anti-fascist victory, trying to impose the view that this victory was supposedly achieved “in spite of the socialist regime” and not precisely because of the existence of socialism! It tries to do this by rewriting history so that it can be incorporated, distorted by bourgeois/reactionary ideologies, into the official narrative of the “more than a millennium long glorious history of Russia”… If pro-nazi, fascist and/or fascist forces had not prevailed and dominated the politics and ideology of neighbouring countries with the full support of the EU and NATO (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, which as EU members have proclaimed nazi collaborators as “national heroes”, and Ukraine, where an openly pro-nazi junta has been imposed since February 2014), the revision of history by the current bourgeois leadership of Russia would have gone much further.
Revision not only in the spirit of denigrating the revolution, the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin, etc. and sanctifying the tsarist regime and the counterrevolutionary white guard (the collaborators of the imperialist invaders in the suppression of the young Soviet Union), but also in the spirit of increasingly hagiographic glorification of the Russian counterrevolutionaries who fully collaborated with the nazi invaders and fought against the peoples of the USSR. This became evident by the relatively recent installation of a memorial plaque by the authorities in St. Petersburg in memory of the Finnish fascist E. Mannerheim[7] with full military honours (which was torn down after popular opposition), by the open appeals of mainstream propagandists in the Russian media for the erection of a monument in honour of the nazi collaborator P.N. Krasnov[8], etc.
The escalating war in Ukraine as well as the war in Syria (with the corresponding bargaining and vacillations of the Russian leadership towards the Euro-Atlantic axis, zionist Israel and Turkey) have shown that the Russian bourgeoisie and its political personnel are in the grip of global and internal economic, social, military, administrative, ideological, etc. contradictions, the solution of which is in principle impossible from a bourgeois position. This war is rapidly and vividly demonstrating the historical limitations of the bourgeoisie, making them a dangerous anachronism. The very survival of Russia and the countries that have emerged in the post-Soviet space, the salvation of these peoples and others tested by the Euro-Atlantic axis, is unattainable from the positions of neo-liberal capitalism. From these positions, a fundamental re-industrialisation, a breakthrough in science and technology, a transition of the economy to a wartime trajectory is unattainable.
As we have shown, the Russian bourgeoisie would naturally like to become an organic part of, or a competitor to, the established imperialism of the axis. However, the axis did not leave them any room for development in this direction, as it eagerly sought and still seeks to perpetuate Russia’s position and role as an exporter of energy and raw materials to imperialism, and ultimately the weakening, disarmament, fragmentation and complete enslavement colonisation of the territory of the former Soviet Union. Therefore, the Russian bourgeoisie did not declare war because they suddenly became anti-imperialist and pro-socialist. On the contrary, they were inevitably dragged into the war for existential reasons, with the well-known criminal vacillations and bargains they is familiar with from their own comprador tenure. Thus, taking the side of the anti-imperialist and socialist forces in the war does not mean unconditional cooperation with the Russian bourgeoisie or any other bourgeoisie that happened to be dragged into the conflict.
The suffocating sanctions of the US-NATO-EU axis of aggression and the escalation of its involvement in the battlefields of Ukraine have led the Russian ruling class to a major revision of its domestic and foreign policies. It has achieved a significant level of reactivation of the potential of the military-industrial complex inherited from the USSR and has proceeded to reorient its diplomatic, political, economic and military-technical relations and alliances, to alliances and cooperation with the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism.
However, the Russian ruling class presents no assurances of consistency in the struggle against the axis. On every occasion, and even without one, it rushes to declare its “readiness for all-out negotiations” in the war, as if it were ready for a complete return to the familiar role of comprador wholesaler, mediator in the predatory disposal of natural resources to imperialism! Only bound by a network of strong mutual commitments and obligations with the forces of early socialism and anti-imperialism, under the pressure of a robust and consistent global anti-imperialist movement, will it be able to advance more consistently in the struggle against the axis.
Conclusion
So, let us consider what the world would be like today if the anti-fascist forces led by the USSR and the Red Army had not crushed the horrors of fascism in 1945… The main lesson of this victory is one: the enemy, the most aggressive forces of imperialism, are not invincible when the peoples decide to take their destiny into their own hands.
The superficial and ahistorical anti-fascism, detached from consistent anti-imperialism, lacks any perspective during WWIII. What is necessary today is a coordinated anti-fascist struggle within the framework of a global militant anti-imperialist front, with the communists as its vanguard. Equally necessary is the unceasing theoretical, ideological and practical struggle against the forces of opportunism and revisionism, which sow confusion and discord, which reject the necessity of a frontal anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle, and separate fascism from imperialism.
The role of the World Anti-imperialist Platform is to act as a catalyst, coordinator and leader in this struggle.
The anti-fascist victory with the decisive contribution of the USSR is a legacy for the future victories of the peoples.
The axis of the present will also be crushed! Victory to the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism!
Notes
[1] John Loftus―“The Dutch connection”, The Guardian: “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power”
[2] U.S. Department of Defense VICTORY IN EUROPE DAY: TIME OF CELEBRATION, REFLECTION
[3] Human losses of World War II by country
[4] For the glorious and contradictory developmental path of socialism, see the collective volume of the Greek section of the international school THE LOGIC OF HISTORY: The October Revolution and early socialism in the Logic of History. Issues of revolutionary theory, methodology and practice. 2017. [Η Οκτωβριανή Επανάσταση και ο πρώιμος σοσιαλισμός στη Λογική της Ιστορίας. Ζητήματα επαναστατικής θεωρίας, μεθοδολογίας και πρακτικής. Αθήνα, ΚΨΜ, 2017.]
[5] Vlasov Andrey Andreyevich (1901-1946) was a Soviet general who became a collaborator with the nazi occupiers in WWII. They made him commander of the “Russian Liberation Army” under the command of the Wehrmacht.
[6] A typical example is the demand for the establishment at the former Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the current “State University of Humanities” (РГГУ) of Moscow, of a Philosophy Department, which will bear the name of the fascist “philosopher” (a servant of the nazis and a favourite “thinker” of V. Putin) Ivan Ilyin, under the direction of the prominent wavering irrationalist, mysticist fascist, Alexander Dugin! For the reaction of the students, see «Против учебно-научного центра имени Ивана Ильина в РГГУ».
[7] Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was a Finnish marshal and politician. He was a Tsarist officer when Finland was part of the Russian Empire. He was a pioneer in the suppression of revolution in Finland and in the massacre/extermination of communists. He became regent of Finland in 1918, took part in the Soviet-Finnish War and the siege of Leningrad on the nazi side as supreme military commander of the Finnish forces, and was a personal friend/collaborator of Hitler during WWII.
[8] Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (1869-1947) was a Don Cossack officer, promoted to lieutenant general when the revolution broke out in 1917, and one of the most bloodthirsty leaders of the counter-revolutionary White movement against Soviet rule. In 1919, after the defeat of the counter-revolutionaries, Krasnov fled to Western Europe, where he continued his anti-Soviet/anti-Communist activities and was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, an openly fascist anti-Communist organisation with a secret network in Russia. During WWII, Krasnov was tasked with organising and leading Cossack units of white emigres and Soviet (mostly Cossack) prisoners of war armed by the nazis. At the end of the war, Krasnov and his men surrendered voluntarily to British forces in Austria. On 28 May 1945, Pyotr Krasnov was handed over to the Soviets by the British authorities during Operation Keelhaul. He was sentenced to death by the Military Court of the Supreme Court of the USSR, along with General Andrei Shkuro, Timofei Domanov and Helmuth von Pannwitz. He was executed by hanging on 17 January 1947.
