VE day and Putin regime’s fake “Anti-Fascism”

By Demian Vinnichenko

The victory over Nazism in World War Il has long been enshrined as the central myth of Russian imperialist state ideology.

The Kremlin has turned the war into a holy crusade, cynically using it to justify a new criminal aggression – which, of course, stands in opposition of the anti-fascist struggle.

After the Nazi invasion in 1941, the peoples of the USSR waged a just war of a workers’ state – albeit degenerated by Stalin’s bureaucracy – against the fascist aggressor. The Ukrainian resistance played a critical role: masses joined the army, built a partisan movement, and defended cities such as Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv. Odessa and Kharkov and became an important factor in the subsequent defeat of Nazism. Other nations made an immense contribution as well – Byelorussians, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Chechens and many others.

However, Putin remains silent on the matter, always trying to usurp the victory of the other nations that are still oppressed to this day.

Moreover, it conceals that the Nazi expansion began with the “Stalin-Hitler Pact” on the division of Poland in 1939, and thus, they tried to initiate the division of Europe between the two dictators.

Putin’s police-state is the new counterrevolutionary pillar of world imperialism, which is why Trump is trying – with all his might and so far to no avail to come to terms with it.

Behind Putin’s “anti-Nazi” rhetoric lie ultra reactionary tendencies: the cult of the autocrat, oligarchic capitalism, Great Russian chauvinist ideology and the medieval obscurantism of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russian dictator actively promotes the same chauvinist ideology that Lenin harshly criticised. That is why Putin hates Lenin deeply, accusing him of “putting a bomb under Russia” and “creating Ukraine”.

Announcing the start of the “Special Military Operation” (SVO), Putin claimed that its goal was the “denazification” of Ukraine. Russian media repeat the mantra about “Nazis” in Kiev, presenting Ukraine as a “fascist state”, but this clumsy rhetoric does not stand the slightest criticism. The Ukrainian regime is a bourgeois democracy, where the extreme right was soundly defeated in the 2019 elections, and in which Volodymir Zelensky, of Jewish, Russian speaking origin, was elected president.

Moreover, with his “denazification”, Putin only strengthened the position of Ukrainian far right, which in the midst of the war, received new “legitimacy”, and finally emerged from its marginal position thanks to the myth making of Putin’s propaganda,

The annual Victory Day parade in Russia is increasingly reminiscent of a grotesque display that has lost all connection with the tragic experience of the war of liberation against Nazism. From a ritual of mourning, it has become a display of imperial arms. This parade does not appeal to memory, but to obedience, to the willingness to die for imperialist objectives, to the sound of marches, fanfares and television propaganda celebrations. It is not about history, but about its falsification for the sake of a war of conquest.

The real anti-fascist struggle is being waged today in Ukraine, not on parade stands, but in the trenches, destroyed cities, volunteer brigades and workers union meetings, it is the working class that forms the basis of the resistance. Let us remember that anti-fascism from its beginnings. arose as a response to the attempts of capital to repress the emancipatory aspirations of the workers.

Even in Germany itself, anti-Nazi resistance though brutally repressed – included workers, underground circles of intellectuals and anti-fascist officers who risked their lives to sabotage the war machine of the Third Reich.

We cannot ignore similar partisan movements in today’s Russia and in the occupied territories of Ukraine, where railways are sabotaged, military registration and enlistment offices are set on fire and leaflets are distributed and walls are painted against the war and invasion, despite torture and long sentences.

In the face of these events, international workers’ solidarity with Ukraine is growing stronger. Workers from different countries express their support for Ukraine: European and American dockworkers refused to unload Russian ships with military equipment trade unions are organizing humanitarian aid, and statements of unconditional condemnation of Putin’s aggression are heard at conferences and forums. The example of the dock workers is particularly illustrative: Workers around the world strongly oppose the Russian invasion including thousands of dockworkers showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people and contempt for Putin’s aggression.”

Today it is clear that the true heirs of the anti-fascist struggle are NOT the cynical rulers of the Kremlin who camouflage themselves behind the flag of victory while committing aggressions nor the Trump administration of the United States, but ordinary people resisting violence and dictatorships.

Their actions are a direct continuation of the work of those who 80 years ago defied the Nazi plague!

In addition to opposing Putin’s aggression, progressive forces must also oppose the growth of neo-fascism and right-wing populism in Europe – which is very sympathetic to Putin’s regime. It is also necessary to combat the intense rearmament of NATO countries which are not seeking what they hypocritically declare: “to help Ukraine” but to encourage chauvinism in their own ranks.

You cannot defeat one form of imperialist oppression by acquiescing in another. That Is why a true anti-fascist, and especially a socialist, which will simultaneously oppose Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, his protected dictators in Syria and other countries, and the genocide and Zionist occupation of Palestine, headed by Netanyahu.

Freedom to the peoples! Death to empires!