Medvedev claims: “We need a Big Great Russia”

Putin’s hatchet man calls for Ukraine “to cease to exist”

By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 13 April 2023, www.thecommunists.net

 

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and chairman of the ruling “United Russia” party, has published a statement titled "Why Ukraine will cease to exist? Because nobody needs it." It is a hotchpotch of bizarre claims and "Russkij Mir" chauvinism which demonstrates the ultra-reactionary character of Putin’s war against the Ukraine. [1]

According to the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, Medvedev explains in his declaration “why the Ukrainian state is not needed to Europe, the US, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Russia and, finally, Ukrainian people themselves.”. It is a kind of sweeping blow for which the former President and Prime Minister of Russia is well-known. [2] He claims that the "forced support of the Nazi regime under command of the American mentor has already created true financial and political hell for the Europeans."

He goes on that Ukraine is "also not needed to Asia," since Asian states see it on Russia’s example "how color [revolution] technologies are being honed in order to take down the largest competitor states," and "understand what fate has the collective West, led by America, has prepared for them in case of disobedience."

In a rather amusing note, he adds that "regular Americans have absolutely no idea, what ‘Ukraine’ is and where ‘it’ is located. Most of them wouldn’t even be able to immediately pinpoint this ‘state’ on the map."

More importantly, Medvedev emphasizes the well-known Great Russian claim that the Ukrainian nation does not exist and that a Ukrainian state is an invention of Moscow’s enemies. He calls the current Ukrainian state a "misconception, created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (…) Millions of our compatriots that have been harassed by the Nazi Kiev regime for years live here. It is them whom we protect with the special military operation, ruthlessly eliminating the enemy."

He suggests that there are only slightly over 20 million out of 45 million Ukrainians still left in the country, and the remaining Ukrainians "are forced to live in constant anxiety and fear" and "are willing to go anywhere."

This is an utterly stupid and cynical statement. First, as a matter of fact, there live about 35 millions in the Ukraine – nearly double as many as the Putin’s hatchet man claims. [3] Furthermore, it is certainly true that Ukraine’s population has dramatically dropped since 24 February 2022 since about 8 million have left the country – mostly women and children – and about the same number are displaced within the country. But what is the reason for this?! It is the war of terror which Putin has unleashed against the Ukraine! It is exactly that war for which Medvedev himself is co-responsible as a leading figure of the Putin regime!

At the end of his statement, Medvedev draws the conclusion from his bizarre ramble. "And this is why this sub-Ukraine is not needed for us. We need a Big Great Russia. (…) This kind of Ukraine is not needed to anyone on the plant. And this is why it will cease to exist."

 

The meaning of Medvedev’s statement

 

Medvedev’s statement is of interest not because of its intellectual depth but because its political meaning. This is, first and foremost, because of the authors high position in the Kremlin. Furthermore, it is not a drunken rambling spread on Twitter after midnight. TASS has dedicated a whole English-language article – longer than most other TASS press releases – in which it presents summaries (with large excerpts) of Medvedev’s statement. This fact alone reflects that Moscow agrees with the deputy chairman of the Security Council and considers it as important to spread his ideas to the global public.

Hence, both the high-ranking nature of the author as well as the prominence given to it by TASS demonstrate that the statement reflects the fundamental ideology behind Russia’s war in the Ukraine. This conflict is not a war “in defence of the Russian brothers in Donbass” or against “the NATO threat” – as the Kremlin and its supporters like to claim. It is rather a colonial war – ideologically based on the denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people. It is an imperialist crusade aimed at the eradication of the Ukraine as a separate state and at the subjugation of the Ukrainians to “Big Great Russia.

Medvedev’s denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people reminds us to a recent statement of Israel's far-right National Security Minister Smotrich who recently claimed that there “isn't a Palestinian people”. [4] The Kremlin applies a very similar logic to the Ukrainians since denying their national existence creates the ideological basis for expelling and subjugating them. Let’s be clear: This is the ideology of genocide.

The ultra-reactionary denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people is not an ideological excess resulting from the ongoing war. In fact, it is in accordance with the world view which Russia’s President Putin himself elaborated in his notorious essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in July 2021. [5]

 

Fighting against the social-imperialist “left-wing” parties which side with Russia

 

It is a shame that there exist a number of Stalinist, populist and social democratic parties which support Putin’s war against the Ukrainian people, or which are sympathetic to Russia as a supposedly non-imperialist “lesser evil” against the Western powers. Make no mistake, such forces are social-imperialist agents in the ranks of the working class and the popular masses.

Such Putinistas are no better than those “left-wing” forces in Western Europe which defend the right of the Zionist Apartheid state to exist (e.g. sectors of the LINKE in Germany, the so-called “Anti-Nationals” and “Anti-Germans”, etc.). [6]

Medvedev’s statement confirms the RCIT’s analysis of the colonial character of Putin’s war against the Ukrainian people. Contrary to the claims by Putinistas and semi-Putinistas, Russia is an imperialist Great Power – no better nor worse than its rivals in the West. [7] Authentic socialists oppose Moscow’s wars of aggression in the same way as they oppose all other imperialist wars. [8]

Likewise, we refute the reactionary thesis that the Ukraine would not fight for their national liberation but merely for interests of Western imperialism. Socialists should support the right of the Ukraine to get material aid (including weapons) from wherever possible. They should oppose any political conditions attached to such aid by Western governments. [9] Such a stance needs to be combined with a revolutionary defeatist approach against all imperialist powers – in West as well as in East. [10]

The RCIT calls all authentic socialists who share such an approach to intensify collaboration and to join forces in fighting for a consistent internationalist and anti-imperialist position. We have summarised such an approach in the slogan: Defend the Ukraine against Putin’s invasion! Beware of NATO and Zelensky – transform the resistance against the Russian occupation into a Popular War! Against Russian and against NATO imperialism!



[1] TASS: Ukraine to cease to exist because it is not needed to anyone, Medvedev says. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman called the current Ukrainian state a "misconception, created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union", 8 April 2023, https://tass.com/politics/1601631. All quotes are from this article if not indicated otherwise.

[2] See on this e.g. Michael Pröbsting: Russia: Medvedev’s “Anti-Colonialism for Idiots”. Putin’s hatchet man cynically presents Russian imperialism as standard bearer of the Global South’s interests, 9 March 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/russia-medvedev-s-anti-colonialism-for-idiots/

[3] For a political and economic analysis of the Ukraine see e.g. the pamphlet by Michael Pröbsting: Ukraine: A Capitalist Semi-Colony. On the exploitation and deformation of Ukraine’s economy by imperialist monopolies and oligarchs since capitalist restoration in 1991, January 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/ukraine-a-capitalist-semi-colony/

[4] See on this an article by our comrades in Occupied Palestine, Yossi Schwartz: The Zionist lie and Palestine, 02.04.2023, https://the-isleague.com/the-zionist-lie-and-palestine/.

[5] See on this e.g. chapter 5 “Putin and Great Russian Chauvinism claim that the Ukraine is not an independent nation” in our pamphlet by Michael Pröbsting: Putin’s Poodles (Apologies to All Dogs). The pro-Russian Stalinist parties and their arguments in the current NATO-Russia Conflict, 9 February 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/nato-russia-conflict-stalinism-as-putin-s-poodles/.

[6] On the history of Zionism see e.g. two books by Yossi Schwartz: The Zionist Wars. History of the Zionist Movement and Imperialist Wars, 1 February 2021, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-zionist-wars/; Palestine and Zionism. The History of Oppression of the Palestinian People. A Critical Account of the Myths of Zionism, RCIT Books, Vienna 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/palestine-and-zionism/;

[7] The RCIT has published numerous documents about capitalism in Russia and its rise to an imperialist power. The most important ones are several pamphlets by Michael Pröbsting: The Peculiar Features of Russian Imperialism. A Study of Russia’s Monopolies, Capital Export and Super-Exploitation in the Light of Marxist Theory, 10 August 2021, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-peculiar-features-of-russian-imperialism/; by the same author: Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism and the Rise of Russia as a Great Power. On the Understanding and Misunderstanding of Today’s Inter-Imperialist Rivalry in the Light of Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism. Another Reply to Our Critics Who Deny Russia’s Imperialist Character, August 2014, http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialism-theory-and-russia/; Russia as a Great Imperialist Power. The formation of Russian Monopoly Capital and its Empire – A Reply to our Critics, 18 March 2014 (this pamphlet contains a document written in 2001 in which we established for the first time our characterisation of Russia as imperialist), http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialist-russia/; see also these essays by the same author: Russia: An Imperialist Power or a “Non-Hegemonic Empire in Gestation”? A reply to the Argentinean economist Claudio Katz, in: New Politics, 11 August 2022, at https://newpol.org/russia-an-imperialist-power-or-a-non-hegemonic-empire-in-gestation-a-reply-to-the-argentinean-economist-claudio-katz-an-essay-with-8-tables/; Russian Imperialism and Its Monopolies, in: New Politics Vol. XVIII No. 4, Whole Number 72, Winter 2022, https://newpol.org/issue_post/russian-imperialism-and-its-monopolies/; Once Again on Russian Imperialism (Reply to Critics). A rebuttal of a theory which claims that Russia is not an imperialist state but would be rather “comparable to Brazil and Iran”, 30 March 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/once-again-on-russian-imperialism-reply-to-critics/. See various other RCIT documents on this issue at a special sub-page on the RCIT’s website: https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-russia-as-imperialist-powers/.

[8] See e.g. Michael Pröbsting: The Struggle of Revolutionaries in Imperialist Heartlands against Wars of their “Own” Ruling Class. Examples from the history of the RCIT and its predecessor organisation in the last four decades, 2 September 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-struggle-of-revolutionaries-in-imperialist-heartlands-against-wars-of-their-own-ruling-class/.

[9] See on this e.g. RCIT: Towards a Turning Point in the Ukraine War? The tasks of socialists in the light of possible lines of development of the war of national defence in combination with the inter-imperialist Great Power rivalry, 11 March 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/towards-a-turning-point-in-the-ukraine-war/

[10] We refer readers to a special page on our website where more than 170 RCIT documents on the Ukraine War and the current NATO-Russia conflict are compiled: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/compilation-of-documents-on-nato-russia-conflict/. In particular we refer to the RCIT Manifesto: Ukraine War: A Turning Point of World Historic Significance. Socialists must combine the revolutionary defense of the Ukraine against Putin’s invasion with the internationalist struggle against Russian as well as NATO and EU imperialism, 1 March 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/manifesto-ukraine-war-a-turning-point-of-world-historic-significance/; see also: Manifesto on the First Anniversary of the Ukraine War. Victory to the heroic Ukrainian people! Defeat Russian imperialism! No support whatsoever for NATO imperialism! 10 February 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/manifesto-on-first-anniversary-of-ukraine-war/.