Russian Federation

The Russian Federation is a capitalist state in Eastern Europe and northern Asia. Russia is the largest of the post-Soviet states and serves as the legal successor state to the Soviet Union since it was dissolved in 1991. After the Union collapsed, the RSFSR became the Russian Federation, an independent capitalist republic. Throughout the 1990s, right-wing Soviet economists put Russia through an aggressive neoliberal campaign of privatization, selling off assets to foreign capital and creating unprecedented rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, poverty, and organized crime in the country. The neoliberal era saw at least 5 million excess deaths between the years 1991 and 2005. Though Russia inherited the USSR's embassies and permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Russia lacks not only the Soviet economic and political system but also its strength, both external and internal.

Russia's president is Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin's chosen successor and Russia's de facto leader since 1999, during which he has continuously held office as either President or Prime Minister of the country. Putin began his current stint as president in 2012.

Society

Many Russian citizens are addicted to heroin, methamphetamine, and other drugs, contributing also to its HIV problem. With 0.8-1.0% of its population infected with the virus, Russia has one of the worst HIV epidemics outside Africa, enabled by its stagnant and corrupt economy and further reinforced by its brand of traditionalism which opposes sex education in schools as well as its drug policy which has banned methadone, an opioid medication that could lower intravenous drug use and thus help curb the epidemic. Besides this Russia does poorly in many other areas, especially for a European country, having high rates of violent crime, poverty, inequality, corruption, abortion, and orphanage, with the last two influenced by misdiagnoses in prenatal screenings as well as doctors urging mothers to not burden themselves with allegedly afflicted children. Russia has other social ills like prevalent domestic abuse and marital rape, which are considered misdemeanors at most — another manifestation of Russia's particular traditionalist ethos.

Politics

Ideology

The Russian Federation is an avowedly capitalist government, led by the anti-communist United Russia party. It emerged as part of the counter-revolution against socialism in the USSR led by Boris Yeltsin. Vladimir Putin, Russia's current president, said in a 1991 interview:

I must tell you that there was a time in my life when I was very interested in Marxism and Leninism, read a lot about it, found it interesting and often logical. But as I matured, the truth became more and more apparent to me, that all of that was no more then a beautiful but dangerous fairy tale, dangerous because an attempt of its implementation in our country caused a lot of harm. And I would like to talk about the tragedy, which we are experiencing today, the tragedy of disintegration of our state, which you cannot call anything else but tragedy. I think that the actors of October 1917 put a time bomb under the foundation of this building, the building of a unitary state called Russia. They broke our fatherland into separate princedoms [i.e. republics], which never existed of the map of the world. Gave them parliaments and governments, and now we have what we have. On the other hand they destroyed what glues, molds the people of civilized countries – market relationships. They destroyed the market, emerging capitalism.

When asked about these remarks in a 2002 interview, he replied, "I am ready to repeat every word." It should thus be obvious that Putin is a bourgeois nationalist and an anti-communist. It is probable too that Putin lies about historical events pertaining to socialism, or that he is simply uninformed. For instance, he labeled the Katyn Massacre as a Soviet crime without bothering to explain why it happened; as an action against Polish counter-revolutionaries. This appears to be a tactic he uses frequently — looking good for “apologizing” for the questionable things Russia has been involved in the past, but at the same time acting as if the government at that time is separate from the one he leads, which is contradictory, then, because he apologizes for actions that were not those of his country after all.

Repression

According to Blackshirts and Reds, the Yeltsin regime—which helped impose neoliberalism on Russia—forcibly dissolved the Russian parliament along with the Federation's every other elected representative body, including both municipal and regional councils. They discontinued Russia's Constitutional Court and launched an armed assault upon the parliament, executing hundreds resisters and demonstrators. (Thousands more were jailed sans charges or trials, and hundreds of elected officials were placed under investigation.) The neoliberal bourgeoisie's Omon troops repeatedly assaulted leftist demonstrators and pickets in Moscow as well as other Russian cities. Parliamentary deputy Andrei Aidzerdzis (an Independent) and deputy Valentin Martemyanov (a Communist), who both vigorously opposed the neoliberal state, became victims of political homicides, as did the journalist Dmitri Kholodov, whom somebody killed in 1994 for probing corruption in ‘high places’. Further information:

Analysis

Discussion of imperialism

Regardless of the fact that Russia has a reactionary government with an arguably revanchist foreign policy, it itself is not imperialist in the economic sense as the United States or the United Kingdom are.^{[tendency-based slant]}

Western media typically exaggerates the influence and power of the Russian government. In fact, Russia has been the recipient of a steady series of US attempts to undermine and isolate it far more egregious than any Russian action in return. As for the accusations that Russia is conducting imperialism by hijacking the “democracies” of other countries, such as the United States, they are simply false. Donald Trump, for one, was the target of baseless hysteria during his election campaign and into his presidency which claimed that he was secretly affiliated with or even working for the Russian government. In fact, Trump's actions in office were often opposed to the interests of Russia, often bolstering Russia's opponents with moves like the $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, support for the re-militarization of Japan, the destabilization of Venezuela, continued and developing support for Israel, and flat out coming to NATO's defense when Russia was considered to have been making “aggressive” moves against it. It is, on the other hand, documentably true that the United States has played a determining role in the fate of the Russian Federation since the very beginning, including when it directly interfered in the 1993 presidential elections in favor of Yeltsin. It is evident that America's recent belligerence is only in reaction to the Russian bourgeoisie's increasing independence from the US-led world order.

Relations

Finland and Eastern Europe

There are a couple of countries whose citizens are particularly at odds with Russia, particularly those of Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland. Russia has a pre-Soviet history of subjugating those lands and treating their people poorly, even trying to wipe out their culture, language, and otherwise nationhood. In the Soviet era, the USSR was compelled by geographic interests to put these areas under its hegemony again, ultimately in order to combat Nazi Germany or the Western Bloc, even though these nations had recently become independent from Russia following the Russian Civil War. Symbols of communism are often banned in these countries, and public perception of the Soviet Union remains poor.

NATO

Europeans as a whole have a rather ambivalent relation with Russia. For one, Russia is considered as an aggressor, and its government does not give the bourgeoisie as many rights to the country's resources as they would like, however Russia and the rest of Europe do cooperate quite a bit in organizations such as the Council of the Baltic Sea States and through economic projects such as the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines. However, the United States still considers Russia to be one of its rivals, and so for instance threatened sanctions against Germany in an attempt to stop the Nord Stream 2 project, so as to weaken Russia's economy and retain American dominance of Europe. Many Russian oligarchs and politicians are very much involved in Europe, holding dual citizenship in, owning houses in, and buying products from the European Union. Many of their wives and children also live in the EU. Putin himself leans to the EU economically, seeking to export resources to it and import technology and machinery. Allegedly, his daughters live in the EU as well. He also, like many other affluent Russians, stores money in Swiss banks, and possibly in London too. The EU generally opposes Russian entry into the Union, however, because it would displace the other powers in representation due to its large population. The argument that Russia cannot join the EU because of its culture or lack of development, relatively, is not a very good one, since the Eastern European EU countries are about as conservative and "undeveloped" as Russia, yet are of course members.

Organizations like the Atlantic Bridge promote American and British dominance in Europe over that of Russia's, however their practical influence is little given the lack of feasibility for their projects, such as shipping fracking gas from the US to Europe in order to push out Russia. Again however, this is economically unviable. Ukraine and Poland likewise have been paid for having the Nord Stream 1 pipeline go through their territory, however oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline because that one won't. Other capitalists, who have over-invested in terminals for fracking gas, possibly because of state and EU subsidies, are hostile to Russia because they want their investments to pay off, which means there would have to be a lot of fracking gas coming in to satisfy the European energy market and not Russian gas. It has been speculated that fracking has even been developed largely as a means to undermine the geopolitical power of countries like Russia, on top of others like Venezuela and Iran.

Sometimes western politicians lash out at Russia because of some inadequacy which Russia actually has little to do with. For example, if there are riots, or the "wrong" candidate won, then Russia is sometimes blamed for some kind of interference, but realistically, even if Russia did pay for some advertisements or whatever, it is primarily the fault of the ruling class and politicians of that country which is having trouble.

External links

• Discussion with Russian Marxist professor Alexander Buzgalin about Russia