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Another war in the Caucasus: Capitalists destroy village in order to 'save it'

Challenge-Desafio, 31 January 1996

Russian troops destroyed the village of Pervomayskoye last week. They added hundreds of bodies to the 30,000 already killed in the year-long struggle over Chechnya. Russian President Yeltsin said they were saving the town from Chechen rebels. He stole that line from U.S. military leaders. Thirty years ago, U.S. troops destroyed villages in Vietnam "in order to save them."

A look at the map explains what Russian bosses want in Chechnya. Chechnya is in the south of Russia. It is in the mountainous Caucasus region bordering on Turkey and Iran. On one side of the mountains is the Caspian Sea. This area is rich in natural resources, especially oil in Azerbaijan. On the other side are the Russian Black Sea ports. These provide access to the Mediterranean and the world's oceans.

The struggle in Chechnya is about oil and access to markets. Oil from the Azerbaijani center of Baku travels through the Caucasus to get to the Russian industrial heartland. Russian bosses must have that oil to fuel their industries. They don't want to cede control of the oil flow to the Chechen upstarts. They will kill thousands more to keep control of the oil and its profits.

The capitalist masters in Moscow are taking a page from the book of their capitalist competitors in Washington. Five years ago, Iraq threatened US imperialism's control over the world's biggest oil reserves in the Persian Gulf. The US imperialists, with the help of French and British imperialists, killed hundreds of thousands to hold onto that oil and its profits. Since the Gulf War, half a million more workers have died as Bush, then Clinton, schemed to dump the Saddam Hussein regime in favor of Iraqi bosses friendlier to them.

Oil is that important to capitalism. It is the prize over which the bosses have launched many of the wars of this century. Millions of workers have died in those oil wars.

SOVIETS ONLY FOUGHT NATIONALISM HALFWAY

Workers in the Caucasus weren't always divided by nationalist rivalry. Communists united them.

In the early 20th century, the Russian communist Bolshevik Party organized in the oil centers of Tblisi in Georgia and Baku in Azerbaijan. They built strongholds in the working class districts. The first strikes in the world by oil workers took place in Baku under Bolshevik leadership. One of the key organizers was future party leader Josef Stalin, a Georgian working among Azerbaijanis.

After the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917-22, the Bolsheviks strengthened their base among Caucasian workers. They won many to communism. The name of the city leveled by Yeltsin's troops, Pervomayskoye, means "May 1st"--the international communist holiday May Day.

Soviet communists made great strides in overcoming racism and building internationalism. But they also promoted nationalism as long as it was "national in form but socialist in content." Mainly this meant opposing "Great Russian chauvinism" (racism in the name of Russian nationalism) by building other nationalisms.

Their line then was similar to the multi-culturalism of today. However, most of the multi-culturalists don't say anything about socialism.

Nationalism is a fundamentally capitalist ideology. Under capitalism, all productive resources are owned privately. The owners organize themselves as nation-states in order to fend off rivals and force workers to submit to exploitation.

Socialism abolished private ownership of production. However, it maintained wages. Without realizing it, socialism retained the core of capitalism. No wonder, then, that the Soviets never recognized the pro-capitalist essence of nationalism.

Nationalism is not the cause of the bloody war in the Caucasus. Imperialist competition over oil and oil.profits is the cause. But the bosses would have a hard time getting workers to fight and die in the name of oil. Nationalist ideology serves them better.

Will there ever be an end to these bloody wars over oil? Yes, when we get rid of the bosses with communsit revolution.

COMMUNISM VERSUS FASCISM IN THE CAUCASUS

During the second world war, the Nazis tried to build an anti- Soviet base in the Caucasus. They were also after the oil. They bribed Caucasian elites, mainly traditional chieftains.

These chieftains' ideological grip was weak among urban workers but strong in remote villages. The Nazis had some success, especially among the leaders of the Moslem nationalities. Moslem SS units fought for Hitler against the Soviets.

The Soviet response to this development was entirely wrong. They should have scrapped their Russian-nationalist slogans. They should have intensified efforts to win workers in the Caucasus, and elsewhere, to communism.

Instead, Soviet authorities deported six nationality groups to central Asia. They included the Chechens. Everybody in these ethnic groups was deported, including the communists among them. Many died en route.

Khrushchev let them return after 1956, when the Soviet Union was firmly committed to the road of capitalism. He did so not to build communist internationalism but, on the contrary, to rebuild nationalist rivalries.

Russian racism against Caucasians, with a long history under the Tsars, returned with renewed force. The results--the destruction of Grozny and Pervomayskoye--are death and misery for Russian and Chechen workers alike.

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