I have been challenged in my critical support of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by Lenin who during the First World War said it was foolish to support Germany against Russia or vice versa, and that the people should seek revolution regardless.
This is written in The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War
The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany.
In all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth
See, the thing is, I can certainly turn the tables on this and ask you if your post is in good faith. Because let’s face the facts, this is a textbook imperialist conflict. It doesn’t matter one bit if Russia’s doesn’t meet every criterion for being an imperialist hegemon right now. Imperialism is capitalism in decay and every sufficiently developed capitalist state will turn outwards to become imperialist eventually. What’s actually important is the class character of the states or blocs involved and Russia is a bourgeois state that exploits and represses its working class. This conflict has done nothing so far to strengthen the positions of either the Ukrainian or Russian working class in their class struggle and neither side represents actual liberation from the capitalist hegemony.
I agree that this situation has been a blow to the US-led western hegemony and that these are certainly interesting times with a new multi-polar world order appearing… But I fear this is just the prelude to a bigger conflict on the horizon where the actual consequences for the international class struggle are not foreseeable.