I may or may not make a separate post about discussing this video, but this stream by Garland Nixon just ended (relistening from the start to gather what I missed, now- I entered the stream probably 20-30 minutes in) and covers a great deal regarding this speech.

Here’s it timestamped, specifically where they started talking about Putin’s speech- https://www.youtube.com/live/lRRwnHUi7Uc?si=uJY71CjE5MawuEf4&t=1785

I’ve been watching quite a few YTers/analysts/etc out of personal interest, to see how the war is going, and to see the economic and political changes coming from it- and I feel that from a socialist perspective, it covers the topic of this speech and how it relates to the changes currently underway in Russia particularly well.

Is Putin a communist? Of course not- and it would be wholly incorrect to see Russia’s present system as similar to China’s “socialist market economy”- there is no dictatorship of the proletariat, as far as I know (I wouldn’t know, though I’m open to learning) what organization of labor existed evaporated after the Soviet dissolution, and while Putin has curbed the excesses of the “oligarch era” and shock therapy, the oligarchs (Putin included to my understanding- though I’m no scholar) retain significant influence (albeit somewhat neutered in comparison to the state in recent years due to the western sanctions, funnily enough) and the society at large remains liberal- if retaining some solid foundations from the Soviet era, for instance in regards to the state of public housing, education, healthcare, etc.

But seeing this speech just dismissed altogether in this thread left a bad taste in my mouth- because while talk is cheap, and this is primarily talk, what I’ve seen mentioned and described in blips here and there in channels I watch- not all socialist or even leftist- (the Duran, the New Atlas, Danny Haiphong, Sean Foo, Dialogue Works, Neutrality Studies, Gita Wirjawan, Geopolitical Economy Report etc. come to mind) did seem to combine together to describe some very meaningful, and distinctive changes underway. Not due to ideological reasons on Putin and Russia’s part- but due to pragmatic reasons.

It has been in Russia’s state interests (frankly, like it would be anywhere else) to curtail the influence of the oligarchs, for instance- and that is presently underway. It has been in Russia’s interests to keep its indigenous arms industry under state control, similarly- and this is why they are outproducing the entire west. As western capital and goods have receded from Russia in the wake of sanctions and worse- naturally, there has been a revitalization- with state backing- of the industries that existed in Russia prior to shock therapy and which had been neglected under neoliberal looting. As a state now under siege from the global imperialist order, it has also been in Russia’s interests to rally the people around the flag through providing tangible material benefits, from infrastructural development, social welfare programs (as announced also in this speech), etc… these are not the actions of a socialist state, perhaps, but they are the actions of a capitalist (or perhaps more accurately- nationalist capitalist- rather than comprador capitalist) society reverting to the imitation of tried-and-true Soviet methods of surviving, prospering, industrializing (or re-industrializing), and building a healthy, unified, anti-imperialist foundation for the population.

None of this is insignificant, though I expect that, with no proletarian rule, the necessity of revolution still exists and will rear its head sooner or later. And of course, I believe that we should wholeheartedly support these changes, for anti-imperialism’s sake and the development of multipolarity and revitalization of another economic core from which peaceful Eurasian economic integration will bloom.