

A history which no longer matters, apparently



I’m not writing a mere list of the hypocrisies within a single London activist scene (honestly, I’d be typing for weeks), and I’m not (just) being snarky. There is a huge problem when teen hipsters who discovered Marxist theory at a freshers fair three months ago try to explain the USSR to people who have known about it since they were in the womb.

Since most of the people who should be saying this were forcibly starved to death, deported to slave camps, and/or lined up and shot, parts of me made it through the gene pool, into the delightful world of English-language online discourse, and I’m here to blog about it. Like most people with post-Soviet heritage, my family history is disjointed, depressing, and confusing. Having ancestors from what are now known as Armenia, Uzbekistan, Russia, Britain, and Pakistan, I grew up in a gloriously multicultural Northern town and I am lucky to have (almost) always been comfortable asserting a British identity. I am very white, I (unfortunately) have a strong regional English accent, and in the UK it’s only upon seeing my name that people start to realise there is something foreign going on.

Many of the generations born out of the Soviet era have a sense of disconnect with their cultural and ethnic roots due to the mass campaigns of cleansing and deportation perpetrated against them. The resulting trauma and erasure of their histories is a living remnant of Soviet rule.

Furthermore, much of contemporary Russian politics and public opinion is still swayed along similar lines to that of Sovietism. People from the Caucasus and Central Asia are routinely discriminated against in Russia and the nations are still bearing the harmful effects of the USSR’s and the Russian Federation’s colonial campaigns.

A large section of humanity’s existence hangs by a thread made up of recent multiple genocides, forced deportations, and famines directly executed by leaders of the Soviet Union. We have to muster some understanding and empathy for the histories of those who suffered under “Communist” rule. We have to listen and learn from this.

There were a huge number of deliberate and pre-meditated massacres perpetrated on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, class, and more. Pleas of “Western propaganda” cannot conveniently explain away the mass graves of those targeted by Soviet leaders. Nor can any ideological argument about the invalidity of religion, precisely which classes are counter-revolutionary, or who conspired with the Germans, be used to justify such a scale of suffering.

It’s a fucking outrage that I have to even give examples again, especially as these are the most well-documented, well-researched, and widely available instances. But here we go. Mass rape was planned and used by Soviet soldiers across Poland and East Germany to punish ex-POWs. Jewish communities were wiped out across countless nations. 2 million Afghans were killed in a Soviet genocide. 18 million people were sent to gulags. 10 million deaths resulted from the 1932-3 deliberate, man-made famine. Ethnic genocides of Poles, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachay, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and so many more. 4 million people were forced to migrate within the Soviet Union, around half of whom died as a result. Need I fucking continue?

Denying genocides and war crimes simultaneously denies the voices of surviving populations and their right to accept and overcome trauma. It removes the possibility for tackling the roots and causes of these atrocities, and it prevents us from being able to move on and stop this shit happening again. It is also horrifying that I have to even try to summarise to someone why they maybe shouldn’t roll their eyes at victim testimonies and deny recognised massacres.

Can you imagine being the last living member of your family, bartering with your food allowance and not eating for three weeks, then using the cigarettes you earned to bribe a guard to give you one metal spoon, then sharpening the spoon gradually over two months, using it to cut your way through a fence and threaten the guard who tries to apprehend you, and walking for twenty eight days to the nearest liberated village (that was a true story btw) where you run into some kind of Vice contributor from Dorset who shouts “HoLOLdomor was fake go to gulag peasant hahaha!” You crumble, all hope is lost, you drop to your knees and shout to the sky “WHY DID I FALL VICTIM TO WESTERN PROPAGANDA”.

The Cold War instilled in both parties a binary view of geopolitics that we need to deconstruct. It also cemented the binary outlook on geopolitics, which largely essentialises ideologies into Capitalist and Communist. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Hating the US doesn’t mean you’ve gotta love and believe the Russian state. What sort of world must this be if we have to choose between the US/UK alliance, and Russia/DPRK/China? Acknowledging and remembering the millions killed by Soviet famine does not mean you can’t also acknowledge and remember that Britain forcibly starved three million to death in Bangladesh.

We don’t have to pick a side. We all have a duty to dismantle power imbalances around the world. To claim “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a very Western-centric way to view the Soviet Union and all it left behind. When you deliberately ground your viewpoint only in precisely that which “The West” despises, you are still basing your view on the Western worldview, and that is still not very cool nor subversive. Attempting to retroactively justify the deaths and suffering of millions of civilians is dangerous, baseless, and absurd. This categorically vague and ideological (and shockingly individualistic) notion of who does or does not deserve to live, within the strange utopia called “The Soviet Union” which lives only in the minds of 20-year-old-white-boys, is no more offensive than it is fucking meaningless.

The conjecture which fills the online duels between Tankies, Ultras, Ancoms, Brocialists, etc. is so empty of any worldly referents that it’s largely impossible to engage with. Sometimes I latch onto something I recognise and get involved. Usually it’s famine denial or any mention of Crimea, and usually, I get called a Nazi sympathiser by three 19 year-olds from Nottingham and sent a link to a Reddit thread describing how the documents must have been forged by bourgeois new-world economists because you can see the different pixels throughout the text.

But, how can you argue with somebody who’s attacking epistemology itself? Fighting against narratives can feel like you’re in a dark room trying to catch a mosquito that you’re not sure actually exists. Is Twitter the forum to discuss historicism? The Tankie’s idea of the Soviet Union, the picture in their mind, is of some rose-coloured, radical and glorious thing which never actually existed. What the Tankie says of the USSR says more about the Tankie than the USSR itself. God bless Edward Said. On the whole, I’m glad people are interested in the Soviet Union. But that interest should go further, we need more nuance, new voices, and better arguments.



A present that matters less:

The impact of “Tankies” has become damaging in contemporary discourse. Real, wonderful, radical socialist movements are out there fighting against the real living legacies of Russian imperialism. Unfortunately, Western politics students with 3000+ Twitter followers are taking up their space. They are wasting our energies on discourse about 100-year-old propaganda. The Russian state and its surrounding colonial legacy is still harmful and still worth debating.

For example, since the USSR enforced unwanted borders and governance, regions in the Caucasus have been fighting for their right to independence and self-determination. You can read more about these fights here. After Russia invaded, Crimean Tatar populations have faced violence and discrimination in their own lands, many being unlawfully detained, forced to leave their homes, and there are numerous missing persons still unaccounted for. You can read more and offer your support here. Meanwhile the usual suspects of the UK far left; Worker's Hammer, the Socialist Worker and the Morning Star, each unequivocally supported the 2014 “referendum” which refused to give Tatars votes as justification for Russia’s invasion of the Crimea.

Vital and important histories of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Crimea, Siberia, Ichkeria, and so many more, are being co-opted, appropriated, and re-written in Leftbook groups made up of middle-class students in Paris. People whose Google searches only bring up English-language articles and archives should not be telling Georgians and Uzbeks that they are just passive victims of Western propaganda. The creeping Russian occupation of Ukraine and the Caucasus is being bolstered and supported by Twitter warriors who have never been East of Berlin (okay, Chiang Mai doesn’t count).

People who open up a critical discourse about the Soviet Union are excluded from certain Western leftist spaces. Whether explicitly, like this...