Imperialist Left and the War in Chechnya: Reflections on One Campaign
Dedicated to Vladimir
Burtsev, "the Sherlock Holmes of theRevolution,"
a man who unmasked Evno Azef
I
Will ISWoR, a London-based organization of "International
Solidarity with Workers of Russia," condemn the murder of
civilians--most of whom are ethnic Russian working class retirees--by
the chlorine and ammonia released by Islamic fascists
in Grozny? That was the question I asked myself this morning
when the news of this crime appeared in Russian and Western
press. Or will they continue to be one big happy family with
the governing faction of the British ruling class, its imperialist
agencies, its NGOs, and its anti-Communist left? To put
it differently, will they remain on the side of LIBERAL
IMPERIALISM of Clinton and Blair against the CONSERVATIVE IMPERIALISM
of John Maples or will they be able to
disengage themselves from any kind of imperialism?
So far the answer is negative. It's time to speak up. I cannot be silent.
Neither the genocide of ethnic Russians in Chechnya, in 1994-1999, nor
the enslavement of and slave trade in thousands of
working class people by Islamic fascists, nor their murderous attack
on Dagestan, as the result of which the entire ethnic
group (the Avars) was driven on the brink of extinction, nor the repeated
pleas of Maskhadov-Basaev clique for NATO to
attack Russian cities (mostly populated by working class people), nor
dynamiting the working class apartment buildings in
Piatigorsk, Bujnaksk, Moscow, and Volgograd--none of these crimes elicited
as little as a token expression of protest from
ISWoR..
Instead, ISWoR, for all PRACTICAL means and purposes, joined Maskhadov,
Basaev and British imperialists in their last
crusade against Russia and . . . communism.
Why communism?
Let us listen to Maskhadov himself:
"The whole world must know that the Russians want to perpetuate the
Communists'
power by destroying Chechnya. Russia has bared its teeth. By
annihilating Chechnya the Communists aim to
demonstrate to the whole world that they have restored their former
power."
(Aslan Maskhadov. Interview "Yeni Safak" Newspaper 21 December
1999)
What is this? The pathetic gibberish of a desperate man?
Yes and no. Yes, because the sober, and far from being
desperate, British ruling class knows all too well the difference between
the communist Kremlin and that of the lumpen
capitalists. No, because both Maskhadov and Blair know that if
communism still has a chance in the foreseeable future it is
in the former Soviet Union, above all, in Russia. Neither the
senile working classes of the West, corrupted by its
social-imperialist shepherds, by its all but total submission to bourgeois
ideology, nor the young working classes of South
and East, though more vibrant that Russian workers but lacking arms
to defend their revolution, will be capable of any
significant breakthrough any time soon. Only the working classes of
Russia, Ukrain, Belorus, and Kazakhstan, if united and in
possession of their nuclear shield, can yet stand up against the world
bourgeoisie and face it confidently, giving
encouragement to the toilers of Indonesia and Peru, Cuba and South
Africa, India and China.
This is what the old fox Maskhadov feels, with his unerring class feeling
of the former Soviet Army colonel. This is what
makes the leaders of Western bourgeoisie to push NATO eastwards--to
the Black and Caspian seas, to the gates of
Leningrad, to the Dnieper and Don--to begin a new arms race in space,
to spend billions for their "fifth column" in Russia and
to give encouragement and material support to Islamic fascist
in the Caucasus.
The Committee for Workers Solidarity with Chechnya was set up not in
Moscow, Leningrad, or Makhachkala, but in the
city of London, a locale usually inaccessible to any working class
person from Russia, precisely at the moment when the
campaign of intimidation by the leaders of NATO countries, accompanied
by the anti-Russian propaganda of imperialist press,
reached the shrillness and venality reminiscent of Dr. Goebbels.
The timing is important. For the birthmark of the imperialist
left is its opportunism in relation to bourgeois public opinion.
From the days of Burnham and Tony Cliff to AWL and our
new Committee the story is the same, time and again: a section of the
Western left, without any connection to militant workers, but a lot of
splits behind, joins the "left" section of its bourgeoisie (e.g., the left
Labor MP's in our Committee), finding it unbearable to choose the opposite:
to stand up to the solid common front of all classes and face up to charges
of treason, etc.
The classical example of the opportunism borne out of these pressures
is the early history of Trotskyist movement, especially, the emergence
of the "state capitalism" tendency within it. It is not an insignificant
fact that this tendency emerged and flourished
exclusively in the constitutive member countries of NATO. This
does not mean, of course, that the leaders and adherents of
this tendency were mere stooges of imperialist agencies, though its
history had more than its share of provocateurs and
informers. It's just that in those countries the ruling classes
took a particularly good care of forming the public opinion and the
ideological milieu of everyday life especially hostile to any manifestation
of 'disloyalty' to one's nation. The touchstone of
'loyalty' and everything that depended on it, from academic career
to one's marriage, was not the question of one's belief in
the Pope or habeas corpus, whether one was a Satanist or a Marxist.
This touchstone, one and the only, was the Soviet
Union. Abstract beliefs, one must say in passing, are not of
any concern for the bourgeoisie unless these beliefs are armed
and actually threaten its order. The bourgeoisie has long used
to Marxism that peacefully exists in its most prestigious
institutions of higher learning and whose existence only makes louder
and more believable the hosannas to the 'pluralism' of
liberal bourgeoisie.
It was very different with the Soviet Union--not an abstract thing at
all!--who made the bourgeoisie to face a quite real
prospect of its own extinction. Trotsky, who knew this better than
any one else--called his followers for the unconditional
defense of the Soviet Union against imperialism. UNCONDITIONAL.
What a terrible meaning this word had for
generations of Western trotskyists! No less terrible than the
other half of Trotsky's testament: to facilitate a political
revolution in the SU by its toilers. Now, I insist that both
demands, mutually conditioned, were terrible and impossible to
live with for regular mortals, of whom, after all, all earthly movements,
communist including, consist. So it's no wonder that
none of them was even attempted to carry out, except by a few angels
maybe. But I do not know their names. Nonetheless, there were
two ways to bail out of this predicament.
One was simply to avoid acting according to Trotsky's blueprint.
To fail by inaction, so to speak. Who would throw a
stone at those people? Perhaps, only those who did act.
But I don't know their names.
The other way was to "rethink" and "refute" Trotsky's dictum.
That was the way of "state caps" (and some others, less
important, groups and tendencies). If the Soviet Union was not
a "workers' state", if only "deformed," but a capitalist one,
then the imperative of its defense by communists disappeared as an
illusion born by Trotsky's faulty analysis. Moreover, since
the Soviet state is not just "capitalist" but "state capitalist" and
presents a system of class oppression more ruthless than in its
bourgeois-democratic counterparts isn't it a duty of true communists
to desire the defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold, as
well as in in the "Hot" war with Western capitalism, with NATO?
Isn't this defeat desirable if only because it will mean a
partial liberation of Soviet toilers from the worst abuses of capitalism,
because it will allow them to have their own
"independent" unions and workers' organizations which they are deprived
of under "state capitalism"?
Yes, such was the other way of bailing out of orthodox Trotskyism.
The way of Burnham, the way of Cliff, the way of
innumerable sects of imperialist left, and the way of the AWL.
But in the beginning was Cliff. He created a theoretical (and
moral) justification for the significant part of the Western left to
join their ruling classes in the anti-Soviet crusade. More
correct is to say that Cliff's book materialized out of the palpable
need, the "social order" of the middle-class left to
accommodate their leftism to bourgeois public opinion and the international
policies of imperialist West. Without this "social
order," one could not understand how a book, marked by such intellectual
mediocrity and political philistinism, became so
influential in the history of the post-war left.
But Cliff was also a maker of another shibboleth of imperialist left. Long before Reagan summoned the forces of Light against the "evil Empire" and before "left Labor" MP's Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn submitted their "early day motion," Cliff pronounced the Soviet Union an "empire" and cautiously but unambiguously expressed his support for the Ukrainian fascists of UPA and the Baltic Nazis (Cliff also sympathetically wrote about General Vlassov's Army who fought the Soviets on the side of the Germans). Let us not forget, after all, that Cliff's book and the formation of the new imperialist left coincided with the announcement of anti-Soviet crusade, the creation of NATO, the Orwellian witch hunt (in which Orwell himself volunteered to take part), with the time when Bertrand Russell--the "moral conscience of the West"--was calling on the Americans to nuke the Soviet Union to radioactive dust before it makes its own Bomb. Such was the reward of the Soviet people for "saving human civilization" on the battlegrounds of Stalingrad and Prokhorovka!
Today the grandsons of UPA fascists are marching in Lvov and Kiev dressed
in brown shirts; assassinate communist
activists in Western Ukraine, exactly like they did in 1949, when Cliff
applauded their struggle against "Russian (sic!)
empire." The Baltic Nazis are knocking in NATO's doors, speak
of the "inferiority" of their eastern neighbors, erect
monuments to their SS heroes. The fascist battalions from Ukraine
are now fighting Russian troops in Chechnya hand in hand
with Islamic fascists. Latvian women snipers, "white stockings,"
keep counting the heads of Russian conscripts.
They are assisted by the "early day motions" of "left Labor Party"
MPs and the pickets of the Committee for Workers'
Solidarity with Chechnya. They are cheered up by "human rights"
imperialism. Exactly like fifty years ago, when Russell
wrote his anti-Soviet agitprop, Orwell compiled a list of "crypto-communists"
sympathetic to the Soviet Union, Cliff dreamed
of the liberation of the peoples of the Soviet Union from "state capitalism"
and "Russian imperialism,"and British M15 sent
arms, materiel, and intelligence to Bandera army.
2 December, 2000
II
[I must apologize before the members of this list for publishing this
article in installments, separated by days.
The reason for this is simple. On the one hand, the development
of events in Russia and abroad makes this
subject of this article highly relevant. On the other hand,
researching and writing it take too much time from a
slow writer, like myself.]
Since I invited some people from Russia to participate in this debate
only recently, I would like to state briefly
the gist of the matter.
A London-based organization "International Solidarity with Workers in
Russia," who has been actively
involved in organizing international support for militant labor movement
in that country for the last year or so,
has recently joined and became active in the "Committee for Workers'
Solidarity with Chechnya" (CWSC).
This Committee, of whose organizers and political nature I will write
at great length, demands from Russia to
stop military actions in Chechnya and recognize its right for self-determination.
In other words, the demands
of this Committee, ISWoR including, not only agree with the explicit
demands of Western imperialists but go
"one step" further, expressing, so to speak, their unspoken wishes
as well. What the ruling faction of
imperialist West is temporarily coy to demand (remember Serbia!), its
dominated faction--the imperialist
left--feels free to articulate under the guise of "workers' solidarity."
I will yet analyze the canny similarity of
this peculiar "one step ahead" tactics of CWSC's demands with those
used by their political doubles in
Yugoslavia. [Since the first publication of this article it became
known that not only the organizers of CWSC were the same groups and individuals
who organized the support of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, but that
ISWoR itself was based on the same crowd - editor). The least
I can say about ISWoR's participation in this imperialist ploy is that
it is a grave political mistake which puts into doubt the relation between
this organization and the militant labor movement
in Russia.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me now begin with the recent letter by Lisa Taylor of ISWoR, written
in response to my criticism of
ISWoR's search for partners among Russian "human rights" organizations.
This is a key passage, to which I
will use repeatedly.
She wrote:
"In the west, subject to the swamping influence of capitalist mass media,
many leftists become fooled by both
imperialist-funded "human rights" organisations and so-called "humanitarian"
propaganda, designed to engage people's emotions
and camouflage the real motives of the US interventions around the
world. We saw this very spectacularly in
the Balkans. It needs to be remembered that the directors of the "human
rights" organisations do not place
their political agenda or their financial backers up front in the public
eye, but only their reports (which may often be true, but extremely selective)
which focus people's minds on the suffering of real human beings somewhere
in the globe. And this is what
those leftists are responding to."
1. This is a surprisingly sober view on the "human rights" imperialism,
given that, as I will demonstrate, some
of ISWoR's partners in the Campaign are precisely these very directors
and, by extension, those who pay
them. This subject will be covered later. First, I'd like to make a
more general comment on the spirit of Lisa
Taylor's approach.
I do not doubt for a moment that not a few leftists indeed take part
in such campaigns as yours, as their way
of responding to "the suffering of real human beings." The same is
true about many other people, including
those belonging to the political right. Humanitarian concerns,
we might recall, are not the exclusive property
of the Left, nor constitute its political essence.
Indeed, a catholic priest, a right-wing politician may feel stronger
compassion to human suffering than a CP
leader or a Marxist theoretician. Nor this compassion depends, or rather
should depend, on class, race or
gender. Philanthropic sentiment does not know a Greek or a Jew,
a Russian or a Chechen, a capitalist or a
worker, a man or a woman. It knows only human beings. This
is why I always feel certain falsity in any
slogan and campaign which attempts to combine humanitarian and class
perspectives. At best, they cancel
each other. At worst, this combination benefits the ruling classes
by obfuscating or altogether sacrificing the
standpoint of class struggle which for Marxists is the guiding light
in understanding social reality and changing
it. Whether ISWoR is a Marxist organization or not is beyond the point.
I am Marxist, and I see my duty
before the Russian working class to establish a Marxist perspective
on the organizations like ISWoR and the political
terrain which they occupy.
If it is indeed the pure compassion to "human suffering," rather than
a political agenda, that motivated the
founding members of this Committee, then why this compassion is so
selective? Why this compassion
excludes thousands of people from all over the Russian Federation,
enslaved by the Chechens? Hundreds,
perhaps, thousands of ethnic Russians murdered and hundreds of thousands
expelled from their homes in the
ethnic cleansing of 1994-99? Where is your compassion to the
people of Dagestan, who with hunting rifles
and rocks beat back Khattab's commandoes, not a few of whom were trained
in Britain, perhaps, even in
Benn's own election district ? Why not to express compassion
to ordinary Chechens whose country and lives
were raped by Islamic fascist, both home grown and foreign? And
why this compassion leads to the demand
for Chechnya "self-determination"? Alas, the experience tells
me that all these questions will remain unheard
and unanswered.
The Committee demands: "Russian Troops Out of Chechnya"? Are the
Committee members aware that
these are not "Russian" troops but the troops of almost one hundred
twenty nationalities who inhabit the 89
legal subjects that constitute the Russian Federation? If you
read Russian accounts of this war you wouldn't
make this mistake. Because every second officer mentioned has
a non-Russian last name. Do you know that
Chechnya is an autonomous republic of Russian Federation? Do you recognize
the right of these one hundred
twenty nationalities to defend the *territorial integrity* of their
homeland, both from the Islamic fascists and
imperialists, and even from Cliff's prodigy in Canada, or the sensitive
British leftists, "simply" responding to
"human suffering"?!
And yet, so far I remain completely within the rhetoric of bourgeois
humanitarism of your own Committee.
You wouldn't deny 88 out of 89 legal subjects of RF *their* right to
protect their federation, would you?
-But we are not bourgeois humanitarians,--you may object.
-We are "leftists." --Look at our web page!
-Don't you see how eager we are to create a credibility gap between
the Blair bourgeoisie, NATO, and
IMF demanding that Russians get their troops out of Chechnya, and us,
"leftists" and "workers," demanding that
Russians get their troops out of Chechnya? Aren't you a lying,
slandering, great-Russian pig of a chauvinist
SOB, Bilenkin, for refusing to see this credibility gap of ours, painted
all over this page and edited 2-3 times
for the past week to make it even more credible?!
First of all, your organization includes liberal bourgeoisie by your own admission.
"ISWoR is a broad front with an anti-sectarian approach uniting individual
and organizations from several
countries and across a wide spectrum of political views. As a result
we have, for example, supporters who
are anarchists and others who are Marxists and others who are neither."
We are not children. "Others who are neither" are bourgeois.
Actually, this coyly negative definition of the
part of ISWoR's membership made me recall Barthes' witty aphorism:
"Bourgeoisie is a class who does not want to be
named." There is nothing terribly bad or shameful in being
bourgeois, ideologically or class wise. If I am
naming things as they are it is only because we need clarity
as to what is the ideological composition of one
London-based organization which about a year ago actively intervened
into the anti-capitalist movement in Russia.
This question is not irrelevant to me and my comrades in Russia.
And there is nothing ominous, inappropriate,
or ridiculous in this inquiry. We want to know who we are dealing
with. We want clarity, clarity, and more clarity.
Lisa continues:
" What unites us is our common support for workers internationalism,
our opposition to the IMF/Yeltsinite
privatisation which we believe has devastated Russia's economy, and
opposition to racism and fascism. These
ideas are prominently advertised on our website, and in most of our
publications, time and again."
Are any of these commonplaces unacceptable for the liberal imperialism
of Clinton and Blair? Absolutely
not!
"Workers internationalism" is defended by Sweeny and Shmakov, by Eric
Lee and ICEM, and a great deal
of other pro-capitalist labor leaders and the ideologists of the bourgeoisie
in the working class.
The same is true about the attitude of the growing section of Western
bourgeoisie to "IMF/Yeltsinite
privatization." It was a "bad" privatization, it is a "crooked"
capitalism., they say. Not only they say so, but
they also act against that privatization and capitalism, and do so
much more effectively than their own "broad
left." They want to "put it straight," because this capitalism
is embarrassment to their own "good" capitalism,
and because it is getting out of hand, out of their control.
Above all, there are great many ordinary people, middle-class people,
in the West who sincerely despise
Russian capitalism on *humanitarian* grounds. They are decent
people. Most people are. They are also
politically thoroughly bourgeois. And again, this is not a swear word.
This word only goes beyond the "purely
human," beyond the political philistinism of statements like "leftists
responding to the sufferings of real human
beings."
Finally, what about the "opposition to racism and fascism"? A
NATO bomber pilot who dropped depleted
uranium bombs on Serbian villages could sincerely put his signature
under this slogan on the ISWoR's
website. This pilot and most of his comrades-in-arms were, indeed,
convinced that by dropping their bombs
they actively fought racism and fascism. The men and women of
NATO are also decent human beings.
Most people are.
2. Not all "leftists" are necessarily Marxists. And not all those
who claim to be Marxists are necessarily agree
on even the most fundamental points of the doctrine, let alone questions
of practical politics. Moreover,
history teaches us that "leftists," including Marxists, often find
each other on the opposite sides of the
barricade. Actually, this happens always when the class struggle
reaches its sharpest. Let me give you an
example, so well-known that every one can see my point easily.
In the beginning of this century, the Russian left included the
social democrats of both tendencies (M/B), the
anarchists, and (up to 1905-7) the so-called "revolutionary democracy":
the socialist revolutionaries and the
constitutional democrats (i.e., liberals). On many issues of
Russian life this Left was more or less united
against the old regime, most obviously and closely on humanitarian
issues, like Jewish pogroms, the
persecution of religious minorities, or police violence. However,
it took no more than 10-12 years before this
Left was in the mortal struggle between each other on the side
of the main battling classes,
internally and internationally.
The constitutional democrats formed direct alliance with Western imperialists
in order to crush the Soviet
republic. The social-revolutionaries led peasant rebellions against
the Bolshevik regime. The Mensheviks
participated in White governments which executed red workers en mass.
The anarchists fought the Bolsheviks in the nationalist army of Makhno.
And the Bolsheviks used Red Terror against all of the above. These
examples, from the French
Revolution to the ongoing civil wars in Peru and the Philippines,
can be multiplied. This is another reason
why the working class should be on guard when another humanitarian
campaign by "leftists," like the one that began last week in London., is
being launched under the name of "workers'" "Left" is too broad, too vague.
It can include people who express, consciously or not, the interests of
antagonistic classes. Even worse than that: a campaign can work hand in
glove with the openly imperialist forces and yet be legitimately called
"leftist." This may sound like a bad paradox. But it
is not.
Let me explain myself and offer some other well-known examples of what
I have in mind.
3. Since the French Revolution the Left and the Right are constitutive
parts of the bourgeois political sphere.
Marxist and anarchist left are special only in that that they desire
the "positive" supercession of the bourgeois
order as such, i.e., private property, while all other leftists believe
that the good society can be achieved by
reforming the existing order. There are very few Marxists and
anarchists left these days in the West. The
bulk of its Left is now overwhelmingly bourgeois. This is not
a dirty word. I use it in the above-mentioned
sense. For example, in Britain to this bourgeois left belong
most of the trade union
leadership, the left wing of Labor Party, all kind of "democratic socialist"
parties and groups, etc.
The bourgeois and even anti-bourgeois left traditionally comes from
the dominated sections of the ruling class,
i.e. the petty bourgeoisie. Historically, humanitarism and moralism,
in general, have been central to the
ideological expression of this class. What IS relatively new
is that this traditional humanitarism and moralism
of the bourgeois left has recently been mobilised by the big, imperialist
bourgeoisie for the cause of creating a
"new world order," i.e., a truly planetary bourgeois empire.
I have in mind the "human rights" or liberal
imperialism, the imperialism of "globalization" led by the new
international of monopolies, financial capital, its
international organizations and bureaucracy, de-nationalized, English
speaking, cross-border mobile
bourgeoisie and "professionals," Westernized, comprador sections of
the peripheral middle-classes.
The bourgeois left has become essential to its project. Not that
this is an entirely new role for this left, as the
"social-imperialism" of the 1900s or the post-war Laborite politics
testify.
Do the desperate efforts to make ISWoR's participation in the CWSC palatable
for the *majority* of the
radical Left in the West (and make no mistake, they ARE a tiny minority)
and Russia testify to the uneasy
consciousness of its leaders? Why did not they proclaim their
independent position, the *good,* the
*correct* one? Why did not they condemn not only the regime of
Russian restoration for this war, but the
regime of Maskhadov-Basaev, and, above, all the main villain, the godfather
and the chief puppeteer of
both--the regime of Western ultraimperialism?! Why did not they
proclaim:
Stop the War!
No to the Regime of Medieval Fascism in Chechnya!
Western Imperialists, Hands Off the Former Soviet Union!
Soldiers and Officers of the Federal Army, Help the Toilers of Russia
to Overthrow the Regime of
Restoration!
Turn Your Bayonets Against the State of Capitalists and Bureaucrats!
Why? There are several reasons for this, one of which is that
even the most radical elements in ISWoR do
not feel, and rightly so, that they have the moral right for the last
and most crucial of these calls. Still, to take
such a position would save ISWoR from getting itself into a cesspit
organized by imperialist stooges, pure and
simple.
However, the more I studied the list
of signatories of the Committee's demands the clearer it became to
me
that it was not a mistake, not an accident, but a logical, inevitable
step taken by the nucleus of ISWoR, the
result of their political development highly symptomatic of the imperialist
left in the 1990s. Of course, should I
known that this group of people came out of Cliff Slaughter's Workers
Revolutionary Party (Slaughter's first
name is politically symbolic), it would have spared me a lot of time
and shaped my relations with ISWoR very
differently, if at all
--------------------------------
What I want to do now is to tell "a story of one campaign," which concretizes
the general reflections above
and shows, if only in the outline, the political anatomy of the imperialist
left and its place in the mechanism of
hegemony, presently being established by Western ultraimperialism.
Lisa Taylor had this to say about one important link in this mechanism:
"In the west, subject to the swamping influence of capitalist mass media,
many leftists become fooled by both
imperialist-funded"human rights" organisations and so-called "humanitarian"
propaganda, designed to engage
people's emotionsand camouflage the real motives of the US interventions
around the world. We saw this
very spectacularly inthe Balkans. It needs to be remembered that the
directors of the "human rights"
organisations do not place their political agenda or their financial
backers up front in the public eye, but
only their reports (which may often be true, but extremely selective)
which focus people's minds on the
suffering of real human beings somewhere in the globe. And this is
what those leftists are responding to.
There is an enduring belief (and not just in the west) that charities
and human rights organisations are basically
independent, impartial organisations just trying to do some good work.
For many this mental image extends to
anything that calls itself an NGO (nongovernmental organisation), as
if the very fact that an association is not
officially part of a government signifies political independence. "
I have to take issue with this characterization of NGOs and similar
organizations of Western hegemony. In
the first place, this description reflects only the surface of things
and serves to produce an alibi for gullible
leftists. The leaders of ISWoR are not naive newcomers.
They could teach any one of us a few things about
the British, and, especially, London Left circles and their complicated
history of the last twenty years, which
includes the "Balkans era" marked by the intensive interpenetration
between the British Left and the
institutions of imperialist hegemony. Contrary to Lisa's gentle
characterization of the Left as a passive victim
of these institutions, the real picture is very different.
Just two days ago in one of my messages I drew this scenario:
"Yes, ISWoR joined the ruling class of its own country in its desperate
attempt to break the
will of the regime in Kremlin to regain control over Northern Caucasus
and to save the
backbone of Basaev's troops. The motion came right after Russian
paratroopers cut their main supply
line from Georgia in the Argun Gorge. Simultaneously, the Northern
group of Chechen forces was
completely encircled in and around Grozny area and lost any viable
communication with the Southern group.
The corridor between the two has been widening since despite the desperate
attempts of Chechen elite forces
to break through it. From the military point of view this situation
means the close end for of the Chechen army.
This is what bothered the gentlemen in London on the eve of this
motion. The time came for
the "total mobilization" of forces. The early day motion by Benn
was a signal for the troops, so far sitting in
the reserve. And there they were, always on the call: the "broad
left." -How can we help you, Sir?"
This is how I imagined the order of moves, the logic of the chain of
commands, the sequence of chemical
reactions binding together the different organs of the hegemony machine
just two days ago. I was about to
post this, second installment, when thanks to one of my correspondents,
my attention was directed to a
couple of seemingly small facts. Soon it dawned on me that my
whole thinking about the imperialist
hegemony on the threshold of the third millennium mistakenly follows
the same logic that pervades Lisa's
account, the logic which was largely true in relation to the older
imperialism, when the ruling class did not have
to hide the mechanism of its rule as thoroughly as the liberal imperialism
does now.
The seemingly appalling fact is that it was not Benn who gave the signal
to the "Left." It was the "Left" who
gave it to Benn.
These small details related to the personalities of two signatories
of CWSC's "Letter." I had to get aquatinted
with them closer than I thought was needed. One of them turned
out to be so fascinating that he deserves a
separate chapter in this investigation, even if his signature occupies
the strategic, but less conspicuous third
place on the list. Let me introduce you to this gentleman,
Mr. Quintin Hoare, the Director of Bosnian
Institute
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