MIM Notes 186 May 15 1999

NATO wakes up Russian people

NATO is waking up the Russian and other former Soviet peoples. The 
bombing goes to show that it is never the agitation of the 
communists that causes the people to move. The ruling class itself 
can't help but politicize the people. The communists only provide 
strategic leadership, ideological clarity and a plan that requires 
the energy of the oppressed and exploited to carry out.

At a recent MIM talk (see page one story) on the NATO bombing of 
Kosovo, a reporter from a Boston University student newspaper came 
and challenged the speaker by saying that it is not the "majority 
of the Russian people" opposing the bombing, just Zhironovsky.

MIM pointed out that the Russian Duma had just voted to send 
weapons to the Serbs, because the pseudo-communists who want an 
immediate restoration of the Soviet Union voted for it. The 
reporter said that Russia was too dependent on Western money--to 
which we replied that kind of thinking is too chancy to be good 
for global peace.

As if to prove MIM right, the next day President Boris Yeltsin 
asked the United $tates not to make him get involved in the 
Balkans. "'I told NATO, the Americans, the Germans: Don't push us 
towards military action. Otherwise, there will be a European war 
for sure and possibly world war,' Yeltsin said in a meeting with 
regional leaders."(1) 

At the same time, the Russians put on a realpolitik display of 
muscle-flexing that would also help to clarify the situation. "The 
speaker of the Russian Duma, communist Gennady Seleznyov, quoted 
Yeltsin earlier Friday [April 9--ed.] as saying he had ordered 
nuclear missiles to be targeted toward NATO members involved in 
the bombing of Yugoslavia, and backed a political union of Russia, 
Belarus and Yugoslavia."(1) Yeltsin later denied the point about 
bombing, but the diplomatic point was made.

On April 11, the Hungarians stopped a 73 truck convoy the Russians 
said was humanitarian aid for Serbia. Hungary joined NATO (the 
U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization) two weeks before the 
bombing. Since Russia does not border Hungary, and the Soviet bloc 
does not exist anymore, the trucks could not get to Serbia. NATO 
said the trucks had fuel that could be used by the Serb war 
machine. Hence, NATO was tacitly admitting that Russia was already 
conducting small acts of war against it.

Next on April 12th, the New York Times admitted on page one that 
"in a nationwide survey of 1,600 Russians, the All-Russian Center 
for Public Opinion Studies concluded that only 39 percent of 
respondents felt positive about the United States in March, 
compared with 67 percent just three months earlier. The share of 
Russians who said their view of America was 'mainly bad' or 'very 
bad' more than doubled, from 23 percent to 49 percent."(2)

"'Russians felt that we ended the cold war and started to behave 
nicely by dissolving the Warsaw Pact, withdrawing troops, cutting 
arms,' . . . 'And thus the very maintenance of NATO was seen as 
strange. But the enlargement of NATO, with NATO absorbing former 
Soviet clients -- that was interpreted as a symbol of Western 
mistrust toward Russia, and some even said hostile 
intentions.'"(2)

NATO formed after World War by the European and U.$. imperialists 
needing to form a bloc against the Stalin-led Soviet Union and its 
allies. We agree with Russian sentiment that NATO never should 
have formed, and that it's continuous existence after the Cold War 
proves U.$. intentions are bad.

Stalin told his colleagues in the Soviet government after World 
War II that the imperialists would attack again soon and fall of 
its own accord for good. As it turns out Stalin died in 1953 and 
the Soviet Union itself became capitalist and imperialist. Now it 
is 1999 and the proletariat is starting to realize it should have 
finished the job Lenin and Stalin started. It is a difficult job, 
so difficult the masses of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 
paused for a rest and started to disbelieve the proletarian 
leaders.

Notes:

1.http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/10/kosovo.russia.diplomacy.
01/
2. New York Times 12 April 1999, pp. 1, a11.