Fascism in Tricolour

The historian Ian Kershaw said that to define fascism is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. As it is difficult to describe fascism, it is often easier to visualise it as a swastika, Hitler and his moustache, black shirts, or brown uniforms. After WWII, the colour of fascism was red.

The most obvious characteristic of fascism is its authoritarian form of government. Indeed there is not a single example of a democratic fascist government. The Soviet Union especially during the Stalin era had the ultimate authoritarian regime and Homo Sovieticus was its master being.

The New Soviet Man was committed to Marxist ideology, was internationalist and collectivist, socially active and harmonious, and the meaning was developed from all sides: learned, skilled, interested, and healthy as a person. Last but not least he would be ready to sacrifice himself for the benefit of society and future generations.

Although this idealisation did not belong to any specific ethnicity, it included only the people who fully conformed with the regime. Political, religious, ideological, and ethnic repression to impose compliance destroyed lives and families. Millions of ‘undesirable elements’ have died because of the executions, and inhuman treatment.

More than two million people of 13 nationalities, sometimes entire nationalities were deported to create ethnically cleansed territories, transfer the labour force, and fill uninhabited territories of the Soviet Union. The deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush were with the highest mortality rates and were recognized as genocides by Ukraine and the European Parliament.

Soviet fascism not oppressed only the population inside its borders. Prior to WWII, it brokered the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany and annexed the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and shared Poland. Brutal repressions and mass deportations were carried out in these states.

In September 1939, the territory of Poland was shared between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. For nearly two years following the invasion, the two occupiers continued to plan bilaterally how to deal with the Polish resistance during Gestapo-NKVD Conferences. Apart from the arrests and deportation of more than 1,200,000 Poles from the Soviet-occupied territories, 22,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were massacred in the Katyn forest.

In June 1940 Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were occupied and traditional massacres and deportations repeated.

The Soviet Union decided to liberate the world from National Socialism only after Nazi Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 almost two years after the partition of Poland and a year after the occupation of France by the Germans. After the war, liberated Eastern European countries had the Soviet Union as their saviour and their new master.

Russian Federation and The Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was created by The Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The signatories of the treaty were four Soviet Socialist Republics Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and the Transcaucasian Federation (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia); later the number of republics grew to 15. Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation and each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. However, the Soviet Union in practice was a highly centralised administrative hierarchy and whole federative governments were under the absolute control of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR which is located in Moscow within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). 

In 1988, several reforms were introduced to revive the stagnating Soviet economy. Reforms also brought some liberalisation to the Union. Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of Europe came down peacefully and Nationalist movements inside the Union gained strength increasing the pressure to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the constituent republics. On November 29, 1988, the Soviet Union ceased to jam all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet citizens to have unrestricted access to news sources beyond Communist Party control.

In 1990, all constituent republics of the Soviet Union held their first competitive elections, with reformers and ethnic nationalists winning many seats. The constituent republics began to announce their sovereignty, rejected union-wide legislation, declared control over their local economies, and refused to pay taxes to the Soviet government. The structure of the Union began to crack as supply lines were disrupted, and the Soviet economy declined further. A coup was staged in August 1991 to bring the old order back but quickly collapsed. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.

The Russian Federation Takes the Flag

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was turbulent but apart from the territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan armed violence was generally avoided. However, for the new Russian Federation, the transition was more violent, the 1993 constitutional crisis ended violently through military force and the declaration of independence Chechen Republic of Ichkeria led to brutal wars in the Northern Caucasus.

The First Chechen War began on 11 December 1994 and ended on 31 August 1996 with Chechen victory over Russia failing all its principal objectives except the death of Dzokhar Dudayev the president of the Republic of Ichkeria. The Russian army compensated for its incompetence with indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force whenever they encountered resistance. Russian troops often prevented civilians from evacuating areas of imminent danger and prevented humanitarian organisations from assisting civilians in need. Also, Russian soldiers committed numerous and systematic acts of torture and summary executions of separatist sympathizers. Humanitarian and aid groups gave numerous accounts of Russian soldiers killing, raping, and looting civilians at random.

The Russian Federation was lifting the tricolour flag of fascism and now was in need of the autocratic leader that every fascist regime requires.

Every authoritarian regime also describes an ideal citizen. The ideal citizen of today's Russia is less precisely defined than the Soviet man. The current president of Russia says "Spiritual and moral values, which some countries are forgetting about, have, on the contrary, made us stronger, and we will always uphold and protect these values,". So the ideal Russian is spiritual and moral. However, this lack of precision in describing the ideal citizen has important advantages. What is spiritually right for the Russian citizens is what the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' says and what is morally right is what the leader says.

Yesterday it was morally and spiritually right to subjugate back Ichkeria by brutality and total disregard for human rights.  It was also right to enthrone a despotical Islamic fundamentalist warlord so that the Republic won’t rebel once more against the Russian authority. Carving out Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia and deporting undesirable Georgians from the occupied territories was also morally and spiritually right. Repeating the same in 2014 in the Donbas region and Crimea abolishing the rights of the Tatars, imprisoning the opposition, and annexing those territories with nominal referendums was too spiritually and morally right.

Today the invasion of Ukraine is in its third month. The Russian army aims to denazify and crush the decadent influence of the west. Victory is expected to be achieved in three days not months. When the tricolour flag emerged on the eastern borders of Europe, the resolution of the west was expected to dissipate into the thin air. Today NATO discusses the addition of two new members to its ranks, and the West gives military and economic support to Ukraine while imposing harsh sanctions on Russia. 

However, the leader of Russia enjoys 80% approval of his citizens. One may think that it is so because there is censorship and the opposition is ruthlessly suppressed in Russia. That could be true if the leaders conceived the nations, not the nations that bred their leaders. 

Izzet Enunlu