Is it okay to spread Communism through military action?

It seems like Communism has often had to survive and establish itself through military force. In your opinion, is that permissible?

Yes, I believe so. Even though it is not the ideal method to spread communism, the reality is that the capitalists have always been willing to use force against alternative social movements. Military power is necessary to both protect and spread communism.

Additionally, I would say that any major state that becomes socialist will have to defend itself and this may mean building a force of allied socialist states. This will likely require military action.

By "okay" and "permissable" it sounds like you're referring to a bourgeois morality code. It would be "nice" if we didn't have to lift a finger and states would surrender themselves to worker control without any coercion, but I can't see that happening very often. That's the same within a state in any case and the reason Communists and Democratic Socialists don't see eye-to-eye. Should we wait for an invitation? I don't believe so.

The extent to which you want to export or consolidate revolution is a bit of bone of contention between different schools of Communism. Generally they agree it needs to be done sometimes, but the rhetoric can differ.

I don't really understand the question. If you mean using an invading army to spread ideology, then yes, it has never really worked well, and the only examples of success are Soviet expansions into the Baltics and West Belarus and West Ukraine where except for Belarus, the places are now havens of anti-communism.

Shigalyov wrote:

By "okay" and "permissable" it sounds like you're referring to a bourgeois morality code. It would be "nice" if we didn't have to lift a finger and states would surrender themselves to worker control without any coercion, but I can't see that happening very often. That's the same within a state in any case and the reason Communists and Democratic Socialists don't see eye-to-eye. Should we wait for an invitation? I don't believe so.

The extent to which you want to export or consolidate revolution is a bit of bone of contention between different schools of Communism. Generally they agree it needs to be done sometimes, but the rhetoric can differ.

Very good choice of words. I'm impressed! :-)

Kirov wrote:

I don't really understand the question. If you mean using an invading army to spread ideology, then yes, it has never really worked well, and the only examples of success are Soviet expansions into the Baltics and West Belarus and West Ukraine where except for Belarus, the places are now havens of anti-communism.

Why do you think they are havens for anticommunism. Is russia like that as well?

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Why do you think they are havens for anticommunism. Is russia like that as well?

A number of Baltic states actively fought a war of liberation against the Russian Empire/Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the 1910s, early 1920s. West Ukraine was part of Poland (which was ruled by anti-communists) until 1945.. The answer is nationalism: by repudiating communism, especially in the case of present-day Ukraine, they are trying to strengthen the people's national identity. For instance, in Ukraine Petro Poroshenko (and co) hold anti-Soviet partisans (some of who collaborated with the Nazies) in high esteem. Not because these partisans were nazies (which is disputed; pro-Russian forces calls them that however) but that these groups are considered by the nationalists as the first modern Ukrainian nationalist group. Every country needs a national history; the Ukrainian centre to far-right are finding their history in the partisan fight against the Soviet order.

Its not like this is in Russia. The main problem with Russia is that the old national history has not been failed with anything convincing. Russia has never been as small as it is today. Ukraine has never (since the establishment of Russia as a state) been independent (a small exception being in the 1920s, but that lasted 1-3 years, and most of the nationalists were either anarchists or communists). I would argue that the lack of a convincing national ideology in Russia has spurred the growth of nationalism, and rekindled the wish to have very close, institutionalised relations with the post-Soviet states (which would make it close to impossible for these states to leave the Russian sphere of influence). This is a mixture of Russian nationalism and Soviet identity (which is still strong in several areas in the post-Soviet world, such as Central Asia, East Ukraine, Moldova and Russia for instance).

At last, the second largest party in Russia is the Communist Party.

Lenin and Stalin repeatedly spoke out against the idea that you could export revolution to other countries. In the Baltics, for example, the working-class had already established soviet power during the civil war period, but this power was overthrown by counter-revolutionaries. The Soviets did not "invade" the Baltics in 1940.

As Anna Louise Strong described it (quoted in Bonosky, Devils in Amber: The Baltics, p. 93:

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In early June the Soviet Union had presented an ultimatum, demanding the formation of a government in Lithuania which would fulfill the treaty of mutual assistance signed the previous autumn. The ultimatum was accepted and, on June 15, a considerable force of the Red Army entered the country where smaller units had been present since the signing of the treaty. Tanks, cavalry, infantry in trucks rolled through the streets of Kaunas and passed on to appropriate camping places. They did not mix with the Lithuanians' internal life at all. The Red Army gave concerts and dances to the Lithuanian army, as allied armies should. Otherwise it was known to be out in the woods near the border.

But long-oppressed Lithuanians, whose champions had been thrown into prison for the fourteen years of the Smetona dictatorship, took heart and began to talk and organize. President Smetona fled; Prime Minister Markys thus became president, appointed Justas Paleckis, a brilliant progressive journalist, as prime minister and himself resigned. Thus Paleckis in turn became president and appointed a cabinet of ministers consisting of well-known intellectuals, later adding a few Communists.

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Paleckis' first decree set free about a thousand political prisoners-- including Communists and Communist sympathizers. Within a week after Paleckis came to power, the first of the big popular demonstrations took place. Tens of thousands of workers marched through the streets of Kaunas demanding the legalization of the Communist Party, and secured it.

Originally the Soviets had just wanted to ensure that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would not join the Axis in the coming war, and felt that this could be achieved by binding the bourgeois regimes of those countries to the aforementioned treaty. The working-classes of those countries took matters into their own hands and the Soviets decided to support them.

As for West Byelorussia and West Ukraine, the Polish state collapsed when the Nazis invaded, prompting the Soviets to move into areas where they were welcomed by the Byelorussian, Ukrainian and Jewish inhabitants and which the Polish bourgeois state had taken from Byelorussia and the Ukraine a decade earlier. This was hardly a case of exporting revolution beyond the fact that the revolutionary processes in the Ukraine and Byelorussia were extended to the rest of their national territory.