NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM FOR DUMMIES (THE BEST OF...)

NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM FOR DUMMIES
(THE BEST OF...)

by Andrew Plugac

With footnotes from Kat Ulrike

1. National Bolshevism is Anti-Capitalism

May Vladimir Ilyich Lenin forgive me for this, but the most important question of any revolution is the question of the means of production. the Russian National-Bolsheviks advocate the abolition of the institution of private property and the socialization of the means of production. The nationalization of large industries, for the implementation of the principles of social justice, freedom and equality, and the construction of a social system that embodies these principles and is known as socialism.

As you know, we live in a world of victorious capitalism. The consequences of Russia's integration into the world economic system as a new source of raw materials and a market occurred in 1991 and still ongoing, visible to the naked eye: the demographic decline, the successive destruction of fundamental and applied scientific developments, the drop in the level of education, quality of health care, real incomes of the population, a steady decline in living standards, degradation of the real sector of the economy that is associated with the steady policy of de-industrialization, a monstrous social stratification, in which the share of the 1% of richest Russians account for almost 80 percent of all personal assets in Russia, pervasive corruption, offshoring of the Russian capital, exceeding foreign exchange reserves of the country, the artificial devaluation of the national currency, increasing from year to year "brain drain" to more prosperous countries, the honorable First place in Europe in male mortality, and environmental problems in various regions of the country and, ultimately, the degeneration of the Russian ethnos, throughout Russian history were state -. Total economic, social, technological and cultural degradation. The uniqueness of Russian history lies in the fact that over the past century we have managed to build both socialist and capitalist societies and have the opportunity to compare their advantages and disadvantages. and it seems to me that the results of the capitalist experiment, which has lasted for almost thirty years, in comparison with the results of the socialist experiment (which, of course, had its shortcomings and shortcomings, which must be taken into account in the new version of the socialist structure of society) speak only in favor of the latter.

Whereas capitalism is killing Russia. socialism will bring Russia back to life.

2. National Bolshevism is Anti-Globalization

The triumphant march of capitalism goes hand in hand with the hegemony and economic, cultural and military expansion of Western civilization. The geopolitical dominance of the West has been growing over the past five centuries or so, and has undergone several phases of development: from its origins in the bowels of the Italian city-states, through the expansionist trade policies of the United Netherlands Provinces, through the colonial policies of the British Empire, and finally through the hegemony of the United States of America. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which for many decades remained an alternative for Third World countries that did not want to be drawn into the world capitalist system on the periphery, and served as a guarantor of the bipolar model of the world order, became a catalyst for accelerating the fifth phase of development, called globalization. Now nothing prevented the planetary spread of a single model of the Western bourgeois-democratic, liberal society, that is, the society of merchants, which Western civilization proclaimed the universal ideal for all human communities without exception.

Is it worth reminding how this geopolitical defeat affected the fate of Russia? The weakening of foreign policy influence in Africa, Latin America, the Far East and Western Europe; the termination of the Warsaw Pact and the liquidation of the socialist camp, which was a colossal blow to the closest zone of strategic defense of the USSR; civil wars throughout the post-Soviet space; the complete failure of national interests; the surrender of strategic positions; the actual establishment of external control over Russia; implementation of destructive economic reforms, which resulted in the impoverishment of the population and the artificial creation of a layer of the super-rich, integrated into the global transnational financial elite; destruction of the entire social infrastructure.

Throughout its history, Russia has repeatedly faced external aggression from the West, whether it is the army of Napoleon's two hundred languages, the military intervention of the Entente countries or the war of annihilation with Hitler's Germany. And the continued expansion of NATO to the East after 1991, despite all the fabulous and humiliating concessions of the political leadership of our country, tells us that the West is not in a hurry to accept Russia and the former Soviet republics into the family of" civilized " peoples. Like the majority of the world's population, the West needs us exclusively as a source of raw materials and a market, as an oil and gas pipeline, which is managed by several clans of the Comprador bourgeois elite, all of whose interests and money are concentrated in the West.

Therefore, Russian national Bolsheviks stand for an independent foreign policy; for the weakening of the hegemony of the West; for the national liberation struggle of the oppressed nations of the periphery and the Third World against globalization and neoliberal economic policies imposed on them by Western civilization; for a multipolar world in which existing nations and civilizations can freely choose their own path of development; for the preservation of traditional society and traditional values and respect for the national cultural and historical appearance of each civilization, nation and nationality existing on the planet; for the class struggle against the comprador bourgeois elite in the associated countries; for the elimination of transnational oligarchic groups, in the hands of which are the main financial, information, political, scientific, military, etc. resources of the planet. In a unipolar world ruled by the international elite of the "golden billion", the Russian people, like many others, have no place. Therefore, the unipolar world must be destroyed in its current form.

3. National Bolshevism is Anti-Liberalism

If the two main enemies of the Russian national Bolshevik are capitalism and the hegemony of Western civilization, then in modern Russian political discourse, its main opponents are Russian liberals. It is they who have historically become apologists for the capitalist path of development, entering "the family of civilized peoples", returning "to the pillar road of civilization", perceiving the history of their native country as a kind of annoying misunderstanding. It was liberal ideas that became the virus, the terrible bacillus that infected the Russian people and brought our country to its current state.

In politics, liberalism means declaring the highest value of the individual, taken in isolation from any form of collective identity. liberals proclaim freedom from: the state, from religious, class, ethnic, racial and even gender identities, i.e. from everything that can allegedly restrict the freedom of a given individual. In other words, liberalism is an ideology of dehumanizing," getting rid " of everything that makes a person human.

In economics, liberalism means the principles of a free market, the withdrawal of the state from the economic sphere, laissez-faire (free competition, non-interference in the economy, neoganichennoy freedom of enterprise) and free trade (free trade). Russian people had to see firsthand how the invisible hand of the market, praised by liberals, develops into a quite obvious and obvious cookie.

in international relations, liberalism presupposes the export of democracy as the main content of foreign policy, i.e., the extension of the norms of political liberalism to all countries. We have already had the opportunity to see all the charms of exporting democracy on the example of our own country and neighboring Yugoslavia, and even now we are watching how civilians of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics are dying under the humanitarian bombs of a country that has made its "European choice".

Therefore, we will not be deceived by modern Russian liberals who are trying to convince us that some "wrong" capitalism has been built in Russia. we've heard and seen it all before. liberalism as a system of political and economic views justifies the further dismemberment and murder of our country and our people. If liberalism is a destructive ideology, then national Bolshevism is a creative ideology, oriented to the benefit of its own people and state.

4. National Bolshevism is Natonalism

The subject of national-bolshevik ideology is the Russian nation. Russian Russian National Bolshevik's priority is the well-being of this nation, the well-being of the majority of the Russian people. This is its fundamental divergence from the liberal ideology, which puts the interests of the individual or individual minorities at the forefront.

But do we have anything to criticize the domestic nationalists for? Definitely. In our opinion, all domestic nationalists are revisionists of the nationalist idea. Because all the theoretical constructions of all our homegrown nationalists who advocate the preservation of the principles of capitalist economy, free enterprise," sacred " private property and natural hierarchy are based on a single and very dubious postulate: the need for a nationally oriented bourgeoisie. Where our nationalists, if I may say so, are going to take these abstract bourgeoisie, is categorically unclear. Apparently, they are going to grow them in a test tube with the help of genetic engineering, otherwise it is absolutely unclear why the domestic capitalist will suddenly decide that national interests are more important than his personal financial interests. Maybe he will be forced to do this by the state? Well, the modern Russian corrupt state itself is a tool in the hands of the ruling class.

Therefore, the Russian Bolsheviks are in favor of national-oriented socialism. Only the socialization of the means of production, only the nationalization of large industries, only the destruction of the institution of private property, only the principles of real, not formal equality, real, not formal democratization of society can fully ensure the well-being and comprehensive development of both the individual and the entire nation as a whole.

5. National Bolshevism is Left-Wing Nationalism

The reader is entitled to ask here: if the National Bolsheviks are so "drowning" for socialism, then how do they differ from the modern leftists? After all, leftists are also in favor of class struggle against globalization and private ownership of the means of production: are national balls any different from them? Yes, I will answer. Although the left-wing ideas are certainly close to the Russian National Bolsheviks, we are at the same time opposed to the extremes of the left-wing idea. This extreme is called left-wing internationalism, left-wing cosmopolitanism, or, if you like, class national nihilism.

National nihilism is not a new phenomenon in Russian history. It was embodied in the screams of awe about Russia, which, in the opinion of this distinguished philosopher, "is intended only to show the world how not to live", and the image of Smerdyakov, described by Dostoevsky in the novel "the Brothers Karamazov": "In the twelfth year Russia was on the great invasion of the French Emperor Napoleon the first, father of the current, and well, if only we then conquered those same French people: clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed. There would even be quite different orders, sir."

But there was a period in our history when national nihilism was presented almost as a state ideology. This period is approximately from the beginning of the 20s of the last century to the middle of the 30s. Russian Russian historians of the so-called school of Academician M. N. Pokrovsky (until 1940, Moscow University even bore his name), ignoring even Lenin's indication of the presence of two patriotisms in Russian history, questioned the very concepts of "Russia", "patriotism", and "Russian history". Patriotism, in their opinion, was "one of the whales of the petty-bourgeois worldview."

The turn from this obscurantism occurred in the early 1930s, when the country's leadership, fully aware that the coming world war could not be avoided and that a world socialist revolution was not expected in the near future, made it clear to the radical internationalists that it was time to stop dreaming of a "zemsharny republic of Soviets" and start building socialism in one country.

This "national-Bolshevik bias" (as some Trotskyists called it) in the policy of the Soviet government ended in the defeat of the Pokrovsky school and various Trotskyist-Bukharin organizations, which were eager to throw the Russian people into the crucible of the world revolution. National Bolshevism defeated national nihilism inside, rebuffed the West outside, and for a long time became the guarantor of a bipolar world and alternative ways of development.

What conclusion can be drawn from this historical excursion? "leftist internationalism", "leftist cosmopolitanism" in its extreme manifestations turns into national nihilism. In fact, "orthodox Marxists" are a kind of globalists on the contrary: they also claim that their ideology is universal, they also run around with the idea of progress, except that in the end they have capitalism magically turn into socialism. In other words, "left-wing" cosmopolitans are agents of the interests of Western hegemony to the same extent as domestic liberals. Therefore, the Russian National Bolsheviks emphasize the left-patriotic orientation. Russian National Bolsheviks are in favor of building socialism in a single country. In our view, Russia, in full agreement with Comrade Stalin's minted NB formula, should be "national in form and socialist in content."

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(From Andrew Plugac: often our subscribers and sympathizers have a rather vague idea of the essence of national Bolshevism. In the article offered to the reader, the author quite successfully tried to state the essence of our ideology.)

This note, made by Plugac, tried to explain about "National Bolshevism" from the view of a Russian "NazBol". Just like any other explanations about this kind of political idea, National Bolshevism tends to combine ideas from both left and right, that of nationalism and their study of Marxism-Leninism. However, some NazBol groups tend to deemphasise aspects of Marxism especially that of Class Struggle, let alone they're inspired by the Soviet Union and that of Stalin and his "socialism in one country." May sound strange and contradictory to some but "National Bolshevism" has been used to describe a struggle for communism that's based upon distinct national characteristics and circumstances, if not having sought a dictatorship of the proletariat which would harness nationalism.

But as an observer, nationalism alone nowadays is not enough in a time struggles becoming social in character.  Nationalists, let alone radical ones, rather chose to limit their nationalisms to that of cultural ones while praising neoliberal capitalism regardless of its effects. These "nationalists" would wave their flags, use the national tongue, anything to promote "love of country" but they are way far from the people they call "folk" or "kin" except that during election periods. But regardless of denials, this "national question" is still relevant for as long as a great majority is still excluded from the political process; the only question is where it will be shaped knowing that and a great majority is still excluded and their political formations squashed by the order such as those claiming to be "for the country." 
And contrary to those who deny the idea of nationalism, that according to Roman Rozdolsky: "When the Manifesto says that the workers 'have no country', this refers to the bourgeois national state, not to nationality in the ethnical sense." Even Anton Pannekoek, known for being against Lenin, and Russian monarchists Nicholas Ustrialov and Vasilii Shulgin pointed out in 1920 that Russians first "nationalized" communism.

To cut the note short, the dictatorship of the proletariat is both national and international. National Liberation Movements are themselves struggles of both national and class nature-for those who fought for the self-determination of nations didn't just simply limit to that of reviving their nations, but also to overturn class structures that oppresses them. Anyway, to use Soekarno's quote: 

“Internationalism cannot flower if it is not rooted in the soil of nationalism, and nationalism cannot flower if it does not grow in the garden of internationalism.”