Written by IBRP sympathizers in different regions of Russia, where our documents are also been translated and circulated

The War in Chechnya is an aggressive war of Russian imperialism. Its goal is to re-establish its control over the North Caucasus with its key oil pipelines. It seeks to lure the Russian proletariat into the trap of national unity and strengthen the arm of the bourgeois state by creating a climate of patriotic hysteria.

All too obvious is the effort to present the banditry and terrorist actions of the Russian Army and Airforce, wiping Chechen villages off the face of the earth, destroying tens of thousands and forcibly removing hundreds of thousands of people, as a fight against terrorism, as a response to bombings in Moscow. These efforts only create a feeling of hatred towards a cowardly, mean, and greedy patriotic bourgeois state which does not even dare to attack without first making up a provocation as an excuse. If one just asks oneself: who benefitted from the bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk, then those who are guilty become evident. What profit could Wahabiti terrorists gain from bombing workers’ homes in Russia? - None! What profit was gained by the Russian bourgeoisie and its state? - Tremendous profit! The bombings not only created the ideal excuse for renewed military aggression in Chechnya but also created an atmosphere of panic and national frenzy. It is all this which made the realization of this aggression extremely easy.

It is wrong to think, as not only the bourgeois opposition but also some of those who call themselves Marxists do, that this war was started only by Yeltsin’s regime, by the “Kremlin Clique” and so on (See the article by I. Loh - “The Little Victorious War” in Rabochnya Democratya Workers’ Democracy n. 11/57, the IS publication in Russia). The major force responsible for the war is not “Yeltsin’s regime”, but the entire bourgeois state. This war is, first of all, in the interest of not the “Kremlin Clique” (even though the latter is trying to gain some political dividends from it) but in the interest of the entire class of the Russian bourgeoisie. This is evident from the fact that, unlike during the war of 1994-96, today all serious fractions of the bourgeoisie, from Liberals to Fascists (including the faithful to the bourgeois fatherland “communists”), completely support this war. Even those of them, who like Kuzhkov’s bloc, are discontented with the fact that the ruling clique came up with a better bargain on the market of patriotic competition. They may even criticize some of the details in the way the war is conducted and in their turn they propose only an intensification of the war and new waves of repression against Chechens living in Russia and other immigrants from Chechnya, the North Caucasus and other countries of the CIS, the majority of whom are workers and street vendors.

The Russian bourgeoisie has both economic and political reasons to be interested in the war. It attempts:

1. to keep control over the oil pipelines running through the North Caucasus that transport oil from the world’s largest oil fields in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus and to keep foreign competitors at bay.
2. after having unleashed the furies of international discord and competing “national interests”, to get workers off the road of class struggle and onto the road of cross-class unity. This unity is protected by the government which supposedly stands independent of class. The situation of war is used by the government to strengthen the bourgeois state, its army and security forces.

These are the class interests of the Russian bourgeoisie - which it calls “national interests”- that caused the war. For as long as the bourgeoisie has power and until workers, united by a world party of the proletarian revolution, overthrow capitalism and destroy the bourgeois state by establishing an international dictatorship of the proletariat - until then wars will be inevitable and millions will continue to die for the sake of the profits of oil companies and incomes of the leaders of the state security apparatus.

Unlike during the war of 1994-96, when Chechenya had a partisan movement that consisted of petty bourgeoisie and proletarian groups which to a great degree were uncontrolled by the Chechen bourgeoisie, the only participants in this new war are professional soldiers. The lower classes of the Chechen society are not participating in the war. The main reason for this is the fact that bourgeois “national-liberation” movements have lost their progressive character. At the end of the 20th century they are unable, not only to reach any kind of sustainable improvement in the conditions of the masses, but also they are incapable of creating an independent bourgeois state that can move towards capitalism. During the 1994-96 war, the lower classes of Chechen society attained a seeming victory - a factual independence of Chechnya. However, all the real fruits of this victory benefitted the upper classes of Chechnya, and its independence turned out to serve their interests. The disillusionment of the lower classes of Chechen society in the independent Chechnya, when the world does not have a proletarian class movement capable of pointing the way out of this dead end towards the path of proletarian revolution, leads to demoralization and apathy.

The position that the proletarian revolutionaries should take with regard to the Chechen war is the only one possible for the proletarian revolutionaries towards the inter-imperialist conflicts after 1914: revolutionary defeat of both sides and a call to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, an appeal to Russian and Chechen soldiers to turn their guns against their oppressors. As the main enemy of the proletariat is the bourgeoisie of its own country and as in other inter-imperialist conflicts the defeat of the strongest imperialism is more beneficial for the struggle of the proletariat, therefore, the Russian soldiers should view the defeat of the Russian army as a lesser evil compared to its victory.

An appeal to turn the imperialist war into a civil one is not aiming for an immediate success. The beginning of the imperialist war is always accompanied by nationalist frenzy. But the longer the war lasts, the worse the feeling of the sobering up. No tricks with the “national idea” will fill the abyss between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Guns instead of butter will not fill the hungry. The bourgeois state with either Yeltsin, Zuganov, Putin, or Primakov as its head will remain a servant of the masters and the enemy of the oppressed. The actual change of liberal politics to national-patriotic politics does not and cannot possibly give the proletariat anything but more bloodshed, tears, and deprivation.

With every new day of the war the amount of blood, tears, and deprivation will grow, and with it will grow the indignation, hatred, and decisiveness of the proletariat. 1914 was followed by 1917. The aggressive war of the predatory bourgeois gang will be replaced with the only just and the only holy war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

Capitalism brings war just like clouds do thunderstorms. War is the last means for settling the relations among different bourgeois gangs that call themselves states and for their control over the class on whose labor and deprivation the capitalist system is based - the proletariat. Only by organizing itself into an independent class power, hostile toward all fractions of the bourgeoisie, only by dethroning the power of capital and establishing its own dictatorship worldwide can the proletariat once and for all put an end to wars and their reason - capitalism. Capitalism is a criminal system that had destroyed tens of millions of people in the world and local wars of the twentieth century, the system that hides its monstrous greed unstoppable by any crimes behind the sugary façade of “democracy” and “humanism.”