LAST WEEK the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice visited Moscow to meet with the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
She insisted that although Russia had problems with the stationing of US radar stations and missiles in the Baltic states, the situation was no where near one that could be categorised as a ‘restarting of the Cold War’.
She left Moscow with nothing to show for her visit.
Yesterday the German Chancellor Merkel and the EU Commissioner Barroso met Putin at a summit in the south Russian city of Samara.
This time the EU in the person of Commissioner Barroso issued Russia with a warning, claiming that Russia was harassing Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, and that an injury to the three was an injury to the whole of the EU.
What has actually happened is that the movement of the NATO alliance right up to Russia’s borders, the US intention to station missiles in the Baltic States, its cheering on of the ‘Orange and Tulip revolutions’ in the Ukraine and Georgia, and its call for regime change in Belarus, had convinced the right wing Catholic regime in Poland and the governments of the Baltic States that their hour had come, and that they were going to get their historical revenge for the changes that were brought about by the October 1917 revolution.
However, in the last year the Orange revolution has been pushed back by the Ukrainian workers, the regime change bid in Belarus has failed, with Lukashenka’s re-election as president, and in Russia the oil, gas and all of the strategic industries have been or are being renationalised, as Shell and BP have found to their peril.
Nevertheless, the right wing genie has been let out of the bottle by the US. In Estonia and Lithuania, where SS veterans can march in the streets, the Russian minority have been targeted. In Estonia the war memorial to the fallen heroes of the Red Army who died liberating the country from the ‘brown plague’ has been moved from the centre of Tallinn along with the bodies of the fallen.
The clerical Polish regime is claiming the right to veto any further strategic engagement between Russia and the EU.
The right wing is now rattling its sabres all across Eastern Europe at the working class, at socialism and at Russia.
In Albania and Kosovo right wingers are mobilising to threaten a new Balkans war, if Russia vetoes a UN Security Council resolution supporting the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.
In a sentence, all over Eastern Europe the anti-Communist White Guards and ‘Iron Guards’ are gathering.
Meanwhile, the main EU states, now dependant on Russian oil and gas, are seeking ways to ensure that they have more control over the supply and are looking for a ‘friendlier’ Russian leader to take Putin’s place as president.
At the Samara summit President Vladimir Putin, for his part, condemned the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states.
In a break with previous practice, no joint declaration was prepared before the summit, and Barroso admitted: ‘We had an occasion to say to our Russian partners that a difficulty for a member state is a difficulty for the whole European community.’
It is clear that the aiming of US missiles at Russia is not an accident and nor is the growth of the right wing in Eastern Europe.
Imperialism is being driven to war by the world capitalist crisis. This same crisis is driving the working class of the world to revolution.
Russian and all Soviet workers need to build the Soviet section of the International Committee of the Fourth International to lead the working class to defend the gains of the Russian revolution by a political revolution to overthrow the remnants of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the new bourgeoisie that it has spawned.
The restoration of rule through soviets, and the revolutionary reconstitution of the USSR, is the only way forward for workers in the east.
This political revolution is part of the world revolution to smash capitalism and imperialism and is the only way to prevent new world wars.
