The Wagner revolt ended with Lukashenko’s intervention.
Two main views attract my attention. One group is more or less in favour of the following attitude: “Oh dear, it’s Russia, these things happen, it’s no big deal.” Another version of this is: “Do you think that a coup can succeed in a big country like Russia?” The other group is roughly saying: “It is very important, if this military coup succeeds, the Kremlin will fall.”
I too think it is very important, but from a completely different perspective.
Informational non-barriers to the coup attempt
Let me begin by re-stating the following. I have persistently and repeatedly argued that many of the claims made about Russia and used as the basis for intellectual activity in the West do not reflect reality. That Russia is authoritarian and totalitarian, the Russian people are warlike (or war-averse), the Russian leadership is Russian nationalist are completely wrong. They are not objective, but fabricated, distorted views about society, state and politics. These are pseudosciences, just like “Kremlinology”, which was all the craze during the Soviet Union (and is now being stewed again), and even if they sometimes offer seminal propositions, their foundations are too flimsy to be taken seriously.
In reality, Russian society is uniquely open. Paul Craig Roberts, Reagan’s undersecretary of the treasury, said as much at the turn of the millennium. Despite widespread intellectual and cultural degeneration, there is sometimes a naive hunger for information. The issue is not the claim that “there are no barriers to information in the information age”. What I mean is that there is a qualitative difference in the quantity of those who need the flow of information. In Western societies, there is more “many-sidedness” and more of it is not needed, but it is certainly intra-systemic. In Russia, no matter how much many-sidedness there is, more of it is sought.
The events of yesterday confirmed this observation. A continuous and multidirectional flow of information, the like of which is impossible to find elsewhere: anyone who wished could find any opinion he wanted on the telegram channels, on the websites and even on the television screens, and, moreover, the audio, video, and written messages of Prigozhin, who had been declared a traitor only in the morning, were widely circulated. So too were the calls to subdue and even destroy the Wagnerians at the point of the bayonet.
Unpredictable spontaneity
The history of Russia is full of spontaneous, sudden, and unpredictable upheavals. Almost all the social, political, military, etc. movements that have shaken Russia have been completely unpredictable and spontaneous. There is one single and great exception: The October Revolution.
Unpredictability does not mean political independence of the actors. On the contrary, actors act by sensing hoe the wind blows and establishing relations with potential allies to the extent that they do not narrow their room for manoeuvre. Considering that the day before he was almost an angel of peace for the Kiev regime, Prigozhin’s action was clearly a digging in the ground for possible relations. The support of the defunct oligarchs, the strange and meaningful silence of the existing oligarchs, the fact that the financial arm of the government, unlike the siloviki arm, carefully avoided statements of support for Putin and played it out over the weekend should be taken as evidence that Prigozhin was digging in the right place.
I actually touched upon this when I commented on Putin’s speech the previous morning.
The reminder of “1917” in this speech may refer to two things: the February revolution, or the Kornilov putsch.
“We know only a single science: the science of history,” Marx wrote. One of the greatest tragedies of the age should be that the left is losing its historical consciousness to a considerable degree. When they think of 1917, they do not remember February, July or Kornilov; all they think of is October.
Putin’s anti-revolutionary stance is well known, but the context of the speech attributes much more to him than that.
If Putin was referring to Kornilov, there is a solid internal coherence, since the Kornilov putsch after the July uprising was the real beginning of the collapse of the provisional government. But in this case, Putin is drawing a parallel between himself and Kerensky.
If he meant the February uprising, the problem is more complicated. February was not just a spontaneous uprising. The uprising itself shows that a state of paralysis of state power had long since emerged, but in the process that led to and resulted in the tsar’s abdication, there was a power conflict that had been brewing since 1915, and behind it was a conspiracy involving the grand prince and a number of front commanders. So, if February is what is meant here, the problem is much more serious.
I will not discuss which assumption is correct.
Spiral history
It is one of Marx’s well-known sayings: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
How many times it repeats itself is a question mark. This is related to the spiral development of history, each new historical period repeats similar events of a sub-segment in a new, highly degenerated form.
Mussolini travelled to Milan on 27 October 1922. On the same day, in Perugia, the National Fascist Party’s appeal to the Italian people that the “march to Rome” had begun was published.[1] The “squadristi” (squad) marching columns, estimated at 10-30 thousand in total, mobilized under the direction of “quadrumviri” (quattro-four; four leaders of the march). The squadristi began to arm themselves, either by raiding army depots along their route or by volunteers from local army units. Prime Minister Luigi Facta declared that the country was on the brink of rebellion and prepared to declare a state of emergency. On 28 October, the king held talks; despite the army’s declaration of loyalty to the king, he refrained from declaring a state of emergency and dismissed the prime minister. Mussolini opposed a coalition government in which the fascists would participate and demanded the premiership. The squadristi were within 50 kilometers of Rome. On 29 October, the king surrendered to the blackmail of Mussolini. On 30 October, Mussolini and his squadristi entered Rome more or less simultaneously. Mussolini, supported by the army and the grand bourgeoisie, received authorization from the king, and the fascist government was formed. The king remained on his throne, but as a hollow puppet, a straw, impotent scarecrow.
Prigozhin called his action a “march for justice” against “corruption, lies and bureaucracy”. Who could oppose such a demand? Who could oppose the black shirts demanding justice?
A perfect choice of slogan for the fascist movement
As always, history proved Marx right again. Prigozhin appeared on the scene as a runt Mussolini and withdrew, fearing the possible consequences of his action, namely that he would not be able to obtain the consent of the people and would fall into disaster. Mussolini had risen on the promise of raising Italy, which had managed to emerge, albeit muddy, from the mire of disaster, while Prigozhin was a candidate to drag Russia, far from disaster, into the gutter. Mussolini had nothing to lose, Prigozhin had everything to lose.
I should make a note here, which I will refrain from dwelling on for the moment. Let us remember that Zhirinovsky died on 6 April last year. Zhirinovsky functioned as an air cushion from which potential unrest could crash and take the momentum away. His death created a vacuum in politics. All the conditions were ready for the petty-bourgeois rightism he represented to shift to another center. How voluntary it was is debatable, of course, but the nature of things was such that Prigozhin emerged as one of the main candidates to fill this vacuum.
This is how the danger of petty bourgeois rightism, a political tendency that is actually quite close to the left, given the material conditions that created it, evolving into a fascist movement emerged.
Why was it not suppressed? One: fundamental reasons
The question of why the armed forces did not take action against the Wagnerians is a legitimate one. It must be answered from two different perspectives.
The first is the reasons below ground.
It is worth going into detail because the dynamics continue to work.
In his first speech on the morning of 24 February, Putin said that they would not be caught unprepared as in 1941. Let us recall the exact wording:
“We know that in 1940 and early 1941 the Soviet Union went to great lengths to prevent war or at least delay its outbreak. To this end, the USSR sought not to provoke the potential aggressor until the very end by refraining or postponing the most urgent and obvious preparations it had to make to defend itself from an imminent attack. When it finally acted, it was too late.”
This means that the Ukrainian conflict, as I have mentioned in all my articles on the impending conflict from November 2021 onwards, was considered a kind of “winter war.” In other words, it was not planned as an aggressive war at all, but as the only means of preventing a bigger war.
That is, the discourse of “we intervened to stop the war that started in 2014” reflected a genuine, sincere belief, even if its (in)accuracy was debatable. However, the discourse naturally included the emphasis on “we will not make the mistake of 1941, we will not delay”, whereas, as Putin admitted for the first time last autumn in a meeting with women who had lost relatives at the front, they had delayed.
One could argue that this delay has a political content, that is to say: yes, but we were not caught unprepared militarily, which is contrary to the nature of things. The development of the war industry and the output of modern weapons and technology undoubtedly meant preparation, but many problems also arose in the organization of the army in terms of supply, logistics, personnel, troops and command. These problems had to arise; nothing more natural than these problems arising when an army that has not been in combat begins to fight.
The problem is that in 1941 these problems were solved with much greater speed, because the state and society had been mobilized down to the core, because they could be mobilized, because the state did not have to calculate in the face of the bourgeois greed for profit. However, as I wrote in March: “… so many and difficult problems arose, from the provision of equipment for the soldiers to the establishment of unity of command and even the transport of those summoned to their posts, that this dynamic was inevitably transferred to Wagner.”
There is therefore no point in roundabouts and clichés about the general tendency of capitalism towards mercenary companies and how this is a sign of political decay. These clichés seem to say a lot, but they do not recognize that the current situation is not caused by a tendency, but by a concrete and burning problem.
Such are the “experts” on the left. As for the “experts” on the right, who are always on the TV screens in Turkey, they have finally learnt that there is such a thing as a Wagner (although they have never learnt why it is called a Wagner, but one should not expect them to, since each of them is a jar of intelligence, history and politics, and since the jar is full to the brim, it cannot hold much); therefore, there is no need to go into the history of this mercenary company.
In passing, it is worth mentioning the legal side of the matter. According to the Constitution, mercenary labour is prohibited in Russia. But there is a loophole in the legislation, military companies are not considered mercenary companies. They are considered as “private detective and protection activities” established according to the corporate law.
In fact, a loophole in the legislation is a ridiculous phrase; in bourgeois law, the legislation is written for the sake of a loophole. This gap is closed in different ways depending on the threat or advantage.
Two: root causes
Let’s come to the technical, “cyclical” (but not unimportant) answer to the question “Why did this happen?”. I emphasized this several times during the day yesterday.
Firstly, by the very nature of things, no army, except the armies of colonial countries, which are mainly organized against a possible civil war, develops serious strategies based on the possibility of confronting another army (regular or guerrilla army) inside the country. (This is precisely what made colonial countries a paradise for military coups for more or less the entire second half of the 20th century).
Secondly, in the current situation, with probably all the experienced combat troops at the front, in border areas and bases, only the following forces are left to intervene against another armed army inside: police, gendarmerie, intelligence and air force. The Russian equivalents of the second and third are the Rosgvardiya, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Stopping heavily armed professional units, advancing in tanks and armour, armed with stinger-type air defense weapons and having recently undergone a major combat experience, is very difficult, even if their personnel numbers are relatively small, and perhaps almost impossible without heavy bombardment by the air force. It is necessary to isolate the advancing enemy army from the civilian population. But this, too, is close to impossible, because the situation has developed so rapidly that normal life goes on in a strange, almost surreal way. Civilian casualties are therefore inevitable.
More important are the difficulties of capturing a city that has actually fallen, not of stopping the incoming. Moreover, this city, as in the repeated experiences of 1919 and 1942, is of strategic importance; it is the gateway to the south. The targeting of this city by Wagner points to serious strategic work and recalls tragic historical experiences.
The most important thing is the political consolidation of the masses. At the present stage, this coup army has not interfered with the administrative and municipal organs. It has not even intervened in the military-law enforcement organs. It is enough only to stop them from implementing the orders they have received or to make it clear that it will stop them. Moreover, the coup army has achieved tremendous successes on the front (this expression does not mean affirmation) and these successes have brought it great prestige in the eyes of the masses. Moreover, this prestige has been reinforced by the government itself through television adverts, giant billboards, and praising speeches at official receptions.
In other words, there are all the conditions for a rapid escalation of the conflict, but there are also conditions for keeping it under controlled tension.
These are very serious, deadly problems. No one can easily predict the military and political consequences. It is no coincidence, therefore, that throughout the day, especially from the Russian left, there have been discussions of the possibility of a chain reaction effect of the conflict, which (1) could lead to a moral breakdown at the front; (2) might require a shift of troops from the front to stop the coup army; (3) in either case could lead to a setback at the front; (4) could result in political defeat vis-à-vis NATO; (5) political defeat could lead to internal turmoil, etc.
Independence tendencies
The main subject of my article in March was the following (I summarize it in the roughest outline): There have been many times in Russia when insignificant men have gained enormous importance. Prigozhin is also trying to become an independent political force. This tendency is also gaining strength elsewhere. The process will inevitably end in liquidation.
One of the underlying causes of the capitalist restoration and the resultant localized civil wars in every sense of the word in 1990 was the decision in September 1989 by a plenum of the CC of the CPSU to cede its powers to the union republics: “The most important sentence in the resolution, quoted by Putin, is this: ‘The highest representative bodies of the union republics may, on their territory, protest and stop the implementation of the decrees and instructions of the union [USSR] government.’ It is difficult to find another example of any government declaring its own existence meaningless. In any case, this would mean the disintegration of the Soviet nation.” It meant that Moscow was handing over its legitimacy to someone else.
It is as ironic as it is tragic: It was this decision of the CPSU that brought about the end of the Soviet Union as a state, where, in Putin’s words, “borders were fictitious and decisions were centralized”, but it was Putin’s hesitation to suppress tendencies towards autonomy that has been his method of governing on the ruins of capitalist restoration, while at every opportunity accusing Lenin, who founded the unity of modern Russia, of breaking up “historical Russia”.
Now an upheaval is inevitable. Firstly, there will be an upheaval that will suppress the tendencies towards independence, and this process will proceed step by step, but with determination. It is not only Wagner, but everyone and everything like Wagner, and they are particularly strong in the local organs of power.
Yesterday’s events have clearly shown that if the central authority is content with the function of coordinator among the subordinates, it will disintegrate; the central power must suppress the independent will of the subordinates and make them dependent on itself.
[1] This event is translated into Turkish (and other languages) as “march to Rome”, and into Russian as “campaign to Rome”. Maybe “marcia” in Italian also means “campaign” in our language, I don’t know. But “campaign” better reflects the spirit of the action.
