Qin Hui, Ukraine 3

Qin Hui, "’Nazify’ or ‘Denazify?’ Ukraine Commentary No. 3”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Qin Hui (b. 1953), who taught at Tsinghua University until his recent retirement, is a historian and one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals.  Translations of many of his writings, treating topics as diverse as Thomas Piketty’s Twentieth- First Century Capitalism, “China as seen from South Africa” and “Globalization after the Pandemic:  Thoughts on the Coronavirus” are available on this site.  Qin emailed me in early March, asking me to translate a series of texts he is writing on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which are being published in FT Chinese.  I am delighted to do so, because Qin’s voice is certainly unique in China, and perhaps in the world.  I have since learned that FT is editing Qin’s texts, softening some of the rough edges and the implicit criticisms of Xi Jinping, and Qin has asked me to translate his original texts rather than the edited versions. At some point, I will compare the two versions and add footnotes to my translations, so that readers can get a sense of the editing process in the Chinese context.
 
The text translated here is the third of seven (to date), and continues to explore themes related to WWII and Western appeasement.  More particularly, he takes up Putin’s vilification of Ukraine as “Nazis” to pointedly suggest that, if Putin is not yet Hitler, Russian behavior in launching its war against Ukraine surely recalls German aggression in WWII.  He ends his piece by noting Putin’s condemnation of Communism and questioning Xi Jinping’s support of Putin and his actions.
 
Translation
 
Calling Someone a “Nazi” 
 
Putin claims that the goal of his all-out war against Ukraine is to "de-Nazify" it. In a previous article, I compared the Nazi annexation of Sudetenland, which led to a huge war, to Putin's annexation of Crimea, which also led to a huge war, and it is clear that Putin is worse than Hitler in terms of senseless violation of international norms. But of course I would not treat him as today's version of Hitler simply on this account. 
 
Regarding "genocide," both Russia and Ukraine are now accusing each other of this crime. In fact, it should be said that neither side has yet gone this far. Putin's invading army has killed many civilians, but this in no way approaches the genocide of the Jews in Auschwitz. There are touching scenes in videos of unarmed Ukrainian civilians attempting to stop Russian armored forces, like the praying mantis that tried to stop the chariot in the old Chinese story 螳臂当车. In addition to showing the unpopularity of the invasion and the unyielding resistance of the Ukrainian people, it also shows that Russian officers and soldiers on the ground are not completely devoid of conscience.  Like the gentle soul who steers clear of the kitchen 君子远庖厨 [because he cannot bear to see animals killed], they may have no problem with indiscriminate bombing from great distances, but they are not yet able to massacre civilians face to face.  In any event they give the impression of being more civilized than the Soviet troops who entered Northeast China at the end of WWII. Such an invading army is surely not made up of “virtuous warriors,” as the Putin fans would have it, but they are not yet animals either. 
 
In fact, this may have to do with the power of public opinion in an age where many people with cell phones post videos online immediately.  Modern soldiers operating high-tech weapons are not illiterate, and Russia has not yet erected a wall to ban the Internet. The soldiers are probably aware that the International Court of Justice in The Hague has accepted Ukraine's complaint and is building a case to investigate Russian war crimes. If images of their own involvement in civilian massacres is on the Internet, there's no guarantee they won't eventually be prosecuted for such acts. To be honest, it's hard for me to connect these soldiers, who are still have the sense to be afraid of international law, with their commander-in-chief, the great emperor Putin, who threatens the world with nuclear weapons after two or three days of bad fighting. But in any case, the Russian army invading Ukraine today is different from the German SS troops, nor can its commander yet be equated with Hitler. 
 
At home in Russia, anti-war protests continue and seem to be on the rise. I have already pointed out that this is a reflection of the unpopularity of the invasion, and on the other hand, it also illustrates that there is still room from protest in Putin's authoritarian system, which means that it is still different from Nazi Germany. But it's hard to say what will happen in the future. Today Putin is persecuting protesters on a large scale, and has reportedly arrested 6,000 to 7,000 people. So he may be catching up…
 
Putin initially said he started this war of aggression to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine. "Demilitarization" means the total annihilation of the Ukrainian army (forcing the entire Ukrainian army to "lay down their arms" and surrender or be destroyed), and "de-Nazification" not only means that Putin is calling Zelenskyy's government "Nazis," but more importantly means that Putin wants to overthrow the democratically elected government in the entire territory of Ukraine, and install a Ukrainian Wang Jingwei puppet government[2] under the bayonets of the Russian army, which amounts to a blatant annexation of a middle-sized country, the second largest in Europe. This goal is not precisely the same as that declared in his February 21 manifesto—to eradicate the "crazy" communist consequences of “Lenin’s Ukraine" and the later independent country it became, and thus to restore the glory of the Tsarist empire—but it is close enough.  But as Liu Heping[3] said a few days ago, this is close to mission impossible from a technical perspective. 
 
It is no wonder Putin changed his story two days later, saying that he had no desire for Ukrainian territory, and that Russian troops would withdraw after a quick war. What people have a hard time understanding is:  since 2014, Ukraine has been made up of 26 provinces, each with its capital, and after eight days of bitter fighting, in a full-scale, completely asymmetric siege of Ukraine where Russian troops had an absolute advantage, only one of these capitals—Kherson—has fallen.  Setting aside "first-tier cities" like Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa, which held firm, even the provisional (since 2014) provincial capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Kramatorsk and North Donetsk, which Putin claimed to recognize as "independent" in his February 21 declaration, are still in Ukrainian hands. How long is his so-called "quick" war going to last? 
 
I have no doubt that, given Russia's absolute military superiority and the West's continued appeasement, which does constitute a guarantee of Ukraine's security, any Ukrainian city will eventually fall to an all-out, prolonged siege, as long as the anti-war movement of the Russian people can be suppressed and as long as the Russian army is not afraid of death (note: this is not the same as "Russian soldiers not being afraid of death").  But then what? When the Soviets took all of Czechoslovakia in one day and all of Afghanistan in six days, did they win? 
 
The Nazi Definition of "Double Standards" and "Single Standards" 
 
In fact, Putin has already failed to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" all of Ukraine, the goal he declared on the first day of the war. The so-called "Nazi" Zelenskyy has not only become the darling of the UN and the political star of the international community, but will also be tough negotiator. And did the Soviet Union negotiate with the Nazis once the Soviet-German war began in WWII? 
 
As I said in my first article, there are inevitably "double standards" for many things in the world, such as whether Kosovo should be understood through the lens of "territorial integrity" and "non-interference in internal affairs," which means the rejection of Western efforts to resolve the issue, or rather through that of "national self-determination" and "humanitarian intervention," which justifies what the West did. But Putin mentions neither territorial integrity nor national self-determination, and his "single standard" is merely his personal happiness.  Setting oneself up as international judge and jury has nothing to do with any double standard, and is much worse, it’s the same as Hitler. 
 
We have the same question on the issue of what is a "Nazi:" meaning, is Putin himself a "Nazi?" Here again we seem to have "multiple standards."  By the standard of "Sudetenland vs. Crimea" he is actually worse than a Nazi, but by the standard of genocide he is clearly not, and by the standard of domestic dictatorship, it can be said that he is still some distance from a Nazi. But Putin himself has a "single standard" for others: if you don't listen to him, then you are a "Nazi!" 
 
What is a "Nazi"? According to what most people believe, first, the Nazi Party committed genocide, especially the attempted extermination of Jews. Second, the Nazi Party wantonly engaged in military aggression and foreign invasions. Third, domestically it was a totalitarian dictatorship. Fourth, as a system, the Nazis practiced "national socialism" (inaccurately translated as "state socialism" in the past). 
 
As for the first characteristic, it should be said that neither Putin nor Zelenskyy should be included. Putin calls the loss of life in the ongoing eight-year war in the Ukraine a "genocide," while it is clear that these casualties were in fact caused by Putin's annexation of the Ukrainian "Sudetenland" and his subsequent troop movements. Didn't Putin himself say that "there was not a single armed conflict and no casualties" in these places before he in sent troops? If the price of war since then amounts to "genocide," then the genocide has to be laid at Putin’s feet. According to Chinese tradition, if you accuse someone else of the crime you yourself committed, you should suffer the penalty for that crime. 
 
What is interesting is that the West, as part of their appeasement efforts, has consistently attempted to separate Putin’s 24-day blatant assault on Ukraine from his previous local aggression against Crimea and Donbass, so that their earlier leniency will not look like appeasement. This is like separating Hitler's full-scale attack on Poland from his previous annexation of the Sudetenland, or separating Japan's 1937 full-scale invasion of China in 1937 or even the 1941 Pacific War in 1941 from Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931—and it’s just as wrong! In fact, the "Russo-Ukrainian War" did not start in 2022, but in 2014. But the irony is that Putin, while fooling the West into not talking about appeasement, has himself been talking about how the war didn't start just a few days ago, but in 2014, which means he is putting his foot in it!  So for once he’s not wrong, which only makes his crime even greater. 
 
As for the other characteristics, I’ve already talked about foreign aggression, and at least as far as Crimea vs Sudetenland is concerned, Putin is already more out of line than Hitler. As for whether in the future, Putin’s move will lead to a greater calamity than Hitler's 1939 military campaign, everything depends on the international community’s response. On the question of domestic dictatorship, Putin, like the four little brothers who supported him at the UN General Assembly yesterday, has been on the throne for decades, and it seems excessive to call him a Nazi at this point, but my fear is that he might try to catch up! 
 
As for Ukraine, on the other hand, no matter how bumpy and tortuous its political transition has been, it has remained within the general framework of constitutional democracy. Like Ronald Reagan in the U.S., the democratically elected president Zelenskyy was once an actor, and some netizens have ridiculed him, thinking that only nobles and aristocrats [lit. “sons of the eight banners” 八旗子弟, a reference to the Qing dynasty] are worthy of politics.  This is depressing, but not worth refuting.  What is worth pointing out is that Zelenskyy is Jewish, comes from the Russian-speaking east, and is a native Russian speaker himself, having learned Ukrainian later in life, as did Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (b. 1960) and others. If he had been hand-picked by a “previous emperor,” it would be meaningless. That emperors redeployed "barbarian generals" or that poor peasants had themselves castrated and rose to power as palace eunuchs does not mean that minorities or the poor “changed their status.”  But for the Ukrainian people to elect a Russian-speaking Jew in a one-man one-vote election means that anti-Russian or anti-Semitic sentiment in today’s Ukraine cannot be that serious (I’m not saying that there is none at all, especially in light of the historical tradition of Cossack anti-Semitism). Is it not a joke that a Ukrainian "ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi" government would be headed by a democratically elected Russian-speaking Jew from the east of Ukraine? 
 
The last characteristic is the social economy of the "national socialist" system. The Nazis were certainly not running a market economy with respect to property rights and fair competition, but there is still a big difference between their system and Soviet-style socialism. I have noted in the past that the Soviet Union had a purely state-owned (or "publicly owned") "planned economy" with no private economy and no market mechanism. By contrast, the Nazi "unified economy" seemed to have any number of markets and private enterprises, but they all existed within the "birdcage" of state control, which made you rich if it wanted to, or poor if it wanted to, with no guarantees concerning fair competition or property rights. 
 
The Soviet Union claimed to have eliminated private ownership, so although there was no one who represented “classes” nor any mechanism creating “class competition,” the regime constantly emphasized "class struggle," and purged and persecuted people in the name of the "proletariat," and all the "bad guys" were labeled "bourgeois."  The Nazis, on the other hand, did not talk about class struggle (which they considered to be a Leninist evil that "divided the nation") because the market and private enterprises were still operating within the birdcage, so the regime was manipulating capital, and not eliminating it.  Purges and persecutions were carried out in the name of the "great nation,” and the bad guys were labeled "anti-Aryan." 
 
Using this criterion, it is true that Russia, more than 30 years after the great change, is not the same as the Soviet Union, and Putin's anti-Communist rhetoric of February 21 was not a put-on. But Russia has not become a true market economy either. Isn't the Russian economy today just a big "birdcage" with "markets" and "private companies" inside? And it is not true that while Putin no longer uses the words "class struggle" to persecute people, he does it in the name of "Greater Russia"? Ukraine, on the other hand, has had to face many obstacles in its transition to a market economy, and there are serious problems with oligarchs and corruption. It can be said that Ukraine's economic transition has been a failure. But Ukraine, with its democratic system, is not as powerful a Leviathan as the Russian state, and the big birdcage of "national socialism" simply cannot work there. It is true that the failure of the market translation poses the danger of moving to a unitary economy, but this is far less true in Ukraine than in Russia. 
 
Putin Denounces the Communists, and the Communists Grin and Bear It 
 
Here we also have to talk about the state of the communist parties in Russia and Ukraine today. Both communist parties were once all-powerful in the parliamentary politics of the 1990s. But when ideology cooled and nationalism emerged, the Russian Communist Party quickly turned to Great Russian nationalism and managed to maintain an important position. The Communist Party of Ukraine, however, could not make the transition to Ukrainian nationalism because it was pro-Russian, so it continued to play the labor card and engage in a "class struggle" with Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (b. 1950), an oligarch who was also pro-Russian. But Putin, who is essentially "far-right" in nature, only supports pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine, and does not like pro-Russian leftists. As a result, the Communist Party of Ukraine became isolated and its influence was greatly reduced, although it continued to operate normally until 2014. And since Ukraine did not have two major stable parties, elections were often evenly split, and smaller parties with few votes often became allies of the larger parties, so things were still okay. 
 
It was not until 2014 that the party was banned, after the Communist Party of Ukraine fully supported Putin's use of force and took part in the "armed uprising" in Donbas. This is not a question of left or right, nor is it a question of freedom of expression and association. 
 
What is interesting is what happened to the Communist Party of Ukraine in the Donbas after the "uprising." Originally, in Donbas, as in Crimea, the local pro-Russian government (Yanukovych's Party of Regions) was not overthrown by the pro-European or Kyiv governments, but by the military might of the Putin-backed “Russians.”  These Russian "insurgents" were originally a combination of "far-left" (the former Communist Party of Donetsk, hereafter referred to as the CPD) and "far-right" elements. So for a few days after the "armed uprising," they strutted around, and the head of the CPD, Boris Litvinov, was also the chairman of the parliament of the Donetsk "Republic.” 
 
But soon the far-right, supported by Putin, got rid of the CPD.  First, its registration was refused, allegedly because there were "too many errors" in the registration paperwork. After the Communist Party was disqualified from running as a political party, Litvinov and several others ran as individuals on other party lists. But in 2016, without any election or other procedures, the far-right forces deprived Litvinov and all the members of the CPD of their seats and kicked them out of the "parliament" on the grounds that the CPD was "not confident" enough in its opposition to Ukraine. At that time, there were rumors that Litvinov had been arrested. Later it was said that he was imprisoned, but he was warned that he “talked too much” and apparently lost his right to speak. Litvinov had no way to appeal to Putin (who was behind all of this), so he turned to the Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov (b. 1944) for help. But what could they do? 
 
Totalitarians do not tolerate crowds. Putin not only needs foreign hysteria as a distraction from his internal problems, he also needs to prevent other hysterics from sharing his "glory." Over the years, Putin has raised his anti-communist tone while increasingly highlighting his anti-Western stance, as exemplified by the February 21 manifesto, which devoted more than 3,000 words to berating Lenin, the Bolsheviks, Leninism and their "crazy" "socialist alliance nation-building principles.” This is a typical example. Putin even said that today's "Nazi Ukraine" was created from "Lenin’s Ukraine!” 
 
This is also understandable. The Communist Party of Russia (CPR), which had become an increasingly weak old man's party during Putin's first decade in power, has made considerable progress as the largest opposition party over the past five years, as the Russian economy has deteriorated and social problems have become more serious, and as the liberals have served as the main focus of government suppression.  In the important elections of 2016 and 2021, their percentage of the Communist vote rose from 13% to 19%, and they rivaled Putin for the banner of Russian nationalism. Putin's attacks on Lenin as a "traitor" are also aimed at getting rid of the Russian Communist Party. The sad thing is that the Communist Party of Russia is still shamefully cleaning up after Putin even as he openly humiliates it. In fact, since the end of the 1990s, when the party shifted to a "patriotic" stance and embraced Great Russian nationalism, it has not taken the ideological beliefs of the "proletarians of the world" seriously. But the question is, can you really hope to out-nationalist Putin? 
 
So the top echelons of the Russian Communist Party, represented by Dzhuganov, have gradually become unprincipled Tsarists.  Not only did they not take Putin's denunciation of Leninism seriously, they do not even intend to defend the basic rights of Russian Communist Party members. When the far-right in the Donbas suppressed the CPD and it turned to the Russian Communist Party for help, the Russian Communist Party ignored it. When Putin declared all-out war on the 24th, certain Communist Party activists, like others across the political spectrum, were shocked and made anti-war criticisms.  Three members of the Russian Communist Party's State Duma, Oleg Mikhailov, Oleg Mateveichev, and Oleg Smolin, were the first to express their displeasure, with Mikhailov denouncing Putin for using recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk independence "to conceal plans for an all-out war with neighboring countries," which was "just as" despicable as actions the West engaged in. Mateveichev said he voted for recognizing the independence of the two eastern regions of Ukraine in order to protect them from attack, not to bomb Kyiv. However, Zyuganov was quick to declare his support for Putin in the official name of the Russian Communist Party. He turned a deaf ear to Putin's anti-Communist rhetoric, and said he would punish those members of the party who were anti-war.
 
The Communist Party of Russia acted this way, as did certain “Putin fans.”  None of the “real pink men” that have been multiplying in the new era the followed the fall of the Soviet Communists—lost for want of a “real man”—seemed to get the irony.  What about “theoretical consciousness?” If there were no real men left in the CPSU, where are China’s real men when Putin slandered Leninism?[4]

Notes


[1]秦晖, “’趋纳粹’还是’去纳粹’？乌克兰评论之三,” published on FT-Chinese on March 7, 2022. 

[2]Translator’s note:  Wang Jingwei (1883-1944) was a Chinese politician, originally part of the Nationalist/Guomintang regime, who headed a collaborationist government that cooperated with the Japanese invading army during the Sino-Japanese War.

[3]Translator’s note:  Liu Heping (b. 1953) is a well-known Chinese playwright and author, who, like Qin Hui, is critical of Russia’s war on Ukraine (see here for example).

[4]Translator’s note:  This is a reference to Xi Jinping’s remark that the USSR collapsed because “In the end, nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist."  See here.