As Trotsky put it, in relation to the Popular Front in Spain, it was an alliance not with the bourgeoisie against fascism, but merely with liberal bourgeois politicians who, in reality, no longer represented anything, because the class whose interests they purported to represent had already put its weight behind Franco and the fascists. The liberal politicians were simply representatives of a ghost class. Paul sees no way of defeating Putin other than via the military of the Ukrainian state, and of NATO standing behind it. So, he is led to propose a Popular Front with the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and its state, and with NATO. As with the Stalinists in Spain – and they adopted the same position in WWII, when they proposed a Popular Front with the “democratic imperialists” - that involves suppressing any class antagonism between the interests of Ukrainian workers, and capitalists, and whitewashing the nature of the Ukrainian regime itself. In fact, Paul does that to a degree that is simply unbelievable, and so undermines his whole narrative.
Paul is right, of course, to reject the Putin propaganda that all Ukrainians are Nazis, but he goes way beyond that, to basically claim that there are no Ukrainian fascists, or very few of them. He says,
“The maximum support for far-right parties in Ukraine has been 3% — and 6%. America and Britain probably have more actual fascists than Ukraine. What’s true — and a problem — is that Ukraine absorbed a far right militia group into its own armed forces in order to keep it under control.”
This is entirely reminiscent of Trotsky's critique of Russian liberals such as Miliukov, who, during the Balkan Wars, would only publish accounts of Ottoman atrocities denying and censoring any reports of atrocities by the Ottoman's opponents. It is simply unbelievable to the extent of discrediting the narrative that Paul presents. The history of Eastern Europe, particularly of all of those countries that were contained within the Tsarist Empire, the greatest prison house of nations, as Lenin described it, is one that necessarily led to the growth of ultra-nationalist ideas and movements, as those held captive sought escape from it. It was something that Lenin and the Bolsheviks both sought to use to their advantage, in building opposition to Tsarism, but with which they also had to contend, in trying to construct a unified workers state, in place of it. It is why, although they argued against separation, and national self-self determination – because they sought to build as large a single unified state as possible, based upon a unified proletariat – they argued that the Russian Bolsheviks should emphasise the right to free secession, whilst the Marxists in the smaller nations should argue vehemently for the right to integrate.
The deep seated ultra-nationalism of all those nations across Eastern and Central Europe, fermented by the history not just of Tsarism, but also of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a history of small nations, and what Marx and Engels called “non-historic peoples”, who had been unable to raise themselves up to the level of statehood, and who were consequently always looking to one large imperial power or another, to champion their cause, has continued into the world we have today. In a world in which the nation state became an impediment to the accumulation of large scale capital more than a century ago, ultra nationalism, sovereigntism, and the demand for “national self-determination” are simply the reactionary slogans of the petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to turn the hands of time backwards, and consequently fit perfectly with the ideas of fascism, which bases itself on the mobilisation of the petty-bourgeoisie.
The Weekly Worker had a useful account of the influence of Nazis, and ultra-nationalists on the Ukrainian government. It also had this account of the history of CIA and ultra-nationalist Ukrainian involvement with some of those involved in the Popular Frontist Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign. I do not know the provenance of the second of these accounts, but you would expect that supporters of the USC would respond to it with a vigorous and detailed rebuttal. When, instead supporters of the USC respond with obscure allusions to a 1970's pop song by the Wurzels, as part of simply throwing muck back at the WW, or else with hysterical lies against anyone suggesting that a more reasoned rebuttal is called for, it only acts to call into question the credibility of those behind the USC, whose politics were highly dubious to begin with.
As can be seen with the first of these articles, its not just Paul who is denying the extent of the involvement and role of Nazis and ultra-nationalists in Ukraine, "for the duration". Bourgeois media outlets that previously set out the extent of that involvement are now rushing to deny it, as they seek to "stand with" the Ukrainian ruling class, and its Nazi supporters. This is an example of "idiot anti-imperialism", of applying the principle of "my enemy's enemy is my friend", if ever there was one. Facebook has even dropped its rules so as to enable contributors to praise the Nazis of the Azov Battalion!
And, now as always happens in such cases of a Popular Front, as happened in China in 1927, in France in 1934, and Spain in 1936, the ruling class waits for the appropriate moment to turn on the useful idiots that have "stood with" it. Zelensky's reactionary government has now banned 11 leftist parties in Ukraine, and that comes after he has also closed down media sites.
Paul's statement that the Ukrainian Nazis have only achieved 6% of the vote, is an illustration again of his parliamentary cretinism, unable to see politics on any grander scale than parliamentary representation, which is odd when considered against his arguments in relation to the January 6th coup attempt in the US. But, even here, Paul's argument fails. For example, the biggest share of the vote in a General Election, obtained by the fascists of the BNP, in Britain, is just 1.9%. In fact, even that was an anomaly, with their vote share being as close to zero as you can get, in nearly all General Elections. One reason the fascist vote moves up and down is the existence of other right-wing parties. For example, the support for both the National Front, and later the BNP, dropped significantly, when right-wing Tory parties simply stole their clothes, and picked up that racist and nationalist vote. The existence of large hard-right parties in many Eastern and Central European countries is itself an obstacle to openly Nazi parties gathering large votes, particularly as, for many of those parties, parliamentary activity is not their prime objective.
To compare the votes obtained by fascist candidates in elections with the fact that, in Ukraine, we have a sizeable neo-Nazi militia, and one that is now financed, trained and armed with the latest NATO weaponry, is bizarre! Paul's other response to this is also bizarre claiming that they can't be anti-Russian nationalists, because many of them speak Russian! Of course, many speak Russian, as do millions of people across Eastern Europe. It is a consequence of the fact that the Rus, the people who originally migrated to that part of Europe established Russian as the language, and the fact that the Tsarist Empire enforced Russian as the state language. Kyiv was at one time, the capital of Rus itself! In the British Empire, many serving in India learned local languages, in Northern Ireland, there are Irish speakers and Catholics who were members of the RUC, did that mean that Indians in India were not oppressed by British Imperialism, or that Northern Ireland was not an oppressive sectarian state?
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