Earlier this year Pravda reported on Moscow's plans to bring former Soviet republics together in a new union. According to the article's byline, "Several Russian politicians believe the Soviet Union will be restored by 2007." Pavel Borodin, the secretary of the unified Russia-Belarus entity, has stated: "The Soviet Union was an objective reality. Almost the whole post-Soviet space might be retrieved in the nearest future."
For those who think that dead things ought to stay dead, it is useful to remember the technique of driving a stake through a vampire's heart. Old enmities, like mythical creatures, don't die easily. After the execution in December 1948 of Gen. Hideki Tojo, the Americans scattered the dead Japanese militarist's ashes over the ocean. This was a special precaution, since Tojo vowed that "next time," in the next war, Japan would win.
After the defeat of Japanese militarism in World War II, the main threat to America came from the Moscow-supported communist left. Since the Soviet Union may be on its way back, it's useful to know something of Soviet/far left propaganda, if only to recognize certain recurring themes. Perusing the work of the leftist Japanese historian Saburo Ienaga, we find a bitter account of U.S. imperialism in Asia. In his sympathy for communism Ienaga described America's defense of South Korea as "aggression," and similarly characterized America's protection of Taiwan. He blamed American anti-communism for undermining Japan's post-war constitution. In his 1968 book, The Pacific War, he even claimed that American militarism was responsible for stunting the development of Japanese democracy. In describing the U.S. occupation of Japan, he wrote: "Murder, robbery, and rape were commonplace. The U.S. military government itself became one of the biggest robbers...." Admitting the U.S. occupation "avoided the mass violence and slaughter of an invasion," Ienaga wrote, "The violence came later ... in the assaults, robberies and general mayhem committed by American troops against civilians." He further explained, "Not content with official pleasure quarters, U.S. soldiers frequently accosted Japanese women on the street or sexually assaulted them."
Today the left generally depicts America as a negative force, and decries the criminal aggression of America in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stories with anti-American themes are constantly circulated. There is also a growing vilification of President George W. Bush. On Tuesday there was a "hate Bush" rally in Hollywood, hosted by entertainment executives. This is not an isolated phenomenon. November's Time Magazine depicted Bush with the caption, "Love Him, Hate Him." One would have thought that this centrist Republican would hardly be the focus of national polarization.
The tide of anti-Bush opinion, found partly on the far right, mostly on the left, follows the old pattern of Soviet communist slander. And this is noteworthy in itself. In hostile depictions, President Bush is described as the stooge of big oil, big business, i.e., capitalism. He is also credited as a warmongering imperialist. (For an antidote to this, try https://www.the-american-project.com/.)
To see the similarity between today's anti-Bush propaganda and old-fashioned Soviet propaganda, consider the depiction of U.S. motives offered by "The Armed Forces of the Soviet State," a book written by the late Soviet Marshal Andrei Grechko in 1974. According to Grechko, American capitalism is naturally militaristic and imperialist. This is because the "crisis of capitalism" produces an impulse to war and aggression. As capitalism dies, it reaches out to inflict murder and mayhem upon innocent victims. Grechko tells us that American warmongering circles definitely plan to unleash a destructive war against mankind. For this reason, the Soviet Union must be ready. If the marshal were alive today, he would say that we are at the beginning stages of the long awaited "Third Imperialist War." This idea of an inevitable world war between America and "the socialist bloc" is not dead. It is very much alive, and like Ienaga's description of the American occupation of Japan, it feeds a simmering hatred of American power that never dies or surrenders. Those in Moscow who would reconstitute the Soviet Union believe that the USSR is the only possible answer to American military aggression. As Grechko noted, "in spite of a sharp weakening of the position of capitalism, the reactionary circles of imperialist powers continue to think in the old categories of the policy of dictate and coercion." Grechko further explained, "Under a false motto of defending the 'free world' ... the aggressive circles of imperialism stepped up the arms race.... The American and British imperialists were especially zealous."
One only has to look at Bush's breakout from the ABM Treaty, and his effort to deploy a national missile defense by September 2004, to see what the Kremlin would presently point to in terms of a "stepped up arms race." Meanwhile, the Kremlin deploys missiles of all kinds in a rapid buildup that has gone unnoticed in the West.
The Russian official press vilifies the United States today, as it did in the 1970s and 1980s. Russian President Vladimir Putin was a loyal adherent of the Soviet Union for many years. By his own admission President Putin was a "Soviet person" with Soviet instincts and a Soviet outlook. When he was prime minister in 1999, Putin addressed an assembly of secret police functionaries as "comrades." This is a distinctly Soviet form of address, not approved by Russian anti-Communists.
Could the USSR be put together again?
Leftists, fellow-travelers and outright Marxists throughout the world continue to denigrate the United States with the same language used by Stalin's henchmen and by sixties radicals. These same people would likely approve a new, "kinder and gentler" Soviet Union. Oft-repeated references to the great theorist, Vladimir Lenin, and the winning power of Marxism-Leninism, are now omitted from their rhetoric; but the anti-American, anti-capitalist animus remains. The words of Gustave Le Bon ring true in this context: "A man is not a socialist without hating some person or thing." The hated person is George W. Bush. The hated thing is the United States of America. Looking at the advance of socialism worldwide since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the softening of ideology by the socialist left has led to an overall strengthening of socialism's position. In Europe and Latin America the Marxists have been strengthened. From a strategic standpoint, if the Cold War were revived in 2007 following an economic crisis in the United States, Washington would probably find itself without NATO, without Japan, assailed from below by the new Marxist states of South America, alone and isolated.
The ashes of Tojo were scattered after the defeat of fascism. Japan was disarmed. Decades later, the defeat of the Soviet Union followed a different course. Lenin's body was not burned. His ashes were not scattered. Crusty old Vladimir remains on display in Moscow to this very day. The Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces also remain. All that is required is a single word, a single order, from the KGB functionaries who run the Kremlin.
