In an era when information was more tightly controlled, it took a long time for Western European communists to realise the extent of the Soviet Union’s misrepresentation by the official propaganda of the USSR’s Communist Party. For many it took an invasion of a European capital, more specifically, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. That was the turning point when many communists in Europe realised that somehow, the USSR too fit in the same anti-imperialist rhetoric they had espoused.
Following the images of Russian tanks in Budapest and the news of up to 2500 Hungarians killed in an uprising that also left more than 500 Russian soldiers killed, many Western communist advocates of the Soviet Union condemned it and turned to China like Jean Paul-Sartre. Bertrand Russell increased his condemnations against the Soviet Union. The Communist Party of Italy, primarily funded by the Soviet Union, sided with the Soviet oppressors in 1956. However, the Soviet uprising sparked a new wave of communists within the party who would eventually disown the Soviet Union, leading to the rise of a distinct Euro-Communist movement. This movement fully took over the party in 1972 under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, who was pro-NATO.
Fast-forward today, the political world of communism and the far-left was completely muted as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. Not only there was muted silence, there were even contorted statements about “peace”, “compromises” and “NATO provocation” by the stalwarts of the left like Yannis Varoufakis. The malleability of today’s left-wing intellectuals to Russia is unprecedented. Imagine Jean -Paul Sartre having called on the Hungarian students being shot at by Russian troops to “compromise” and “negotiate” with the oppressor because the “West was provoking the Soviet Union”. The depths of today’s pseudo-intellectual left-wing garbage can’t be even more corrupt and nonsensical.
The Soviet Union consistently sought to bring foreign leftists and communists into its fold, investing considerable resources in funding communist parties, intellectuals, and left-wing movements abroad throughout the Cold War. They also consistently held international events in Moscow especially for the youth whom they belied with their propagandistic narratives about peace and global denuclearisation. Eventually, the Communist Party in Moscow recognised that it could apply the same approach to right-wing political parties and movements, a strategy that began in the late 1980s. Today, Russian influence and subversion in mainstream politics and even society across the world is taken for granted, well-documented and even openly espoused publicly and to the whole world by the Russian propogandists back in Moscow. They’re even bragging about it, just like they do about their fellow ally Elon Musk, who has been in direct and consistent contact with Vladimir Putin himself.
Russia hasn’t given up supporting the subversives in the West, but it has extended its influence to the mainstream going as far as the Republican Party, and having its puppet in the White House. The Russian meticulous combination of bringing both the subversives into its fold and using them to leverage the mainstream in its favour, has proved wonders for them. After all, Donald Trump was elected President with Russia’s help, including a batch of embarrassing emails of the Democratic National Convention hacked by the Russian themselves and handed over to Julian Assange for publishing. Donald Trump was also aided in his election prospects by a massive bot-farm which was active on social media platforms, and was lead by the now deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Donald Trump’s inner circle actively sought support from Moscow for their his election prospects leading to an investigation which indicted up to 34 individuals and 3 companies with many of them convicted or even pleading guilty. Today, Russia doesn’t need to apply the same tactics because the owner of one of the largest social media platforms, X.com, owned by none other than Elon Musk, has been turned into a massive propaganda tool for Russia and Donald Trump. The Russians are still chipping in, but Elon Musk is doing most of their dirty work by pushing the algorithm of his platform to promote his support for Donald Trump. The Russians are still chipping in. and Musk happens to prefer to promote those being paid by Russia.
The end-game for Russia in all of this is old-school imperialism: Russia wants the United States to abandon its support for Ukraine so that Putin can expand his Russian empire. Russia’s newly-founded imperial demands extend to Georgia and Moldova, where it is actively trying to undermine the democratic process to achieve more direct control over these countries. In order to achieve these aims Russia is also conducting attacks inside member states of the European Union. Yet, this is a culmination of Russia’s activities inside Europe which were left unpunished including a host of assassination attempts against Russian dissidents, active propaganda activities inside Europe, and even subversive disinformation campaigns.
The EU’s response to all of this, in addition to Russia’s direct and aggressive invasion of Ukraine, is to tell its citizens of “preparedness”, a Nordic concept about preparing civilians for war. Yet, this is exactly what Russia expects. Russia wants to instill the fear of war into European citizens, so that European citizens vote for malleable politicians who are ready to say yes to Moscow to whatever it requests: including straight out imperialism and the annexation of European countries. So far, Russia has been very successful with its subversive tactics that is prompting this form of compromising thought process in Europe: it’s also very gangster-like as if Russia is pointing a gun at us and telling us how we should conduct our foreign and domestic policies.
After all, Russia is gaining ground with its subversive tactics in the West. It may clinch the White House yet again through Donald Trump and could very well win in Ukraine if this happens. This would be a rather rare scenario in which a nation-state does not win a war through military force, but through sophisticated subversive and political tactics and strategies. And the West? The West allowed Russia to arrive to this point with its complacency, corruption and arrogance. Western leaders either opportunistically refused to engage in this new global security threat, or else cowered in fear of abstract scenarios. Truth be told, Russia knows that it can’t and doesn’t afford to enter into a fully-fledged war against NATO or the West. Even a war between Europe and Russia without US intervention would be catastrophic for Russia.
Russia has lost more than 600,000 men and more than 1 million wounded fighting Ukraine alone: a nation without a proper defence system and with one of the weakest economies in Europe. If Russia were to fight any kind of war against Europe, it would result in its very quick demise and collapse. The logical conclusion is that Russia won’t go to war against Europe. The Russians gaining ground, both literally (in Ukraine) and figuratively (in Western politics) by subverting our democracies, and in order for them to get what they want, the Russians may very well keep doing what they are doing.
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