Is Russia waging an imperialist war and Europe’s Nazi traditions

“On the Barricades” s05e44

Many on the Left have fallen into the trap of calling the war in Ukraine an aggressive act of Russian imperialism, overlooking the history and using the term ‘imperialism’ haphazardly. We have the American-Bulgarian, Marxist academic Arto Artinian on this second episode of this week’s release of “On the Barricades” to clarify this matter via an in-depth materialist-historical analysis– of the tsarist Russian empire through to the anti-imperialist Soviet Union, through to the current capitalist republic. Artinian argues that since 2014 Ukraine has become instrumental to the Euro-Atlantic powers, allowing them to, by proxy war, advance their own imperialist interests to finish off the process of demolishing the state that once was the Soviet Union.

Artinian also provides some fascinating context as to why he thinks, of all means of anti-Russian propaganda, neo-Nazi ideology is serving a role in Ukrainian nationalism. And how does this relate to the creation of the EU itself as what Artinian describes as the survival of the economic and political project of Nazi Germany: the European integration and economic rule which we call neo-liberalism? Finally, Maria and Boyan discuss with Arto on the current state of the academia both in Eastern Europe and the United States and how they shape an intellectual climate where such pro-NATO imperialist agendas can advance.