Why Lies About Soviet-Nazi Collaboration Matter for Understanding Ukraine Today

Historical patterns in lies echoed by the Kremlin's surrogates

When a Facebook discussion about Soviet-Nazi collaboration erupted recently, the defensive responses revealed something more significant than historical disagreement. The same evasion techniques used to justify Soviet imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s repeatedly excuse Russian imperialism in Ukraine. Understanding this continuity matters because pseudo-anti-imperialism continues to produce strategic disasters for the international left.

The thread began with a reminder: In 1939, the USSR invaded Poland as part of a joint plan with Nazi Germany. The Kremlin had proposed dismembering Poland to German governments since the 1920s. This wasn’t short-term compromise but colonial logic rooted in Great Russian nationalism. The discussion documented Soviet training of German military during the Weimar era, who later formed the cadre of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, army and chemical weapons experts, as well as specific trade figures showing massive raw material transfers to Nazi Germany, and naval cooperation, including Soviet icebreakers clearing Arctic passages for German warships.

When pressed, critics couldn’t identify factual errors. Instead, they pivoted to accusations of “bourgeois slander” and warnings about “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” This pattern of deflection rather than engagement with evidence exposes how campist analytical frameworks operate across decades.

Three Evasion Techniques: Then and Now

1. Dismissing Critics as Serving Imperialism

Historical Pattern: When Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian workers’ revolution in 1956, the Czechoslovak democratic revolution in 1968, and the massive Polish workers’ rebellion in 1980, campists justified this repression as necessary defense against Western attempts to restore capitalism. This required ignoring that such restoration “was not on the agenda.” The interventions defended bureaucratic privilege, not workers’ power, yet loyalty to the Communist camp overrode all objections to the lack of democratic rights and the USSR’s imperial character.

The justification followed a clear logic: any opposition to Communist states must be externally orchestrated or politically naive, requiring violent suppression to defend the “workers’ state” against Western imperialism. Campists supported crushing these movements even though millions had been sent to the Gulags and democratic rights didn’t exist in the USSR. Later, when Ukrainian socialists condemned these repressions, some comrades responded with moral relativism: repressions by the CIA in Latin America were “even worse,” therefore Stalin’s crimes should be excused and the USSR judged as a “superior, more progressive and humane civilisation.”

In the Facebook thread, Art Francisco deployed this exact technique. He accused me of “supporting a bourgeois argument that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies” and engaging in “capitalist slanders.” Rather than address the documented evidence of Soviet-Nazi collaboration, he warned that “the complete discrediting of the Soviet Union is in the bourgeoisie’s class interest.” This rhetorical move treats any criticism of Soviet imperialism as inherently suspect, regardless of evidence.

Francisco continued: “Comrades can be honest in scathing criticism of both the Soviet Union and Stalin while respecting the integrity of facts and the material situation of the time and remaining loyal to the need to defend the integrity of revolutionary socialism.” Note the formulation: criticism is permissible only if it simultaneously “defends the integrity of revolutionary socialism” by contextualizing Soviet crimes as unfortunate necessities rather than imperial choices.

Contemporary Parallel: This logic structures campist Ukraine analysis today. Critics who support Ukrainian resistance face accusations of “facilitating the empire’s propaganda campaigns” and being “objectively pro-imperialist.” This transforms solidarity with Ukrainian resistance into complicity with imperialism. Kaitlin Ulyanov has made the underlying logic explicit: “Not under the Zelensky regime, the country lost whatever sovereignty it had after the 2014 coup, when it effectively became a US puppet.” Ukraine has no agency; therefore Ukrainian resistance is merely NATO proxy action; therefore supporting resistance means supporting NATO imperialism. The chain of reasoning renders Ukrainian self-determination invisible.

Campist ideology requires subordinating all internal critiques to the primary struggle against US imperialism. If a state opposes the United States, it becomes “by definition anti-imperialist,” rendering its “internal political, economic, and social system irrelevant” to the conflict. The problems of “anti-imperialist states” should not be examined or criticized because “that might weaken support for the anti-imperialist camp and its struggle against the United States and its allies.” Critics face accusations of “automatically supporting the United States.”

Fourth International Alternative: The FI has consistently rejected this framework. In the 1930s and 1940s, Trotsky recognized that the Stalin bureaucracy’s policies retained a “reactionary character and remain the chief obstacle on the road to world revolution” (In Defence of Marxism). Defending workers’ states didn’t require defending bureaucratic imperialism. Today, the FI maintains that Ukraine’s struggle is primarily a war of self-defence against an invading oppressor state. While Western powers exploit the conflict to weaken Russia, this exploitation is no reason to refuse the Ukrainian people the necessary means to defend themselves.

The test is independence. A liberation movement can accept aid from an imperialist power as a tactical tool provided it maintains political and class independence. The FI acknowledges risks: historical examples like Soviet aid constraining the Spanish Republic and leading to Vietnam’s partition prove financial and military support is never politically neutral. Ukrainian resistance risks “progressive subordination to the aims, methods and political-military direction of the powers that support Kiev.” Trump’s attempts to negotiate Ukrainian partition without consulting Kyiv demonstrate the desire to treat Ukraine as a pawn.

Yet until now, Ukraine’s struggle has remained independent, demonstrated by repeated actions against US preferences. The revolutionary task is dual: unconditional support for Ukraine’s right to resist and acquire defensive means, while building independent working-class opposition to the Zelensky regime’s neoliberal policies and maintaining political distance from Western imperial aims.

2. Demanding “Context” That Excuses Atrocities

Historical Pattern: Richard Barbrook deployed this technique in the thread, acknowledging the Nazi-Soviet pact but framing it as a “too clever by half response to the Munich Agreement” that “kept the USSR neutral.” This reframes active collaboration as defensive necessity.

But examine what this “neutrality” entailed. The German-Soviet Trade Agreement of August 19, 1939 granted the USSR a merchandise credit of 200 million Reichsmarks for industrial products and machinery, while the USSR committed to immediately delivering raw materials valued at 180 million Reichsmarks. The volume of these deliveries was staggering and strategically critical, allowing Germany to circumvent the British naval blockade that would otherwise have crippled its war efforts.

From 1939 to 1941, the USSR provided Nazi Germany with over 1.36 million tons of grain (820,800 tons in 1940 alone, plus 547,100 tons in the first six months of 1941), approximately 139,000 tons of manganese ore (critical for high-strength steel in military hardware), and nearly 20,000 tons of technical oils and fats vital for mechanized transport and weapons production. The 1940 trade agreement committed 650 million Reichsmark worth of materials. The USSR also supplied over 500,000 tons of other metal ores, plus copper, nickel, chrome, platinum, and lumber.

This wasn’t defensive positioning. In August 1940, Soviet icebreakers Lenin and Stalin cleared Arctic passages for the German warship Komet, enabling Nazi attacks on Allied merchant shipping in the Pacific. Active military collaboration continued until Germany invaded the USSR. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s secret protocols divided Poland and the Baltic states, crushing young republics and restoring colonial authoritarianism across Eastern Europe.

The “context” defense transforms imperial collaboration into geopolitical necessity. Yet the actual context reveals choices: the USSR had provided secret military cooperation with Germany since the 1920s, training Luftwaffe cadres and German military personnel throughout the Weimar era; Stalin’s Third Period opposition to united front tactics enabled Nazi consolidation; colonial designs on Eastern Europe predated Nazi threats.

Contemporary Parallel: Today’s campists employ identical contextualization. They characterize NATO’s eastward expansion as “a series of provocations” that provided Russia with “justification” for invasion. This places “NATO and its interests as the cause of the war and as a consequence would be Russia’s response.”

The factual basis rests on claims that the US “broke a pledge” to Gorbachev and that Russia’s warnings about Ukraine joining NATO as a “red line that should not be crossed” were ignored. Therefore, Russian invasion becomes defensive response rather than imperial aggression.

This geopolitical framing erases Ukrainian agency entirely. It ignores Putin’s deranged nationalist rants, Russian imperialism’s history, and the crimes of occupation. Campist writers focus “largely, some of them exclusively, with the western elite” while literally ignoring what happens in Ukraine and Russia.

Consider what this “context” excuses: Russia’s proposed peace terms in the Istanbul negotiations (March 2022) demanded reducing the Ukrainian military to only 50,000 personnel—roughly one-fifth of its pre-war size and a minuscule fraction of the force fighting the invasion. Coupled with demands for permanent neutrality, formal cession of Crimea and the Donbas, and forced changes to language and history laws, this was a “blueprint for the destruction of the Ukrainian state” and a demand for “unconditional surrender.”

Campists frame Ukraine’s refusal as Western obstruction, claiming “Boris Johnson was dispatched to Kiev, presumably with Biden’s blessing, to block a peace agreement.” Yet Davit Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation, confirmed that while Johnson advised them to “just fight,” the Ukrainian side had already decided against signing. This decision was driven by profound distrust of Russian intent, realization that the agreement lacked credible security guarantees, and the impact of the Bucha massacre on Ukrainian demands for substantial protections. The choice to reject terms amounting to national destruction was made “primarily by Ukraine, not by imperialist puppeteers.”

Fourth Internationalist Alternative: The Trotskyist movement acknowledges complexity without excusing imperialism. As the ISL notes, the war involves “concentrated intensification of the inter-imperialist struggle between NATO and Russia.” But this inter-imperialist conflict has “reactionary character that socialists have to oppose” separately from supporting Ukrainian self-determination. Fourth Internationalists defends Ukraine’s right to resist, including acquiring defensive means from whichever source available while opposing both Russian and Western imperialism.

This dialectical analysis maintains strategic clarity: support national liberation while opposing all imperialisms, including those of the oppressed nation’s temporary allies. No “context” justifies colonial reconquest or requires sacrificing Ukrainian sovereignty to great power negotiations.

3. Claiming Criticism Weakens Anti-Imperialist Struggle

Historical Pattern: Campist ideology transformed the Communist camp into the perceived anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist alternative to capitalism. This created an obligation: problems of “anti-imperialist states” should not be examined or criticized because “that might weaken support for the anti-imperialist camp and its struggle against the United States and its allies.”

The Soviet army was used to suppress working-class struggles for socialist democracy in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The “dual function” of the Soviet repressive apparatus—defending the conquests of October versus defending bureaucratic privileges—was used to argue that facing these rebellions, the apparatus’s dominant function was “defense of the USSR” against imperialism. This political line meant refusing the right of workers in these states to engage in struggles based on their immediate demands.

When Ukrainian socialists in the 1970s condemned Stalinist repressions, some comrades responded with whataboutism: CIA repressions in Latin America were “even worse,” presenting this as justification that exonerated Stalin’s crimes and judged the USSR as a “superior, more progressive and humane civilisation.”

This served a strategic function: subordinating all questions to the primary struggle against US imperialism. Critics who supported democratic or socialist oppositions faced accusations of “automatically supporting the United States.” Any criticism of an “anti-imperialist nation” meant being “objectively pro-imperialist.”

Contemporary Parallel: Today’s pseudo-anti-imperialists exhibit a “blind spot” regarding Russian imperialism while denouncing US crimes. They point to Western hypocrisy, noting governments that oppose Russia’s war in Ukraine while backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This criticism is valid, but campists use it to absolve Russian invasion rather than condemn all imperialisms.

Some insist there is “one single enemy, the U.S. and its allies,” producing a Manichean story that “ends up legitimating the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” This mirrors historical campism’s “socialism of fools,” which criticized Western exploitation while turning “a blind eye to, or even defending repressive, authoritarian, and dictatorial states simply because these states face hostility from Washington.”

The Stop the War Coalition exemplifies this evasion. A motion called for solidarity with Ukrainians and demanded Russian troop withdrawal, then immediately insisted the British government “stop arming Ukraine.” This position denies Ukrainians “the right to obtain the weapons necessary to resist invasion” while calling for “immediate ceasefire and negotiations” that would mean “permanent Russian seizure of Eastern Ukraine.”

Some StWC factions, attempting to salvage anti-imperialism, advocated “Ukrainian resistance from below” while demanding NATO stop supplying weapons. Critics rightly call this “fantasy,” implying Ukrainians should have permitted invasion to enable underground resistance. The logic is absurd, yet it preserves the fiction of opposing imperialism while functionally supporting Russian conquest.

Contemporary campists refuse to examine the “authoritarian and oppressive political powers” or exploitative economic systems of anti-US nations like Russia. They focus exclusively on Western obstruction of peace talks, repeating disputed claims about nearly-signed Istanbul deals blocked by Western interference. This framing places blame for continued conflict solely on Western governments, ignoring that the peace terms demanded Ukrainian capitulation.

Fourth International Alternative: The FI rejects campist Manicheanism. Opposing US imperialism doesn’t require defending Russian imperialism. Trotsky championed Ukrainian self-determination, calling for an “independent, Soviet socialist Ukraine” as the only solution, distinguishing between nationalism of the oppressed and oppressor.

Today, Fourth Internationalists view the war as “an imperialist attempt by the neo-fascist Putin regime to annex Ukraine,” requiring support for “Ukraine’s legitimate right to resist the invasion.” This links the struggle against Russian occupation to the struggle against Zelensky government’s neoliberal policies, upholding principled internationalism that refuses to choose between imperialisms.

The Proxy Question: Agency vs. Instrumentalization

The debate over whether Ukraine is a “US proxy” crystallizes these evasion techniques. In the Facebook thread, David Keil argued Ukraine acts as a proxy because “the US is treating Kyiv as a proxy, and that is why the US supplies weapons.” When I noted Ukraine continues fighting when the US suspends aid or disagrees with targeting, Keil restated his position: US weapons provision makes Ukraine a proxy regardless of Ukrainian decisions.

I responded with an analogy: “You’re confusing a proxy with a consumer, and you’re confusing the war that is happening (a defensive war against an invasion) with a war that is not happening (NATO fighting Russia).” I eat at Subway. When they’re closed, I eat elsewhere. When they recommend something, I often ignore it. I’m not a Subway proxy. A proxy is an object of the agent. Ukraine fights whether or not the US supports it.

The campist proxy thesis treats Ukraine as an “object of the agent” (US/NATO), asserting that weapons provision necessarily dictates Kyiv’s strategic and tactical choices. Yet observed facts consistently demonstrate sustained Ukrainian autonomy:

1. Drone strikes on Russian oil refineries: Ukraine repeatedly ignored US preferences regarding attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. The US expressed concerns these strikes could escalate the conflict and raise global petrol prices, particularly during an election year. Ukraine “didn’t take much notice” and continued operations, prioritizing its strategic goals of degrading Russia’s military logistics and financing over US electoral stability or escalation concerns.

2. Refusing Istanbul peace terms: Russia’s March 2022 proposal demanded reducing Ukraine’s military to 50,000 personnel—one-fifth of its pre-war size. With additional demands for permanent neutrality, territorial cessions, and forced policy changes, this amounted to “unconditional surrender.” Ukraine refused, a decision made “primarily by Ukraine, not by imperialist puppeteers,” influenced by profound distrust of Russian intent, lack of credible security guarantees, and the Bucha massacre’s impact.

3. Kursk offensive: Ukrainian military planning has frequently pushed beyond cautious, limited strategies preferred by the West. Incursions into Russian territory aimed at changing battlefield dynamics demonstrate independent strategic initiative rather than following scripts designed to “avoid deeper involvement and escalation.”

4. Maintaining the “Sponsors of War” blacklist: Ukraine faced significant Western pressure to scrap this public list naming international companies supporting Russian militarism. The fact pressure was necessary confirms Kyiv initially chose to maintain it, prioritizing its own political and economic agenda over temporary allies’ commercial sensitivities.

The attempt to label Ukraine a proxy based solely on receiving military aid confuses an agent with a consumer. A proxy acts only by the master’s will. Ukraine consistently demonstrates ability to fight whether or not US aid flows, to set its own targets, and to disregard supporters’ tactical advice. The evidence overwhelmingly confirms the conflict’s primary dimension remains a defensive war waged by an autonomous, invaded state.

The campist characterization of the war as “simply ‘the NATO proxy war in Ukraine’” equates Ukrainian resistance with support for NATO and US imperialism, “thereby denying Ukraine’s right to defend its territory.” This “studied ambiguity” means retreating into general anti-imperialist posture while failing to address the primary contradiction: violation of sovereignty by an aggressor.

Why This Matters Strategically

The connection between historical lies and contemporary analysis reflects a fundamental campist framework treating imperialism as something only Western powers commit. This produces strategic disasters.

In the 1930s and 1940s, it meant Stalin’s Third Period policies preventing united front against fascism, followed by active collaboration that helped Nazi Germany launch World War II. The secret military training since the 1920s, the trade agreements providing essential raw materials, the naval cooperation, and the territorial conquests weren’t unfortunate necessities but choices that strengthened fascism and crushed independent working-class movements across Eastern Europe.

John Medhurst cut through evasions in the thread: “The Red Army didn’t liberate anyone, it replaced one totalitarian occupier regime with another. It is the reason that today those countries that suffered under the Stalinist police regimes (Poland and the Baltic states) viscerally mistrust Putin’s Russia, and are right to do so.”

This explains why Poland, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe generally understand Russian imperialism more clearly than much of the Western left. They experienced Soviet “liberation” as renewed colonialism. They recognize continuity between Russian and Soviet imperial projects, the same Great Russian nationalism driving reconquest of Ukraine.

Today, campist frameworks mean large sections of the left refuse solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. The arguments are structurally identical: acknowledge problems (Soviet collaboration aided Nazis; Russian invasion is unfortunate), demand contextualizing great power dynamics (Munich Agreement; NATO expansion), warn criticism serves imperialism (bourgeois anti-communism; US war drive).

Thomas Rieger made a crucial point in the thread: “Our solidarity is for ending the colonial domination, not with a nation building project.” Yet he immediately qualified this, warning against letting opposition to nationalism undermine support for struggles against colonial domination. The qualification reveals the problem: no one in the thread expressed illusions about nationalism. The question is whether campist “context” erases the basic fact of colonial invasion and resistance to it.

As I responded: “It’s the nationalism of an oppressed nation, and only by liberating the nation can we liberate the working class.”

Learning From Catastrophic Failure

Francisco insisted comrades must not “throw the baby out with the bathwater” or give in to “opportunistic and sectarian prejudices and judgments” when evaluating Soviet history. But what baby? What bathwater?

The historical record shows Soviet collaboration with Nazi Germany enabled fascist expansion, European occupation, and the Holocaust. The “strategic blunders” included training the Luftwaffe that bombed Guernica, training the general staff that led Operation Barbarossa, training chemical weapons experts who enabled industrial genocide, providing over 1.36 million tons of grain and vast quantities of strategic raw materials that built the Nazi war machine, joint invasions that started World War II, active naval cooperation enabling German attacks on Allied shipping, and crushing independent working-class movements across Eastern Europe through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s secret protocols.

At what point does defending “the integrity of revolutionary socialism” require honestly confronting revolutionary socialism’s catastrophic failures? If we can’t acknowledge that Soviet imperialism materially aided fascism and colonialism, how can we build movements that don’t repeat these disasters?

The same question applies to contemporary Ukraine analysis. If campist commitment to “anti-imperialism” means refusing solidarity with Ukrainian resistance, what kind of internationalism is this? If our framework treats Ukrainian agency as Western propaganda, NATO expansion as determinative context, and criticism of Russian imperialism as serving US interests, how is this different from evasions that excused Soviet-Nazi collaboration?

Trotsky’s programmatic demand for an “independent, Soviet socialist Ukraine” provides the alternative: fundamentally distinguish between nationalism of the oppressed nation and imperialism of the oppressor. The political experience of nations that suffered under Soviet “liberation”—Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine—validates their visceral mistrust of Putin’s Russia. They understand Soviet “liberation” often meant renewed colonialism, recognizing clear continuity between Great Russian nationalism driving the Soviet project and current Russian imperial reconquest.

The revolutionary task is to link struggle against Russian occupation to internal struggle against Zelensky government’s neoliberal policies and corruption, maintaining principled internationalism that refuses to choose between empires.

Revolutionary regroupment requires learning from catastrophic failures, not defending them as strategic necessities. It requires solidarity with colonized peoples resisting invasion, not great power framings that erase their agency. It requires acknowledging that socialism can fail, revolutionary states can become imperial powers, and our movements can enable horrors rather than prevent them.

The alternative is what the Facebook thread demonstrated: endless evasions, demands for context that excuse atrocities, accusations that criticism serves bourgeois interests. This doesn’t defend revolutionary socialism’s integrity. It guarantees repetition of the same disasters, supporting different empires while claiming to oppose imperialism.

The question facing the contemporary left is simple: Will we learn from history, or insist on defending lies that enable new catastrophes? The answer determines whether we build effective anti-imperialist movements or continue producing pseudo-anti-imperialism that functionally supports imperialism.

Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine understand this clearly. They lived through “liberation” that meant occupation. They know the difference between revolutionary internationalism and great power apologetics. The Western left needs to learn what they already know: there is no imperialism worth defending, no context that excuses colonial conquest, no geopolitical necessity that requires sacrificing peoples’ self-determination to empire.