War without citations
For cognition of social phenomena, processes in states, in ideological systems, various methods and methods were used. Marxism for knowledge of social processes, problems of war and peace, wars and revolutions used the formational approach, according to which the only correct consideration was stories from the point of view of a “socio-economic formation”: the transition from one formation to another is carried out in a revolutionary way.Formation approach allows you to know some social processes, but its possibilities are limited. Marxism essentially abandoned the multivariate historical development. The formational approach impoverishes historical reality, recognizes a single-line process in the development of society, and communism is the top of development; absolutizes the role of the material over the spiritual, rigidly attached to the economic factor in explaining the causes of wars and revolutions. The formational approach assumes that with the change of formation all the adjusting structures are eliminated: religion, culture, science, morality, law, therefore Marxist ideologues denied religious wars, did not understand war as a clash of cultures.
Cosmopolitanism stands for the use of the civilization method, which involves analyzing social processes, the world history of war through the prism of the origin, development and death of local civilizations.
THROUGH THE PRISM OF CLASS FIGHT
The history of mankind, world history is the history of local civilizations. Local civilization is a large social community, a large-scale device in the world community, a way of life of society, an integral system that includes religion, culture, traditions, philosophy, science, morality, legal norms, ways of thinking, lifestyle, relationship with nature; political, economic and social subsystems.
Scientists estimate the number of local civilizations in different ways. The author proceeds from the fact that there are currently Chinese, Indian, Western European (Euro-Atlantic), Orthodox (Eastern European), Islamic, Latin American, African and Japanese civilizations.
Religion is the determining structural factor of every local civilization. For example, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism are the forming factor of Chinese civilization; Shinto - Japanese civilization. The formation and development of local civilizations are influenced by its other components: culture, traditions.
There are types of wars that have a civilizational character: wars within the states of local civilizations; wars between states within local civilizations; wars between states of different civilizations; wars between secular authorities and religious organizations.
The civilizational approach, the analysis of social processes through the prism of local civilizations, in contrast to the formational approach, provide a more complete and deep knowledge of the essence, causes of interstate and intrastate wars, their moral and political nature, the distribution of political forces, methods of armed and non-military forms of struggle; political, social, economic, spiritual and environmental consequences of all kinds of wars.
Marxism considered wars between states, within states through class struggle. The Soviet Union throughout its history has been preparing to conduct only class wars. The class approach was at the heart of military policy. The Soviet Union waged a class war in Finland and Afghanistan, supported Kim Il Sung from class positions and partially participated in the Korean War on his side. The class approach did not allow Marxist ideologues to understand the role of geopolitics, geography, space in wars.
From class positions, Soviet ideologists assessed the sources of the victories of the Great Patriotic War; only from class positions did they rethink the military history of Russia.
Among the Marxists there were different views on the place of wars in world history. Lenin and his followers in the Soviet Union believed that wars arose with the advent of private property, classes, states. In our opinion, they exaggerated the role of classes.
Engels and Trotsky adhered to another point of view. They believed that the war arose when a person began to build a society and use tools. Genera and tribes have already fought with each other. This point of view went beyond the edge of the class approach.
Marxism absolutized the role of war in world history. Lenin believed that the world is a respite for war. Totalitarian, then authoritarian socialism at certain stages of development was also a source of war, a carrier of militarism. The concept of the world socialist revolution, the assessment of the epoch as the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, state ownership, totalitarian and authoritarian political system, militant ideology, the impossibility of the antiwar movement - all this created favorable conditions for the unleashing of class wars.
WAS THE EMPIRE OF EVIL?
The Soviet Union in the wars pursued the following goals. First, the defense of socialism, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity. Secondly, assisting revolutionary forces, the imposition of socialism (in Spain, Finland, Korea, Afghanistan and other countries). Marxist ideologues convinced that wars between socialist states were impossible, although there was a war between the PRC and Vietnam, there was an armed conflict between the Soviet Union and the PRC.
Yugoslav politician and ideologist Milovan Djilas believed that in the future there will be wars between the socialist countries. In our opinion, if the socialist system continued to exist, wars between countries could occur. In wars, goals would be pursued: the achievement of independence from the Soviet Union, a way out of the socialist system; building socialism with a “human” face; building a democratic state; redistribution of boundaries.
The causes of war could also be the uneven economic, political, technical, spiritual and military development of states; contradictions in the value system of states (political, cultural, national, religious, moral, legal).
In Marxism, the relationship of war and revolution was considered. It was believed that wars serve as an impetus for the start of revolutionary actions, wars revolutionize the masses. War is the mother of revolution. The First World War, the Marxists regarded as a stimulating factor of the world socialist revolution. When World War II began, they were confident that it would give impetus to the independence movement of the oppressed peoples. In the Soviet Union, it was assumed that a civil war was a war only between classes, it was underestimated that there were wars between states between dynasties, clans, ethnic groups, cultures, and religious denominations.
The ideologists of Marxism supported the theory of violence, revolutionary wars, that is, wars of the working class with bourgeois states, wars of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of the same state. 15 January 1918 was signed by the decree on the formation of the Red Army. It said that it would serve as support for the coming socialist revolution in Europe.
Marxists reserved for themselves the right to start wars. Stalin declared: "There are cases when the Bolsheviks themselves will attack if the war is fair, if conditions are favorable." In 1939, the Soviet Union launched a war against Finland. In the 60 – 70 of the last century, the Chinese radicals believed that the socialist countries were the first to start a war and such wars were revolutionary. In 1960, Yugoslav politician and political scientist Edward Kardel published the book Socialism and War, in which he noted that socialist China could be the first to start a war. In 70, the Soviet Union committed aggression against Afghanistan.
The class approach, the theory of violence, the concept of revolutionary wars, the world socialist revolution formed the basis of the principle - waging wars on foreign territory, Sovietization of the conquered territories. Stalin believed that one who "occupies territory in a war, must introduce his own social system on it. Introduce your system should the army. It cannot be otherwise. ”
The problem of wars, world revolution, the Soviet leaders associated with the content of the era, which is essentially evaluated from class positions. Marxists since October 1917 have believed that humanity has entered a new era - the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism. The leaders of the Communist Party of Russia called it the era of proletarian revolutions. In 1924, they called this era the long imperialistic agony of capitalism. In the 20s, Trotsky characterized the new era as an era of wars and revolutions. In 1922, he predicted that the coming decades would be an era of rebellions, revolutions, counter-revolutions and wars. In the 1939 year, Trotsky still believed in the international revolution. With the outbreak of World War II, he saw two perspectives: the era of social revolution and socialist society and the era of the decadent society of the totalitarian bureaucracy.
Fatherland Fatherland Rozn
In the Soviet Union, the concept of “socialist fatherland” narrowed the concept of “fatherland”. The concept of “socialist fatherland” was limited to the class approach, and not the universal approach, in which the class approach is only part of the universal approach. From the protection of the “narrowed fatherland” fell: protection of the roots of ancestors, Russian culture, the graves of ancestors, the traditions of the Russian army The defense of the socialist Fatherland did not involve the defense of the past, present and future. There was a cult of not fatherland in the country, but a cult of the socialist Fatherland.
Absolutization of the class approach in defense of the socialist Fatherland, and not of the Fatherland as a whole, mistakes of political and strategic leadership, lack of the concept of protecting the population in the occupied territories reduced to a certain extent the fatherhood in the Great Patriotic War. The class approach to a certain extent made it difficult for the Soviet Union to prevent the Second World War, as well as to establish allied relations of the Soviet Union with the United States and Great Britain.
The Marxists had a class approach to morality. Engels wrote that morality was always class. According to Lenin, there is no morality in politics, but expediency. Therefore, the assessment of wars from the point of view of justice (injustice) was carried out in the interests of the proletariat, socialism, and the national liberation movement. Marxism could not even raise the question of justice, morality, means and methods used in wars, and this is natural, since some Soviet politicians and strategists used immoral and unjust means and methods in defense of their state in just wars.
With the emergence of tribes, peoples, states, and up to the present, war is a way of life of humanity as a whole. War and for the Soviet Union was the same way of life. The Soviet state waged just and unjust wars in its own and in foreign territories; participated in the Second World War, led the Great Patriotic War; made a huge contribution to the global military culture, to the formation of the militaristic potential of the planet.
Having created a powerful nuclear potential, Soviet hawks in politics and military strategy were confident of victory over the capitalism system in a world nuclear war.
Marxism denied the war as a universal phenomenon, as a way of life of mankind. The ideologists of Marxism proceeded from the fact that war is the continuation of politics by other, armed means. Social, economic, scientific, technical, demographic, moral, cultural, ethnic and religious factors remained outside the understanding of war. In the understanding of war as a continuation of politics, it is interpreted as a concentrated expression of the economy, while ignoring that culture, ethnic groups, religion are the basis of politics.
The narrow limited understanding of Marxism war had negative consequences. The reasons, the goals of wars, their results were permeated with a class approach. Marxism denied religious wars, did not take into account the religious factor in the civil war, in the war in Afghanistan. Stalin's thesis about the intensification of the class struggle led to mass repressions, to the reduction of the military power of the Red Army.
Marxism borrowed from Clausewitz not only the formula "war is the continuation of politics by other means." The ideologists of Marxism, the Soviet political leadership adopted the theory of absolute war Clauzewitz.
He saw the dialectic of war in its movement from limitations to unboundedness. The pauses in the war remove the war from the absolute, act as a moderating force, moderate the tension of military operations. Clausewitz rejected restrictions in wars, advocated liberation from all conventions, for bringing the war to a halt, where there is no limit.
Absolute war manifested itself, according to Clausewitz, for political and military purposes, in the defeat of the armed forces of the enemy, in the defeat of the civilian population. Violence in politics, physical and spiritual violence, violence in the economy, in all spheres of public consciousness, in the demographic sphere, in the destruction of the environment are characteristic features of absolute war. His formula "war is the continuation of politics by other means," Clausewitz attributed it to an absolute, unlimited, ideal war.
The Bolsheviks approached the issue of preventing wars in capitalist states primarily from class positions, from the positions of the proletariat. Therefore, they sometimes underestimated the anti-war movement, they believed that bourgeois pacifists could not prevent wars. They urged the workers to reject the utopian ideas of the pacifists, since the sharp contradictions between the capitalist countries will always be resolved through wars. In their opinion, the anti-war movement distracts the workers from the class struggle.
Marxism associated the disappearance of wars with the disappearance of class society, with the victory of the world socialist revolution. Under capitalism, the causes of war cannot be eliminated; only socialism can do this.
As already mentioned, totalitarian and authoritarian socialism was the source of wars, but in the Soviet Union there was never a peace movement directed against its foreign and military policy. It was not him when there were wars with Finland, Afghanistan. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union supported the anti-war movement in the United States. The leadership of the Soviet Union organized in the country a movement for peace against US military policy. However, there was no peace movement in the country directed against the foreign and military policies of the Soviet leadership, and there was a need for this.
The leadership of the Soviet Union in 20 – 50-s of the last century reacted negatively to the norms of international humanitarian law. Only when Gorbachev came to power, did Defense Minister Yazov sign an order on the use of international humanitarian law.
LIFESTYLE OF HUMANITY
The main features of Marxism-Leninism are: militancy, aggressiveness, hegemonism, adventurism, purposeful use of the destructive component of scientific and technological progress for just and unjust wars; achievement of political and strategic goals by immoral and illegal means.
The ideologists of Marxism-Leninism did not consider man to be the main value, therefore they did not create a man-saving military culture. The desire to achieve goals in military operations at any cost led to huge losses, reduced the gene pool of the Soviet people.
A narrowed understanding of the essence of war weakened the defense potential of totalitarian and authoritarian socialism. The absolutization of Marxist research methods hampered the use of research methods in military science. Cosmopolitanism as an ideology and practice condemns Marxism-Leninism, totalitarian and authoritarian socialism, which violate the norms of international law, repressions against its people and its military personnel.
The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of war, despite its narrow understanding, contributed to world military culture. Marxism-Leninism corresponded to the totalitarian and authoritarian Soviet regime. And vice versa, the totalitarian and authoritarian regime corresponded to Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism, a totalitarian and authoritarian state provided reliable protection of the Soviet state, won a great victory over totalitarian fascism, allowed to wage a cold war with the United States and with NATO.
New challenges and threats change the essence and content of modern wars. Understanding of war as a universal phenomenon, understanding of militarism as a world phenomenon makes it possible, first of all, to realize the increasing threat to the survival of mankind, to tackle global problems, to make the fight against terrorism global. Secondly, to overcome the narrow understanding of war only as a political phenomenon; bring together the armed, political, ideological, diplomatic, economic, cultural, ethnic and religious forms of struggle; to evaluate in the war not only who won, but also at what price victory was achieved; establish that the military security of the world community takes precedence over the military security of any state.
In conclusion, we give the definition of war. War is a historical universal human phenomenon, a way of life of mankind, an organized armed struggle of nations, states, and religious denominations using traditional and new types. weapons, as well as non-military forms of struggle to achieve political, social, demographic, economic, cultural, ethnic and religious goals.
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