U.S. Workers Blame Ohio Train Derailment on Corporate Cost Cutting

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Kawsachun News.

JUNE 12, 2022—Today marks two years since the kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Nain Saab, while on a humanitarian mission to Iran, his third mission to the country, to try to alleviate the effects of the U.S. economic warfare against Venezuela.

Saab, an accredited diplomat protected under the Vienna Convention, was abducted in Cape Verde without an arrest warrant or Interpol alert, and was taken to the United States in October of 2021. Cape Verdean authorities kept him arbitrarily imprisoned for 491 days without due process, in violation of the laws of Cape Verde, during which Saab experienced torture.

In the book, A Sacred Oath, written by former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Esper admits that the kidnapping was part of “soft” options to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.

Esper also admits that Saab’s efforts, as a diplomat and businessman, were always aimed at making the situation of the Venezuelan population more bearable. “According to reports, under the direction of Maduro, Saab was on a special mission to negotiate a deal with Iran for Venezuela to receive more fuel, food and medical supplies . Saab was Maduro’s point man for a long time when it came to crafting economic deals and other transactions that kept the regime afloat.”

Meanwhile, the movement calling for the release of Alex Saab has gone international, and demands for his release were made at the counter-summits both in Los Angeles and Tijuana, during Biden’s Summit of the Americas.

Back in Venezuela, defense of Alex Saab is seen as not only the defense of an individual but as the defense of the sovereign actions of the Bolivarian government and people. The diplomat is also a member of the Venezuelan government delegation in the dialogue process which has taken place in Mexico.

Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR, by Tricia Starks (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 2022)

Tricia Starks’ Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR (2022) is an exploration into the evolution of a unique industry throughout the course of the former Soviet Union.

Juxtaposed against the development of the cigarette industry in the West, the evolution of tobacco within the USSR provides a looking glass into both the distinctions between the two systems and how they both similarly confronted social pressures. In the author’s words, “[the book] presents the relationship among state, production, profit, health, culture, gender, biology, use, image, and users” (p. 10).

The Cigarette Industry’s Utility in a Nascent Socialist State

Starks begins prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1917, during Lenin and his comrades’ famous train ride back to the then-Russian Empire. She proceeds to move the reader through time by commissioning a theme for the periods that she covers in each chapter, including posters and photographs for reference throughout. The book concludes with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a brief preview of the transformation of tobacco in the immediate aftermath.

The choice to focus on the tobacco industry through the paradigm of the Soviet system is an interesting case study in what distinguished their socialist system and the particular challenges they faced throughout the 20th century. In the capitalist West, and particularly in the United States, the traditional narrative on the rise of the tobacco industry is one of capitalist marketing and the explosion of consumerism as industrial modes of production expanded throughout the century. However, despite the lack of consumption-driven marketing within the newly formed Soviet republics, the demand for tobacco was tremendous. Soviets initially smoked it in the form of a coarse Russian tobacco known as makhorka or as filterless Russian cigarettes known as papirosy, only later increasing consumption of cigarettes.

Soviet Approach to Health and Cigarettes

Lenin despised the use of tobacco, going as far as to enforce designated smoking areas and issue smoking vouchers during the revolutionaries’ train ride back to Petrograd (p. 1). Following the triumph of the October Revolution, the Soviets would go on to found the first national prophylactic [preventative] healthcare system in 1918 (p. 2). Under the leadership of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko, the new People’s Commissariat for Public Health (known as the Narkomzdrav) quickly acknowledged the dangers of smoking and launched the world’s first mass anti-smoking campaign, calling for both wide-reaching public education and curtailment of production and distribution. However, the conditions that the USSR’s planned economy faced presented them with a difficult choice. That was because demand for tobacco far exceeded supply coming out of the destruction of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, the industry’s unions were strong, and the revenue from its sale and export was badly needed. Thus, they decided to continue production while committing to a robust propaganda campaign to inform the public about the dangers of smoking.

The perspective that the public awareness campaigns took serves as a great example of what distinguished the Soviet approach from the West. Representative of the collectivism that guided the state, posters and resources throughout the period highlighted individuals’ responsibility to their community and the social impacts of smoking. While the extent of tobacco’s danger to physical health was far from fully understood, the socialist perspective of Soviet medical professionals led them to include the social implications of smoking in their understanding of its dangers. At a delicate time for the revolutionary project, Narkomzdrav rightfully warned smoking could not only limit one’s ability to be a productive member of society, but could also drain badly needed resources from the state. Posters highlighted how smokers caused fires in factories and in homes, polluted public and personal spaces, and influenced the next generation to take up the habit.

An Unusual Analysis of Former USSR

The focus of Cigarettes and Soviets is enticing. Starks’ avoidance of Cold War-era pseudo-history and histrionic oversimplifications, which seek to disparage the Soviet project, is particularly refreshing. Starks notes:

“The depiction of tobacco as the true opiate of the masses assumes a passive smoking population and a state in total control. The potency and popularity of papirosy prepared the Soviets to have a massive market for any tobacco they produced, and for the state to interfere in the biopsychosocial bond between smoker and tobacco held danger (p. 8).”

The first anti-smoking campaign demonstrated the question of tobacco was complex and the way Soviets chose to respond illustrates their principles. Pamphlets and other materials produced during this early period criticized alcohol and tobacco for “[endangering] order, health, and political progress” as well as “[softening] consciousness (p. 95).” Narkomzdrav looked to align their message with the Bolshevik Revolution and tap into the revolutionary energy among the people to dissuade them from smoking. However, Starks also points out the Soviets were restricted in their ability to take action by both the social conditions and the concrete benefits tobacco production provided. In 1931, Anastas Mikoian, head of the People’s Commissariat of Food Industry, “praised tobacco workers for fueling the Stalinist industrialization drive (p. 111).” Mikoian was commenting on the reality the USSR faced; industry and the economy were still developing and tobacco was in high demand, able to provide welcome satisfaction in the face of shortages of other products while the revenue it produced funded development.

In later chapters of Cigarettes and Soviets, the thoughtfulness that guides the author’s exploration of the pre-Stalin era at times fades. Starks mentions the Soviets declined aid offered through the Marshall Plan, but fails to explain that this was due to the purposefully small amount offered to a country that suffered a great deal of damage throughout World War II and that the USSR recognized the strings attached to the aid in the plan (p. 157). The analysis of later decades doesn’t provide the depth to fully understand the profound changes happening within the tobacco industry and within the USSR. For example, one of the first Western industries to break into the Soviet market was tobacco, following the lead of Marlboro owner Philip Morris’ joint venture with a Soviet tobacco factory on the topically named Soiuz-Apollon cigarettes in 1975 (p. 175). However, unlike her analysis of how the post-1921 New Economic Policy era’s policies influenced tobacco imagery and propaganda, Starks does not elaborate on the post-WWII sociopolitical developments influencing the changes.

Nonetheless, Tricia Starks’ new book, Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR, is enlightening and thought-provoking. The case study on the peculiar USSR tobacco industry provides an interesting window into the Soviet project, highlighting challenges the Soviet people faced and successes the Bolshevik Revolution was able to produce.

Nick Flores is a co-founder of and organizer with Bushwick, Brooklyn-based G-REBLS, a grassroots organization as well as a member organization of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Solidarity Network. Nick holds a double-major bachelor’s degree in history and Latin American studies.

Editor’s Note: This analysis was produced by Globetrotter.

On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “And my god, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost.” Furthermore, Schönbach said that in his opinion, “It is easy to even give him the respect he really demands and probably also deserves.”

The next day, on January 22, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ukraine, Anka Feldhusen, to Kyiv and “expressed deep disappointment” regarding the lack of German weapons provided to Ukraine and also about Schönbach’s comments in New Delhi. Vice Admiral Schönbach released a statement soon after, saying, “I have just asked the Federal Minister of Defense [Christine Lambrecht] to release me from my duties and responsibilities as inspector of the navy with immediate effect.” Lambrecht did not wait long to accept the resignation.

Why was Vice Admiral Schönbach sacked? Because he said two things that are unacceptable in the West: First, that “the Crimean Peninsula is gone and never [coming] back” to Ukraine and, second, that Putin should be treated with respect. The Schönbach affair is a vivid illustration of the problem that confronts the West currently, where Russian behavior is routinely described as “aggression” and where the idea of giving “respect” to Russia is disparaged.

Aggression

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration began to use the word “imminent” to describe a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine toward the end of January. On January 18, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not use the word “imminent,” but implied it with her comment: “Our view is this is an extremely dangerous situation. We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine.” On January 25, Psaki, while referring to the possible timeline for a Russian invasion, said, “I think when we said it was imminent, it remains imminent.” Two days later, on January 27, when she was asked about her use of the word “imminent” with regard to the invasion, Psaki said, “Our assessment has not changed since that point.”

On January 17, as the idea of an “imminent” Russian “invasion” escalated in Washington, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked the suggestion of “the so-called Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Three days later, on January 20, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova denied that Russia would invade Ukraine, but said that the talk of such an invasion allowed the West to intervene militarily in Ukraine and threaten Russia.

Even a modicum of historical memory could have improved the debate about Russian military intervention in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Georgian-Russian conflict in 2008, the European Union’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, found that the information war in the lead-up to the conflict was inaccurate and inflammatory. Contrary to Georgian-Western statements, Tagliavini said, “[T]here was no massive Russian military invasion underway, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces shelling Tskhinvali.” The idea of Russian “aggression” that has been mentioned in recent months, while referring to the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine, replicates the tone that preceded the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which was another dispute about old Soviet borders that should have been handled diplomatically.

Western politicians and media outlets have used the fact that 100,000 Russian troops have been stationed on Ukraine’s border as a sign of “aggression.” The number—100,000—sounds threatening, but it has been taken out of context. To invade Iraq in 1991, the United States and its allies amassed more than 700,000 troops as well as the entire ensemble of U.S. war technology located in its nearby bases and on its ships. Iraq had no allies and a military force depleted by the decade-long war of attrition against Iran. Ukraine’s army—regular and reserve—number about 500,000 troops (backed by the 1.5 million troops in NATO countries). With more than a million soldiers in uniform, Russia could have deployed many more troops at the Ukrainian border and would need to have done so for a full-scale invasion of a NATO partner country.

Respect

The word “respect” used by Vice Admiral Schönbach is key to the discussion regarding the emergence of both Russia and China as world powers. The conflict is not merely about Ukraine, just as the conflict in the South China Sea is not merely about Taiwan. The real conflict is about whether the West will allow both Russia and China to define policies that extend beyond their borders.

Russia, for instance, was not seen as a threat or as aggressive when it was in a less powerful position in comparison to the West after the collapse of the USSR. During the tenure of Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the Russian government encouraged the looting of the country by oligarchs—many of whom now reside in the West—and defined its own foreign policy based on the objectives of the United States. In 1994, “Russia became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace,” and that same year, Russia began a three-year process of joining the Group of Seven, which in 1997 expanded into the Group of Eight. Putin became president of Russia in 2000, inheriting a vastly depleted country, and promised to build it up so that Russia could realize its full potential.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western credit markets in 2007-2008, Putin began to speak about the new buoyancy in Russia. In 2015, I met a Russian diplomat in Beirut, who explained to me that Russia worried that various Western-backed maneuvers threatened Russia’s access to its two warm-water ports—in Sevastopol, Crimea, and in Tartus, Syria; it was in reaction to these provocations, he said, that Russia acted in both Crimea (2014) and Syria (2015).

The United States made it clear during the administration of President Barack Obama that both Russia and China must stay within their borders and know their place in the world order. An aggressive policy of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and of the creation of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) drew Russia and China into a security alliance that has only strengthened over time. Both Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping recently agreed that NATO’s expansion eastward and Taiwan’s independence were not acceptable to them. China and Russia see the West’s actions in both Eastern Europe and Taiwan as provocations by the West against the ambitions of these Eurasian powers.

That same Russian diplomat to whom I spoke in Beirut in 2015 said something to me that remains pertinent: “When the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq, none of the Western press called it ‘aggression.’”

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.