The dreams of a war-lord

In October 1922 Mussolini’s Blackshirts marched on Rome. Within days the fascist leader had been appointed prime minister by the Italian king and was forming his first government.
Last weekend the Wagner Force, Russia’s ‘foreign legion’ marched on Moscow but within 24 hours they were back in their barracks while their boss was ignominiously packed off to Belarus under an agreement with President Putin.
   Yevgeny Prigozhin is, of course, no Duce. Benito Mussolini was already a national figure when his followers marched on the Italian capital. His fascist movement had significant backing from the Italian ruling class – including army chiefs, nationalists, business leaders and members of the royal family. They wanted an iron-fist regime that would deal with the unions, the “Reds” and the assorted socialists that they feared would lead to anarchy or a Bolshevik revolution. But they needed a front-man.
   Mussolini wasn’t even their first choice. Gabriele D’Annunzio, the fiery nationalist poet didn’t want the job. Neither did General Peppino Garibaldi – the grandson of the great Italian liberator of the 19th century. So it finally went to a turn-coat socialist – the immensely vain and ambitious Mussolini. Needless to say the future “duce” didn’t do any marching – he took the train to Rome from Milan.
    Prigozhin, an oligarch who made his fortune in the catering and entertainment industries during the worthless Yeltsin era, is neither a politician or a professional soldier. He has no support on the Russian street. He made no appeal to working people apart from a diatribe against the Ukrainian conflict that seemed to blame Putin for the war and he didn’t get any support from any sections of the Russian oligarchy or the armed forces.
   Russia’s communists closed ranks to defend the people of the Donbas when they cried out for help against Ukrainian terror. They closed ranks around country last weekend to stop the Wagner legion’s march on Moscow.
   Prigozhin’s revolt was met with glee in the Western chancelleries. They hoped for civil war or a coup that would give them and their Ukrainian pawns the victory that has so far eluded them on the battlefield. The Wagner boss certainly briefly bask in the praise of the self-styled Western gurus who told us this was the end for Putin and that a Ukrainian victory was just around the corner.
   As Putin said “they were rubbing their hands in glee as they dreamed of revenge for their failures on the front during their so-called counteroffensive, but they miscalculated”. So did Prigozhin.
   Some say Prigozhin was lashing out because his private army was going to be incorporated, against his will, into the regular Russian armed forces. Others believe he was bought off by Western intelligence.
Whatever his motives, Prigozhin’s abortive revolt objectively served imperialism. US imperialism wants regime change in Russia. They want to get rid of Putin and his national bourgeois circle and replace him with a weak and pliant regime like that of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s that would break up the Russian Federation and open it up for plunder by the trans-national corporations.
   Every oligarch has a price. Hopefully we will soon find out whether Prigozhin was suborned by Western intelligence...