“No investigation, no right to speak” is a helpful guideline. This is a good example of how to ask questions like these.

“Authoritarian” is not a meaningful descriptor because it applies to every state, hence “dictatorship of the proletariat/bourgeoisie”. Russia has no colonies, is not imperialist, and is no more “authoritarian” than any country in the imperial core. Russia is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but it’s ended up resisting the imperial core and deserves critical support in that domain, not for its domestic policies.

As others have said, you are using language that has diffused to you through propaganda or spending too much time interacting with Western news media and social media.

If you are interested in socialism/communism, you’d do well to re-examine what “authoritarian” means, as it’s nothing more than an idealist catch-all term meant to quickly dismiss any country that’s not part of the Western capitalist system.

The second thing to note, is that you should try and understand what idealism, realism and materialism mean. They are different philosophical approaches to examining and analyzing history, politics and economics. If you are interested in Marxism, you should understand that Marx was a proponent of materialism, and materialism concerns itself with material conditions (which is what most of us ascribe to here), rather than fake “morality” (idealism) or with selfish self-preservation (realism).

As an example, why do wars get started?

1. Realists would tell you that the world is a chaotic place, and that countries act out of selfish interests. If a country sees itself as being able to win a conflict with another country, and benefitting from it, then it will start the conflict. The only way to ensure peace for a realist is to ensure that an international system exists which ensures that any conflict is too costly (because of big alliances) or will result in less benefits than envisioned (due to international pressure).

2. Idealists would tell you that the world is divided into ideological camps. Countries with different ideological frameworks (political, economical, cultural, religious, etc) will always be at odds with each other and therefore will always fight each other. The only way to ensure peace is to convert everyone into the same ideological camp through any means necessary. Typically, idealists will view themselves as the “good guys” and anybody who stands outside their group as the “bad guys”. The latest evolution of this framing is the “freedom/authoritarian” divide that the West has been pushing for the past 60 years.

3. Materialists would tell you that the world is governed by capital. Capitalists, through various means of control and pressure, will direct their nations to wars that aim to secure resources, open up markets to themselves and exclude competitors, or destroy competing capital. The only way to secure peace for a materialist is to eradicate capital and the capitalist economic system, so as to take away the conditions that cause wars.

Having said all that, why do we critically (not blindly) support Russia?

• Western imperialism has almost total control of the world, has a massive economic, industrial, political and military infrastructure in place, and has the means and range to affect any nation on Earth. Hence, any socialist projects are immediately and brutally besieged by Western imperialism, which is why it is extremely difficult for socialist projects to currently succeed.

• After the dissolution of the USSR and a decade of shock therapy, Russia finds itself mistrustful of the West and outside their system. Hence it has become (or has always been) a target of Western imperialism. Therefore, to survive it needs to resist and fight Western imperialism, which is the dominant force in the world right now.

• Russia is the one nation, beside China, that is currently able to effectively fight Western imperialism. Therefore, having both the means and the motivation, means that Russia can be an ally against Western imperialism.

• Russian politics and society are dominated by reactionary and conservative elements currently. And its government is highly anti-communist. However, there is still support for communism among many people, and its alliance with China makes it a possibility that Russia might one day return to socialism. However, the important part is that Russia is in no position to suppress socialist movements outside its borders, as the US and its allies have been doing endlessly for decades. In fact, it’s in its interests to support such movements, so it can gain allies in its fight. Russia has formed strong alliances with both China and North Korea. It has strengthened its ties with Cuba and Venezuela. And it is attempting to support socialist projects in Africa, such as that in Burkina Faso. Maybe in the distant future, Russia will turn imperialist as well, but it’s not right now.

• The war in Ukraine was an attempt by the West to weaken and dismantle Russia. The west has invested so much in this war, that a defeat of the West here would create effects that would ripple across decades. In fact, I would argue that the decolonization efforts of Western African nations from the chains of France, would not have been possible, had the US not been so focused and invested in Ukraine.

• The efforts to build a multi-polar system can only help our efforts to build socialist projects. Especially if one of those poles is China.

• I’m not going to touch on how the war in Ukraine got started, as that would make it a much longer post than it already is. Suffice to say that it’s our view that this war was provoked by NATO, and Russia is right to have intervened militarily in Ukraine, both on a political level and on a humanitarian level.

Therefore, we don’t particularly like the internal politics of Russia, but materially, its foreign policy is aligned with our goals right now.

You have used the word “authoritarian” three times in the one paragraph you wrote in your post. I want you to take some time to think about why this word so important to you. What exactly do you think it means?

Edit: Some additional food for thought: do you really think that it applies only to some countries and not others, and is it really a word that is helpful in understanding the world from a materialist socialist perspective, or is it just a thought terminating moralistic cliché?

I will recycle my past answer.

Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?

In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

• Robert Parry, 2015: The Mess that Nuland Made
• Jeffery Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace