Russian Imperialism: Nationalism Disguised As ‘Socialism’

Russia's President Putin controls a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons, along with Russia's powerful Northern Fleet

But under UN rules, an Arctic country's zone can be extended if it can prove that the undersea territory it wants to claim is geologically part of its own continental shelf - in other words, a natural extension of its own territory.

Using this loophole, Russia has mounted a massive scientific and diplomatic effort to redraw the polar map.

The Russians made what they claimed was their first major scientific breakthrough in the summer of 2007. The Rossiya nuclear ice-breaker, carrying 50 scientists and tons of seismic equipment, nosed through the ice of the polar region, taking sonic and magnetic photographs of the seabed.

Many neoliberals are under the impression that communism failed due to wasteful economic policies adopted by the former Soviet Union. Economic weakness must have played a role, but it was only secondary to the primary role played by politics and a desire for enfranchisement in three-quarters of a century old autocratic political system, especially among the non-Slavic population of the erstwhile Soviet Union.

If we take a cursory look at the history of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in December 1991, it appears that the communist system collapsed due to Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization policies of Glasnost, or openness, and Perestroika, or restructuring.

The Glasnost phenomena is especially important because it sheds light on the impact of new technology on the social and political life of a country. The late 1980s was the era of the emergence of satellite television in the developing world and it coincided with the political developments in the former Soviet Union. The impact of relatively independent media, such as privately owned television channels and radio stations, cannot be underestimated in creating awareness among the masses.

Marxism as it was practiced in Russia and China was barely disguised Slavic and Han nationalism, respectively. Gorbachev wanted to liberalize and democratize the bureaucratic Bolshevism in Russia gradually, but such was the level of frustration felt by all other nations of the erstwhile Soviet Union besides Slavs that things slipped out of control.

The only force that kept the former Soviet Union together was the Russian Communist Party and its repression. But once relatively free and fair elections were held, first for the Congress of People’s Deputies of the former Soviet Union in March 1989 and then for the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russian Republic in March 1990, a rival power center emerged under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin and the ensuing power struggle between Gorbachev as the then-President of the former Soviet Union and Yeltsin as the then-President of the Russian Republic – one of the 15 constituent Republics of the former Soviet Union – and the unfolding events resulted in the declaration of independence by the Baltic states.

In a momentous coup plot on 19 August 1991, Gorbachev’s vice president, prime minister, defense minister and KGB chief put Gorbachev under house arrest. The coup organizers expected some popular support but the public sympathy in large metropolitan cities was against them.

The attempted coup failed after three days and Gorbachev returned as the President of the former Soviet Union, but not only the power of the president but also the invulnerability of the Communist Party and the Soviet armed forces and intelligence apparatus were compromised in the eyes of wider public. A failed coup plot is always a recipe for disaster because it compromises the deterrence value of power projection which is more about tacit intimidation than actual use of excessive and violent force.

Marxism aspires for the lofty ideals of social justice and the establishment of a classless and stateless society, but it fails to offer a modus operandi for the realization of those goals. It leaves everything to the bureaucratic cadres of the communist party’s ideologues. But the accountability of those ideologues can only take place in a top-down manner, not in a bottom-up manner, because they are not held accountable to the people over whom they are supposed to rule.

China is different from Russia due to its cultural homogeneity: 90% Chinese are Han Chinese who speak the same language and share a similar culture. Due to this reason, it may not collapse like the erstwhile Soviet Union, but it must create a representative political framework to function democratically and in an accountable and transparent manner.

Here let me confess that I am indebted to inimitable Karl Marx for his unprecedented critique of the capitalist exploitative system and his numerous concepts pertaining to economic theory and labor rights. But at the same time, I will dare to question Marx’s flawed sociological analysis. His “dialectical materialism” is akin to social Darwinism. Individuals, even analytical philosophers, are socially constituted and socially situated, and apparently the mindsets of Marx and his disciples were structured by their European cultural and historical experience.

The Russian Slavic imperialism in the form of Marxism-Leninism gained world-wide traction simply because Russia is culturally a European offshoot, even though geographically it occupies the North Asia, whereas the Asian Han imperialism in the form of Maoism is only limited to some regionally adjacent countries.

This fact alone is a sufficient proof of the European cultural hegemony on the rest of the world – not only the thesis but the anti-thesis must also have European cultural roots in order to gain traction among social elites of the Western world. The Marxists fail to appreciate the fact that there are two kinds of divisions: vertical divisions on the basis of class and horizontal divisions on the basis of ethnic, linguistic and cultural groupings, which might also have legitimate ethnic and cultural aspirations.

Moreover, after carefully observing ideas and worldviews of disparate groups of socialists around the world, I’ve reached a conclusion that there are two separate and distinct classes of socialists. Idealist Marxists generally are the erudite and highbrow intellectuals of the developed Western countries; whereas national socialists mostly are the Russian, East European, Chinese and sometimes Latin American nationalists.

Basic difference between the two is that idealist Marxists typically are socialists by choice and learning who have overcome their ethnic and nationalist prejudices, whereas national socialists are socialists by birth and indoctrination since their national narratives are based on facile Marxism. The make-believe socialism of the latter class of socialists is actually nationalism in the guise of socialism.

Regarding the New Left, although it seems revisionist, I prefer the evolutionary, non-violent and nuanced approach of the New Left over classical Marxism. I have noticed only one serious deficiency in the New Left creed, however. Instead of being single-mindedly labor-focused, they waste their time and efforts on a wide range of tangential issues.

And the way I see it, it isn’t their fault. When a Western Marxist looks around him, he doesn’t finds an exploited class; the labor is already well paid and there is no need for further labor reforms. Thanks to the North’s exploitation of the South, the general state of national economies in the developed West is robust, and dollar, euro and pound can buy anything; that’s why, the Western Marxists find time to take interest in marginal issues.

Due to the neocolonial global economic order, the real exploited class does not exist in the developed world; it only exists in the developing world; where labor is still underpaid, overworked and labor rights and laws are virtually non-existent. For the New Left to become relevant once again on a world-wide scale, it must focus on the mainstream issues affecting an overwhelming majority of the dispossessed masses all over the world, and not just in the developed world.

Finally, China is an interesting case study in regard to its history. Firstly, although it did fight a couple of Opium Wars with the British in the middle of the nineteenth century, the influence of Western imperialism generally remained confined to its coastal cities and it did not make inroads into inland areas.

Secondly, China is ethno-linguistically and culturally homogeneous: more than 90% Chinese belong to the Han ethnic group and they speak various dialects of Mandarin, thus reducing the chances of discord and dissension in the Chinese society.

And lastly, behind the “Iron Curtain” of international isolation beginning from the Maoist revolution in 1949 to China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China successfully built its manufacturing base by imparting vocational and technical education to its disciplined workforce and by building an industrial and transport infrastructure.

It didn’t allow any imports until 2001, but after joining the WTO, it opened up its import-export policy on a reciprocal basis; and since labor is much cheaper in China than in the Western countries, therefore it now has a comparative advantage over the Western capitalist bloc which China has exploited in its national interest. These three factors, along with the visionary leadership of Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai and China’s vanguard socialist party collectively, have placed China on the path to progress and prosperity in the twenty-first century.

Earliest known photos of life in a 19th Century American brothel: Intimate pictures show prostitutes in 1890s Pennsylvania factory town posing for the private collection of a photographer who was also a client

• Hundreds of photos capture prostitutes in various phases of undress as well as going about their day-to-day lives: reading, bathing and preening for customers in the 1890s
• The pictures, taken 20 years before the E.J. Bellocq portraits of 1913 sex workers in Storyville, Louisiana, now mark the earliest known body of work on the subject in the US
• Author and art curator Robert Flynn Johnson found the photos at a vintage paper fair in California about a decade ago and began tracking their origin 
• One image features a prostitute reading a newspaper called the Reading Eagle from August of 1892 - helping Johnson trace the photos to the Pennsylvania city and a brothel run by single mother Sal Shearer
• With the help of local historian George M. Meiser IX - to whom the new book is dedicated - he identified the man behind the lens as 19th Century commercial photographer William Goldman
• Goldman took the secret photos at his studio and at the brothel, where he was a customer and the girls were friendly with him; the discovery of his albums would have caused a scandal in the local community
• Burlesque star Dita von Teese wrote the foreword to Johnson's new book, saying that Goldman 'and his anonymous muses appear to straddle an artful titillation'

They pose jauntily before the camera, some draped only in a shawl, some wearing only fancy hosiery, others looking pensive and clad in nothing at all. The women are surrounded by curtains and lace, pictured doing everything from bathing and reading to preening in preparation for male customers. Their barely-dressed ease in front of the lens is remarkable, their calm faces framed either by opulent 1890s hairstyles or left to tumble seductively over their bare shoulders.

This is life inside an 1890s American brothel, an intimate portrait of a segment of society so frequently kept behind closed doors, discussed only in hushed tones. And this extraordinary set of photographs – shot for the private collection of a commercial photographer named William Goldman in Reading, Pennsylvania at the end of the 19th century – was almost lost to history, as well.

Then an art curator happened upon them at a vintage fair in northern California, setting him on a journey to identify the city, the brothel and the photographer who captured them so intimately more than 100 years ago. Now the photos feature in a new book, published this week, titled Working Girls: An American Brothel, Circa 1892 – The Secret Photographs of William Goldman.

The photographs were taken two decades before the famous E. J. Bellocq pictures of 1913 sex workers in Storyville, New Orleans - meaning Goldman's pictures are the earliest known body of work on this subject in the United States.

They were discovered around a decade ago by Robert Flynn Johnson, and his book offers a fascinating insight into the lives of prostitutes in the 1890s. Through research and clues, Johnson figured out that the anonymous photographs depicted women who worked at an upmarket brothel run by single mother Sal Shearer in Reading around 1892 – at a time when the city was teeming with young, unmarried male railroad and factory workers and other laborers.

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William Goldman, a commercial photographer in industrial Reading, Pennsylvania, took private photographs in the 1890s of women working at one of the city's more upmarket brothels - an establishment run by a single mother named Sal Shearer, who dressed her girls as upper-middle-class ladies to feed into male laborers' fantasies

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The photographs were discovered by author and art curator Robert Flynn Johnson about ten years ago at a vintage paper sale in northern California; he had no information about their origin but noticed one image depicted a prostitute reading a newspaper, the Reading Eagle, from August of 1892 - giving him clues that eventually led him to that Pennsylvania city

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Working with local Reading historian George M. Meiser IX - to whom he would eventually dedicate his book - Johnson tracked the photos to Sal Shearer's brothel and identified the man behind the lens as commercial photographer Goldman, who was also a patron of the establishment and kept the pictures in albums for his private collection

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Goldman's photos were taken two decades before the famous E.J. Bellocq photographs of 1913 sex workers in Storyville, Louisiana - meaning the Reading photographer's collection marks the earliest known body of work on this subject in the United States

The girls at Sal Shearer’s brothel, Johnson explains, likely charged more for their time than other brothels in town - $3 or $4 as opposed to $1 or $2 – because the establishment catered to a particular fantasy or predilection amongst the male clientele. Many of the men had not yet made enough money to marry and start their own families, and the brothels answered a definite need in the testosterone-laden city.

Reading, located in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 120 miles from New York and 60 miles from Pennsylvania, was an industrial and railroad center throughout much of the 19th Century, especially important for moving coal. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad (P&R) was one of the first railroads in the US and highly successful, though problems surfaced in the years just before the time period during which Goldman shot his photos, when competition encroached and the railroad company went into receivership before gaining strength again.

Johnson, author and former curator of prints at the Achenbach Foundation at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, explains that ‘the city fathers considered prostitutes … the necessary evil. They considered it a safety valve for the community, so these men wouldn’t be accosting their own daughters and sisters on the street.’

He explains: ‘At Sal Shearer’s establishment, the men went in there and they didn’t want to sleep with a farm girl or an immigrant woman. That’s who the women were, of course,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘”They wanted to fantasize that they were sleeping with the boss’ daughter, so to speak – so therefore the madam dressed her girls up as upper-middle-class with really nice clothes and stockings and all of that.

‘Not only were the men buying sex, they were buying the fantasy – and so the women were in a situation where they were being protected and not hurt in any way, they were being paid and they were wearing nice clothes and makeup and all that sort of thing … the clothes were a very important aspect of the whole fantasy, the whole illusion.’

It was a different era, Johnson points out, arguing that working at a place such as Sal Shearer’s brothel was not necessarily the worst option.

‘These women in the 1890s, these women didn’t have much prospects,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘They were in an urban environment; they could work at a hotel, where they’d be sexually harassed; they could work at a restaurant and be sexually harassed; they could be a nanny in a household and be sexually harassed by the husband when the wife was away; they could work in a box factory for a dollar a day – or they might become a prostitute, where at least they’d be protected and wear nice clothes and stuff.’

Burlesque star Dita von Teese, who wrote the foreword for the book, echoes the view of brothels as a ‘necessary evil in town, where men with certain desires visited women who would oblige.

‘In this case, it was the desire of a man to capture the beauty and sensuality of the women he befriended,’ she writes.  

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Johnson says the photographs ‘reminded me of Degas, reminded me of Rodin. They were beautiful and honest, and that’s why I had enthusiasm for them.' He adds: ‘The thing that struck me, for sure, is that there are photos from around this period or a bit later that you don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Either they’re pornographic pictures or … they’re the kind of French winky postcard – the naughty photographs that were made, especially in France, to monetize to sell. And these photographs were never monetized, as far as we can tell … he never published these photographs. These were his private albums'

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Goldman photographed the girls posed and also going about their day-to-day activities at the brothel such as reading, bathing and preparing for male customers; in the late 19th Century, Reading was awash with young, unmarried male workers employed by factories and railroads.  Johnson says that 'the city fathers considered prostitutes … the necessary evil. They considered it a safety valve for the community, so these men wouldn’t be accosting their own daughters and sisters on the street’

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The brothel was located six or eight blocks from Goldman's studio; Johnson says that the photographer  'became friends with Sal Shearer and he became friends with the girls – and they seemingly were extremely comfortable with him'

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Unmarried women faced few prospects at the time, Johnson explains; sexual harassment of women working as domestic help or in restaurants, or they could make $1 a day in a factory - but if they worked as prostitutes, they enjoyed some level of protection and fine clothes

‘There is much to learn and (most of all!) take pleasure in with this discovery. As these lost photographs illustrate more than a century later, one period’s “social problem” is another’s cultural revelation.’

Johnson had no idea about the photos’ backstory when he first caught sight of the images at a vintage fair in Concord, California about ten years ago. 

‘They reminded me of Degas, reminded me of Rodin,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘They were beautiful and honest, and that’s why I had enthusiasm for them.’

The woman displaying the photographs, priced individually, was selling items from the estate of her late collector husband. Johnson – who has published books featuring other artistic photographs of unknown subjects and origin – asked her for a better price if he bought the pictures in bulk, but the pair clashed, and he left with only two. It was a decision he soon regretted.

‘Over the next couple of days, I realized that maybe I’d made a mistake – that her personality had turned me off to the quality of the art,’ he says. ‘So I had [her] card, so I called her up and said, “Well, you know, I bought a couple of these photographs at that fair over the weekend … do you still have any of them?” And she said, “Have them? You’re the only person who’s interested in those.”’

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Goldman, pictured, included a naked self-portrait in his collection, which helped Johnson and historial Meiser identify him as the man who photographed the women

So Johnson drove three hours to view more of the collection and purchased about 50 additional photographs, eventually amassing several hundred as he sought to turn the distinctive images into a book – an endeavor which turned into a bit of a detective story as Johnson tried identifying the brothel, the photographer and the women captured by his lens.

‘One of the photographs was the key to everything else,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘Without that photograph, these would have been beautiful, mysterious, anonymous photographs, period. I would not have been able to connect it to a photographer, a brothel or a city – but one of the photographs … had one of the prostitutes reading the Reading Eagle of August of 1892.

‘I called up the historical society in Reading, Pennsylvania from California, and I said, “What was the name of your newspaper in 1892?” And they said, “The same as it is today: The Reading Eagle.”

‘And I said to myself: Bingo,’ Johnson says. ‘That’s where I started my search, and it was like a detective story.’

He made several trips to Reading and enlisted the aid of local historian George M. Meiser IX – to whom the eventual book would be dedicated. Their efforts identified the establishment as that run by Sal Shearer, who had been abandoned by her husband and tried working as a seamstress – unsuccessfully – before opening up the brothel.

Meiser also helped identify the photographer, a local man who worked in commercial photography named William Goldman – whose naked self-portrait within the collection of photographs led to his own identification. Goldman, it turned out, had been a friend of the women, a fan of private and artistic photo shoots and – it seems – a brothel client.

‘Obviously, if these albums had seen the light of day in his community during his lifetime, it would’ve been a scandal,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘He would’ve gone out of business; he would’ve lost all his clientele, because his profession was to take photographs of businessmen and weddings and school events and things like that – so he was just a professional photographer, and his studio was six or eight blocks away from the brothel. 'And he was obviously a patron and he became friends with Sal Shearer and he became friends with the girls – and they seemingly were extremely comfortable with him.’

He adds: ‘The thing that struck me, for sure, is that there are photos from around this period or a bit later that you don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Either they’re pornographic pictures or … they’re the kind of French winky postcard – the naughty photographs that were made, especially in France, to monetize to sell.

‘And these photographs were never monetized, as far as we can tell … he never published these photographs. These were his private albums.’

Johnson divided the book into 14 chapters exploring themes such as ‘Customers,’ ‘Erotic Poses,’ ‘Artistic Photos,’ ‘Off Duty’ and ‘Side Jobs.’

‘He had used the prostitutes for some of his commercial work,’ Johnson says. ‘He had them pose as Joan of Arc, he had them pose as jockeys, he had them pose as Cleopatra, he had them pose as the birth of Venus. He made commercial photographs with them sometimes for people’s parlors, decorative work, but he also behind the scenes took photographs of them in the brothels and then had the girls come to his studio. He took artistic photographs in there, too.’

In addition to his own research and impressions in the book, Johnson included writings by von Teese, historian and UC-Davis professor Ruth Rosen and Dennita Sewell, curator of fashion design at Phoenix Art Museum. 

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The book includes a foreword by burlesque star Dita von Teese, as well as writings about the sociological history by professor and historian Ruth Rosen, and Dennita Sewell - curator of fashion design at Phoenix Art Museum - who explores the costume history. Johnson says: 'The idea of me lining up three women authors for this book, I think, was very important ... the last think I wanted this book to come off [as] – is the male gaze, so to speak. I didn’t want to be accused of being some misogynist curator who decided he found some pics of women without their knickers on'

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If the pictures had come out during Goldman's lifetime, they would certainly have caused a scandal and he would have lost his work in commercial photography as well as his standing in the local Reading community; hence the photographer kept the images in private albums

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The photographer also 'used the prostitutes for some of his commercial work,’ Johnson says. ‘He had them pose as Joan of Arc, he had them pose as jockeys, he had them pose as Cleopatra, he had them pose as the birth of Venus. He made commercial photographs with them sometimes for people’s parlors, decorative work, but he also behind the scenes took photographs of them in the brothels and then had the girls come to his studio. He took artistic photographs in there, too’

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Burlesque star Dita Von Teese writes in the foreword: 'For these working girls who were already going against the drudgery of toiling in a factor or as a domestic, who were surviving in a patriarchal world by their wits and sexuality, the opportunity to sit for Mr Goldman was very likely not only thrilling – it was also empowering'

‘The idea of me lining up three women authors for this book, I think, was very important,’ Johnson tells DailyMail.com. ‘It will be important, because something I wanted to – the last think I wanted this book to come off [as] – is the male gaze, so to speak. I didn’t want to be accused of being some misogynist curator who decided he found some pics of women without their knickers on, you know?’

He adds: ‘I wrote about the art history, Ruth Rosen wrote about the sociological history, Dennita Sewell wrote about the costume history, and Dita wrote about the experience of being the seductress, so to speak, or the performer. So between all of those things, I think we’ve really told a responsible overview, history of these photographs, in addition to them just being about photographs to look at.’

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The photos are presented by author Robert Flynn Johnson in new book Working Girls: An American Brothel, circa 1892 / The Private Photographs of William Goldman, copyright © 2018

Von Teese – who became involved because she and Johnson have mutual friends – writes in the foreword of the book: ‘Sexuality is subjective. One woman’s last gasp for survival can be another’s act of independence. One man’s whore can be a muse in the eye of the artist.

‘This fascinating collection of found images more than a century old could not have originated just as a case study on the women employed at a brothel. The local photographer and his anonymous muses appear to straddle an artful titillation, at times striving toward Degas nudes and at another, more in the spirit of a strip and tease. There is beauty in even the most mundane moments.’

She adds: ‘For these working girls who were already going against the drudgery of toiling in a factor or as a domestic, who were surviving in a patriarchal world by their wits and sexuality, the opportunity to sit for Mr Goldman was very likely not only thrilling – it was also empowering.’

And in addition to shining a light on the intimate lives of the 1890s women pictured, Johnson said, he’s gratified by the fact that the meticulous, private work of a commercial photographer will finally see the light of day; after a book launch at New York’s Rizzoli Bookstore on September 12, Goldman’s photographs will be exhibited at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery.

‘When this book comes out, William Goldman will be a known photographer,’ Johnson says with satisfaction. ‘I mean, he died in 1922; nobody remembers him. He didn’t have any children or anything – and I’m giving William Goldman his second act with his secret photographs.’ 

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Von Teese writes in the foreword: 'This fascinating collection of found images more than a century old could not have originated just as a case study on the women employed at a brothel. The local photographer and his anonymous muses appear to straddle an artful titillation, at times striving toward Degas nudes and at another, more in the spirit of a strip and tease. There is beauty in even the most mundane moments'