Note: We are republishing Trotsky's essay, Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads. The article was first published on the Marxist Internet Archives:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm

Although much has changed since Trotsky first wrote this piece in 1939,  most significantly the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in the territories it formerly administered, the national aspirations of the people in the Ukraine remains a relevant issue today.  Some have argued that Trotsky's analysis is out of date because unlike the situation in 1939, there is no longer a Ukrainian left which can be mobilized around a program that answers their national aspirations such as existed when the Borotba group made an alliance with the Bolsheviks shortly after the October Revolution.  Even if it were true that there is today no significant Ukrainian left, the task for revolutionaries is not to fold up their arms and ignore the national aspirations of the masses, but to put forward a program that can begin to pry away the Ukrainian working class from right wing nationalists and fascists.  Trotsky makes this very point where he writes,       "When the Ukrainian problem became aggravated early this year, communist voices were not heard at all; but the voices of the Ukrainian clericals and National-Socialists were loud enough. This means that the proletarian vanguard has let the Ukrainian national movement slip out of its hands and that this movement has progressed far on the road of separatism."  

To be sure the question of Ukraine's right to self-determination is posed very differently today than it was in 1939. Then it was a matter of advocating the right of Ukraine to declare its independence from the Soviet Union and establish an independent Soviet Ukraine that would determine its relations with its neighbors both to the East and the West.  Today the question is posed of the possible dismemberment of the Ukraine into a series of mini-states dominated by local oligarchs or proxies for Western imperialism such as Poland.  Nor has the threat from great Russian chauvinism disappeared. The spectre of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 1990's is the ghost that haunts Ukraine today. 

Moreover, it is not possible to oppose the right wing regime in Kiev and their fascist allies by conceding the Ukrainian national question to the right,  unless that is, one is convinced that the consciousness of the Ukrainian masses does not matter and that the only thing that can be done is to support Putin's Russia as if it were a bulwark against Western imperialism and fascism.  But it is this very position,  which recapitulates the Stalinist policy of a "Popular Front" against fascism, that is precisely the position that many of our modern day sectarian muddleheads have stumbled upon, by giving short shrift to the national question, as they follow in the footsteps of the sectarians Trotsky was writing against in the 1930's.

              A.S.

Leon Trotsky

Independence of the Ukraine
and Sectarian Muddleheads

(July 1939)

---

Written: July 30, 1939.
First Published: Socialist Appeal, September 15 & 17, 1939.
Source: Fourth International [New York], Vol.10 No.11, December 1949, pp.346-350.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

---

Original 1949 introduction by Fourth International Leon Trotsky’s article, The Problem of the Ukraine, which we re-published in the November Fourth International, aroused widespread interest and discussion in revolutionary circles at the time of its appearance in May 1939. However, the only open opposition to Trotsky’s slogan of independence for the Ukraine came from the small sectarian Oehler group. Despite the political insignificance of this group, Trotsky seized the opportunity to further clarify his position His reply, first published in the Socialist Appeal, September 15th and 17th, 1939, proved to be a permanent contribution to the Marxist analysis of the national question. It sheds considerable light on the present-day relationship between the Great-Russian Soviet bureaucracy and the countries of Eastern Europe.

---

In one of the tiny, sectarian publications which appear in America and which thrive upon the crumbs from the table of the Fourth International, and repay with blackest ingratitude, I chanced across an article devoted to the Ukrainian problem. What confusion! The author sectarian is, of course, opposed to the slogan of an independent Soviet Ukraine. He is for the world revolution and for socialism—“root and branch.” He accuses us of ignoring the interests of the USSR and of retreating from the concept of the permanent revolution. He indicts us as centrists. The critic is very severe, almost implacable. Unfortunately—he understands nothing at all (the name of this tiny publication, The Marxist, rings rather ironically). But his incapacity to understand assumes such finished, almost classical forms as can enable us better and more fully to clarify the question.

Our critic takes as his point of departure the following position “If the workers in the Soviet Ukraine overthrow Stalinism and re-establish a genuine workers’ state, shall they separate from the rest of the Soviet Union? No.” And so forth and so on. “If the workers overthrow Stalinism” ... then we shall be able to see more clearly what to do. But Stalinism must first be overthrown. And in order to achieve this, one must not shut one’s eyes to the growth of separatist tendencies in the Ukraine, but rather give them a correct political expression.

Pat Formulas Don’t Solve Concrete Tasks

“Not turning our backs on the Soviet Union,’’, continues the author, “but its regeneration and re-establishment as a mighty citadel of world revolution—that is the road of Marxism.” The actual trend of the development of the masses, in this instance, of the nationally oppressed masses, is replaced by our sage with speculations as to the ’best possible roads of development. With this method, but with far greater logic, one might say, “Not defending a degenerated Soviet Union is our task, but the victorious world revolution which will transform the whole world into a World Soviet Union,” etc. Such aphorisms come cheap.

The critic repeats several times my statement to the effect that the fate of an independent Ukraine is indissolubly bound up with the world proletarian revolution. From this general perspective, ABC for a Marxist, he contrives however to make a recipe of temporizing passivity and national nihilism. The triumph of the proletarian revolution on a world scale is the end-product of multiple movements, campaigns and battles, and not at all a ready-made precondition for solving all questions automatically. Only a direct and bold posing of the Ukrainian question in the given concrete circumstances will facilitate the rallying of petty-bourgeois and peasant masses around the proletariat, just as in Russia in 1917.

True enough, our author might object that in Russia prior to October it was the bourgeois revolution that unfolded, whereas today we have the socialist revolution already behind us. A demand which might have been progressive in 1917 is nowadays reactionary. Such reasoning, wholly in the spirit of bureaucrats and sectarians, is false from beginning to end.

Democratic Tasks Tied to Socialist Aims

The right of national self-determination is, of course, a democratic and not a socialist principle. But genuinely democratic principles are supported and realized in our era only by the revolutionary proletariat; it is for this very reason that they interlace with socialist tasks. The resolute struggle of the Bolshevik party for the right of self-determination of oppressed nationalities in Russia facilitated in the extreme the conquest of power by the proletariat. It was as if the proletarian revolution had sucked in the democratic problems, above all, the agrarian and national problems, giving to the Russian Revolution a combined character. The proletariat was already undertaking socialist tasks but it could not immediately raise to this level the peasantry and the oppressed nations (themselves predominantly peasant) who were absorbed with solving their democratic tasks.

Hence flowed the historically inescapable compromises the agrarian as well as the national sphere. Despite the economic advantages of large-scale agriculture, the Soviet government was compelled to divide up large estates. Only several years later was the government able to pass to collective farming and then it immediately leaped too far ahead and found itself compelled, a few years later, to make concessions to the peasants in the shape of private landholdings which in many places tend to devour the collective farms. The next stages of this contradictory process have not yet been resolved.

Has Stalin Convinced the Ukrainian Masses?

The need for compromise, or rather for a number of compromises, similarly arises in the field of the national question, whose paths are no more rectilinear than the paths of the agrarian revolution. The federated structure of the Soviet-Republic represents a compromise between the centralist requirements of planned economy and the de~ centralist requirements of the development of nations oppressed in the past. Having constructed a workers’ state on the compromise principle of a federation, the Bolshevik party wrote into the constitution the right of nations to complete separation, indicating thereby that the party did not at all consider the national question as solved once and for all.

The author of the critical article argues that the party leaders hoped “to convince the masses to stay within the framework of the Federated Soviet Republic.” This is correct, if the word “convince” is taken not in the sense of logical arguments but in the sense of passing through the experiences of economic, political and cultural collaboration. Abstract agitation in favor of centralism does not of itself’ carry great weight. As has already been said, the federation was a necessary, departure from centralism. It must also be added that the very composition of the federation is by no means given beforehand once and for all. Depending on objective conditions, a federation may develop toward greater centralism, or on the contrary, toward greater independence of its national component parts. Politically it is not at all a question of whether it is advantageous ’in general” for various nationalities to live together within the framework of a single state, but rather it is a question of whether or not a particular nationality has, on the basis of her own experience, found it advantageous to adhere to a given state.

In other words: Which of the two tendencies in the given circumstances gains the ascendancy in the compromise regime of a federation—the centrifugal or the centripetal? Or to put it even more concretely: Have Stalin and his Ukrainian satraps succeeded in convincing the Ukrainian masses of the superiority of Moscow’s centralism over Ukrainian independence or have they failed? This question is of decisive importance. Yet our author does not even suspect its existence.

Do the Ukrainians Desire Separation?

Do the broad masses of the Ukrainian people wish to separate from the USSR? It might at first sight appear difficult to answer this question, inasmuch as the Ukrainian people, like all other peoples of the USSR, are deprived of any opportunity to express their will. But the very genesis of the totalitarian regime and its ever more brutal intensification, especially in the Ukraine, are proof that the real will of the Ukrainian masses is irreconcilably hostile to the Soviet bureaucracy. There is no lack of evidence that one of the primary sources of this hostility is the suppression of Ukrainian independence. The nationalist tendencies in the Ukraine erupted violently in 1917-19. The Borotba party expressed these tendencies in the left wing. The most important indication of the success of the Leninist policy in the Ukraine was the fusion of the Ukrainian Bolshevik party with the organization of the Borotbists.

In the course of the next decade, however, an actual break occurred with the Borotba group, whose leaders were subjected to persecution. The old Bolshevik, Skrypnik, a pure-blooded Stalinist, was driven to suicide in 1933 for his allegedly, excessive patronage of nationalist tendencies. The actual “organizer” of this suicide was the Stalinist emissary, Postyshev, who thereupon remained in the Ukraine as the representative of the centralist policy. Presently, however, Postyshev himself fell in disgrace. These facts are profoundly symptomatic, for they reveal how much force there is behind the pressure of the nationalist opposition on the bureaucracy. Nowhere did the purges and repressions assume such a savage and mass character as they did in the Ukraine.

Significant Attitudes of Ukrainians Abroad

Of enormous political importance is the sharp turn away from the Soviet Union of Ukrainian democratic elements outside the Soviet Union. When the Ukrainian problem became aggravated early this year, communist voices were not heard at all; but the voices of the Ukrainian clericals and National-Socialists were loud enough. This means that the proletarian vanguard has let the Ukrainian national movement slip out of its hands and that this movement has progressed far on the road of separatism. Lastly, very indicative also are the moods among the Ukrainian émigrés in the North American continent. In Canada, for instance, where the Ukrainians compose the bulk of the Communist Party, there began in 1933, as I am informed by a prominent participant in the movement, a marked exodus of Ukrainian workers and farmers from communism, falling either into passivity or nationalism of various hues. In their totality, these symptoms and facts incontestably testify, to the growing strength of separatist tendencies among the Ukrainian masses.

This is the basic fact underlying the whole problem. It shows that despite the giant step forward taken by the October Revolution in the domain of national relations, the isolated proletarian revolution in a backward country proved incapable of solving the national question, especially the Ukrainian question which is, in its very, essence, international in character . The Thermidorian reaction, crowned by the Bonapartist bureaucracy, has thrown the toiling masses far back in the national sphere as well. The great masses of the Ukrainian people are dissatisfied with their national fate and wish to change it drastically. ii is this fact that the revolutionary politician must, in contrast to the bureaucrat and the sectarian, take as his point of departure.

Sectarian Arguments Like Those of Stalinists

If our critic were capable of thinking politically, he would have surmised without much difficulty the arguments of the Stalinists against the slogan of an independent Ukraine: “It negates the position of the defense of the Soviet Union”; “disrupts the unity of the revolutionary masses”; “serves not the interests of revolution but those of imperialism.” In other words, the Stalinists would repeat all the three arguments of our author. They will unfailingly do so on the morrow.

The Kremlin bureaucracy, tells the Soviet woman: Inasmuch as there is socialism our country, you must be happy and you must give up abortions (or suffer the penalty). To the Ukrainian they say: Inasmuch as the socialist revolution has solved the national question, it is your duty to be happy in the USSR and to renounce all thought of separation (or face the firing squad).

What does a revolutionist say to the woman? “You will decide yourself whether you want a child: I will defend your right to abortion against the Kremlin police.” To the Ukrainian people he says: “Of importance to me is your attitude toward your national destiny and not the ‘socialistic’ sophistries of the Kremlin police; I will support your struggle for independence with all my might!”

The sectarian, as so often happens, finds himself siding with the police, covering up the status quo, that is, police violence, by sterile speculation on the superiority of the socialist unification of nations as against their remaining divided. Assuredly, the separation of the Ukraine is a liability as compared with a voluntary and equalitarian socialist federation; but it will be an unquestionable asset as compared with the bureaucratic strangulation of the Ukrainian people. In order to draw together more closely and honestly, it is sometimes necessary first to separate. Lenin often used to cite the fact that the relations between the Norwegian and Swedish workers improved and became closer after the disruption of the compulsory unification of Sweden and Norway.

Ukraine Independence Revolutionary Slogan

We must proceed from facts and not ideal norms. The Thermidorian reaction in the USSR, the defeat of a number of revolutions, the victories of fascism – which is carving the map of Europe in its own fashion – must be paid for in genuine currency in all spheres, including that of the Ukrainian question. Were we to ignore the new situation created as a result of defeats, were we to pretend that nothing extraordinary has occurred, and were we to counterpose to unpleasant facts familiar abstractions, then we could very well surrender to reaction the remaining chances for vengeance in the more or less immediate future.

Our author interprets the slogan of an independent Ukraine as follows: “First the Soviet Ukraine must be freed from the rest of the Soviet Union, then we will have the proletarian revolution and unification of the rest of the Ukraine.” But how can there be a separation without first a revolution? The author is caught in a vicious circle, and the slogan of an independent Ukraine together with Trotsky’s “faulty logic” is hopelessly discredited. In point of fact this peculiar logic – “first” and “then” – is only a striking example of scholastic thinking. Our hapless critic has no inkling of the fact that historical processes may occur not “first” and “then” but run parallel to each other, exert influence upon each other, speed or retard each other; and that the task of revolutionary politics consists precisely in speeding up the mutual action and reaction of progressive processes. The barb of the slogan of an independent Ukraine is aimed directly against the Moscow bureaucracy and enables the proletarian vanguard to rally the peasant masses. On the other hand, the same slogan opens up for the proletarian party the opportunity of playing a leading role in the national Ukrainian movement in Poland, Rumania and Hungary. Both of these political processes will drive the revolutionary movement forward and increase the specific weight of the proletarian vanguard.

My statement to the effect that workers and peasants of Western Ukraine (Poland) do not want to join the Soviet Union, as it is now constituted, and that this fact is an additional argument in favor of an independent Ukraine, is parried by our sage with the assertion that even if they desired, they could not join the Soviet Union because they could do so only “after the proletarian revolution in Western Ukraine” (obviously Poland). In other words: Today the separation of the Ukraine is impossible, and after the revolution triumphs, it would be reactionary. An old and familiar refrain!

Luxemburg, Bukharin, Piatakov and many others used this very same argument against the program of national self-determination: Under capitalism it is utopian; under socialism, reactionary. The argument is false to the core because it ignores the epoch of the social revolution and its tasks. To be sure, under the domination of imperialism a genuine stable and reliable independence of the small and intermediate nations is impossible. It is equally true that under fully developed socialism, that is to say, with the progressive withering away of the state, the question of national boundaries will fall away. But between these two moments – the present day and complete socialism – intervene those decades in the course of which we are preparing to realize our program. The slogan of an independent Soviet Ukraine is of paramount importance for mobilizing the masses and for educating them in the transitional period.

What the Sectarian Ignores

The sectarian simply ignores the fact that the national struggle, one of the most labyrinthine and complex but at the same time extremely important forms of the class struggle, cannot be suspended by bare references to the future world revolution. With their eyes turned away from the USSR, and failing to receive support and leadership from the international proletariat, the petty-bourgeois and even working-class masses of Western Ukraine are falling victim to reactionary demagogy. Similar processes are undoubtedly also taking place in the Soviet Ukraine, only it is more difficult to lay them bare. The slogan of an independent Ukraine advanced in time by the proletarian vanguard will lead to the unavoidable stratification of the petty bourgeoisie and render it easier for its lower tiers to ally themselves with the proletariat. Only thus is it possible to prepare the proletarian revolution.

How to Clear the Road

“If the workers carry, through a succesful revolution in Western Ukraine ...,” persists our author, “should our strategy, then he to demand that the Soviet Ukraine separate and join its western section? Just the opposite.” This assertion plumbs to the bottom the depth of “our strategy.” Again we hear the same melody: “If the workers carry through The sectarian is satisfied with logical deduction from a victorious revolution supposedly already, achieved. But for a revolutionist the nub of the question lies precisely in how to clear a road to the revolution, how to render an approach to revolution easier for the masses, how to draw the revolution closer, how, to assure its triumph. “If the workers carry through ...” a victorious revolution, everything will of course be fine. But just now there is no victorious revolution; instead there is victorious reaction.

To find the bridge from reaction to revolution—that is the task. This is the import, by the way, of our entire program of transitional demands (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International). Small wonder that the sectarians of all shadings fail to understand its meaning. They, operate by means of abstractions—an abstraction of imperialism and an abstraction of the socialist revolution. The question of the transition from real imperialism to real revolution; the question of how to mobilize the masses in the given historical situation for the conquest of power remains for these sterile wiseacres a book sealed with seven seals.

Superficial Reasoning

Piling one dire accusation indiscriminately on top of another, our critic declares that the slogan of an independent Ukraine serves the interests of the imperialists (!) and the Stalinists (!!) because it “completely negates the position of the defense of the Soviet Union.” It is impossible to understand just why, the “interests of the Stalinists” are dragged in. But let its confine ourselves to the question of the defense of the USSR. This defense could he menaced by an independent Ukraine only if the latter were hostile not only to the bureaucracy but also to the USSR. However, given such a premise (obviously false), how can a socialist demand that a hostile Ukraine be retained within the framework of the USSR? Or does the question involve only the period of the national revolution?

Yet our critic apparently recognized the inevitability of a political revolution against the Bonapartist bureaucracy. Meanwhile this revolution; like every revolution, will undoubtedly present a certain danger from the standpoint of defense. What to do? Had our critic really thought out the problem, he would have replied that such a danger is an inescapable historical risk which cannot be evaded, for under the rule of the Bonapartist bureaucracy the USSR is doomed. The very same reasoning equally and wholly applies to the revolutionary national uprising which represents nothing else but a single segment of the political revolution.

Independence and the Plan

It is noteworthy that the most serious argument against independence does not even enter the mind of our critic. The economy of the Soviet Ukraine enters integrally into this plan. The separation of the Ukraine threatens to break down the plan and to lower the productive forces. But this argument, too, is not decisive. An economic plan is not the holy of holies. If national sections within the federation, despite the unified plan, are pulling in opposite directions, it means that the plan does not satisfy them. A plan is the handiwork of men. It can be reconstructed in accordance with new boundaries. In so far as the plan is advantageous for the Ukraine she will herself desire and know how to reach the necessary economic agreement with the Soviet Union, just as she will be able to conclude the necessary military alliance.

Moreover, it is impermissible to forget that the plunder and arbitrary rule of the bureaucracy constitute an important integral part of the current economic plan, and exact a heavy toll from the Ukraine. The plan must he drastically revised first and foremost from this standpoint. The outlived ruling caste is systematically destroying the country’s economy, the army and its culture; it is annihilating the flower of the population and preparing the ground for a catastrophe. The heritage of the revolution can be saved only by an overturn. The bolder and more resolute is the policy of the proletarian vanguard on the national question among others, all the more successful will be the revolutionary overturn, all the lower its overhead expenses.

The Critic’s Ideal Variant

The slogan of an independent Ukraine does not signify that the Ukraine will remain forever isolated, but only this, that she will again determine for herself and of her own free will the question of her interrelations with other sections of the Soviet Union and her western neighbors. Let us take an ideal variant most favorable for our critic. The revolution occurs simultaneously in all parts of the Soviet Union. The bureaucratic octopus is strangled and swept aside. The Constituent Congress of the Soviets is on the order of the day.

The Ukraine expresses a desire to determine anew her relations with the USSR. Even our critic, let us hope, will be ready to extend her this right. But in order freely to determine her relations with other Soviet republics, in order to possess the right of saying yes or no, the Ukraine must return to herself complete freedom of action, at least for the duration of this Constituent period. There is no other name for this than state independence.

Now let us further suppose that the revolution simultaneously embraces also Poland. Rumania and Hungary. All sections of the Ukrainian people become free and enter into negotiations to join the Soviet Ukraine. At the same time they all express the desire to have their say on the question of the interrelations between a unified Ukraine and the Soviet Union, with Soviet Poland, etc. It is self-evident that to decide all these questions it will be necessary to convene the Constituent Congress of Unified Ukraine. But a “Constituent” Congress signifies nothing else but the Congress of an independent state which prepares anew to determine its own domestic regime as well as its international position.

The Road to Unity

There is every reason to assume that in the event of the triumph of the world revolution the tendencies toward unity will immediately acquire enormous force, and that all Soviet republics will find the suitable forms of ties and collaboration. This goal will be achieved only provided the old compulsory ties, and in consequence old boundaries, are completely destroyed; only provided each of the contracting parties is completely independent. To speed and facilitate this process, to make possible a genuine brotherhood of the peoples in the future, the advanced workers of Great Russia must even now understand the causes for Ukrainian separatism, as well as the latent power and historical lawfulness behind it, and they must without any reservation declare to the Ukrainian people that they are ready to support with all their might the slogan of an independent Soviet Ukraine in a joint struggle against the autocratic bureaucracy and against imperialism.

The petty-bourgeois Ukrainian nationalists consider correct the slogan of an independent Ukraine. But they object to the correlation of this slogan with the proletarian revolution. They want an independent democratic Ukraine and not a Soviet Ukraine. It is unnecessary to enter here into a detailed analysis of this question because it touches not Ukraine alone but rather the general evaluation of our epoch, which we have analyzed many times. We shall outline only the most important aspects.

Democracy is degenerating and perishing even in its metropolitan centers. Only the wealthiest colonial empires or especially privileged bourgeois countries are still able to maintain nowadays a regime of democracy, and even there it is obviously on the downgrade. There is not the slightest basis for hoping that the comparatively impoverished and backward Ukraine will be able to establish and maintain a regime of democracy. Indeed the very independence of the Ukraine would not be long-lived in an imperialist environment. The example of Czechoslovakia is eloquent enough. As long as the laws of imperialism prevail, the fate of small and intermediate nations will remain unstable and unreliable. Imperialism can be overthrown only by the proletarian revolution.

The main section of the Ukrainian nation is represented by present-day Soviet Ukraine. A powerful and purely Ukrainian proletariat has been created there by the development of industry. It is they who are destined to be the leaders of the Ukrainian people in all their future struggles. The Ukrainian proletariat wishes to free itself from the clutches of the bureaucracy. The slogan of a democratic Ukraine is historically belated. The only thing it is good for is perhaps to console bourgeois intellectuals. It will not unite the masses. And without the masses, the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine is impossible.

The Charge of Centrism

Our severe critic flings at us the term “centrism” at every opportunity. According to him, the entire article was written so as to expose the glaring example of our “centrism.” But he does not make even a single attempt to demonstrate wherein precisely consists the “centrism” of the slogan of an independent Soviet Ukraine. Assuredly, that is no easy task.

Centrism is the name applied to that policy which is opportunist in substance and which seeks to appear as revolutionary in form. Opportunism consists in a passive adaptation to the ruling class and its regime, to that which already exists, including, of course, the state boundaries. Centrism shares completely this fundamental trait of opportunism, but in adapting itself to the dissatisfied workers, centrism veils it by means of radical commentaries.

If we proceed from this scientific definition, it will appear that the position, of our hapless critic is in part and in whole centrist. He takes as a starting point the specific (accidental—from the standpoint of rational and revolutionary politics) boundaries which cut nations into segments, as if this were something immutable. The world revolution, which is for him not living reality but the incantation of a witch-doctor, must unequivocally accept these boundaries as its point of departure.

He is not at all concerned with the centrifugal nationalist tendencies which may flow either into the channels of reaction or the channel of revolution. They violate his lazy administrative blueprint constructed on the model of “first” and “then.” He shies away from the struggle for national independence against bureaucratic strangulation and takes refuge in speculations on the superiorities of socialist unity. In other words, his politics—if scholastic commentaries on other people’s politics may be called politics—bear the worst traits of centrism.

The sectarian is an opportunist who stands in fear of himself. In sectarianism, opportunism (centrism) remains unfolded in its initial stages, like a delicate bud. Presently the bud unfolds, one-third, one-half, and sometimes more. Then we have the peculiar combination of sectarianism and centrism (Vereecken); of sectarianism and low-grade opportunism (Sneevliet). But on occasion the bud shrivels away, without unfolding (Oehler). If I am not mistaken, Oehler is the editor of The Marxist.

July 30, 1939

---

Last updated on: 22.4.2007

Share:

Read More

Trotsky on Ukraine: lessons for today

By Frank Brenner

We are reposting Leon Trotsky's article from 1939, “Problem of the Ukraine”, from the Marxist Internet Archive, as a useful starting point in trying to make sense of the current crisis in Ukraine.

It is notable that very few of the groups claiming to be Trotskyist make any reference to this article, in particular to its central demand for a free, independent Soviet Ukraine. No doubt such groups would argue that the article was written 75 years ago, and a lot has changed. Marxism isn't a dogma, and not every word, even of someone of Trotsky's stature, is holy writ. Nonetheless, it is striking that groups which otherwise venerate Trotsky (sometimes with a degree of hero-worship he would have found appalling) make not a single reference to this article, let alone offer up an explanation as to why it may no longer be relevant.

And the more one learns about the Ukraine crisis, the more one is impressed by how the dead past has come back to life, how the supposedly out-of-date is very much up-to-date. Vampires like Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator who ran a fascist puppet state in Ukraine during the war that butchered thousands, have become undead, politically if not literally. Stalin, too, is much in vogue these days in the Kremlin. And ancient disputes – the Crimean Tatars – are suddenly front-page news. All sides in this crisis are embracing 'their' history fervently ... except, it would seem, the Marxist left.

Which is a serious problem because this crisis has unfolded with a speed and violence that make it hard to get one's political bearings. All the more reason to consider carefully Trotsky's article, especially as this is his fullest statement on the issue. In the parade of historical ghosts that is Ukraine today, he deserves a prominent place.

What follows are some observations on the current crisis and what I believe the fundamentals of a Marxist standpoint should be. I want to depart from the usual practice of tiny grouplets issuing statements awash in overheated rhetoric that pretend to have everything worked out, along with a heavy dose of denunciations for anyone who might disagree with them. The crisis in Ukraine is complicated and confusing, and probably the first principle to keep in mind is skepticism towards anyone who claims to have all the answers. I also don't have any special access to information about the facts on the ground apart from what's available to everyone on the net and in the mass media, so the best I can offer is a gleaning of what I feel are useful insights from a variety observers, not all of whom I necessarily agree with politically. Nonetheless I think such an approach can be helpful if it makes up in clarity what it lacks in rhetorical 'fervor'.

First point: Marxists should oppose the dismemberment of Ukraine. That means opposing any and all annexations, whether by Russia or by other 'players' like Poland and its imperialist partners in NATO. The dismemberment of Ukraine would be a disaster on the same order as that which befell Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This would be a calamity for the working class, and not just of the countries involved.

Trotsky argued strongly for the right of Ukraine to self-determination, and that right still has political significance. Ukraine was an oppressed nation under czarism and that oppression resumed under Stalinism, with genocidal results in the Thirties.

For Marxists, the right to self-determination is NOT an endorsement of Ukrainian nationalism. Rather it means one thing only: the right to separate, to establish an independent state. The distinction is crucial to the Marxist position on this issue, most clearly spelled out by Lenin: the right to self-determination is akin to the right to divorce (or to an abortion, an analogy Trotsky once drew): upholding that right doesn't mean you make a virtue of the thing itself. When you do make a virtue of Ukrainian nationalism, you can only end up in a reactionary dead-end. That's evident from the glaring contradictions in the Maidan movement, which I'll get to later.

But now I want to consider a possible objection to Trotsky's position. Since Ukraine already got its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it could be argued that the right to self-determination no longer applies. To which my reply would be that in the current crisis that independence is on the brink of collapse. So, translated into 21st century terms, self-determination in Ukraine means no annexations.

Why is this important? I think no annexations has to be a bedrock policy for Marxists on Ukraine BECAUSE WHAT IS AT STAKE IS THE UNITY OF THE UKRAINIAN WORKING CLASS. To support the carve-up of Ukraine into ethnic enclaves means giving up on any possibility of achieving class solidarity across national lines. Ukrainian-speaking workers and Russian-speaking workers would be under the thumb of reactionary nationalist forces on both sides of the ethnic divide. This is what happened in Yugoslavia, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. So, an indispensable pre-condition for fighting nationalist ideology is to oppose annexation; otherwise, it will be impossible to get a hearing for socialist policies that can unite workers in Ukraine.

The same considerations apply to linguistic rights of minorities, particularly Russian-speakers. When the interim government in Kiev took over after Yanukovych fled, one of its first actions (later withdrawn) was to outlaw Russian as an official language. In the reactionary logic of nationalism, the 'victory' of one linguistic group can only come at the expense of another. For Marxists, the crux is always the unity of the working class, and anything that gets in the way of that unity, that builds up resentments and creates fissures along linguistic or national lines, has to be opposed. Marxists should support full linguistic rights for Russian-speakers, including the right to educate their children and to work in their language. (Incidentally, Russian speakers in Ukraine are not Russians, they are Ukrainians who happen to speak Russian, just as Hispanics in Texas or California are not Mexicans but Americans. For its own reasons, the Russian government has deliberately blurred this distinction, and much of the radical left has followed suit.)

Second point: No crisis in Ukraine is ever just about Ukraine. Like the Balkans, like the Kurds, Ukraine is a conundrum that capitalism has never been able to resolve or get past. The current crisis has elements of Cold War redux, with a US-led NATO squaring off against the evil empire run from the Kremlin.

In that confrontation, one's first instinct as a revolutionary should be hostility towards one's 'own' government. The term American imperialism may seem outdated rhetoric, but only to those suffering from historical amnesia. A recent summary of US foreign policy since 1945 shows that “the US tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders” (1). Drone warfare, an Obama specialty, can be added to that list. All of which should make it plain, mass media hype notwithstanding, that the power elite in Washington, and its counterparts in London and Berlin, couldn't care less about the welfare of the people of Ukraine. Their real interest is a strategic one, long expressed by such gurus of Great Game politics as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, which is to encircle Russia with a network of hostile states occupied by NATO forces.

The crisis in Ukraine is a major opportunity to weaken Russia, to say nothing of the immense economic spoils Ukraine has to offer Western business. So there is no doubt that the CIA et al. are up to their usual sinister machinations. It's not that clear, however, to what extent they are fomenting events or, instead, reacting to them. Too often what passes itself off as Marxist analysis is just a reductive view of a crisis like Ukraine as a chess match between Obama and Putin. Imperialism is a reality but the elites aren't omnipotent. There are other 'players' in such a crisis, including a rather important one for Marxists – the masses.

The campaign to demonize Putin in the Western media has been pretty unrelenting, but as is all too often the case, the truth and the hype turn out to be opposites: think Iraq. The Western powers are the aggressors and Putin is reacting defensively, desperate to maintain what the Russian elites have always considered their 'sphere of influence'.

That being said, opposing Western imperialism doesn't mean giving a pass to Russian imperialism. The annexation of Crimea, the troop build-ups on the Russian-Ukrainian border, the appeals to Russian patriotism, are clearly aimed at building a Greater Russia, bound together by what Trotsky called Great Russian chauvinism. And another point of no small importance: for all the confusion of the Maidan movement, it still was a mass movement that toppled a regime, and how could the Kremlin not see that as a dangerous precedent? It's notable that as the Ukraine events have unfolded, the nascent opposition movement to Putin inside Russia has largely been silenced, drowned out by a torrent of Russian patriotism.

The events in Ukraine have also brought a more aggressive Polish capitalism on to the scene. Reportedly the Polish foreign minister Sikorski has been the leading voice inside NATO pushing for military intervention in Ukraine. The government of Premier Donald Tusk combines free market zealotry and Catholic social reaction, and now the country's political culture is awash in militarist rhetoric and anti-Russian nationalism. There is a long history to this conflict: Poland and Russia have fought over Ukraine for centuries. In the event Ukraine disintegrates, Poland would quickly seize its western territories, which were part of Poland before the Second World War. Even if this doesn't happen, the orientation of the Kiev political elite towards the EU and NATO would mean that a so-called independent capitalist Ukraine would really be an economic and political vassal of Poland and ultimately of an even bigger 'player' to the west, Germany. It would probably last about as long as a hunk of meat in a tank of sharks.

Third point: We need to pay careful attention to role of the masses in this crisis. Here the picture gets dense and tangled. Workers seem to have joined the Maidan occupation and protests against Yanukovych, and workers in the Donbas are now also part of the 'separatist' groups seizing city halls and police stations. In both cases they seem to play no independent role but instead function as recruits to the banners of contending nationalisms, and perhaps just as importantly, to the machinations of competing oligarchs. The role of the oligarchs is, it seems to me, a key to the real story behind the current crisis in Ukraine. In large areas of the country, they are virtually a law unto themselves, controlling not only finance and factories but armed gangs as well. But their activities go largely unreported, and so it becomes a guessing game to figure out to what extent spontaneous movements are truly spontaneous.

I can't claim any independent knowledge of the mass movements in Ukraine so what I'm going to do is summarize the most insightful comments I've found from others. The first such summary is from an article in the Workers International Journal by Balazs Nagy. Again a disclaimer: I don't agree with the political tendency Nagy belongs to or even everything in this particular article. (Apply the same disclaimer to the other sources that follow.) But this much I do agree with. Nagy argues that in the aftermath of such an epoch-changing event as the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would be nonsense to imagine that mass movements in the old Soviet bloc countries are going to be class conscious; instead they are going to be marked by “howling contradictions” in their political outlook, for the simple reason that you don't dispense with 75 years of crap that easily. Nagy gives a striking example of a miners' strike in Ukraine in 1993 that brought down the government of Leonid Kravchuk: besides typical union demands the workers “advanced the demand for a market economy against the bureaucracy's monstrous planning system. That was how they were duped and their movement exploited by bourgeois formations.” Another famous example is the Solidarność movement in Poland, and the way in which it got sucked in by the Catholic church. Nagy is right when he says that these examples of what he calls “this spectacular lack of any political clarity of vision” by the working class are “entirely due to the heritage of the Stalinist dictatorship.”(2)

I think what happened with the Maidan protests is best understood as another example of such howling contradictions, and if anything this time the outcome was even more extreme. The spark that set those protests off was the sudden refusal by Yanukovych to sign a trade pact with the EU, but along with that came a welling up of hatred of government corruption, the power of the oligarchs and grinding poverty. But very quickly this movement was co-opted by extreme right-wing and neo-Nazi forces (Svoboda, Right Sector). Leftists and unionists who tried to join the Maidan occupation were driven out violently. The fascists became 'heroes' in the eyes of many protesters, as the most militant opponents of the government. Given how much Stalinism did to discredit socialism in the eyes of the masses, it's not surprising that fascists came to fill the political vacuum in a mass movement without any clear idea of where it was going.

Now the fascists have important positions inside the interim government, the first time in postwar history that neo-Nazis are in power anywhere in Europe. There is also strong evidence that the fascists manipulated the protests by posing as government snipers who killed 19 people in late February. Up to then Yanukovych had been desperately trying to hold on, offering to share power with the protest leaders; the outrage over the shootings, which everyone blamed on the government, forced him out. In April, Right Sector thugs were responsible for the worst outrage of the crisis so far, killing 46 pro-Russian protesters in Odessa. A movement that doesn't know where it's going can be a very dangerous thing.

But it's wrong to see Maidan as nothing other than a movement FOR fascism. In a crisis like this it's wrong to overestimate the power of the enemy, while underestimating the power of the masses. Fascism is not yet triumphant in Ukraine, or even in Kiev: the government there is a reactionary amalgam of oligarchs, mainstream politicians and fascists, but it is also a highly unstable regime, and the fascists themselves are still far from being a mass movement. Denunciations of fascism are easy to make, but it's much harder to find a way to appeal to the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian masses. If there was nothing more to Maidan than fascism, then any prospect for uniting Ukrainian workers goes out the window. In my view, fascists are not the main danger, at least for now, in Ukraine. Much more important are the oligarchs. Focus fire on them and it becomes possible to counter nationalist hysteria (on both sides) with an appeal based on class. A Ukrainian oligarch is no less an exploiter and a thief than a Russian one.

Once you begin looking at Maidan from that perspective, some clarity emerges. Here is a quote from a manifesto by a group called the Left Opposition Collective, which provides an important context to the protests:

Euromaidan’s popularity has nothing to do with Ukrainians finding the question of free trade with the European Union so significant that it emboldened them to survive sleepless nights on the square. The country’s socioeconomic problems, which are much more acute than those of its neighbors to the East and West, gave the protest its meaning. The average salary in Ukraine is 2 to 2.5 times lower than in Russia and Belarus, and much lower than in the EU. The worldwide economic crisis affected the Ukrainian economy much more drastically than almost any other economy in Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals. Economic growth after the crisis nearly froze, and industry will most likely continue to decline in 2013. Furthermore, Ukraine’s economic system more or less exempts oligarchs from paying taxes. One can completely legally export tens of billions of dollars worth of minerals, metals, ammonia, wheat, and sunflowers, and report no profit. All earnings are stashed in offshore jurisdictions, where almost all of Ukraine’s functioning enterprises are formally located. Any profits earned by an enterprise inside the country can be legally and effortlessly transported to offshore locations by reframing them as a fictitious loan, for example. (3)

I should add that the manifesto comes with a program of socialist policies (nationalization of primary industries, workers' control) and policies aimed at the oligarchs (a luxury tax, prohibition of offshore transfers, separation of government and business) that seems to me in the spirit of what Trotsky thought a program should be – a bridge to socialist consciousness. Beyond that I know nothing about the group.

“Ukrainians, “ wrote Slavoj Žižek in a recent article, “ are far from blind about the reality of the EU. They are fully aware of its troubles and disparities: their message is simply that their own situation is much worse. Europe may have problems, but they are a rich man's problems.” (4) That seems to me about right when it comes to understanding what Maidan was about. And that ultimately can pit the masses against their homegrown fascists, who like the extreme right in other countries, are hostile to the EU and have nothing else to offer except nationalism, more misery and eventually war. Socialists, on the other hand, do have an alternative: a united socialist states of Europe. Which means that the issue of Europe can be a wedge into class consciousness, without giving in to illusions about the EU.

I read somewhere that as many as 16 statues of Lenin were torn down all over Ukraine. It's one of the sad ironies of these events that Lenin is identified with the hated oppression of Stalinism. But as Žižek rightly points out, “the golden era of Ukrainian national identity” was “the first decade of the Soviet Union, when Soviet policy in a Ukraine exhausted by war and famine was 'indigenization'. Ukrainian culture and language were revived, and rights to heath care, education and social security introduced.” Doubtless very few people in Ukraine know that history. The Kremlin, though, is well aware of it. “The Bolsheviks,” declared Putin in a recent speech, “for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large sections of the historical south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic make-up of the population, and today these areas form the south-east of Ukraine.” It seems that Lenin is very unpopular with nationalists on both sides of this divide. That's the kind of unpopularity Marxists should embrace. It's the same spirit that animates Trotsky's article.

Notes:

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger

[2] http://workersinternational.info/wp-content/uploads/WIRFI-Journal-May-2014.pdf

[3] http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/manifesto-left-opposition-in-ukraine/

[4] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n09/slavoj-zizek/barbarism-with-a-human-face

The quote from Putin at the end is from Žižek ‘s article.

Share:

Read More

Problem of the Ukraine

Note: We are reprinting below a seminal essay by Trotsky from the Marxist Internet Archives written on the eve of the Second World War on the problem of the Ukraine.   The issues Trotsky addresses have once again become relevant in 2014 as the crisis of the Ukraine demands a serious review of the national question. We will follow with a comment on the current situation in the Ukraine. 

*******************************************

Leon Trotsky

Problem of the Ukraine

(April 1939)

Written: April 22, 1939.

Originally published: Socialist Appeal, May 9, 1939.

Source: Arsenal of Marxism, Fourth International, Vol.10 No.10, November 1949, pp.317-319.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive 2009. This work is completely free to copy and distribute.

Trotsky’s article on the Ukraine first appeared in the Socialist Appeal on May 9, 1939. Like so many of the writings of the great Marxist master, his analysis in this article has withstood the test of the years and the turbulent events they encompassed. Today, more than a decade later the struggle of Yugoslavia against the oppressive Great Russian chauvinism of the Kremlin confirms what Trotsky wrote in 1939. The ruthless offensive against Tito is, in reality, only the latest and most dramatic expression of what Trotsky called the “outright strangulation of any kind of national development of the peoples of the USSR.” By an ironic quirk of history, the man who made his reputation as a Marxist expert on the national question, has “solved” the problem of the national minorities by methods no Czar would have dared to employ. During the war and since, Stalin has uprooted entire peoples from their ancestral homes and shipped them in cattle cars to the barren wastelands of Siberia. This was punishment for murmuring against the Kremlin whip and “security” against a possible revolt. As far as the Ukraine itself the concerned, here too Trotsky proved correct if not in detail then in the essence of the matter. Hitler’s first and easy victories in the war resulted not least of all from the dissatisfaction and hatred towards the Kremlin which Stalin’s policy had engendered in the Ukrainian people. Recent reports of “partisan bands” operating in the Ukraine and of groupings of anti-Stalinist Ukrainian refugees in exile indicate that the embers of the Ukrainian problem are still glowing and that Trotsky’s slogan – A united, free and independent workers’ and peasants’ Ukraine – has lost none of its timeliness. “Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved ... by decisions of the League of Nations ... The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.” The Yugoslav worker-communists would do well to ponder these lines. A second article by Trotsky replying to critics of his program for the Ukraine will appear in the December Fourth International.

* * *

The Ukrainian question, which many governments and many “socialists” and even “communists” have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history, has once again been placed on the order of the day and this time with redoubled force. The latest aggravation of the Ukrainian question is most intimately bound up with the degeneration of the Soviet Union and of the Comintern, the successes of fascism and the approach of the next imperialist war. Crucified by four states, the Ukraine now occupies in the fate of Europe the same position that was once occupied by Poland; with this difference – that world relations are now infinitely more tense and the tempos of development accelerated. The Ukrainian question is destined in the immediate future to play an enormous, role in the life of Europe. It was not for nothing that Hitler so noisily raised the question of creating a “Greater Ukraine,” and likewise it was not for nothing that he dropped this question with such stealthy haste.

A Question That Must Not Be Ignored

The Second International, expressing the interests of the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy of the imperialist states, completely ignored the Ukrainian question. Even its left wing did not pay the necessary attention to it. Suffice it to recall that Rosa Luxemburg, for all her brilliant intellect and genuinely revolutionary spirit, found it possible to declare that the Ukrainian question was the invention of a handful of intellectuals. This position left a deep imprint even upon the Polish Communist Party. The Ukrainian question was looked upon by the official leaders of the Polish section of the Comintern as an obstacle rather than a revolutionary problem. Hence the constant opportunist attempts to shy away from this question, to suppress it, to pass over it in silence, or to postpone it to an indefinite future.

The Bolshevik party, not without difficulty arid only gradually under the constant pressure of Lenin, was able to acquire a correct approach to the Ukrainian question. The right to self-determination, that is, to separation, was extended by Lenin equally to the Poles and to the Ukrainians. He did not recognize aristocratic nations. Every inclination to evade or postpone the problem of an oppressed nationality he regarded as a manifestation of Great Russian chauvinism.

After the conquest of power, a serious struggle took place in the party over the solving of the numerous national problems inherited from old Czarist Russia. In his capacity as People’s Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin invariably represented the most centralist and bureaucratic tendency. This evinced itself especially on the question of Georgia and on the question of the Ukraine. The correspondence dealing with these matters has remained unpublished to this day. We hope to publish a section of it – the very small section which is at our disposal. Every line of Lenin’s letters and proposals vibrates with an urge to accede as far as possible to those nationalities that have been oppressed in the past. In the proposals and declarations of Stalin, on the contrary, the tendency toward bureaucratic centralism was invariably pronounced. In order to guarantee “administrative needs,” i.e., the interests of the bureaucracy, the most legitimate claims of the oppressed nationalities were declared a manifestation of petty-bourgeois nationalism. All these symptoms could be observed as early as 1922-23. Since that time they have developed monstrously and have led to outright strangulation of any kind of independent national development of the peoples of the USSR.

The Bolshevik Conception of Soviet Ukraine

In the conception of the old Bolshevik party Soviet Ukraine was destined to become a powerful axis around which the other sections of the Ukrainian people would unite. It is indisputable that in the first period of its existence Soviet Ukraine exerted a mighty attractive force, in national respects as well, and aroused to struggle the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intelligentsia of Western Ukraine enslaved by Poland. But during the years of Thermidorian reaction, the position of Soviet Ukraine and together with it the posing of the Ukrainian question as a whole changed sharply. The more profound the hopes aroused, the keener was the disillusionment. The bureaucracy strangled and plundered the people within Great Russia, too. But in the Ukraine matters were further complicated by the massacre of national hopes. Nowhere did restrictions, purges, repressions and in general all forms of bureaucratic hooliganism assume such murderous sweep as they did in the Ukraine in the struggle against the powerful, deeply-rooted longings of the Ukrainian masses for greater freedom and independence. To the totalitarian bureaucracy, Soviet Ukraine became an administrative division of an economic unit and a military base of the USSR. To be sure, the Stalin bureaucracy erects statues to Shevchenko but only in order more thoroughly to crush the Ukrainian people under their weight and to force it to chant paeans in the language of Kobzar to the rapist clique in the Kremlin.

Toward the sections of the Ukraine now outside its frontiers, the Kremlin’s attitude today is the same as it is toward all oppressed nationalities, all colonies, and semi-colonies, i.e., small change in its international combinations with imperialist governments. At the recent 18th Congress of the “Communist Party,” Manuilsky, one of the most revolting renegades of Ukrainian communism, quite openly explained that not only the USSR but also the Comintern (the “gyp-joint,” according to Stalin’s formulation) refused to demand the emancipation of oppressed peoples whenever their oppressors are not the enemies of the ruling Moscow clique. India is nowadays being defended by Stalin, Dimitrov and Manuilsky against – Japan, but not against England. Western Ukraine they are ready to cede forever to Poland in exchange for a diplomatic agreement which appears profitable at the present time to the bureaucrats of the Kremlin. It is a far cry from the days when they went no further than episodic combinations in their politics.

Stalin, Hitler and the Ukraine

Not a trace remains of the former confidence and sympathy of the Western Ukrainian masses for the Kremlin. Since the latest murderous “purge” in the Ukraine no one in the West wants to become part of the Kremlin satrapy which continues to bear the name of Soviet Ukraine. The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence. Upon this tragic confusion Hitler bases his policy in the Ukrainian question. At one time we said: but for Stalin (i.e., but for the fatal policy of the Comintern in Germany) there would have been no Hitler. To this can now be added: but for the rape of Soviet Ukraine by the Stalinist bureaucracy there would be no Hitlerite Ukrainian policy.

We shall not pause here to analyze the motives that impelled Hitler to discard, for the time being at least, the slogan of a Greater Ukraine. These motives must be sought in the fraudulent combinations of German imperialism on the one hand and on the other in the fear of conjuring up an evil spirit whom it might be difficult to exorcize. Hitler gave Carpatho-Ukraine as a gift to the Hungarian butchers. This was done, if not with Moscow’s open approval then in any case with confidence that approval would be forthcoming. It is as if Hitler had said to Stalin: “If I were preparing to attack Soviet Ukraine tomorrow I should have kept Carpatho-Ukraine in my own hands.” In reply, Stalin at the 18th Party Congress openly came to Hitler’s defense against the slanders of the “Western Democracies.” Hitler intends to attack the Ukraine? Nothing of the sort! Fight with Hitler? Not the slightest reason for it. Stalin is obviously interpreting the handing over of Carpatho-Ukraine to Hungary as an act of peace.

For a Free, Independent Soviet Ukraine!

This means that sections of the Ukrainian people have become so much small change for the Kremlin in its international calculations. The Fourth International must clearly understand the enormous importance of the Ukrainian question in the fate not only of Southeastern and Eastern Europe but also of Europe as a whole. We are dealing with a people that has proved its viability, that is numerically equal to the population of France and occupies an exceptionally rich territory which, moreover, is of the highest strategical importance. The question of the fate of the Ukraine has been posed in its full scope. A clear and definite slogan is necessary that corresponds to the new situation. In my opinion there can be at the present time only one such slogan: A united, free and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine.

This program is in irreconcilable contradiction first of all with the interests of the three imperialist powers, Poland, Rumania, and Hungary. Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.

Soviet Constitution Admits Right of Self-Determination

But the independence of a United Ukraine would mean the separation of Soviet Ukraine from the USSR, the “friends” of the Kremlin will exclaim in chorus. What is so terrible about that? – we reply. The fervid worship of state boundaries is alien to us. We do not hold the position of a “united and indivisible” whole. After all, even the constitution of the USSR acknowledges the right of its component federated peoples to self-determination, that is, to separation. Thus, not even the incumbent Kremlin oligarchy dares to deny this principle. To be sure it remains only on paper. The slightest attempt to raise the question of an independent Ukraine openly would mean immediate execution on the charge of treason. But it is precisely this despicable equivocation, it is precisely this ruthless hounding of all free national thought that has led the toiling masses of the Ukraine, to an even greater degree than the masses of Great Russia, to look upon the rule of the Kremlin as monstrously oppressive. In the face of such an internal situation it is naturally impossible even to talk of Western Ukraine Voluntarily joining the USSR as it is at present constituted. Consequently, the unification of the Ukraine presupposes freeing the so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist boot. In this matter, too, the Bonapartist clique will reap what it has sown.

But wouldn’t this mean the military weakening of the USSR? – the “friends” of the Kremlin will howl in horror. We reply that the weakening of the USSR is caused by those ever-growing centrifugal tendencies generated by the Bonapartist dictatorship. In the event of war the hatred of the masses for the ruling clique can lead to the collapse of all the social conquests of October. The source of defeatist moods is in the Kremlin. An independent Soviet Ukraine, on the other hand, would become, if only by virtue of its own interests, a mighty southwestern bulwark of the USSR. The sooner the present Bonapartist caste is undermined, upset, crushed and swept away, the firmer the defense of the Soviet Republic will become and the more certain its socialist future.

Against Imperialism and Moscow Bonapartism

Naturally an independent workers’ and peasants’ Ukraine might subsequently join the Soviet Federation; but voluntarily, on conditions which it itself considers acceptable, which in turn presupposes a revolutionary regeneration of the USSR. The genuine emancipation of the Ukrainian people is inconceivable without a revolution or a series of revolutions in the West which must lead in the end to the creation of the Soviet United States of Europe. An independent Ukraine could and “undoubtedly will join this federation as an equal member. The proletarian revolution in Europe, in turn, would not leave one stone standing of the revolting structure of Stalinist Bonapartism. In that case the closest union of the Soviet United States of Europe and the regenerated USSR would be inevitable and would present infinite advantages for the European and Asiatic continents, including of course the Ukraine too. But here we are shifting to questions of second and third order. The question of first order is the revolutionary guarantee of I the unity and- independence of a workers’ and peasants’ Ukraine in the struggle against imperialist on the one hand, and against Moscow Bonapartism on the other.

The Ukraine is especially rich and experienced in false paths of struggle for national emancipation. Here everything has been tried: the petty-bourgeois Rada, and Skoropadski, and Petlura, and “alliance” with the Hohenzollerns and combinations with the Entente. After all these experiments, only political cadavers can continue to place hope in party one of the fractions of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie as the leader of the national struggle for emancipation. The Ukrainian proletariat alone is capable not only of solving the task – which is revolutionary in its very essence – but also of taking the initiative for its solution. The proletariat and only the proletariat can rally around itself the peasant masses and the genuinely revolutionary national intelligentsia.

At the beginning of the last imperialist war the Ukrainians, Melenevski (“Basok”) and Skoropis-Yeltukhovski, attempted to place the Ukrainian liberation movement under the wing of the Hohenzollern general, Ludendorff. They covered themselves in so doing with left phrases. With one kick the revolutionary Marxists booted these people out. That is how revolutionists must continue to behave in the future. The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece. These gentlemen, who especially love to warm their hands in the vicinity of the national question, must not be allowed within artillery range of the labor movement. Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic! Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist! No “People’s Fronts”! The complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!

For an International Discussion

This appears to me the correct policy in the Ukrainian question. I speak here personally and in my own name. The question must be opened up to international discussion. The foremost place in this discussion must belong to the Ukrainian revolutionary Marxists. We shall listen with the greatest attention to their voices. But they had better make haste. There is little time left for preparation!

April 22, 1939

---

Last updated on: 17 March 2009

Share:

Read More