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life, how the supposedly out-of-date is very much up-to-date.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.
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:
The quote from Putin at the end is
from Žižek ‘s article.
