LefteastVolodymyr Ishchenko is a research fellow at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Technical University of Dresden. His research focuses on protests and social movements, revolutions, right and left politics, nationalism, civil society. He has authored a number of articles and interviews on contemporary Ukrainian politics, the Maidan uprising and the following war in 2013-14 for various publications including The Guardian, New Left Review, and Jacobin. He is currently working on a collective monograph “The Maidan Uprising: Mobilization, Radicalization, and Revolution in Ukraine, 2013-14”. He used to be a member of various new left initiatives in Ukraine and a founding editor of left-wing intellectual publication Commons: Journal of Social Criticism.
Note from LeftEast editors. This is a reprint, the article originally appeared in Truthout on December 28, 2021. After weeks of media scare about a purported Russian military invasion of Ukraine, the conflict may get a chance to be solved in a negotiated way. The public conversation on the current escalation of the Russian-Western conflict […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This is a slightly edited version of an earlier published text in German: Ishchenko, V. (October 15, 2021). Die Ukraine im Teufelkreis der post-sowjetischen Hegemonie-Krise. Ukraine-Analysen, 256, 8-10. After the 30 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine may give a unique perspective on the post-Soviet condition in general […]
We share here notes by LeftEast contributing editor Volodymyr Ishchenko on Belarus from August 10th (Part 1) and 19th (Part 2), 2020. Part 1: SOME QUICK COMPARATIVE NOTES ON BELARUS (August 10, 2020) 1. Both Lukashenka and Tsikhanouskaia claim ~80% voters. The official results look suspicious as they are improbably stable. Lukashenka gets ~80% of […]
Dossier 1989 Thirty Years Later: Several profound contradictions have defined the dynamics of Ukrainian economy, politics and society since the collapse of the Soviet Union: the contradiction between transnational and local capital, those between factions of the local capital, Ukrainian national identity contradictions, geopolitical contradictions with Russia, the US, and EU, and contradictions between civil society, the active public, and Ukrainian society at large. I will first expose them, and then discuss how the Ukrainian new left has been failing to respond to these contradictions with a project for Ukraine’s alternative development.
This article was first published in Jacobin. In Sunday’s election Ukrainian voters dealt a decisive rebuttal to the post-Maidan establishment. Yet well-organized nationalist forces represent a time bomb under the new president-elect. American readers won’t be too surprised by a tale of an inexperienced candidate winning against the establishment’s pick. But in the case of […]
This article by Volodymyr Ishchenko, a member of LeftEast’s editorial collective, was originally published in The Guardian. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has united a polarised country by rejecting angry nationalism – but his politics offer no panacea. A politically inexperienced comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is in the lead after the first round of presidential elections in Ukraine – and […]
We are publishing this article in collaboration with Vox Ukraine. Recently the massive rallies of the far right parties, the powerful public presentation of the National Militia affiliated to Azov’s “National Corps” party, escalating attacks by extreme right groups against leftist, feminist, LGBT, human rights events brought Ukrainian radical nationalists back into the center of […]
Tariq Ali and LeftEast editorial board member Volodymyr Ishchenko discuss the manifold ongoing crisis in Ukraine, which may have fallen out of the news of late but has not lost its importance for the peoples of the region. This video originally aired on Telesur English. Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist studying social protests in Ukraine. He […]
On the anniversary of the fall of Ukrainian President Yanukovych, which marked the onset of the current conflict, Rob Ferguson and Tomas Tengely-Evans interview Volodymyr Ishchenko in Kiev. Originally published at Socialist Review. RF: Volodymyr, there is currently a crisis over the ceasefire in the east and the retreat from Debaltseve. What is your judgement […]
Source: DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE How significant was the participation of the far right in Maidan? Unfortunately, this question quickly falls victim to extreme politicization due to two phenomena: first, active propaganda aimed at discrediting Maidan by its opponents, including the Russian media, and second, by whitewashing attempts by Maidan’s (left-)liberal or moderate […]