Note from the editorial board of LeftEast: LeftEast is a common platform for social movements from across the region of Eastern Europe. With the goal towards promoting discussion among different sections of the Left we publish a variety of perspectives and analyses of current events. These publications represent the opinions of their authors, and not necessarily those of the editors.
—
ANTARSYA* addresses a message of solidarity to the Ukrainian people who are going through difficult times.
The government change brought about in a coup-d’état manner that came after a political conflict with hundreds killed and thousands wounded in Kiev, is the result of a relentless conflict between groups torn by the economic and political oligarchy that has been ransacking the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The root causes of the crisis and conflicts can be found in decades of poverty, along with the attack on social rights and democratic freedoms by the Yanukovych government.
At this juncture, we are witnessing a clash between, the nationalist armed militias with a fascist ideology and Nazi origins, on one hand, who are supported and equipped by the EU and the US and, on the other hand, the state repressive forces of Yanukovych’s authoritarian regime supported by Russia.
The people of Ukraine find themselves in straitjacket in two imperialisms; That of Russia wanting to preserve by any means its political and economic dominance in the region and that of the EU, with Germany and the U.S. in the leading role, which through the connection with the EU and NATO attempts the annexation of territories, states and economies in the chariot of the European and American capital respectively.
The first coup organized by the EU, spearheaded and led by the fascist extreme right and neo-Nazis forces the masks to drop and proves that the EU not only does not guarantee democracy in Europe, but spearheads its undermining.
The first indications from the new Ukrainian regime, as well as the EU/US position point to an attempt at chaining the country in the shackles NATO, IMF and EU-imposed Memoranda, along with attacking the democratic and social rights of the Ukrainian people. “Europeanization” and “reforms” will be nothing more than a new ransacking of Ukraine’s natural resources and wealth that will only benefit local oligarchs, and US and EU capital. This development makes possible the very explosion of civil war, and the division and dissolution of the country.
ANTARSYA denounces the reactionary manipulation to outlaw Ukraine’s Communist Party by the EU- and US-supported government. ANTARSYA stands alongside struggling forces, leftists, communists and anti-fascists, who, in difficult circumstances, are trying with toil and selflessness, to bring to the forefront of the battle taking place in the streets, the real problems of the Ukrainian people.
Hope lies in the struggle against fascism, against the civil war, imperialist intervention and capitalist ransacking.
—
* ANTARSYA (ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ) is an alliance of the anti-capitalist revolutionary left in Greece. It includes OKDE-Spartakos, Greek section of the Fourth Inrternational, and SEK, Socialist Workers’ Party, member of the International Socialist Tendency.
One reply on “Solidarity with the Ukrainian people Against imperialist interventions – Against the EU-IMF pillaging through Memoranda of Understanding”
A REQUEST THAT THE GREEK COMRADES CHECK THEIR FACTS BEFORE MAKING DECLARATIONS
Social economic matters were the fundamental issues surrounding both Ukrainian MAIDANs
But, in Ukraine, a de facto neo colonized country still dominated by Russia, the social question today remains, as it always has been. tied to the national question. The Greek comrades, who have known Turkish rule in the past, should not overlook this. Have none of them read Ivan Dzuiba INTERNATIONALISM OR RUSSIFICATION?
Yes Ukraine finds itself between two imperialisms, but to say the MAIDAN was a EU “organized” “coup” led by neo Nazi’s is simply absurd. Some leftists understand the Ukrainian national movement cannot be reduced to “fascism” – which in eastern European usage is normally but erroneously considered synonymous with Nazism. It is true that there are not very intelligent extremists associated with Ukraine’s right wing party Svoboda who stupidly refused trade union activists access to the Maidan stage and beat up activists. But its leader has condemned some of his underling’s actions and the party is unlike other EU right parties. It condemns Russian imperialism, supports the notion of an EU, and was rejected membership in the Alliance of European National Movements. Ukrainian accession to the EU, therefore, is unlikely to benefit the right in the EU. Svoboda may be more extreme than the French National Front or the Freedom Party of Austria, but it is less extreme than Hungary’s Jobbik, the NPD, Golden Dawn, Tricolour Flame, or the BNP. Even if certain members of Svoboda are in the current government, this government is transitional and it will hardly start building a Nazi state. To call conservatives “radical nationalists” or “extremists” is absurd. While the right-wing Right Sector does have a neo-Nazi fringe – the “White Hammer” and “Social-National Assembly”– the main group behind it is “Tryzub.” These people are neither neo-Nazi, racist nor anti-Semitic. Their ideology is also conservative.
It is true membership in the neo capitalist EU will bring hard times to the majority of the Ukrainian population, but, no democratic leftist can ignore that after 200 years of Russian rule the mass of Ukrainians and a majority of Russians and Russian-speakers, with the exception of the Crimea, regard the EU as the only alternative to the neo-soviet Russophile oligarchic order in which they live.
For better or worse, they desire integration into EU looking to Poland Slovakia and Hungary as models. Polls taken in early 2014 show that had presidential elections occurred then, no more than 15% would have voted for clearly neo soviet Russophile candidates. 12% supported full integration with Russia. In the most heavily colonized and Russified provinces where most of the population tune-in to Russian rather than Ukrainian media, 24 percent in Luhansk and Odessa, 33 percent in Donetsk, and 41 percent in Crimea, supported political union with Russia. http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&&;cat=reports&id=236&page=1 .
Transnational corporations through their various “trade agreements” destroy what Marxists term “bourgeois” freedoms in the countries where they were won, often by force of arms and bloodshed. But democratic leftists must not forget that Marx considered these the great achievements of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revolutions: freedom of the press, elected representative assemblies, constitutions, the rule of law, and strong legal trade unions. In Ukraine, democratic leftists must not forget, never had a successful bourgeois revolution and these freedoms were never enacted and enforced. These freedoms never existed in Stalin’s USSR and, after 1991, despite their formal adaptation in a written constitution, Ukraine’s 1% and their hired politicians ignored them whenever they pleased. Re-establishing closer ties with Putin’s Russia would only re-establish and reinforce the criminalized neo-feudal soviet-style order that Ukrainians rose agаіnst en masse in November 2013. For this reason, even in truncated form, today’s EU member countries remain as beacons of these freedoms and liberties to people living in a corrupt neo-feudal authoritarian post-soviet republic. From a neo-feudal perspective, the bourgeois order is progressive.
The average Ukrainian, even if such a person is aware of the neo-liberal corporatist destruction of the post-war order in Greece or Ireland or Portugal, sees the EU corporate neo-liberal capitalist order as one that still provides better conditions of life than the post-soviet Russian-style robber state-corporatist capitalist order they live under in Ukraine – as their protest has shown.
Yes Ukraine’s communist party should be outlawed. Any democratic anti Stalinist leftist who knows Ukrainian history should support such a move. If the Greek comrades had done their homework, they would have known that Communism in Ukraine was never tied to national liberation as it was in Greece, but was a foreign imposition that in no way represented the interests of the Ukrainian population. It may be compared to the early years of the Communist Party in Algeria which was made up primarily of French Settlers and opposed Algerian independence.
Since 199 the CPU moreover has been popularly known since 1991 as the Capitalist Party of Ukraine. THis was because of its close ties with and financing from politically pro-Russian oligarchs and the opulent life-style of its leaders with their chauffeured Mercedes and Maserati’s. With the exception of the years 1923-33, this CPU reflected only the interests of an overwhelming Russian state-capitalist bureaucracy and not the interests of the Ukrainian majority or even the working Russian minority.
Perhaps after reading Dzuiba and some Ukrainian history the Greek comrades will issue a more credible declaration.