by Volodymyr Ishchenko, The Guardian, 28.02.2014
Two popular labels are being ascribed to events in Ukraine: it was either a democratic – or even social – revolution, or it was a rightwing – or even neo-Nazi – coup. In fact, both characterisations are wrong. What we have have seen is a mass rebellion, overwhelmingly supported in western and central Ukraine without majority support in the eastern and southern regions, leading to a change of political elites. But there are no prospects for democratic, radical change, at least under the new government.
Why was it neither a social, nor democratic revolution? Some of the demands of the Maidan movement have been implemented. For example, the notorious Berkut regiment – the riot police who killed most of the dead protesters – was disbanded and the most odious of the former Yanukovych officials have been sacked.
However, this does not mean the start of systematic democratic change, or that the new government is in any way going to challenge the root of pervasive corruption in Ukraine: poverty and inequality. Moreover, it is likely only to aggravate these problems, putting the burden of the economic crisis on the shoulders of Ukraine’s poor, not on the rich Ukrainian oligarchs.
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2 replies on “Ukraine has not experienced a genuine revolution, merely a change of elites”
[…] A few of these examples of material on Left-East are an informative commentary by a Russian writer who visited Kiev in late 2013: Ukraine: Days of Decisions, Days of Struggle; and a column that appeared in The Guardian on Feb. 28: Ukraine has not experienced a genuine revolution, merely a change of elites. […]
[…] can criticize the Maidan movement as a whole—for the naïve Europhilia with which it started, for the now-fulfilled predictions that the forces it will end up bringing to power discredited politicia…, and for much else—but to hurl at it wholesale “fascist” labels, as a number of anti-Maidan […]