Petro Poroshenko: the Chocolate King walks onto a sticky wicket

Marko Bojcun

A crowded polling station in Shevchenko District, Kyiv on 25 May

Why Poroshenko won in the first round

Petro Poroshenko emerged as the clear winner of the presidential elections in the first round. With 95% of the votes counted, Poroshenko had 54% of the vote, followed in the distance by Yuliya Tymoshenko with 13% and a string of other candidates.

The electorate decisively rejected the two far right candidates – Oleh Tiahnybok from Svoboda (1.2%) and Dmytro Yarosh from the Right Sector (0.7%). Three reasons were given by political commentators in the mass media and by activists I talked to in Kyiv: first, far fewer Ukrainians identify with them ideologically than their prominence in the winter Maidans had led some Western observers to claim; second, in Western Ukrainian towns where Svoboda did have significant support and so gained control of local governments they quickly alienated their electors by behaving in the same corrupt and authoritarian ways as the other parties. And third, people just do not want their national leaders associated with far right or fascist politics of any sort.

The prevailing view is that Poroshenko was elected in the first round mainly because of the urgent need felt by the Ukrainian public to stop the war in the east. This was the feeling right across the political spectrum. Even some people on the left said they were suspending their misgivings about voting for Poroshenko, an oligarch, “a capitalist pig”, because there is a foreign intervention underway that needs to be stopped. No-one wanted the presidential elections to be drawn out over two rounds. They wanted to empower a leader with a democratic mandate who appeared most able negotiate an end to the war with the separatist movement and its sponsors in Russia. People also wanted to show by their turnout that the great majority continue to support an independent and united Ukraine.

The elections were severely disrupted in Donetsk and Luhansk where only around 6% of the eligible electorate of some 3.5 million actually voted. Opinion polls conducted over the telephone indicated that at some 28% of voters in these two oblasts were prepared to go and vote if there was a polling station open nearby. The rest were either too frightened to try or were opposed to casting a vote in these elections. But the majority of polling stations remained closed because their election committees had been threatened by the militias, their ballot papers were burned and their electronic equipment seized.

Poroshenko’s priority

Poroshenko’s election in the first round places enormous pressure on him to respond quickly to the high expectations placed on his shoulders. As soon as exit polls suggested he would win, Poroshenko’s team announced he would go to Donetsk as soon as possible. And already at 2.15 am on 26 May Poroshenko told journalists in Kyiv that he was ready to meet Putin:

“We can’t talk about serious security in our region without Russia’s involvement. We will find the right format and for sure there’ll be meeting with Putin”.

He went on to say that he was ready to negotiate with Russia on a bilateral basis or within the framework of the Geneva Accords – that is to include the USA and the EU in the talks as well.

The separatist movement replied to these initial overtures by declaring martial law in Donetsk, occupying part of Donetsk airport in the morning of 26 May and demanding that Ukrainian government forces holding the perimeter of the airport withdraw. Their move was clearly aimed at preventing Poroshenko from getting into Donetsk.

Ukrainians remain soberly realistic about the gravity of the challenge they face and what one man can possibly do about it, regardless how high his state office. Nor has it been forgotten that the Maidan fought to return the country to a parliamentary republic and to strip the presidency of executive powers. Poroshenko can do nothing on his own and he is well aware of it. He has already said that early elections to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) must be called to renew its popular legitimacy and to create an effective governing majority. But he hasn’t said anything since the election about constitutional reforms that will restore a parliamentary republic or decentralise real power down to regional and local governments. The latter is a key demand both of Russia and the moderate, non-separatist forces seeking autonomy for the Donbas.

Donbas separatism: attempted revanche of the old regime

The separatist movement in the east has become more radical and intractable since it first appeared three months go. Let us recall that his movement is at its core a revanche of the Yanukovych regime, a regime of the Ukrainian oligarchs that also served Russian state and big business interests in Ukraine. When it became clear in February 2014 that this regime had lost all legitimacy and authority across western and central Ukraine the Party of Regions (PR) in the eastern oblasts revived its Russian nationalist wing there in a desperate bid to avoid total defeat.

After his election to the presidency in 2010 Viktor Yanukovych had silenced the PR’s nationalist wing by co-opting its leaders into the party’s patronage and power sharing networks in government. But upon his ejection from Kyiv Russian nationalism was needed to spur a whole set of initiatives – People’s Fronts, anti-Maidan rallies, self defense militias. Their declared common aim was to protect Russian speakers from Ukrainian “fascists and banderites”, but their real aim was to prevent the spread of the Maidan movement into the east and its possible transformation into an-anti-bourgeois movement that could threaten the oligarchs’ property and power in their eastern industrial heartland. The dying Yanukovych regime clung to this platform in the east and started to rock it so as to upend the interim Kyiv government that came to power after Yanukovych fled Kyiv into Donetsk on 21 February.

The Russian state encouraged and supported the revanche of the old regime because Moscow was losing the guarantor of its own interests in the person and regime of Yanukovych. And its own oligarchs’ biggest investments and markets (as well as their main competitors) lay in the steel, chemical and petroleum processing industries in the eastern oblasts.

Russian sponsorship

The Russian state gave the emerging separatist movement international diplomatic cover, strengthened its voice though Russian mass media internationally and in Ukraine itself. It launched a powerful campaign to discredit the Kyiv government as a “fascist junta” and to legitimise the separatists as defenders of Russian speakers from an allegedly impending ethnic cleansing by the Right Sector. This campaign of cynical and racist lies proved effective enough to alienate many people in the eastern oblasts from the Maidan movement that was beginning to take hold in their region. At the same time the Russian campaign enthralled the apologists of Stalinism in the west, who now see in Putin the resurrection of their Great Leader and in the Ukrainian people the old bogeyman of bestial fascism: the Cold War reincarnated.

Russian interest

But the separatist campaign is needed above all to serve Moscow’s interest to undermine the Kyiv government. Putin wants Kyiv to bow to Russian imperialist ambitions and Russian transnational capitalist ambitions. Those ambitions were served first when Russia seized the Crimean peninsula, of great military significance and with a maritime shelf full of shale gas. They now require maintaining a long term destabilising force inside Ukraine.

So Moscow has awakened its sleeping agents in Ukrainian state institutions. It has channelled money, arms and veterans of counterinsurgency campaigns in the Caucasus into the eastern oblasts to give backbone and leadership to the separatists. It has mobilised its armed forces onto the border with Ukraine so as to maintain corridors through it for ongoing transport and communications. The last reported major operation by Russian forces on the border was to open a corridor to let the insurgents remove five truckloads of corpses from the overflowing morgue in Slovyansk.  The unburied dead threatened an epidemic on the separatists’ stronghold. Apparently this transport of death failed to get over the border into Russia.

The separatist campaign has grown in three months and taken effective military control over many government buildings, police stations, state security buildings, weapons stores, transport arteries and communications facilities. It acquired an initial social base by recruiting to its ranks local lumpen elements, unemployed youth and criminal gangs who were given firearms and paid to man the block-posts on the roads.

However, this local source of recruits dried up. The separatists’ military commander, the Russian citizen Igor Girkin (nom de guerre “Strelkov”) recently complained publicly that local residents were coming to take arms from his stores, only to return home to use them to protect their own communities, rather than to serve in the separatists’ militias. He declared that his forces would start to recruit women. But locals have proved hard to recruit and the most recent reinforcements to the separatists’ fighting units are mercenaries coming over the border from Russia. A truckload of them was filmed in Donetsk on 25 May as they arrived to take part in a public rally in defiance of the presidential elections. When asked by reporters they freely admitted they were veterans of campaigns in Chechnya.

Ukrainian state’s fragility and the spread of instability

The Kyiv government has itself contributed to building public support for the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics by its poorly conducted and at times bungled Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), It has cost lives of innocent civilian bystanders and damaged people’s homes and farms. Russian mass media has additionally and falsely charged the ATO with responsibility for some deaths and damage it had nothing to do with at all, including the deaths of its own Ukrainian troops. All this has generated more hostility among the local population towards the Kyiv government.

The war fighting in general has intimidated and effectively silenced everyone without a gun. An estimated ten thousand people from the east have been internally displaced, seeking safety in other parts of the country. Once open opponents of the separatist campaign there have been forced to go underground or to leave the region altogether. There are at least one hundred left wing activists among them from Donetsk and Luhansk who are currently taking refuge in Kyiv. And there is an effort underway to help others to get safe passage out.

People are still camping on the Kyiv Maidan

The war in the east has generated enough anxiety and instability as to provoke the beginnings of a dangerous militarisation of Ukrainian society in other parts of the country. First, the Maidan in Kyiv remains in place as an encampment, with its inhabitants settled in for an indefinite period. The Maidan was meant to end after the presidential elections were over. Some people living there in tents plan to stay on, while otthers told me they will now strike camp and go to fight in the east.

Most of the members of the Kyiv Maidan’s self defense sotni (hundreds- 17 in all) have already gone into the Ukrainian armed forces and their sotni have been officially disbanded. But some have gone into various independent armed militia, who set up their own training camps and maintain their own check points on roads and near vital installations like dams. On the highway between Kyiv and Odessa there are numerous checkpoints where vehicles are routinely stopped and searched. These checkpoints are manned separately by the traffic police (DAI), or by special forces of the Interior Ministry or the State Security Service (spetsnazy), or by independent militias. The relationships between these forces is unclear and is never disclosed to the people being searched.

The independent militias are of different ideological persuasions ranging from outright support for the Kyiv government to outright rejection of it. Militias hostile to the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are being formed on their territories as well.  However, all such militia are united in the belief that the Kyiv government is losing control and becoming incapable of maintaining order. The belief justifies their assumption of local authority by force of arms.

Community self defense

One also hears reports about the beginnings of organised self defense of neighbourhoods, either by the communities themselves or by civilians patrolling together with the regular police. The low paid regular police traditionally get little respect from the public. They have long been regarded as petty bribe takers who break the law themselves. The upheavals of recent movements showed just how powerless they are to protect people from violence and intimidation. And so their authority has been diminished all the more.

However, some local communities are supporting the police in trying to maintain order. Some leftists in the West have dismissed the patrols in Mariupol and other eastern towns, which are composed of steelworkers and miners walking with the police, as merely an attempt by the employers to protect their own property from the separatists. This is quite untrue. The employers have supported such patrols, but that was after working class communities in Mariupol, Alchevsk and elsewhere initiated them on their own in defense of their neighbourhoods, well before their employers jumped in and agreed to support them.

With or without the employers’ agreement or co-operation, these communities urgently need to restore a peaceful and safe environment for people going to work in factories and fields, for children going to school, for those travelling the roads, making deliveries, and so on. And we in the West should find ways to support them because without the organised self defense of workers’ and farmers’ neighbourhoods there can be no collective political action by them either.

Ongoing economic decline

Then, of course, there is the deteriorating socio-economic situation in the country. Industrial wage earners and salaried employees have seen their real income drop between 30 and 50%. Wage arrears are mounting.  Industrial production has been disrupted. Exports, to which over half of the national economy is devoted, are not getting out of the country. Investment is at a standstill. There is a growing need for state social assistance, but the state is effectively bankrupt as it takes loans from the IMF just to cover the interest on outstanding debts.

Eventually such a process of economic disintegration will provoke a social explosion. Which way the pent up frustration and anger of the people is channelled will depend in great part on the political leadership and basic organisations available to the working classes. Those are not available, or only just appearing, which is one reason why there was no credible challenger to Petro Poroshenko coming from the left.

Still, a lot of people want to believe that Petro Poroshenko can turn the tide around. The record of his career, summarised below, suggests he could unite the Ukrainian oligarchs and take a common position from them into negotiations with Putin. But can Poroshenko unite the broad masses of Ukrainian citizens in the east and the west whose poverty and political marginality have up till now been the preconditions of the oligarchs’ wealth and power?

Petro Poroshenko, born 1965, is a billionaire involved in the food processing, automobile and bus production industries. He owns Ukraine’s Channel Five television station. The biggest market for the “Chocolate King’s” confectionary products is in Russia, where he also owns a processing plant.

Well educated in law and international relations, he went into politics and was elected to parliament in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2012. He became Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council in 2005, head of the National Bank of Ukraine in 2007, foreign affairs minister in 2009 and minister of economic development and trade in 2012.

A distinguishing feature of his political career has been Poroshenko’s frequent movement between political parties and coalitions, He started in the United Social Democratic Party, then established the Solidarity party at the end of the 1990s, passed briefly through the Party of Regions and ended up with Viktor Yushchenko in the Our Ukraine coalition in 2001. He stayed there through the 2004 Orange Revolution and its subsequent governments, but after Viktor Yanukovych became president he went to serve in Prime Minister Azarov’s government in 2012.

Behind the lines: Ukrainian leftists in the Donbas

“Don’t sell your homeland – its the only one you have. Away from Brussels! Away from Moscow!”

 

An interview with Mykola Tsikhno, co-ordinator of the National Communist Front. Taken by Chris Ford, 16 May 2014; translated by Marko Bojcun

Preface

Mykola Tsikhno explains in this interview why he and his comrades call themselves national communists. He also refers, but only in passing, to this tradition in the history of the Ukrainian Communist movement.

During the Revolution and Civil War of 1917-21 there emerged a political current simultaneously in three parties – the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers Party, the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries and the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine – that called for an independent Ukrainian republic of workers and peasants, with its own army and foreign policy and with an independent (of the Russian Bolsheviks) representation in the Third (Communist) International.

The adherents to this current based their demands on a shared analysis of national oppression as an integral part of class oppression, which led them to envisage the resolution of national oppression simultaneously with overcoming all the inequalities inherent in the division of labour under capitalism.

This political current found its ultimate expression in the Ukrainian Communist Party, which was the last surviving legal opposition party in the Soviet Union. Adherents to this current did not choose to call themselves “national communists”, but were rather labelled as such, as “deviationists” from the official line, by their critics in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Third International. Almost all their leading members perished in Stalin’s purges. 

The term national communism was revived again and applied by Stalin’s agents against the Yugoslav communists and other communists in Eastern Europe who took positions independent of Stalin in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

MB

 

Please explain the rise of the so-called “pro-Russian” movement in the Donbas?

Separatist sentiments in the region are in the first instance connected to the information space in which the people of Donbas are living. Historically, Donetsk people prefer to watch Russian television channels, rather than Ukrainian ones. As a result, they see mainly Russian news, political shows, analytical programmes and don’t come across alternate views or arguments.

Secondly, these sentiments are tied up with the Soviet historiographical inheritance and the chauvinism directed against Western Ukrainians. For Donetsk people the inhabitants of Halychyna (Galicia) are “traitors”, “agents of America and the EU” and “Russophobes”. According to my countrymen it was the “banderites” who seized power “by force of arms” who are now persecuting the Russian-speaking population.

To these prejudices we should add also the general poverty of the region whose working class lives by all of the laws of capitalism – that is to say poorly. Many people consider the reason for their poverty to be the “banderites”, who allegedly live off subsidies from the Donbas, rather than their exploitation by the factory owners and the bourgeois state.

Is there any possibility of Donbas workers supporting a political alternative to this pro-Russia movement?

This is the dream of all leftists. In fact not all workers support the separatists; some sections of workers are aware they will be without jobs in the event of separation from Ukraine. For example, the miners whose mines are completely state subsidised. The independent union of miners in the Donbas is agitating today against supporting pro-Russian forces. But that this moment it cannot count upon a mass following.

Do you consider that the separatist movement is a workers’ rebellion from below?

No. This movement was sponsored by the local oligarchs who lost their influence in February in the parliament. And it relies on the forces of Russian nationalists in the Donbas who began to organise meetings, checkpoints (block posts), to seize administration buildings and kidnap people. The separatists no longer hide the fact they are sponsored by the wealthiest person in Ukraine – Rinat Akhmetov. Of course, there are people who support them, but this movement wasn’t organised by ordinary people, but by the directors of state budgeted institutions, by businessmen, activists of far-right organisations and Russian special forces personnel.

“We fight for equality, justice and progress”

Should socialists in the West support the separatist, pro-Russia movements in Donbas?

If “socialists” support imperialism, chauvinism, interclass co-operation, military dictatorship and terrorism then we could understand their support for the separatists in Ukraine. But if socialists stand opposed to such things they should support us – those who come out against splitting the working class of Ukraine, those who want to continue to build a civil society in Ukraine, to continue to build the ideas of the Maidan in a socialist direction.

Has there been a growth of Great Russian chauvinism in Donbas?

Of course, chauvinist feelings have grown. People are being attacked on the streets for wearing Ukrainian symbols. It is dangerous now to speak in Ukrainian and it immediately provokes mistrust. Some people have begun to reject their nationality: there is a leaflet circulating on the Internet: “The Maidan killed the Ukrainian in me. Now I am a Russian”.

Chauvinism, by the way, is not directed solely against Ukrainians. The separatists also dislike Jews and Gypsies.

What is the current situation of the pro–Maidan movement in Donbas?

Almost everyone has gone underground. There are practically no pro-Ukrainian meetings in the Donbas; more often than not agitation materials are distributed on the streets, or Ukrainian graffiti is painted on walls. The more serious activists come to the Ukrainian army posts to bring them food and other necessities. A few people sign up for the unofficial brigades, for example the “Donbas Battalion” and lend direct support to the soldiers during their operations.

TheMaidan movement is portrayed by some as being fascist. Ist his true?

Unfortunately, but only partially – yes. The Maidan was made up of different political groups whose common aim was to drive out president Yanukovych. There were liberals there and socialists, anarchists, nationalists, national communists and fascists. But the main mass of people on the Maidan were not politically engaged, but simply wanted a better life for themselves. The fascists on the Maidan were a relatively small group of people, though quite outrageous and noticeable. There were times when they came into conflict with everyone, even the nationalists, not just the anarchists and socialists, which is why to call the Maidan a fascist phenomenon is stupid.

In contrast to the separatist movement the Maidan itself came out in support of a civil society and against the dictatorship of the Party of Regions and Yanukovych. To some extent activists understand that in Ukraine it is a matter of a dictatorship of the sponsors of this party rather than a dictatorship of the party itself. And that is why it was both possible and necessary to advance socialist ideas, which is what we and all the leftists were doing there.

On the other hand all of the oligarchs and most of the representatives of the state in Ukraine are not Ukrainians by origin and that is why the fascists on the Maidan had something to work upon.

However, people here often forget that fascism is not only the idea of national exclusivity. It is also statism, and friendship between classes, and imperialism. That is why this separatist movement, in contrast to the Maidan, is fascist in its roots 

What is the nature of the Maidan movement in Donbas, and who supports it?

The Maidan in the Donbas is practically no different from any other in Ukraine. Its back bone was made up of students, entrepreneurs and workers. Most of them were activists of the pro-Ukrainian parties and community organisations. The journalists actively supported them.

“The people create history”

Do you think the Ukrainian left should participate in the Maidan movement?

The left in Ukraine actively supported the Maidan when it was current. We have different kinds of problems today – separatism in eastern Ukraine, and so the left should be supporting antiterrorist movements. Of course, I don’t mean that the left should be supporting the government and president Turchynov, but the left should all the more quickly be spreading propaganda against Russian fascism.

When the struggle was underway on the Maidan, when we were chasing out Yanukovych the majority of the left supported the people. We, the National Communist Front ourselves took part initiating actions across eastern Ukraine; we took part in storming the Dnipropetrovsk oblast administration; we blockaded the Kharkiv adsministration. Hundreds of socialists, left anarchists and communists joined with us across all of Ukraine in these actions.

Many on the Western left consider the European Union and NATO has caused the crisis in Ukraine. What do you think?

Its true that the pro-European stand of the Maidan contributed to some extent to its antagonism with the Donbas. But there is a nuance here: that the Maidan stood for association with the EU only up to the events on Hrushevsky Street on 19 December (when the first massive battle using Molotov cocktails against the police took place). Up to that point the Maidan resembled a concert with lots of EU flags, dancing, free biscuits and the occasional pushing and shoving with the police. After Hrushevsky everything changed: everyone finally forgot about the EU and concentrated their attention on Yanukovych’s resignation, the disbandment of the Berkut special force and early elections

The Donbas, however, finds itself – as I’ve already said – in Russia’s information space, and that is why the Donbas did not know about all these changes taking place on the Maidan and carried on thinking that people were dying on the Maidan for European tolerance and a visa-free regime (as they were being told on Russian television).

It was precisely that which turned the Donbas away from the Maidan, which itself won nothing from its association with the EU.

What do you think of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine?

Its clear that relations are hostile. These two states will remain hostile to each other for so long as Putin and his followers remain in power in Russia. Little depends in this from the Ukrainian side, whether it be anti-Russian or pro-Russian, because Russia will always have territorial pretensions and hatred for any manifestations of independence. That’s how it was under pro-Russian president Kuchma when in 2003 there was the conflict over Tuzla Island. That’s how it was under the pro-Russian president Yanukovych when the price of gas was raised all the same and Ukrainian exports (milk products) to Russia were prohibited without any good reason. Russia will always be the enemy of Ukraine for so long as it is an empire.

As for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia there will be manifestations of chauvinism between us until we destroy our bourgeois states which stoke up inter-national conflicts.

Do you think there is still a Ukrainian national question; for example is Ukraine a neo-colony today?

Of course, the national question of any people becomes current and is raised during any national crisis. That’s what is happening in Ukraine today. Today, either Ukrainians will remain a sovereign nation or they will be divided once again between the imperialist powers. Our aim as leftists is to bring to the people the message that the unity of the proletarians with the “national bourgeoisie” is NOT the Ukrainian national idea, that building a strong police state with a “national dictatorship” is not in the interests of the nation. To convey to the masses that that the Ukrainian national idea is the establishment of a republic in which the society, and not the elite, governs the society, and for this to happen a social revolution is needed. This is an indivisible part of the national idea, together with national sovereignty.

What do you think should be the response of the Ukrainian left to the current ituation?

The leftists are duty bound to stand for the unity of the Ukrainian proletariat and to oppose manifestations of Russian fascism in the Donbas. That is the principled position of the National Communist Front.

Do you think that the working class in Ukraine can develop a class struggle against the Oligarchs and overcome the current divisions?

This is unlikely in the event of a civil war. Some Ukrainian oligarchs have been behaving quite untypically for representatives of their own class by sponsoring a movement against separatists and terrorists. Individual powerful capitalists are gaining popularity and earning affection from all over. Of course, we are trying to explain that they are doing this not out of patriotism but in an attempt to rescue their capital from the terrorists and thieves. But we have only the Internet, while they have newspapers and the television.

How should socialists and communists in the West respond to Ukraine, how can we support Ukrainian workers?

There are many ways. Assistance in training for street fighting, and with funds…. And the readiness of the left in Europe to rise up for socialism in their own countries.

What is the social base of your movement?

The social base of the National Communist Front is mainly university and high school students and young skilled workers who are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in Ukraine. Most of us have taken no part in any movements. However there are some former activists from nationalist parties who have voiced their dissatisfaction with the elitist, authoritarian and bourgeois views in the nationalist movement and have come over to us. Generally speaking, we are glad to see in our organisation all people who have thrown off their prejudices about national communism and are ready to work for the attainment of our aims.

Day of Remembrance of Mykola Skrypnyk, July 2013

What are your connections with state and non-state forces in Russia.

We don’t work and have never worked with any state institutions of Russia or of Ukraine. On the contrary, we seek like minded people, national communists in the milieu of community activists. Unfortunately, there are no national communist movements in Russia of the egalitarian and democratic kind which reject private ownership as well as state ownership and who are also not chauvinists. The unification of communist and nationalist ideas in Russia is limited largely to the national bolshevik movement, who bear no relationship to us and whom we classify as fascists.

However, we do have comrades in Russia. The closest to us ideologically and programmatically is the Socialist generation group, with whom we have established a joint co-ordination group, the National proletarian network, in the search for national communist organisations we can ally with.

In conclusion can you explain the position of your own organisation, why do you call yourself ‘National Communists’, as this is a term historians often use to describe the Ukrainian Marxist tradition?  

We are national communists because we are at one and the same time left nationalists and anti-authoritarian communists.

We are nationalists because the main value for us is the nation, because we are fighting for the national liberation of the peoples of the world from imperialism and globalisation.

We are communists because our social and political ideal is communism – the classless and stateless society of free people.

At the same time we oppose chauvinist and bourgeois pseudo-nationalist theories, and we don’t lean towards the Soviet practice of building a state capitalist empire under the flag of communist ideas.

We are convinced that only in a free communist society can we gain independence for the Ukrainian nation and for other nations. We believe that only in a sovereign Ukrainian republic will we be able to consolidate the gains of the Social Revolution.

Our ancestors were of the same conviction – the national communists of the 1920s, the “national deviationists” as they were also called. A tendency toward such views existed among all fighters for Ukraine’s independence and amongst all honest internationalists and communists. 

How is the Ukrainian Marxist tradition relevant today? Marxism is in itself relevant for so long as people are divided into oppressors and the oppressed. Ukrainian Marxism is distinguished by its currency in times of national crisis, enslavement and separation of Ukrainians by territorial or some other non-class attributes. That is why Marxism is very relevant today. We need only to pass this on to the working class.

The National Communist Front’s website is here: https://vk.com/nkfront

 

 

Socialists campaign for Kyiv City Council

As Ukrainians go to the polls on 25 May to elect a new president, the citizens of Kyiv will also be electing a new city council. The Left Opposition in the capital is fielding four candidates to the city council under the banner of the Assembly for Social Revolution. Formed on 12 April the Assembly has developed its programme through a series of public meetings with voters. It has also established an Internet based system of accountability of its candidates to their electors, based on the example of the Pirate Party of Germany.

We publish in translation two documents here: the joint campaign leaflet of the Assembly’s four candidates and the Assembly’s electoral programme.

Support the social activists in the Kyiv elections!

The Assembly for Social Revolution calls upon Kyivans to support its candidates in the elections to the Kyiv City Council which will take place on 25 May 2014. By taking part in these elections we want to show it is possible to engage in politics that is not under the control of business interests. In contrast to the candidates who simply promise a better life we know where to take the money from for real changes. Instead of the populists who are stoking up aggression in our society we stand for the removal of the causes: the unjust distribution of wealth. We will not betray because we are fighting for the things that everyone needs: education, medical care, decent transport and clean air.

OUR CANDIDATES

Pavlo Vezdenetsky (constituency no. 3, Holosiyivsky district), student, trade union organiser for Kyivpastrans/

Zakhar Popovych (constituency no. 36, Pechersky district), Candidate of economic Sciences, initiator of public scrutiny of the accounts of the Ministry of Education.

Mykola Vlasov (constituency no. 39, Polil district) artist.

Nina Potarska (constituency no. 51, Solomiansky district) director of the Centre for Social Labour Research, joint co-ordinator of the self defense Women’s Hundred in the name of Olya Kobylianska.

All the candidates of the Assembly are ready to vote only after the prior approval of their decisions by way of electronic voting (by the process of LiquidFeedback). This is made possible by the HARAZD system borrowed from the Pirate Party of Germany. The Assembly will not on principle work with the oligarchy, because its candidates are dependent on the citizens and not on their sponsors.

The key problems facing Kyiv are caused by the prioritisation of private interests over social benefits. We recognise that simply the victory of our candidates will not change the situation. For that to happen we need the widest possible support of the citizens from below.

Our programme “Instead of promises” includes three ideas: direct democracy, open accounting of public funds, and social justice.

We are convinced that any increase in wages is possible only after a complete disclosure of the relevant accounts and exhausting the all possibilities entailed in optimisation, automation and energy conservation. The main resource available for improving living standards is the return of communal property to the community, taking away the excess wealth of the oligarchs and rooting out corruption.

We call upon all independent candidates who oppose the oligarchy taking over the economy and the political process to work with us.

Stay tuned, spread the message, offer help, take action!

And vote if you believe in the possibility of change.

Instead of promises: Programme of the Assembly for Social Revolution

A near impossible objective stands before Kyiv city council: to improve the old machinery of government. We, the candidates for office from the Assembly for Social Revolution, demand a new system. Above all “social lustration” is needed – the representation of ordinary citizens instead of the parasitic business interests. The citizens should delegate authority to their government. Funds should be directed to common needs –education, health care and housing. We are in favour of limiting private egotism: more parks instead of supermarkets, accessible public transport instead of unsuitable private taxi buses. Communal property and institutions maintained by public funds will bring benefits to all if corruption is rooted out from them. We don’t make up promises, but say outright by what costs it is possible to improve our life.

The steps we have outlined below can save our society from further degradation and impoverishment. Together with the independent unions we are ready to defend your rights to jobs, which is especially important in this time of crisis. Only self-managed socialism – the participation of the people in their own governing and placing the economy under the control of the people – is capable of really improving the standard of living and laying the foundation for the development of each one of us.

1. Direct Democracy

Steps: Prior approval of resolutions of deputies via the Internet (LiquidFeedback system). Recall of district officials upon the basis of the signatures of 25% of the district’s residents.

Kyiv city council to initiate project resolutions put forward by 5% of Kyivans.

Participation of delegates from the community in the formation of the Kyiv city budget. The community council’s right to veto questionable purchases out of public funds.

Results: A halt to the cheap selling off of land and the sale of official positions. Parks will stop being destroyed by new commercial construction. The authorities will be answerable to and will co-operate with the community.

1. Open accounting

Steps: Daily publication in the Internet of the income and expenditures of enterprises and institutions. Automation of parking fees and payment for public transport. Open registration of communal property and real estate.

Results: We will know how public housing associations are spending money and what happens to the receipts from advertising on public transport, just in the same way as this is being done now in the Ministry of Education and Science. Compulsory-voluntary payments are halted and fares on public transport stop growing.

1. Social justice

Steps: A progressive scale of fees for land use instead of the current range of 3-12% of the estimated monetary value of the land (3% for small business – 12% for big business). Increase in the cost of parking in the centre of the capital and for expensive cars. An increase in property rates for the owners of luxury houses. A requirement that construction companies hand over every tenth residence they build to the social housing fund for release as rented accommodation.

Results: Fair taxation will allow everyone to receive new social services. It will become possible to create new jobs in the communal sector; develop sports facilities, establish new centres for children’s creative activity, build and repair housing.

Find news about the campaign here; rev.org.ua

Translated by Marko Bojcun from the originals here: http://gaslo.info/?p=5242and here: http://rev.org.ua/listivka/

British campaign launched to support Ukrainian workers

The Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity campaign was launched on 12 May at a meeting in the British parliament sponsored by John McDonnell, MP from the Labour Party. Participants in the meeting included members of several trade unions and representatives of the following organisations: Labour Representation Committee, Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Socialism 21, A World To Win, and Socialist Resistance (Fourth International).

The meeting discussed the increasingly tense situation in Ukraine. Participants noted that, while much attention has been focussed on the Anti-Terrorist Operation of the Kyiv Government and the the separatist movement in the eastern oblasts, the rapidly deteriorating socio-economic conditions of life for the vast majority of people right across the country is largely ignored in the international media. However, miners’ communities in Krasnodon, Kryviy Rih and Chervonohrad have recently drawn attention to the sharp fall in real wages and disintegrating communal services, which is generating much of the desperation and uncertainty on which extremist politics now thrives.

The British campaign is seeking to draw attention to these underlying conditions of the crisis and to build support for those in Ukraine who are trying to address them through collective action and self defense. The campaign will call for this support from the British labour movement, in the first instance from the miners’ unions who have historic links of mutual support with Ukrainian miners.

The campaign will organise solidarity actions and provide information to the international public in support of Ukrainian trade unionists and socialists who are campaigning for working class, democratic and national rights.

The first action of the solidarity campaign will be a picket on 23 May at 1630 in support of the Kryviy Rih miners at the London headquarters of the EVRAZ corporation, their employer. The picket will press upon EVRAZ to accept the demands of the miners for a doubling of their pay. It will also support the miners’ rights to self defense against violence and intimidation by extremists of all kinds.

If the miners’ demands are not met the solidarity campaign will call a mass demonstration against the annual general meeting of the shareholders of EVRAZ, which is planned for 12 June in London.

Efforts are underway to spread the campaign to the USA, where the EVRAZ Pueblo subsidiary, is operating. This company, with offices in Chicago, claims to be the biggest rail manufacturer in the USA.

Protests will also be organised at the Russian Embassy and the offices of the European Union to demand cancellation of the Ukrainian government’s debt and for an end to the austerity measures that are being implemented at the behest of the International Monetary Fund.

The Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity campaign is focussed on supporting the rights of labour and the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future free from interference by Russian or Western imperialist powers.

For further information contact the convenor of the campaign, Chris Ford: CPFord@aol.com

The EVRAZ company website is here: http://www.evraz.com/products/business/

Send messages of support to Yurii Samojlov Co-ordinator of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine in Kryviy Rih, Head of the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine in Kryviy Rih, by email: profikr@i.ua

 

 

Appeal of the Kryviy Rih Basin miners to the workers of Europe

Miners marching through Kryviy Rih on 11 May

11 May 2014

The attention of the world community is currently focussed on the confrontation between pro-government and anti-government forces in Ukraine. This confrontation is becoming all the more tenacious and bloody. All the more it is being turned into an interethnic confrontation that is stoking up a hysterical mutual hatred between workers of different nationalities.

What remains beyond people’s attention at this moment is the sharpening social and economic situation, and not only in the regions where the fighting is taking place. The rapid devaluation of the hryvnia (Ukrainian currency), the steep rise in prices of consumer goods, transport and basic services, as well as the cutbacks in production in many enterprises – all this has led to a sharp fall in workers’ real wages. By our estimates there has been a 30-50% fall in real wages.

The announcement by the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast (province) of an increase in pay for April of 20% was actually turned into an insulting handout to workers of 300-700 hryvnia (£25-58). Miners received only 15% of the actual rate, which often makes up less than half their actual income. As well, the money was paid out as “material support”, which means it will not be included in the calculation of their average monthly wage and therefore in the calculation of their annual leave.

As a result we have no option but to demand an immediate doubling of the real wage in the interests of preserving social peace in this country. We are deeply convinced that the main cause of the destabilised situation in the country is the greed of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who pay a beggar’s wage to workers, send all their profits off-shore and don’t pay taxes in Ukraine. In fact the oligarchs are almost completely exempt from taxes on their profits.

We turn to you with a call to support our struggle against the oligarchs, who have brought Ukraine into the current crisis and who continue to destabilise it further, threatening to provoke a fratricidal war in Ukraine which without any doubt will have catastrophic consequences for all of Europe. It is necessary to put pressure on the corporations of the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, many of whom have their shares placed on the London Stock Exchange.

There is a mounting labour dispute in the enterprises of EVRAZ plc, whose headquarters are in London. Today (11 May 2014) the miners marched through the streets of Kryvyy Rih to the administration of the EVRAZ Sukha Balka plc and showered its office with loose change as a sign of protest against the fictitious “wage increase” for April. The Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine calls upon the British public to picket the offices of EVRAZ plc and the offices of other Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs’ corporations in London and other cities in Europe. If we don’t force them to come round the chances of preserving peace in Ukraine will be elusive.

At the same time we are demanding that the authorities officially recognise the miners’ self defense and the arming of miners’ brigades. Organised workers and workers’ self defense are precisely that stabilising factor which can effectively prevent the escalation of violence in Ukraine. In those places where organised workers are controlling the situation mass actions never turn into mass killings. The workers defended the Maidan in kryviy Rih. The workers did not allow any violence when they took under their control the situation in the city of Krasnodon during the recent general strike there.

We call upon the workers of Britain for solidarity. In particular we will be grateful for any information and humanitarian support, but the biggest need we feel right now is for personal protective clothing for members of the self defense brigades (body armour and the like) and mobile radio communications equipment.

Long live international workers’ solidarity!

By preserving the peace in Ukraine we will preserve the peace of Europe!

 

Oleksandr Bondar, Head of the branch of the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine at the EVRAZ Sukha Balka plc

Yuri Samoilov, Co-ordinator of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine in Kryviy Rih, Head of the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine in Kryviy Rih.

Makiivka miners confront the separatists

Volodymyr Ariev on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/volodymyr.ariev/posts/689085251154334

translated by Marko Bojcun

“ I just spoke with my old friends in Makiivka (heart of the Donbas mining industry-MB). The separatists came to the mine to tear down the Ukrainian flag. The working people didn’t like that and they showed their guests the door. The guests got angry and threatened to throw explosives down the mine shaft. So there appeared at the shaft a self defense unit against the separatists. They say this incident is far from unique.

They are also saying that after the Ukrainian television channels were switched off they stopped watching tv because their nerves can’t take it. They believe less in the evil “banderites” than they do in martians. And they look upon the Russian little green men and their local hangers-on with ever greater anger.

Perhaps they will awaken?”

For an independent social movement! For a free Ukraine!

 

Left Opposition statement, published on 7 May 2014 here: http://gaslo.info/?p=5217

Translated from the Ukrainian by Marko Bojcun

The mass killing of people in Odessa on 2 May cannot be justified in any way. The socialist union Left Opposition is convinced that “Whoever the deceased people on both sides are, the force used against the majority of them clearly exceeded any needed exercise of it in self defence. It is necessary to undertake an all-sided investigation of these events and to personally expose the provocateurs and the killers, who more than likely appeared there from all sides of the confrontation”.

We are unable at the present time to name the people responsible for these murders, their organisations or groups. However, we can see the political consequences of the Odessa massacre and we cannot but see that left wing political organisations are among those that carry political responsibility for it.

Without a doubt the violence was directed and organised in the first instance by ultranationalist and chauvinist groups who quite consciously kill people and try to exploit the blood of the deceased to whip up bestial nationalist hysteria in society, which to their way of thinking should “mobilise the nation” against its “its enemies”. Really, that is perhaps the only way to achieve their dreamed-of nazi dictatorship, which can be established only through bloodletting and the intimidation of people. This will become possible only if in Ukraine Russians will see a Banderite murderer in every Ukrainian, while Ukrainians will see in every Russian a potential “saboteur from Russian Military Intelligence”. Unfortunately, we have come far too close to the boundary beyond which this can really happen.

However, there appeared in Odessa on 2 May on opposing sides of the barricades people, including activists of left wing organisations, who only a year ago were making part in common protests against restrictions on the freedom to assemble peacefully and against the introduction of an enslaving Labour Code. Activists of the “Borot’ba” (Struggle) union appeared on the side led by the right wing chauvinists of the “Odesa druzhina” (Odessa Guard). On the other side anarchists and anti-fascists took part in actions that were actually directed by their opponents, in particular the right wing football ultras. The latter group distinguished themselves by their particular brutality against opponents.

The left organisations were unable to put forward an independent, distinct working class programme. To say nothing of not being unable to take the lead of a mass movement, they did not distance themselves, nor even manage to retrain the masses of people from fratricidal violence under nationalist slogans. These leftists ended up in the snare of uncritical support for a relatively large movement which in recent times has almost completely departed from the socio-economic order of the day and changed it into a nationalist one. At that moment for the protesters in Odessa the ability or inability, in the last instance the right, of the Ukrainian state to exist unfortunately carries more weight than the labour rights of the Ukrainian working class of all nationalities. Instead of a strategy to remove the capitalist oligarchies from power in Ukraine and Russia there is a discussion under way as to whether the creation of a Ukrainian state was a “misunderstanding” or “a historical mistake”.

Its no surprise that by and large the workers of the big factories in Eastern and Central Ukraine are not taking part in mass protest actions. Anti-Maidan and pro-Maidan actions are on the whole poorly attended and in no way can they be compared to the one-hundred-thousand strong mobilisations of Kievans during the Euro-Maidan in January and February this year. Armed radicals remain a small group of adventurists even in Sloviansk, where they have seized power and clearly are holding on only by intimidating the local population who quite logically don’t want to become the victims of the Anti-Terrorist Operation of the Government.

It is very doubtful whether a majority of the residents of Sloviansk support the monarchist idea of resurrecting “the one and indivisible” (Russia –translator), which is openly proclaimed by the Russian officer Strelkov-Hirkin, “commander-in-chief” of the Donetsk People’s Republic. At the same time it is clear that neither do they want to see in Sloviansk the “little green men” of Strelkov nor any other soldiers. After all, they understand only too well that with the continuation of the Anti-Terrorist Operation fighting will start sooner or later in the inhabited homes of the town and they will be the first to suffer – the peaceful local inhabitants.

The workers of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk by and large are not taking part in the stand-off, but continue each day to drive through the checkpoints to work. The question of a general strike has not even been raised here. Local lumpen-criminal gangs and old people who dimwittedly pine with nostalgia for the USSR are the main supporters of the “Sloviansk junta”.

At the same time a mass organised workers movement is present without a doubt in Ukraine. It has appeared in Kryviy Rih when the miners’ self defence brigade prevented the escalation of violence in that city during the attempts by “titushky” (thugs hired by the authorities and employers – translator) to attack the local Maidan. The workers showed themselves also in Chervonohrad, Lviv oblast, where they intervened in the political process and then de-facto nationalised the local electricity power station, which belongs to Rinat Akhmetov, the oligarch.

The workers movement has shown itself even more powerfully in Krasnodon, Luhansk oblast. During a general strike here the miners took the city under their control. It is significant that they did not want to ally themselves with the Luhansk separatist “anti-Maidan” , nor did they declare support for the bourgeois oligarchic leaders of the Kyiv Maidan. They had their own Maidan, of the workers, armed with slogans for social justice and seriously intent on realising these slogans, unlike the Kyiv Maidan. The workers were demanding not only an increase in their wages, but also an end to outsourcing for supplementary workers in the mines. Thus it was not a narrowly economic strike, but a movement that raised the need for solidarity between workers of different skills, a movement sufficiently powerful to take the whole city under its control. And in doing that there was no violence, there were no casualties or victims! The city was taken not only without a single shot fired, but without anyone offering even half hearted resistance.

Understandably, a workers’ movement organised on a national scale is still very weak. Truly active, class conscious workers’ unions are concentrated in a few centres of the mining industry. However, it is also the case that only where the workers really intervene in a confrontation that it becomes possible to avoid mass casualties and to calm down chauvinistic hysteria.

Indeed, the emergence into the political arena of an independent, class workers’ movement remains perhaps the last chance for the survival of today’s Ukrainian state and the prevention of a civil war which is unfolding before our very eyes. If the scenarios of dismemberment of Ukraine come to pass we will not be able to avert an explosion of violence and massive casualties. Alongside that the confrontation will assume more and more an international and interethnic character, not at all a class one. When the war in Yugoslavia was only just beginning the ultra-right forces were also very weak and marginalised. They had no more support in society than Yarosh and Tiahnybok, with their microscopic ratings, have today. However, less than a year into the war Serb and Croat nazis started to dominate in the Yugoslav political arena and turned themselves into big mass organisations.

If the miners of Luhansk, Donetsk, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk regions cannot by their joint efforts stop this war we will all be dragged into its meat grinder. In that event a left movement in Ukraine will truly be destroyed for many years to come. It is doubtful whether it will survive in Russia either.

Workers of Krasnodon and Kryviy Rih urgently need your solidarity and support! The Krasnodon strike has not ended, but only been suspended during negotiations. In Kryvyj Rih the miners are also preparing to strike in the event their demands are not met.

No support to chauvinists regardless of the flags under which they stand!

For an independent and united workers’ Ukraine!

For an independent workers and social movement!

 

 

 

Did Putin blink?

The western press this morning is saying “Putin blinked”, that he has adopted “a softer tone” by describing the 25 May presidential elections as “a step in the right direction” and by asking the separatist insurgency in the east to postpone their referendum planned for 11 May so as to create the necessary conditions for a dialogue with the Kyiv government. To attribute Putin’s latest statements to hesitation or doubt would be wrong. Everything he said yesterday remains in line with his original strategy. What Putin wants now is to put the brakes on the military escalation of the crisis and to return to loosening the Kyiv government’s authority by other means: notably by getting the separatist insurgency recognised by Kyiv and by western states as a legitimate party to negotiations on the constitutional make-up of Ukraine.

First, the forces behind the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk autonomy are incapable of organising a referendum, let alone winning one. They are a tiny, albeit armed, constituency who have as yet no proven mass support. They cannot get the local authorities in their region to co-operate with them voluntarily to organise the referendum. They don’t have the time to prepare up to date voters’ lists or to convene credible local committees to supervise them. Even if they could, opinion polls taken in the past month, as well as much other anecdotal evidence, point to a majority of the voters rejecting these initiatives aimed at splitting eastern oblasts away from Ukraine. Putin and his advisors can see that a referendum held on 11 May will be a farce and a falsification that no-one outside of Russia and the separatist camp itself will recognise.

Second, the May 2 tragedy in Odessa where 46 people lost their lives sends another kind of message: Odessa is not Donetsk. Nor is Zaporizhzhia or Kryviy Rih or Dnipropetrovsk nor, hopefully, Kharkiv. The separatist movement is not going to spread much beyond its present territory…unless…Unless it is spread by armed groups that can terrorise the population at large into silence, and unless it begins to assume the character of an inter-ethnic conflict. Now there are already signs of inter-ethnic conflict showing themselves, in the words and actions of both Russian and Ukrainian far right organisations, and in Odesa on 2 May. Perhaps this is what Dmitry Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Institute also means when he said that Putin’s most recent stance seems rational following days of mounting violence in south-east Ukraine. “Putin clearly understands the odds and the stakes…A Ukrainian civil war would spread across the border to Russia”. (Financial Times 8 May 2014). We all hope that no-one wants to go down the road of Yugoslavia.

Third, Putin has gotten the message from Germany, Russia’s most important economic partner, that the conflict in Ukraine must be addressed through peaceful negotiations, not destabilisation. Note the statement today from Markus Kerber, director-general of the Federation of German Industries.

“(The Federation) sees the crisis in Ukraine as a major threat to peace and stability in Europe. One can have different views on the legitimacy of the change in government in the country this year…but there is no doubt that the subsequent annexation of Crimea was a gross violation of international law. This is something that German industry cannot tolerate

…..German industry therefore supports our government’s efforts to induce Russia to comply and honour the Geneva agreement of 17 April…Sanctions cut into economic ties; inevitably they hurt both sides. Yet with a heavy heart, German businesses will support Ms Merkel if she decides that sanctions are the only way to make President Vladimir Putin comply with international law

….It is unacceptable to subvert a neighbouring country’s politics and use paramilitary forces to thwart Ukraine’s attempt to pursue a democratically chosen path. The conflict must be settled at the negotiating table”.

This statement is significant in that German industry has signalled for the first time to its government to pursue sanctions unilaterally against Russia. Until now German capitalists appeared deeply divided over sanctions against Russia. Joe Kaeser, head of Siemens, Germany’s biggest engineering firm, demonstratively travelled to a meeting with Putin on the very day US President Obama addressed the European Council.

Germany has also until now communicated unilaterally with Russia – Merkel and Putin speak the same two languages, the last time over the weekend – but agreed to sanctions only as a member of multilateral institutions like the G7 and the EU. German manufacturing, trade and investment are critical to the Russian economy, and such an escalation of intentions, at least, by the German side has not gone unnoticed by the momentarily softer spoken Putin.

Nor can he ignore the fact that the French government has stiffened its back as Societe Generale Bank takes a massive loss on its investments in Russia , or that the European Commission now insists it will not waive EU competition rules for Gazprom’s South Stream project, despite the bilateral agreements Russia has already secured with several EU member states. Even the sudden jump in the Russian stock market yesterday on news that Putin appeared more conciliatory over Ukraine testifies more to Russian big business’ anxiety than to their confidence about their president’s course.

Putin’s conduct in the Ukrainian crisis is by no means governed mainly by economic calculation. It is, however, part of the overall planning and timing of grand strategy moves. Equally important is Putin’s calculation of the balance of forces both within Ukraine and internationally, as well as the choice of an optimal tool to alter it in his favour. Putin has just changed tools. Russia’s big goal under him remains the same: to reclaim “Novorossiya” so as to return Russia to the court of great powers. In the pursuit of this goal Russian imperialism will impose whatever costs it takes on the Russian as well as the Ukrainian people.

Marko Bojcun

“I AM WHERE? I’M AT WAR “- THE EVENTS OF MAY 2 IN ODESSA

 

A socialist eye-witness in Odessa

Original in Russian published here: http://gaslo.info/?p=5211

 

Preface by the Left-Opposition site:

This is an update by an Odessa left activist of the clashes of May 2, 2014 between the supporters of the Maidan and pro-Russian forces , in particular, about the events of the Battle of Kulikovo and burning of the trade union house. The subjective impressions of the author are shaped to a large extent by his personal involvement in the events. The Editors of the site Left Opposition do not share all his assessments of the sides in the conflict, but consider it important to try to establish the chronology of events that led to the tragedy. It is obvious to us that the main guilty parties are the oligarchic power and chauvinism that exists on both sides.”

 Sergei , Odessa

A dignified, grey-haired grandpa in a brown jacket talks on the mobile. “Hi. You’re asking where I am? I’m at war.”

Cracked cobblestones, tiny streams of blood on the street, blood-soaked bandages scattered around. A young fellow, about 16 years of age, asks for some space on the bench to sit down. The guy’s head is bandaged, blood drips from underneath the cloth. That’s Odessa city centre for you. Second of May, 2014.

Zhanaozen: worker organisation and repression

I remember how the events in Zhanaozen in December 2011 left me in a state of shock. [Kazakhstan’s security services killed at least 16 and wounded 60 oil workers, on strike for better pay and conditions.] I couldn’t get my head around how they could –kill people on the streets just like that in the friggin’ 21st century! Not somewhere far away, but nearby … one of our neighbours from the deceased Soviet Union. But for whatever reason, somewhere deep inside my heart, I was certain that in Ukraine, a thing like this couldn’t happen. It’s Ukraine, what are you talking about! … On the night of February 18 to 19 [when the Maidan demonstrators in Kyiv clashed violently with the Berkut riot police], paralysed in front of the TV, when the Maidan was raging and bits of the Ukrainian anthem were bursting through the flames, I understood that this certainty was gone. Perished. One certainty, however, remained, however irrational and groundless it may have been – that in Odessa, a thing like that is surely impossible.

On the 2nd of May, it turned out to be very possible.

Who were the culprits in the Odessa tragedy? For me, the answer is clear – Russian fascists and the police.

Fascists, yes, fascists – and cut out your “But our grandfathers fought…” already. You can wrap yourselves up from head to toe in St George’s ribbons [a symbol of military prowess in Russia] – you are still fascists. Your deeds speak for themselves. The radicals from the pro-Russian camp marched to the city centre with one aim – to beat up, or maybe even to kill, people.

http://vk.com/druginaodessa?w=wall-65113914_160246

http://odessa-daily.com.ua/news/narodnye-druzhiny-v-odesse-fashisty-pod-maskoj-antifashizma-id62395.html

The whole city knew that the football fans of [the local team] Chernomorets and Metallist [of Kharkiv] were going to have a march for the unity of Ukraine before the game. Everyone also knew that activists from Odessa’s Maidan would be joining up with them. Already a few days before the planned event, the more radical part of the pro-Russian movement – the so-called “Odessa Squad” druzhina [ “militia”], which is composed of outright Russian Nazis, promised to break up the march. For example, here. (http://vk.com/druginaodessa), (More info about the Squad can be found here, http://odessa-daily.com.ua/news/narodnye-druzhiny-v-odesse-fashisty-pod-maskoj-antifashizma-id62395.html). Actually, calls to kill the “Maidan-freaks” popped up regularly on the webpages of the “Kulikovtsy” (that’s what people call the local separatist movement that has its tent camp on one of the city squares, Kulikovo field). On these sites, one could often spot criticism from the rank and file – puzzlingly, very often from young women – aimed at the leaders, along the lines of “enough sitting around twiddling our thumbs, let’s fight”. Well, they came. And fought a bit.

The “Odessa Squad” gathered at the memorial of the fallen militiamen at Aleksandrovskii Prospekt. There were about 300-400 of them, hardly any women (except for a few girls from the paramedics), not one single old man, just fighters, equipped accordingly, wearing helmets, many of them with bullet-proof vests. On some of their shields one could spot the logos of the Russian nationalist organisation “Dozor”, many were bearing corresponding symbols. Lined up alongside the motorway, they beat their bats against their shields and shouted out their slogans. Directly nearby – many cops, and a busload of Berkut [Ukrainian riot police], or whatever they’re called now.

At about the same time, a few blocks away, on Sobornaia square, the participants of the unity march began to gather. Two to three thousand people, with “ultras” making up not more than one-third of them. Just like at all events of the Odessa Maidan, there were many women, senior citizens, and people with kids. The allegedly horrible “Bendera” football fans from Kharkiv, the bugbear brought up by the “Odessa Squad”, mostly walked off to watch football and did not take part in the fighting. In the crowd, there were a few people sporting “Metallist” football shirts – such as a grey-haired man with an aristocratic posture, about 50 years of age, with wife and kids; or a few teenage girls. The only persons who were at least somehow armed were members of the Maidan Self-Defence.

One just needed to take a glimpse at these two camps to get the idea about who came for a peaceful demonstration and who was prepared for violent action. Another remarkable thing – the tent camp of the “Kulikovtsy” has already been there for a few months. Every week, there are pro-Russian marches. And not even once was there a reaction from the Maidan people that was more serious than raising their middle fingers towards the marchers. Of course, there are enough hotheads among the Maidan crowd, but there never was anything beyond idle talk. In fact, just one day before the massacre, the pro-Russian movement staged a May Day demonstration, marching down the central streets and shouting slogans like “Odessa is a Russian city” and “Hail Berkut” – and yet no one cared to touch them. Neither Maidan activists, nor football fans, nor the Right Sector [an alliance of Ukrainian fascist groups] (whose Odessa branch, to be frank, rather resembles tenth-graders on a school trip than grim radical fighters).

When the unity march reached Grecheskaia street, the “Odessa Squad” was already waiting there to welcome them. How a column of armed men could march up to the meeting spot of their opponents under the eyes of the cops is completely beyond me. After all, they [the police] knew all too well what sort of people they are and what they want. Although, if one considers that some of the policemen had the same red tape armbands as some of the combatants, it’s probably not that surprising after all. Stun grenades rained down on the activists. The sound of a gunshot can’t be mistaken for anything else. Just like gunshot wounds. Just like the bullet casing we found on Deribasovskaia street – knowledgeable people say it comes from a “Saiga”, the hunters’ version of an AK-47. I don’t know, they probably know what they’re talking about. There were also shots from the roof of the Afina shopping mall, where the combatants tried to have a stronghold. There’s enough film footage on the net. The Maidan guys tried to defend themselves as well as they could. My friend and his mates – simple blokes from Odessa, football fans, who had been frowning at the “ultras” with ill-disguised revulsion – came under fire. Only a few minutes later, they were giving the [pro-Russian] combatants a beating, shoulder to shoulder with the same “ultras”. Later on, when the Russian Nazis were driven up Grecheskaia square and besieged, I saw a few Asian-looking guys, Turks or Arabs, helping the Maidan people to build barricades. Girls prepared the much-famed Molotov cocktails on the spot, using beer bottles bought at the nearby shops. Typical Odessa grannies brought stones for the Maidan crowd. “I didn’t expect any leftists to show up”, I was told by a guy in a balaclava, with whom I was dragging a rubbish bin towards the barricades. “It’s awesome that we’re all here together, like on the Maidan”, he added.

It was hell in the city centre, while the cops behaved as if it was an ordinary, unremarkable day in May. You could already hear the gunshots, people started carrying the wounded out of the battleground, while the cops carelessly trudged to the sidelines of Soborna Square, in order to … line up and head in an unknown direction. “Where are you going? Who will protect us?” the Maidaners shouted at them. Some of the cops got it in the neck. When the [pro-Russian] gunmen shot an activist dead, the police tried to simply run away from the scene – here it is, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f5uLGRK0FI) enjoy. The [police] special ops unit formed a protective “tortoise shell” (300 Spartans!) and crowded under the wall while a real battle went on.

http://dumskaya.net/news/50-kadrov-poboische-pod-oga-fotoreportag-032760/

“Odessa is not Crimea, no way we will give up Odessa!”, shouted the activists. And they didn’t give it up. Apparently, the [pro-Russian] combatants did not expect them to strike back so decisively. A counterattack at the Kulikovo field was probably inevitable. Many activists did not go there for obvious reasons, but the most radical part of the Ukrainian unity march did.

Over there the second act of the tragedy started. On Grecheskaia street people were killed by bullets; on Kulikovo they suffocated in the smoke and were crushed, having jumped out of the windows. Viacheslav Markin, a member of regional council, had died in this way. The Odessans remember him mainly due to the events of 19 February: when the visiting combatants [then supporting the Yanukovich government], in the same black uniforms, beat up (http://dumskaya.net/news/50-kadrov-poboische-pod-oga-fotoreportag-032760/)

Maidan activists and journalists, Markin said it was self-defence of the city, and that the “Mai-downs” [an abusive term for Maidan activists] should “get more of it”.

No-one knows who set the House of Trade Unions on fire: the Molotov cocktails were flying from both sides. Pro-Russian information resources painted a picture of radical Maidan supporters beating those who tried to escape from the burning building. But they don’t mention other facts. For instance, that the Maidaners themselves – primarily, the Maidan Self-Defence – snatched the wounded away from their own [Ukrainian nationalist] radicals, and rendered them first aid. They also don’t mention that the same Maidan Self-Defence fighters made sure that the captive separatists were handed over to the police, not to the angry crowd. Nor do they tell about the gunshots coming from the burning House of Trade Unions. One of the local TV channels, First City Channel, had been broadcasting live from the streets for the whole day, almost without commenting on what was going on. From this broadcast the Odessites learned about the weapons stored in the House of Trade Unions. The website of the “Odessa squad” druzhinniki [i.e. militiamen] immediately responded with a hysterical post, with Caps Lock on and thousands of exclamation marks: “Do not watch the First City Channel, everything there is lies …”

An interesting point: the most radical part of the Odessa Anti-Maidan – the Nazi “Odessa squad” druzhinniki, Imperials, and the Cossacks – had left Kulikovo field on the day before and relocated outside the city, at the 411th troop memorial [a memorial park to Red Army defenders of Odessa during the second world war]. Their camp there was also broken up, but no one was hurt. It turned out like that because nobody barricaded themselves in and shot back, and the pro-Russian activists stationed there just quietly left.

Kulikovo field was a unique gathering of conservative forces of all kinds. “All the forces of the old world”, as the revolutionaries of the past would say, joined together there: Stalin admirers and fans of the Tsar-father, Russian Nazis and Ruritanian Cossacks, Orthodox fanatics and old women nostalgic for Brezhnev’s times – and opponents of justice for juveniles, gay marriage and flu vaccinations.

These were the forces of black reaction, from which ever angle you looked. I have grown past the age when you scream about revolution and sing about “drowning the people’s sorrows in blood”. I am a convinced humanist and pacifist. Any death is a tragedy for me – even of a political opponent, even of an enemy. But it infuriates me when this reactionary bunch howls about the people tortured in the House of Trade Unions. Why don’t you honestly tell us how you were going to beat and kill, how you attacked first, how you shot into the crowd from the rooftops? The death of your supporters on Kulikovo is entirely on your conscience. You did everything possible in order to end up that way. And this is another argument to show that you are fascists.

PS. At night, after the defeat of the Kulikovo field, a post appeared on the Odessa druzhinniki web page, ending with the phrase “Odessa is a Hero City, and heroes should live in it, not Kikes [Jews] or [torgashy] traffickers”. Before I had a chance to take a screen capture, in the morning, the word “Jews” was replaced by “traitors”. Yeah, tell us more about how your grandfathers fought in the second world war.

 PPS. From one of the official sites of the Odessa Anti-Maidan: “For me that pseudo image of a Ukrainian brother has disappeared, because it’s Russian people who live in Ukraine, and those who don’t consider themselves as such are scum, who must be finished off quickly, by death and death alone.”

PPPS. The Anti-Maidan groups are now putting up links to the Vkontakte pages [a Russian language site similar to facebook] of Maidan activists. Without checking whether they were even present on 2 May, they just pick on people who have put something pro-Maidan on their wall. They put up a link to the page of the wife of an activist of the liberal “Democratic Alliance” (“the bitch is one of the leaders”) – notwithstanding the fact that that organisation always did their best to calm down the hotheads in the Maidan crowd and decisively spoke out against any violence directed at political opponents.

 

Thanks to Olga P, Yulia P and GA for this translation.