Economics and politics of an escalating war

 

The costs of the war are mounting

Over one thousand people have been killed, more than three thousand injured, almost a quarter of a million forced to leave their homes. The overwhelming majority of people killed, injured and displaced have been civilians playing no part in the fighting at all. There has been widespread destruction to infrastructure, enterprises, public utilities and homes. The productive economy – that which makes possible the reproduction of human society – is shrinking as a result of the simultaneous contraction of civilian industries and the expansion of the industries supplying the war. Arms and munitions are consumed only by way of their destruction.

The economic decline continues

Prime Minister Yatseniuk predicts that GDP will fall by 6% in 2014, inflation will go up by 19.5% and nominal wages will fall by 6.3%. The rate of unemployment according to the IMF will be between 10 and 15% by year end. These are conservative estimates, but they still represent a further serious decline from an already grave economic position for the great majority of Ukrainian workers, small farmers, students and pensioners. The hryvnia has already devalued by 47% against the US dollar since the start of 2014 ($1=12.2UAH). The combined impact of devaluation and inflation since the beginning of this year has cut the real income of workers by 50% and of middle class professionals by 30%.

Growth of a siege mentality

War inhibits protest against state policies: “All dissent is treason when the castle is under siege” (St Ignatius Loyola) So what will be the outlet for the inevitable social tensions and grievances generated by the economic crisis? Protest and political struggle or more war? Can there be both war and peace in Ukrainian society at the same time? Not for long. One will inevitably overwhelm the other. The “peaceful” area of Ukraine is increasingly on a war footing that will eventually make a democratic political process there unsustainable.

State budget

The revisions to the 2014 budget that were adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on 31 July were driven principally by the need to increase funding for the war effort. The main changes are as follows:

• to increase the budget for the Anti-Terrorist Operation by 18bn UAH, which represents an increase of 28% on the original 2014 defense budget of 63bn UAH. If large scale military operations go on beyond the summer, this requirement will double;

• to introduce a 1.5% war tax on all wages and salaries;

• to cut public services responsible for enforcing standards of environmental protection, quality of medicines, food quality and occupational health and safety,

• ministries will at their own discretion to lay off public sector workers without pay for up to two months in order to balance their budgets

• to decouple the rates of public sector pay, state pensions and student stipends from index linking to the rate of inflation,

• to freeze the minimum wage and official poverty line,

• to reduce workers’ protection against unfair or arbitrary dismissal under the Labour Code,

• to reduce availability of HIV-AIDS treatment,

• to cut support for the resettlement of deported Crimean Tatars.

• to suspend in time of martial law the law on tendering for state contracts to supply the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “other military formations”, law enforcement bodies and other institutions responsible for state security

• to increase the rents paid by businesses for oil, gas and iron ore extracted in Ukraine and destined for sale abroad.

These changes to the state budget were pushed through the Rada at the end of a week of high political drama. First, the parliamentary deputies refused to consider an original set of revisions put to them by Yatseniuk’s government on 24 July, declaring publicly they would not support an “anti-social” budget. Svoboda and UDAR leaders then announced they were quitting the parliamentary coalition with Bat’kivshchyna that was holding up Yatseniuk’s government. Yatseniuk duly resigned, and the country waited for the government to resign in turn, the parliament to be dissolved and new general elections to be called.

This course of events, however, was unacceptable to Poroshenko, because the country would be left without funding for the war while a caretaker government waited for new elections to parliament. Poroshenko persuaded Yatseniuk -or was he colluding with him all along?- to return to the parliament and try again. When a second, renegotiated version of the revisions was published and duly adopted by the Rada on 31 July it turned out the deputies had rejected the original version because it had been unacceptable to their oligarch sponsors, not because it was “anti-social”. Though softened a little at the edges the harsh anti-social character of the revisions to the budget remained in place.

The Rada had refused to consider these July 24 revisions because – according to Minister of Financs Oleksandr Shlapak – they would have increased the rents on the extraction of oil and gas in Ukraine that is then exported to levels that were unacceptable to big business. The biggest loser of all would be Ihor Kolomoisky, governor of Dnipropetrovsk. Kolomoisky runs Ukrnafta, the majority shareholder of which is the state. It is highly profitable, and would have remained so even with the increased rents that were tabled on 24 July. But Kolomoisky did not want to be the fall guy. To make his point he closed all the petrol stations he owns in Ukraine for “stock taking”.

The July 24 revisions did not increase the rent on extracted iron ore. Its rate had been increased just recently, in March. But iron ore is one of the main businesses of Renat Akhmetov, Kolomoisky’s rival. And Akhmetov is viewed widely as a renegade oligarch who hedged his bets and secretly backed the separatist movement. Unlike Kolomoisky, Akhmetov does not control “his” province of Donetsk any more.

So the 31 July version that was voted through increased the rent of iron ore once again – at a cost to Akhmetov, Kostiantyn Zhivago (of Ferrexpo infamy) and ArcelorMittal. It also reduced the planned increase on rents of extracted and exported Ukrainian gas and oil and alternative fuels as a further concession to Kolomoisky. And these changes are to be in effect only until the end of 2014, rather than indefinitely.

Thus the battle over the revised state budget sees the oligarchs vying to relinquish the least of their super profits to finance the war effort. The Left Opposition in Kyiv concludes that “the burden of the war is being put fully on the backs of the workers while big business is quietly accumulating its profits”. http://gaslo.info/?p=5344

Western support to Kyiv

Nor should it be forgotten that the Ukrainian state is on the verge of insolvency. Without the $6bn it is has received in loans and grants from foreign governments and their multilateral institutions, it could not hope to balance its budget in 2014 and to carry on the war in the east. Thus, the Western powers are in effect financing the Kyiv government’s prosecution of the war, in addition to the intelligence, advisors, food provisions, bulletproof vests and night vision equipment they are also providing.

The IMF is prohibited by its own charter from lending to a country at war. Conveniently for the Ukrainian government the Russian government is pretending that it is not making war in Eastern Ukraine. President Poroshenko has taken a cue from Putin by not declaring war on Russia either, even as he dons military fatigues and stresses that the Kyiv government is not engaged in a civil war.

Elections in October

The Verkhovna Rada rejected Yatseniuk’s resignation as it voted in the changes to the state budget. Now all the deputies can go to the electorate and say they have taken responsibility for financing the war effort and allowed the government to carry on discharging its functions. They will now prepare for general elections.

The present parliament is widely, if not universally, regarded as unrepresentative of post-Maidan society, inadequate to the tasks the country faces, and discredited by its deputies’ association with the old regime.

So the present parliamentary deputies will seek ways to crawl under the wire into the new parliament with the least number of casualties. The election period will be reduced from 60 to 45 days. This for several reasons: officially to save money; unofficially to have elections before the beginning of the heating season – when heating costs go up. Possibly also, Kyiv is anticipating major advances on the battlefield before election day.

There is also talk in Kyiv about parliament backtracking on Poroshenko’s election promise to hold the next general elections solely on the basis of proportional representation with open party lists. Doing away with single member constituencies as well as closed party lists reduces the opportunities for the rich buying a seat in parliament, either from local power brokers in the constituencies or from the party bosses/oligarchs.

Now the talk is about staying with the mixed system of one half proportional representation chosen from closed party lists and one half majoritarian election in single member constituencies. This was the system that gave the country the dirtiest, most corrupt election since independence and a parliament in 2012 that relinquished its powers to the presidency and made Yanukovych a near dictator. This system will help retain the status quo – as difficult as that might be. It might also prevent Oleh Liashko, the right wing populist allied to UNA-UNSO, from building a big fraction in the Rada.

There is no talk at all about lowering the 5% threshold for parties to enter the parliament on a proportional representation basis. This was another one of the democratic aspirations of the Maidan being left by the wayside.

The elections will most likely be announced on 24 August, Independence Day, and be held as soon as 12 October.

Elections will not touch the old regime

The old regime is still very much alive in the ministries, regulatory bodies, courts and tax authorities that make up the carcass of the Ukrainian state. Politician – public official – private businessman: this is the holy trinity that fears disruption by the current crisis. Elections could threaten its unity if there was a radical, progressive party – a genuine Workers Party – to contest them. But it has not yet appeared, while the forces of the far right both inside and outside parliament do offer the new/old Ukrainian regime a channel to divert the anger and frustration of the lower classes away from themselves. This is a real danger of the current situation.

Poroshenko escalates war

There is no doubt in my mind that both Poroshenko and Putin want to end the war. Each, however, has his own terms, and these terms are still too far apart for either side to stop fighting now. Many people voted for Poroshenko in May in the hope and expectation that he would enter into negotiations for a peace settlement. Indeed, Poroshenko and Putin both put forward their representatives and negotiations did begin – and are still ongoing even as the fighting escalates.

However, Poroshenko set about strengthening the Ukrainian armed forces in order to apply overwhelming convential military power over what was still in May a lightly armed guerrilla force of some five thousand men with few seasoned fighters to lead them. Military victories against them would decisively strengthen Kyiv’s position in any peace negotiations. That still seems to be the objective of the Ukrainian government as it uses heavy weapons on the ground and in the air, as it orders a second call up to relieve soldiers who have been in the field for four months, and as it expands the military budget.

Putin now builds an army, not an insurgency in Eastern Ukraine

Putin responded to Poroshenko in kind. He is no longer trying to stimulate an insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, which in Putin’s original plan was to give birth to an autonomous statelet beholden to Russia. Rather, he is trying to match and surpass Ukrainian heavy weapons with Russian ones and to build an army. Russia has lots of surplus heavy weapons mothballed since the end of the Soviet Union. So, Putin is building up the equipment of a conventional army –armoured personnel carriers, tanks, vehicle mounted missile batteries. For such equipment one needs trained soldiers and specialists, hierarchical command, co-ordination and command centres – an army, not a guerrilla force. Where will this army’s soldiers and officers come from? The DNR and LNR? Hardly. Either Putin has lost his bearings or he is planning to station an army under Russian command in Eastern Ukraine.

Putin is not about to back off. He is counting on being the last man standing. As long as he keeps the border open into eastern Ukraine Russia can supply the DNR and LNR forces indefinitely, and indeed build an armed force of considerable firepower. But if it wants to use this firepower to its full potential Putin will have to bring hundreds more, if not thousands of Russian servicemen over the border into Ukraine.

Negotiations, but on whose terms?

According to the Independent on 4 August Germany and Russia are in secret talks about political settlement. The proposals on the table include: the West recognising the annexation of Crimea by Russia; Russia withdrawing from eastern Ukraine; some autonomy for eastern Ukraine; $1bn payment to Ukraine by Russia for the final lease of Sevastopol port for its fleet; and gas supplies and gas transit prices to Ukraine guaranteed by Russia. Once again, the Russians and the Germans regard the transnationally mobile oligarchs as the keys to any deal between Ukraine and Russia:

“Central to the negotiations over any new gas deal with Gazprom is understood to be one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, the gas broker, Dmitry Firtash. Mr Firtash – who negotiated the first big gas deal between Ukraine and Russia between 2006 and 2009 – is now living in Vienna fighting extradition charges from the Americans. But he has close relations with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders – he supported Mr Poroschenko – and has been acting as a go-between behind the scenes at the highest levels.”

A Ukrainian government facing imminent general elections, insolvency, a deepening economic crisis, massive reconstruction costs in the east, and likely protests from various domestic quarters will have few options of its own: either to negotiate a peace with Russia that recognises the DNR and LNR as legitimate parties to further negotiations, or to carry on fighting them and the Russians.

However, Ukraine’s government can match Russia’s resources in the long run only with Western support, which will mean relinquishing more of its sovereign policy making power to Western governments and institutions. Which will in turn weaken its domestic and interstate authority.

An erosion of Ukrainian state capacity and authority may in turn force the western powers to become even more directly involved in the war in the east. And it will naturally increase the chances that the big powers – USA, Russia and Germany – will put together a “solution” of their own. Such a pessimistic scenario is brought to mind by the real forces and circumstances that have come together over the past three months.

Protecting lives, denazification, a general strike

We publish below the statement of the Left Opposition collective in Ukraine on the war in the east and the steps it believes are needed to bring it to a halt. Posted originally in Ukrainian by gaslo-info on 15 June 2014. Translated by Marko Bojcun

  It is necessary above all to protect the inhabitants of populated centres from the war. The next steps should be the removal of neo-Nazis from the warfare on both sides, for they are now the ones primarily responsible for inciting the war. Getting out of the social crisis generated by oligarchs’ omnipotence has the potential to overcome the root causes of this confrontation.

One can have different views on what happened on the Kyiv Maidan this winter and the evolution of this mass movement, as well as on people’s democratic right to national self-determination and autonomy. However, one cannot tolerate there being victims among the civilian population, nor can one not see that the utilization of heavy weaponry in densely populated regions of Donetsk and Luhansk brings new victims. Both sides of the conflict admit to the use of artillery and trench mortars. It does not matter to the dead whether bombing an apartment building was intentional or not, nor which side in the conflict is more often targeting housing districts.

It is imperative to cease fire before discussing any kind of political questions about the future constitutional order of Ukraine. We demand the immediate cessation of fire and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from populated areas. Negotiations about a ceasefire, the release of hostages (the populations of entire cities are now held hostage) and the creation of humanitarian corridors should be held now directly with commanders in the field. Such issues can be negotiated even with the worst terrorists, such as Strelkov, Abver and Bes, if they can indeed ensure the ceasefire. Meanwhile, we categorically oppose any political discussions with the terrorists. Issues concerning the future state organization and the formation of new representative government bodies can be discussed only with the representatives of local communities and not with the visiting militants.

De-escalation of the conflict is possible only when the supply of arms, presently falling in large numbers into the hands of uncontrolled semi-autonomous detachments, will be stopped, and new mercenaries from other countries and regions will be prevented from entering Ukraine. Such mercenaries do not respect the interests of the local population and are rather more interested in continuing the war “until final victory” than in seeking compromise and a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Therefore, we demand from the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine to ensure the effective protection of state borders and to prevent the infiltration of arms and any armed people onto the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Furthermore, it is necessary to bring to a halt the use of Ukraine as a playing card in the contest between the USA, EU and Russia as they strive to re-divide their zones of influence on the continent. The peaceful citizens of Ukraine are the ones who are paying the price for this. Therefore, alongside our condemnation of Russia’s actions we also demand the cessation of any involvement by the Western states in stoking up this conflict.

Responsibility for the infiltration of fighters onto the territory of Ukraine lies with Russia

Responsibility for halting the supply of modern weaponry and foreign mercenaries to the region lies in the first instance with the Russian Federation. At the same time the Government of Ukraine must bear the responsibility for preventing the entry of semi-partisan “volunteer battalions” of dubious status and authorisation into the zone where the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) is underway. The volunteer battalions “Ukrayina”, “Azov” and others often conduct provocative actions that serve only to foster the consolidation of the local population around the terrorists, who are then accepted paradoxically as their defenders. These battalions, like the Russian mercenaries, are politically motivated to carry on the war.

The main factor that complicates the political resolution of the crisis and undermines trust in state institutions in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts is the presence on both sides of the confrontation of ultra-right nationalists and even frankly open neonazis. In the ATO leadership, especially in the command and staff of the Ukrainian “volunteer battalions” there are members of the ultra-right nationalist and xenophobic Svoboda party (Sich battalion батальйон „Січ”) and the Right Sector. Often these are people with openly nazi views (we have learned that the “Radical Party of Oleh Liashko” has merged with the ill-reputed “Social-National Assembly”).

We demand the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), the President and the Government of Ukraine remove members of radical nationalist organisations from the operation of the ATO, that they remove them from the zone of the ATO, disarm and disband the units concerned and undertake a lustration of neonazis (denazification) in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the interior ministry organs and the Procuracy. Additionally, representatives of the Svoboda party should be removed from official positions in the Government of Ukraine.

We call upon the world community to demand that the governments of the USA and the EU member states cease supporting the Government of Ukraine until radical nationalists are removed from official positions in the Government and the Armed Forces, law enforcement bodies and the Procuracy.

 

At the same time we must point out the considerable number of Russian radical nationalists and frankly open Nazis in the leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). In particular we see in these self-proclaimed entities’ leading positions a lot of citizens of the Russian Federation who only recently were members of neo-nazi organisations that have since been banned there, such as “Russian National Unity”/ (Русское национальное единство) and others.

Neo-nazis from the Social-National Assembly are fighting on the side of Ukraine, and anti-Semites and imperialists are fighting on the side of Russia.

The following “insurgents’” websites are revealing:

http://iks2010.org/ Imperial Cossack Union (Имперский казачий союз)

http://antisionizm.info Anti-Zionism (Антисионизм)

Therefore, we call upon the residents of eastern Ukraine, the local councils in Luhansk and Donestsk oblasts, community organisations and trade unions to work by all acceptable means for the removal at least of Russian neonazis and radical nationalists from the leadership of the self defense detachments of the self-proclaimed DNR and LNR. It is necessary to declare non-confidence in the Russian neonazis who are at this moment attempting to declare themselves the representatives of the population of eastern Ukraine.

We also call upon the world community, in the first instance upon the citizens of the Russian Federation to put pressure on the Russian state authorities in order to compel the Russian Federation to acknowledge the presence of Russian neonazis in Eastern Ukraine and to cease giving them moral and material support.

We also call upon the Russian and Ukrainian mass media to stop whipping up nationalist hysteria and to turn people’s attention instead to the fascists on both sides of this confrontation.

We call upon the representatives of local communities of Eastern Ukraine and the Government of Ukraine to join in a public political dialogue, the first subject of which should be the transparent, democratic re-election of the local councils. The question of admitting observers from Ukrainian and international organisations should be decided. In our view community and trade union organisations should take on the responsibility for ensuring adherence to the terms of an agreement between the sides in the conflict in the Donbas. On the one hand they are independent of the oligarchs, and on the other they are clearly delineated from radical nationalist organisations, of both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian orientation.

It is no secret that the representatives of civil society and workers’ trade union organisations have until now taken practically no part in the events occurring in this industrial region. At the same time, where workers’ organisations have dared to take the situation under their own control they did not allow disorder or the escalation of violence. For example, the strike committee in Krasnodon, Luhansk oblast prevented any violence from taking place during the general strike there. The independent workers unions in Kryviy Rih have experience in forming their own self-defense detachments, which played an important role in preventing provocations and force being used during the protests on the Maidan of Kyviy Rih Basin. Workers’ organisations and the miners’ self defense detachments could become the most active force capable of restoring order in the Donbas.

Without a doubt Ukraine and its inhabitants are being used as small change in the geo-political contest between the imperialist powers for spheres of influence, resources and markets. However, the reasons for the emergence of the mass movements of the Maidan and the anti-Maidan, notwithstanding their very different characteristics, lie not so much in the influence of external forces or the forces of corruption inside the country as they do in the oligarchic socio-economic system, in the carefully built political and state institutions which over decades have been under the full control of the business oligarchy. It is the oligarchs, who pay practically no taxes in Ukraine and systematically plunder the country’s wealth and take it abroad, who brought the country to a social explosion. This explosion took place under nationalist slogans because of the lack of a sufficiently strong workers’ movement. At the same time the slogans of social justice were the key ones for the majority of participants in those mass actions on the Maidan and the anti-Maidan.

By agreeing to co-operate with the IMF the Government betrayed the social aspirations of the Maidan

Social peace will be impossible to achieve in Ukraine until the social crisis is resolved. This crisis has sharpened unbelievably in the wake of the hryvnia’s devaluation and the fall in production in most sectors of the economy triggered by the instability. The government and the oligarchs who stand behind it, instead of seeking ways to resolve the crisis, are using the military threat and the ATO as cover for their anti-social policies. Tenders for military orders which are taking place according to a simplified procedure – these are multi–million orders for private corporations and an opportunity for state officials to steal public funds. But the oligarchs are increasing their profits not just by enriching themselves through contracts to deliver military supplies. Most of the export-oriented firms of the mining and metallurgical complex have taken advantage of the devaluation of the hryvnia to improve their financial position. Profits have doubled in many enterprises. Which is not surprising considering that they pay the workers in hryvnia and sell their products for hard currency.

And alongside that, whilst knowing full well that they are already robbing the workers and provoking a social explosion the oligarchs can’t restrain themselves from grabbing even more. Despite the fact that Ihor Kolomoisky, governor of Dnipropetrovsk, officially acknowledged the need to increase workers’ pay by at least 20%, most enterprises are in no hurry to use some of their super profits to compensate for the workers’ losses in their real income. The situation is unfolding in Kryviy Rih in such a way that the oligarchs’ stubbornness may well provoke a general strike in this million-strong city. As the likelihood of mass strikes grows all the more, it becomes more difficult to say what kind of character they will assume. Will the miners dare to pose the question of resolving the situation in the country as a whole, and not just the either own pay and self defense?

A general strike demanding a doubling of wages will deal with the social crisis

A general strike could become a real lever to influence all sides in the conflict and ensure a swift halt to the war in deed, not just in words. The question is whether the workers can organise themselves effectively enough and to put forward relevant demands, that is general political demands. In such an eventuality an important factor will be the ability of the workers’ self defense to safeguard the strikers from the pressure of the state and the oligarchs. Indeed, one cannot exclude the possibility that attempts will be made to use “volunteer battalions” not against the separatists but against the independent workers movement in all oblasts.

We demand from Ukrainian, Russian and Western businessmen who control enterprises in Ukraine that they stop profiting from the crisis and immediately raise workers’ pay in their enterprises to a level that equals at least the real wage in 2007-08.

Cancellation of Ukraine’s debt to the IMF is also part of the solution: this crippling financial burden imposed by foreign creditors does not permit us to deal with our domestic problems.

Considering all this, we support the general direction of the statement adopted recently in Minsk http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/zimmerwald-2014-stop-the-war-in-ukraine/ . We understand very well and completely support the desire of left activists in Ukraine and neighbouring countries to express their class position and their internationalist anti-war position. The problem with this statement is that it is not so much the expression of an agreed position as it is the result of a rotten compromise. It is written in such a way as to hide the absence of an agreed position by using general and vague phrases which each of the signatories can interpret as they wish – often in direct contradiction to one another.

From this flows the second shortcoming of the statement: the eclectic and unrealistic nature of its stated demands. So, in the first point it calls for the withdrawal of Ukrainian armed forces from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and in the second it calls for the full disarmament of the armies of the DNR and LNR. It is not clear whether the local population actually supports handing over all the functions of government exclusively to some small bands that are under no-one’s control, to say nothing of the evident unreality of such a scenario.

Therefore, we call for the formation of a powerful anti-war movement whose concrete, general demand should be an immediate cease fire and a cessation in the use of heavy weapons. We hope this slogan can be and will be supported by the public at large in all oblasts of Ukraine as well as abroad.

London demonstration in support of Kryviy Rih miners

14 June 2014

A demonstration organised by the Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity Campaign took place today at the Chelsea Football Club stadium in London where EVRAZ, the corporation employing the Kryviy Rih miners was holding its shareholders’ annual general meeting. John McDonnell, Labour MP joined the demonstration.

The demonstrators picketed one of the main entrances to the stadium and distributed information leaflets to passersby. Cars passing down the road honked their horns in support of the action.

John McDonnell MP handed over the Kryviy Rih miners’ notice of dispute addressed to EVRAZ CEO Aleksandr Frolov

The demonstrators attempted to deliver a copy of the notice of dispute from the miners to Aleksandr Frolov, EVRAZ CEO who was attending the shareholders’ meeting, but security guards prevented them from approaching the stadium. However, they did accept the letter from the hands of John McDonnell MP to pass on to  Frolov.

The shareholders did not attempt to leave the Chelsea Football Club through the entrance picketed by the demonstrators.

The purpose the this action was to exert pressure on the EVRAZ employer to meet the Ukrainian miners’ demands for an increase in their pay which has been eroded by 30-50% by devaluation of the Ukrainian currency. The devaluation, the rapid increase in retail prices for basic necessities and the imminent hike in energy prices for households and communal services demanded by the IMF have all stoked up social tensions. Unless the employer meets the miners half way they are threatening to mount mass protests and call an all out strike.  

 

Copied below is a new appeal letter from the the miners of Kryviy Rih. The original can be found here on the Left-Opposition site:  http://gaslo.info/?p=5290

Despite the escalation of the socio-political situation in our country, the oligarchs still refuse to meet the workers half way. More than a month has passed since the branch of the independent trade union of miners at the Sukha Balka enterprise addressed the administration with a reasoned demand to increase workers` wages. Having based our arguments on official documents, we convincingly demonstrated to the administration that the enterprise is now receiving a surplus profit from export production as a result of a reduction in miners` real wages caused by the drastic devaluation of the hryvnia and an increase of retail prices. The enterprise has doubled its profits exactly in line with this reduction of real wages by 40-50 percent. In order for real wages to stay at the same level as we had last year it is necessary to increase the wage rates by at least 1.5-2 times. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise rapidly. We are already receiving bills for electricity with a 30 percent increase over the previous rate. The administration has no arguments to contradict these obvious facts.

 

However, while the dialogue concerning the wages increase has already began at some enterprises of the Kryviy Rih Iron Ore Basin, (for instance at the Kryviy Rih Iron-Ore Mining enterprise (KZhRK) where wage rates have been raised by 15-25 %), the administration of the Sukha BAlka enterprise does not even try to initiate any sort of contact with their workers. Indeed, enterprise officials have been evading negotiations from the very beginning. Our official appeals are constantly ignored. In his letter dated May 22, 2014, General Director of Evraz Sukha Balka, A. V. Davidov, informed us that a wage increase “could result in the increase of production costs and prices for the product,” having in fact ignored the key demand of our trade union. Therefore, the administration is not willing to give up getting a surplus profit which they are practically stealing from miners` pockets while they continue to stall.       

Resentment is growing among the miners. Over a thousand workers at the Frunze and Jubilee   mines personally signed up to their support our demands.  Miners feel strongly, and if there is no adequate increase in wages we will turn to mass protests, and possibly to an all-out strike.  Thus the responsibility for increasing social tensions rests entirely on the stubbornness and inappropriate behaviour of the administration who do not seem to realize their actions are pushing the miners towards radical solutions.

For the sake of preserving peace and social stability in Ukraine we urge all on whom it depends to ensure that the management at Evraz Sukha Balka immediately increase wages!  The independent trade unions and our miners’ self-defence have always been the guarantors of peace and security in our city and have prevented any violence! 

We really hope to avoid social unrest and violence today!

 

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

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.

What compromise are we prepared to make to save lives in the Donbas?

Zakhar Popovych, member of the Left Opposition, Kyiv

Published originally on the website Haslo: http://gaslo.info/?p=5298

Translation by Marko Bojcun

Only the lazy aren’t talking about the need to stop the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). The speediest possible halt to the armed conflict has even become even the official position of the Ukrainian authorities. The issue, however, is that some people see the halt to the ATO coming with the ultimate victory of the Ukrainian government’s army, which at this moment has a clear advantage in numbers and arms. In our view, such a “victory” is not possible right now without massive civilian casualties in the region. And even if it is achieved, it will lead to the growth of a completely justifiable hatred on the part of the local population not just towards the pro-government army but in general to the Ukrainian state itself.

A Ukrainian authority established by way of terror will not be strong and will never be accepted by the eastern Ukrainians as their own. But it is precisely down this path that extremists on both sides of the conflict are pushing us. In the end this particular path leads to the complete loss of faith in these regions in Ukrainian state institutions and the de facto disintegration of the contemporary Ukrainian state. This is precisely the scenario that anti-Ukrainian forces want to see; they want to prove above all the incapacity of the contemporary Ukrainian state and the inability of Ukrainians to exist as a political nation.

Armed confrontation taking place right now around Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and other cities of the Donbas bring civilian casualties every night. You will find no writing on each piece of shrapnel that has wounded or killed a civilian just who set that mine. However these mines are continually exploding very close to residential quarters; they systematically get them them inside occupied buildings, although of course in most cases they are not intended to hit peaceful residents. One can readily believe that ATO forces have on no occasions fired directly at residential buildings, however in a densely populated place in the Donbas it is impossible to avoid accidental casualties altogether. In the same way one could argue over whether the armed formations of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are directing their mortar fire at residential buildings or not. The fact remains that mines are getting into them, and most likely from both sides of the conflict.

Therefore the first demand that conscious Ukrainian citizens should make is an immediate ceasefire. An immediate cessation in the use of heavy weapons and air forces on both sides in populated centres. The first task to be agreed, if necessary with the devil, is to prevent casualties among the civilian population, people who have now become hostages of the terrorists. In this situation it is simply necessary to conduct negotiations even with those we consider to be the worst terrorists.

Such questions as a ceasefire and creating a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of civilians and the delivery of humanitarian aid can all be agreed with, among others, the real “field commanders” of the terrorists – Girkin-Strelkov, Abwehr, Bis, others. At the same time, the release of hostages and the conditions under which the terrorists will leave Ukraine are the only questions that ought to be negotiated with them. On the other hand, any questions concerning political decision making should be considered solely with representatives of the local communities and not with fighters who have come here from abroad.

It is necessary to hold discussions with the representatives of local communities about withdrawing the army from population centres and creating security buffer zones around Ukrainian military encampments. The question can also be raised about returning Ukrainian military units to their permanent bases, but there can be no question about removing all Ukrainian military forces from the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Units of the armed forces of Ukraine have been here ever since the armed forces were created, which happened right after we gained our independence. Service men and women with their families have lived here in garrisons and nearby settlements for decades. To demand that these people, most of whom have nothing at all to do with any nationalist organisations, be resettled is absolutely unacceptable.

Negotiations should be conducted in the context of organising open and democratic elections to local councils. In particular a decision will be needed to allow election observers from Ukrainian and international organisations. Its no secret that a significant portion (if not the majority of the urban population) does not trust the Ukrainian army. Naturally, people are frightened and find themselves under the influence of lying Russian propaganda. However, there are also objective reasons for such mistrust. There are many members of Ukrainian ultranationalist and even openly neo-nazi organisations in the ranks and leadership of newly formed Ukrainian military units. And unfortunately the Government has been relying all the more on such units, which are more inclined to decisive action, which still do not have a clear status or clearly defined authority. The actions of such semi-autonomous battalions are often provocative and tend to consolidate the local population around the terrorist groups, which are then regarded, paradoxically, as their “defenders”. Without a doubt an important step on the road to peace in this region would be the removal of these “volunteer” Ukrainian battalions from the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk, their disarmament and disbandment.

It is no secret either that organised workers have until now taken practically no part in the events taking place in this industrial region. At the same time, in places where workers’ organisations were bold enough to take the situation under their own control, as happened for example in Krasnodon, Luhansk oblast, the strike committee not only took control of the whole city, but also prevented any violence during its general strike. The independent unions of Kryviy Rih have experience in forming their own self defense brigades. They played an important role in preventing provocations and violence during their protests on the Maidan in the Kryviy Rih Basin.

We think that trade union representatives, which are independent of the oligarch-owners on the one hand and clearly distanced from radical nationalist organisations, both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian, on the other hand, can also become the guarantors of agreements made between the conflicting sides in the Donbas. Therefore we call upon the independent trade unions and strike committees to form their own self defense brigades and use all acceptable means to bring these sides to an immediate ceasefire. Possibly, workers’ delegations from Dnipropetrovsk could become effective mediators in normalising this situation, and be much more helpful in the ATO zone than the Azov and Dnipro (special volunteer) battalions.

 

 

 

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.

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!