Euromaidan – 2013 Ukraine protests
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From looking at RT, and listening to the UK press, I think a partition of Ukraine is the desired outcome from both Russia (which would effectively get Crimea back through a puppet state which it might absorb at some point) and from Germany. The press seem very keen to talk up the geographical spread of the protests, particularly RT, which keeps hammering home that the protests are in the west of Ukraine.
i hope you are right about that there can be a successful peaceful resolution by re-dividing Ukraine, YMS. But as we saw in the division of Yugoslavia, it can be a bloody business.
I'm still inclined to believe that those throwing Molotov cocktails at the police in Kiev will be ultra-nationalist quasi-fascists from that part of the Ukraine which was annexed by Russia from Poland in 1940 and which had previously been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and which supplied Nazi Germany with concentration camp guards and non-German members of the Waffen SS. So, no sympathy for them. The last thing they wanted is political democracy. Mind you, the government side is just as bad. Some choice, fascism or stalinism.
An interview with an American author about Ukraine which i think is well worth watching as it gives the broad picture and not soundbites. A penetrating analysis. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37701.htm
This just seems to be the latest in populsit tit-for-tat political fights. thailand, ukrain, Egypt: both sides can bring out the streets and mobilise their votes (although in Egypt and Thailand there is a split between urban and rural that underlies the main action, Ukraine has an industrial/mining basis in the West, which helps explain some of the differences as well). Obviously, I'd prefer street protest (albeit with sporadic killings) to Syrian style civil war, and it does show how the elites are having to find popular support. The interesting thing seems to be an absence of a specifically working class voice.
A comrade from America recommends this interview as "by far the best" source for what's happening in the Ukraine. It's long but it brings out the importance of the cultural divide there (between Ukrainian-speakers and Russia speakers) as well as the prominence of far-right ideologists and thugs in the protests and the absence of any class-conscious working class involvement. His own article on the Ukraine (which brings out that it is also a conflict between rival oligarchs) will be in the March Socialist Standard:http://avtonomia.net/2014/02/20/maidan-contradictions-interview-ukrainian-revolutionary-syndicalist/There's another, shorter syndicalist statement here:http://www.aitrus.info/node/3540
It seems we are all quoting from the same source. In message #11 and #13 i recommend some links which may well be the same as #22 and certainly the same political organisation, the Autonomous Workers Union, which is organised in Kiev and Harkov with about 40-45 members, who aspire to be a IWW-type union although far off that goal. Perhaps we should try contacting this group directly as they are on the ground physically…unlike the other link KRAS who are a Russia based group of the Anarchist InternationalStrange how Obama and the EU pick and choose which government uses excessive force to suppress protests? I can just imagine the reaction of Fox TV if the Occupy Wall St started firing rifles at police when their camp was dismantled and abducted police and politicians and held them as hostage and the Russian foreign minister turned up to encourage the OWS protesters. Cant and hypocrisy.It seems to be a trend right now of oligarchs deciding control in the streets. Here in Thailand the Bangkok protests continue with the 'peaceful' protests includes chucking hand-grenades at the riot police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiAGXAKC7n4
The other interesting thing about that interview, apart from the acute observations of Denis the interviewee, are the questions posed by the interviewer desperately trying to find something worthwhile from the employment of a tactic he favours. But not finding it. Occupations and street demonstrations are normally associated with the tactics of the left, but events in Ukraine (and also as Alan as pointed out those in Thailand and Venezuela) show that this is a tactic that can be, and is, used by the right too. The same with "anti-parliamentarism". I can imagine the ultra-right agitators in the crowd arguing that the offer of elections is a trap designed to derail the movement.What is important about any tactic is not so much the tactic itself as the ideas of those using it. Let's not forget that the only successful political strike in Britain was the one organised by the Ulster Workers Council (yes, that's what they actually called themselves) against the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974.
This is a good analysis on Ukraine and the constitutional crisis it now faces. It too expects as YMS earlier suggested, the break up of Ukraine as a country. http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-crisis-eu-washington-plan-282/ As for ALB's comment on the Right, we have historic examples of Mussolini's successful March on Rome and Hitler's less than successful Munich Putsch, a replay of the Left's futile 1921 March Action
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/21/venezuela-beyond-the-protests/In regards to Venezuela, i think this list has been fairly guarded on commenting due to our well justified scepticism of Chavism and the so-called Bolivarian Revolution, and we have been suspicious of Madura's rhetoric of blaming the USA and his supporters on the left in the UK and elsewhere are also suspect at manipulating facts to present the Veneuelan government in a good light. But i think overall that the protests there too are being manipulated by vested powers and that just as the US was exposed in Ukraine of interfering, the role of it attempting regime change in Venezuela is overwhelming. Over the ten year period, from 2000-2010, US agencies, channeled more than $100 million dollars to opposition groups in Venezuela. Over one third of US funding, nearly $15 million annually by 2007, was directed towards youth and student groups, including training in the use of social networks to mobilize political activism. Student leaders were sent to the US for workshops and conferences on Internet activism and media networking. Obama included $5 million in the 2014 Foreign Operations Budget for opposition groups in Venezuela. And it appears that the recent outbreak of protests are in response to the fact that the December town council elections once more resulted in a pro- government majority, something that is not widely revealed in media reports. 242 out of 317 mayoralties were won by the PSUV. Out-voted in the presidential elections, out-voted in local elections, the Right took to the streets and a helpful world media is misrepresenting the protests. (A caveat being that indeed there is also pro-government probably officially sponsored vigilantes at work too. No one says that Madura is a saint) In Thailand it is indeed a battle of the oligarchs as well but Thaksin's faction introduced a free health service (and i can personally vouch for its benefits in the rural north east), extended free education (less impressed by that even if 7" tablets were distributed to most kids..,a misdirection of resources, btw) , provided guaranteed prices to the rice farmers and people voted for them – repeatedly, and in droves. So the opposition has chosen to declare the end of bourgeois democracy and that the people cannot any longer be trusted to vote the way they want them to. As you say ALB much the same as the left anti-parliamentarians…people aren't voting the way we want for revolution – lets do away with the vote…birds of a feather…same bed-fellows. Universal suffrage is too valuable to hand over to our class enemies to dispense with when and where they choose to. And to participate in the process is a worthy expression of our adherence to democratic principles…even if we never come close to winning. But we still protect the possibility of it.
I must confess to be being surprised at the turn of events. It seems that the government collapsed as a result of losing the support of the army. It remains to be seen whether the West will be able to benefit from the victory in Kiev of its side. There are already indications that part of the country won't accept the new regime. The map at the end of this article from RT (Russian government world TV) shows what these areas might be.It is also ominous that in other reports RT is referring to the people living there as "Russians" rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians as well as referring to the western part of the country as "Galicia" The EU could end up with only a land-locked poor region in its sphere of influence.The real tragedy of the events in the Ukraine is that the working class there, insofar as it has got involved, have agreed to line up behind one or other capitalist State that wants the area to be in its sphere of influence and/or with one or other group of local oligarchs.
Pub quiz question: What nationality was Trotsky? Was he a Ukrainian? He was born in the Kherson region (see map above) and, according to this, his father spoke surzhyk, a dialect between Ukrainian and Russian. He also wrote articles in 1939 justifying independence for the Ukraine.
Reply from a comrade not on this forum:Trotsky was of Jewish origin. His father is described as a "well-to-do farmer" (itself an anomaly, as Jews were legally prohibited from owning land, though in fact quite a few did). However, the family was not part of a Jewish community and therefore spoke not Yiddish but the same language as their Gentile neighbors, which in that area was surzhik. As an adult Trotsky mostly used Russian. Of course, he did not think of himself as Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish but as a revolutionary internationalist.
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