By Nikita Volchenko, originally published on Vzglyad.ru, Oct 15, 2015, translation to English by New Cold War.org
The crisis in Ukraine regularly provides material for reflection. The country’s economy stumbles from one disaster to another. Recurrent mistakes in economic policy have led to the rapid de-industrialization of Ukraine, a logical result of the surge of radical nationalism.
At the same time, we see an interesting paradox. Crisis is rampant in industry and agriculture in Ukraine, creating higher unemployment. But this does not prompt visible growth of protest moods. The ‘official’ rate alone of unemployment in 2015 has hovered around ten per cent of the population. Forecasts say it will reach 12-14 per cent by the end of the year.
Back in the spring of this year, unemployment among Ukrainian youth was 25 per cent. And yet, silence. Not so long ago, during the Euromaidan movement in 2013-14, Ukrainian society responded to any limitation of their rights, including economic ones, immediately and violently. As it was called that time, such rights were being violated by a “criminal power”, that of President Yanukovych and his everlasting oligarchs.
Now, when conditions for everyone are worsening all around and the new chief oligarch, Poroshenko, has enriched his income by seven times, the people of Ukraine, “descendants of free Cossacks”, are modestly silent, patiently cutting their spending or leaving for Russia to find work. Why is this?
The reason is due to the complex cocktail of liberal, leftist and nationalist currents which have formed in Ukraine. In the former USSR after 1991, a quite liberal type of economy emerged. The level of state regulation fell to zero and public properties passed into private hands.
Over the ensuing two decades, the picture has not changed fundamentally. Relatively free competition reigned in Ukraine. The country opened itself to the penetration of global corporations and at the same time tried to bring its own products to international markets.
The economic battles between the oligarchs who exploited the most profitable segments of post-Soviet industry regularly shook the country’s economy, but in general, they kept the economy functioning at an acceptable level. A dynamic equilibrium also existed in the relationship between the owners of enterprises and their employees. Ukrainian workers responded with mass strikes to reductions in incomes and workers’ rights during the 1990s.
In the traditionally industrial Ukraine, with powerful labor traditions of collectives in coal mining, metallurgical and machine-building productions , trade unions continued functioning actively. The left-wing movements in Ukraine also inherited from the Soviet Union the traditions of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, which was transformed into Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, and created new workers’ organisations, ranging from the officially loyalist Confederation of Trade Unions of Ukraine to the radical, anti-oligarchic, left-wing organization Borotba.
Also, left forces have been traditionally strong in Ukraine: the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), was consistently winning seats in parliament and was more or less representing the interests of the labor movement.
All this ‘liberty’ ended with the victory of the Euromaidan. Initially positioning itself as a general civil protest, the movement quickly turned into a performance benefitting radical nationalists. They became the striking force and the symbol of change.
During the events at Maidan, the left wing was unable to develop a consolidated response to what has happening. The KPU hesitated chaotically, trying to adopt the stance of an ostrich and declining to clearly oppose the radical nationalists, as did the communists of the 20th century. The non-organized left split, with part of it supporting Euromaidan in the hope of finding a niche through a temporary, ‘tactical alliance’ with extremists of the Right Sector.
The outcome was sad: the alliance between liberal oligarchs and the nationalist shock troops crushed the left movement in Ukraine. This is a common story—neoliberal capitalism attacks trade unions and other workers organizations that get in the way of the capitalists earning their enormous profits, doubly so in an economy in crisis.
The Ukrainian radical nationalists are positioning themselves as successors of the Nazis of the 20th century. They remember the outcome of 1945 and cannot tolerate the existence of a political left. The positions of the new authorities were revealed very clearly after Euromaidan’s success, when they opened a persecution of communists: from the official banning of the sluggishly resisting Communist Party to the murdering of left activists and MPs.
The situation with the Ukrainian trade union movement has developed somewhat differently. The leadership of major unions lent support to Euromaidan. Thus, the ‘Independent Trade Union of Miners of Donbas’ issued a statement of solidarity. The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine provided its premises to the protesters in Kyiv.
As a result, the trade union movement did not immediately suffer significant losses. But the joy was short-lived. Renewed battles among the oligarchs over a new redistribution of the Ukrainian economy and a swift break of existing production relations with enterprises in Russia, on orders from Washington, has led to the collapse of Ukrainian industry.
Trade union leaders then tried old-fashioned protests, but they suddenly found a new reality. Mikhail Volynets, the head of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Ukraine and of the ‘Independent Trade Union of Miners of Donbas’, who fought for Euromaidan and relentlessly condemned Russia and the Peoples Republic of Donetsk, to his own surprise has found himself being interrogated by the SBU on suspicion of separatism. Volynets declared a hunger strike against his treatment, but who cares now?
The miners of Volyn in western Ukraine who regularly supplied protesters to the “revolution” in Kyiv have tried to oppose the closing of their mines, which happened after their own Maidan “victory”. But the protesting miners were quickly served with 800 draft conscription notices, meaning a threat of being sent off to the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ zone in the east of the country.
The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine is trying to sound the alarm over the new labour code in Ukraine which it accuses of containing elements of slavery, but it is shouting into the void.
As a result, there is a paradoxical situation in the country. Against the background of large-scale de-industrialization and an unfolding crisis over labor rights, the situation is met by a deafening silence. The SBU and its vigilante volunteers are strictly monitoring social networks for signs of ‘sedition’. The media is silent whenever labor protest actions are undertaken.
Ultra-nationalists, who have joined the private armies of the oligarchs, are now fighting for control of property and are pressuring prominent activists. A classic example is the situation in the long-suffering ‘PA Yuzmash’, machine-building complex in Dnipropetrovsk. This now dying enterprise once employed 50,000 residents of the city. Now it operates one day per week, workers are forbidden to communicate with the media [as management hunts for mysterious enemies of the enterprise], and the leader of the independent trade union of the factory was beaten up.
The independent union leader’s idea of a “new, pro-worker Maidan” enjoying the support of Dnipropetrovsk Maidan activists is an example of a simple, proletarian naivete. Who will allow the losers to organise new protests on Maidan? They are rather doomed to lose their enterprise and be forgotten by the public due to their production ties with Russia, which are seen as criminal by the triumphant “nationalist capitalism” in Ukraine.
An illustration of the labour crisis is the activity in social networks of the thousands of employees of the dying Yuzhmash enterprise. It is reduced to nothing: isolated comments and a dead group of 23 individuals registered on the VKontakte social network. Compare that to the VK community of the Right Sector in Dnepropetrovsk–2500 people. It looks like a death sentence.[1]
Ukrainian leftists have forgotten the history of their German predecessors of the 1930s— who were smashed by the alliance of the German liberal bourgeoisie and the brown-shirted fighters of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany. Now they are learning this lesson from their own experience.
Russia itself (and our socialists) have much to ponder as well.
Nikita Volchenko is a researcher and PhD at Kuban State University in Russia.
Note by New Cold War.org:
[1] Also in Dnipropetrovsk, several leaders of the trade union of city transit system workers have been unjustly fired in recent months. A letter of appeal on their behalf is published here.
