The Crisis In Ukraine

Paul Craig Roberts

Mouksa Underground: We only wish the Ukrainians had heard their message before falling for the Western siren song.

In 2004 Hungary joined the EU, expecting streets of gold. Instead, four years later in 2008 Hungary became indebted to the IMF. The rock video by the Hungarian group, Mouksa Underground sums up the result in Hungary today of falling into the hands of the EU and IMF. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg8h526sB7w&feature=youtu.be The song is about the disappointing results of leaving socialism for capitalism, and in Hungary the results are certainly not encouraging. The title is “Disappointment with the System Change.” Here are the lyrics:

Over twenty some years now We’ve been waiting for the good life For the average citizen Instead of wealth we have poverty Unrestrained exploitation

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

No housing No food No work But that’s what was assured wouldn’t happen

Those on top Prey upon us The poor suffer everyday

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

(Repeat)

When will real change occur? When will there be a livable world The ultimate solution will arise When this economic system is forever abandoned

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

(Repeat)

There is no solution but revolution

Perhaps if the Kiev students had listened to the Hungarian rock group instead of to Washington’s NGOs, they would understand what it means to be looted by the West, and Ukraine would not be in turmoil and headed toward destruction. As Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland made clear in her speech last December and in the leaked recording of her telephone conversation with the US ambassador in Kiev, Washington spent $5 billion of US taxpayer dollars engineering a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected democratic government. That it was a coup is also underlined by the obvious public lies that Obama has told about the situation, blaming, of course, the overthrown government, and by the total misrepresentation of Ukrainian developments by the US and European presstitute media. The only reason to misrepresent the events is to support the coup and to cover up Washington’s hand. There is no doubt whatsoever that the coup is a strategic move by Washington to weaken Russia. Washington tried to capture Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-funded “Orange Revolution,” but failed. Ukraine was part of Russia for 200 years prior to being granted independence in the 1990s. The eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine are Russian areas that were added to Ukraine in the 1950s by the Soviet leadership in order to water down the influence of the nazi elements in the western Ukraine that had fought for Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union during World War 2. The loss of Ukraine to the EU and NATO would mean the loss of Russia’s naval base on the Black Sea and the loss of many military industries. If Russia were to accept such strategic defeat, it would mean that Russia had submitted to Washington’s hegemony. Whatever course the Russian government takes, the Russian population of eastern and southern Ukraine will not accept oppression by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and neo-nazis. The hostility already shown toward the Russian population can be seen in the destruction by Ukrainians of the monument to the Russian troops that drove Hitler’s divisions out of Ukraine during World War 2 and the destruction of the monument to Russian General Kutuzov, whose tactics destroyed Napoleon’s Grand Army and resulted in the fall of Napoleon. The question at the moment is whether Washington miscalculated and lost control of the coup to the neo-nazi elements who seem to have taken control from the Washington-paid moderates in Kiev, or whether the Washington neocons have been working with the neo-nazis for years. Max Blumenthal says the latter: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37752.htm The moderates have certainly lost control. They cannot protect public monuments, and they are forced to try to pre-empt the neo-nazis by legislating the neo-nazi program. The captive Ukrainian parliament has introduced measures to ban any official use of the Russian language. This, of course, is unacceptable to the Russian provinces. As I noted in a previous column, the Ukrainian parliament itself is responsible for the destruction of democracy in Ukraine. Its unconstitutional and undemocratic actions have paved the way for the neo-nazis who now have the precedent to treat the moderates the same way that the moderates treated the elected government and to cover up their illegality with accusations of crimes and arrest warrants. Today the illegally deposed President Yanukovych is on the run. Tomorrow will the current president, Oleksander Turchinov, put in office by the moderates, not by the people, be on the run? If a democratic election did not convey legitimacy to President Yanukovych, how does selection by a rump parliament convey legitimacy to Turchinov? What can Turchinov answer if the neo-nazis put to him Lenin’s question to Kerensky: “Who chose you?” If Washington has lost control of the coup and is unable to restore control to the moderates whom it has aligned with the EU and NATO, war would seem to be unavoidable. There is no doubt that the Russian provinces would seek and be granted Russia’s protection. Whether Russia would go further and overthrow the neo-nazis in western Ukraine is unknown. Whether Washington, which seems to have positioned military forces in the region, would provide the military might for the moderates to defeat the neo-nazis is also an open question, as is Russia’s response. In a previous column I described the situation as “Sleepwalking Again,” an analogy to how miscalculations resulted in World War 1. The entire world should be alarmed at the reckless and irresponsible interference by Washington in Ukraine. By bringing a direct strategic threat to Russia, the crazed Washington hegemon has engineered a Great Power confrontation and created the risk of world destruction.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Whither Ukraine?

An Imperialist Invasion Without an Imperialist Army

by MARILYN VOGT-DOWNEY, Counterpunch.org

It’s not just that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (above) was a coward for fleeing in the dead of night from angry and rebellious Ukrainian nationalists in Western Ukraine to what (he hoped) would be a friendlier population in the Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine. Of course, he probably was a coward to run away. However, a coup d’etat had been carried out against him, his government security forces were melting away, and roughnecks with weapons and shields were just outside his door.

But more important than his cowardice is the fact that he is a scoundrel.

He could have easily calmed the rebellion in Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital Kiev early on if he had simply told the crowds the truth about what the Association Agreement with the European Union would mean to their lives and futures, which is one reason he apparently refused to sign it. His refusal to sign this Agreement on November 21, 2013 has been called the “spark” that led to the current crisis and his overthrow. However, if, for example, he had summarized the terms of only one part of it–the Agreement’s “Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area”–and explained what it would mean to the Ukrainian people, he would have severely dampened enthusiasm for this Agreement. This Free Trade section alone–removing tariff barriers and export duties–would convert Ukraine into one big “free trade zone,” where the anti-environment, anti-labor, and pro-business laws would prevail.

This is what “European integration” and “joining” the glamorized “West” would really mean to Ukraine’s massive working-class population of 46 million. It would create the economic devastation of the type that NAFTA has created in Mexico.

“You want a free, independent Ukraine?” Yanukovych could have asked, were he a man of integrity. “Well, so do I! That is why I cannot–in good conscience–sign this Agreement.”

THAT is what an honest leader would have said back in November 2013, or even before that. It is not complicated. Then he could have gone on to outline what the pending IMF “financial aid package” would do to further worsen their lives. The last but one paragraph of the February 23 New York Times report on Yanukovych’s flight and its aftermath summarized very well what the “EU option” will mean. “The economy will remain the greatest problem facing the country,” the NY Times reported, and then goes on:

“The International Monetary Fund remains a potential source of financing to replace the $15 billion that Russia had made available before the protests. But that comes with an insistence on austerity and economic changes that will inflict considerable pain….” (Italics added.)*

Wanted poster on Yanukovych bearing the stamp of Western dirty tricks. First, it’s in English. Second, note the “high production value,” are in situations where chaos prevails.

Considerable pain, indeed!! The IMF loans will require in Ukraine, as they do everywhere, that the government undertake broad-scale privatization of resources and basic public services, cut government spending on education, health care, pensions, housing, and benefits for the needy, as well as laws that hinder the accumulation and free movement of capitalist profits. And that’s just for starters. All this will further lower the wages and standard of living of the mass of the population of Ukraine, which are already lower than the European average.

However, Yanukovych could not say such things. It is not just that he is not a man of integrity. The problem is that during his time in power, he–like all the Ukrainian rulers since Ukraine became independent with the collapse of the USSR in 1992–had already been pursuing measures similar to those the IMF would impose. These include measures such as privatizing public resources, cutting public spending, cutting subsidies for major industries–leading to stagnation, non-payment of wages, and benefit cuts–and imposing market mechanisms. All these measures have impoverished the workers and lowered the standard of living for the majority of the population. The New York Times reported one woman protester outside the reconstituted Parliament after Yanukovych fled, for example, only wondered when tthe rump Parliament would reopen the health clinics and provide jobs. (“Amid Political Upheaval…,” February 25, 2014.) In the meantime, the economy as a whole stagnated while politicians and their cronies have managed to considerably enrich themselves and acquire vast fortunes from resources that should belong to the Ukrainian working people as a whole.

In the capitalist world, we would call them the ruling class. In Ukraine, they are called “the oligarchs.” They own the politicians, they own major means of production, and they own the media so they can mold public opinion as they please, and have been quite effective in doing so in many respects.

What is unfolding right now in Ukraine is not a revolution but imperialist consolidation of the capitalist counterrevolution by imperialist finance capital and the army of international capitalist investors who seek unfettered opportunities to milk every ounce of profit they can from the Ukrainian working class and the resources in their territory.

Imperialist Invasion without an Imperialist Army

This counterrevoloutionary attempt is not being carried out by a military invasion or heavy weaponry–although surely some of the roughnecks in ski masks wielding weapons throughout Western Ukraine, occupying and destroying buildings, throwing molotov cocktails, and setting fires were paid agents of the imperialist powers. **

There is no doubt that the mass uprising in Ukraine since November was inspired by or “made in America,” in the bowels of international finance capital; the US government has the deciding vote in the IMF. This Ukrainian campaign was calculated to achieve several related goals:

1. To use popular unrest with the already deteriorating economic conditions as a cudgel against the existing Ukrainian government officials who were tending toward signing a long-term trade agreement with Russia and joining the Eurasian Union, an economic union much like the European Union but composed of former Soviet republics. The Eurasian Union, as a new economic power center, would compete with the European Union and the IMF.

2. To gain Ukraine’s acceptance of the Association Agreement with the EU causing Ukraine to fall into the clutches of the IMF and other imperialist lenders.

3. To exploit the illusions of vast numbers of the Ukrainian population that joining “the West” is the road to “freedom,” when precisely the opposite is true.

Meanwhile, for Ukraine, accepting the Association Agreement with the EU and the IMF aid package would actually remove any semblance of Ukrainian independence.

1. It stipulates that Ukraine cannot accept any financial support from Russia,

2. It would make impossible any Ukrainian economic planning that did not follow the guidelines established by the IMF and other imperialist lending agencies.

3. Because of he nature of the IMF-imposed economic agenda, Ukraine would find it very difficult to ever escape the debt cycle. The IMF mandates, for example that capitalist profits be only minimally taxed, the government provide generous financial support and tax breaks for capitalist ventures, public services be privatized, and restrictions on transfer of capitalist profits abroad be minimal. As a result, it would be difficult, if not impossible for any Ukrainian government to raise funds for basic institutions people need to live a quality life. (If you have doubts about these claim, look at the living conditions of the masses of the people in the 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that have been controlled by the IMF for many years now, or Latin America and other areas.) IMF control of the economies of the “developing world” is the reason it never develops!

Most commentators have presented the dilemma facing the Ukrainian people as a choice between being under the thumb of Russia or of “the West.” The dice are loaded when the choice is posed that way.

The Post-Soviet “Free-For-A Select Few”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been nominally “independent.” However, it still remained under the control of the corrupt Communist Party and other politicians whose market and privatization policies produced “the oligarchs,” into whose pockets all the politicians had to jump to be be elected, much like it is in the capitalist world, “the West.” What happened in Ukraine was typical of what happened throughout the USSR–including in Russia– after the Soviet Union collapsed. It is often called the “post-Soviet free-for-all.” But it only benefited a tiny segment of the population.

But what caused this current crisis to unfold?

On November 5-6, 2013, in New York, I attended a conference on the Famine in Ukraine, the “Holodomor,” a two-day event where scholars from the US, Canada, Ukraine, and elsewhere, described various aspects of this event, including some extraordinary academic papers incorporating new archival materials.

On the last evening, there was a special memorial ceremony with various speakers, one of whom, a US Federal Judge seemed to hold celebrity status. In his speech he made a direct pitch to Ukrainians do everything they could to make sure that Ukraine signed the Association Agreement with the EU. I couldn’t believe my ears. This man, like everyone present, claimed to support an independent Ukraine. Yet he was promoting what amounted to the negation of this independence. Europe, like the rest of the capitalist world is in a deep-going crisis. Did he want Ukraine to end up like Greece, Italy, and Spain?

I later posed the question directly to him: “How can you claim you support Ukrainian independence while promoting the Association Agreement?” He looked at me, refused to answer and turned away. The reason is obvious: The two are obviously incompatible, and he knew it. It was obvious that something strange was going on.

Then, within a few weeks, on November 20, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspended talks with the EU on the Agreement after the Ukrainian Parliament refused to pass measures aimed at furthering the accord. A week later, Yanukovych refused to sign the Agreement, ending a process that had been in the works for seven years, His refusal was widely interpreted as a sign that his government was going to align Ukraine with Russia and its Eurasian Union instead of with the EU; this might have sealed his fate.

For Washington, the political face of finance capital, this move by Yanukovych could have been the tripwire that unleashed Washington’s plan for still another “regime change.”

By November 21, there were already mass protests in the streets, at first mostly students and youth, but soon involving broader layers of society. The rest is history. To summarize it: Starting in November, the protests at first peaceful and massive, ended up occupying Independence Square in Kiev for three months. Police repression to disperse the crowds failed and incited anger. Parliamentary passage of a law strictly outlawing public protests only caused the crowds to grow. Soon they were joined by men in ski masks and helmets who grew in number and aggressiveness, beating up police and soldiers, setting fires around the encampments to stop the police and army who were trying to disperse them. Masked men took over buildings and raided arsenals. Overall, the violent confrontations led to over 80 deaths and many more wounded. Finally, the army and security forces withdrew from battle, demoralized, fearful and, certainly in some cases, paid considerable sums. When the security forces guarding Yanukovych’s compound evaporated, he fled early February 22.

Meanwhile, the capitalist media across the board distorted the nature of the crisis ( as Stephen Cohen pointed out in an interview on Democracy Now! on February 20, 2014) committing acts of great hypocrisy (as they always do) by focussing almost exclusively on the Yanukovych government’s repression –as if caring for the Ukrainian people’s welfare– while downplaying the dire economic stakes involved . (The New York Times coverage of the Ukrainian events is in sharp contrast, for example, to its coverage of the far more pervasive violence by the US-backed military government in Egypt, which has arrested and killed 100 times more protesters in recent months (and has now declared the opposition to be “terrorists.”—Eds). Both are awful, but it is the contrast in coverage that is being emphasized here.)

This “rebellion” in Ukraine, regardless of the various motivations for those attending or how they got there, surely did not happen by itself. Behind the scenes, through a variety of avenues, US government and private capitalists provide funds to a multitude of groups such as The National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, Democratic Institutes of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and dozens of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Such organizations as these have been and are funding and providing tendentious ideology, equipment and other logistics to either agents or unknowing youth and other organizations to incite rebellion,” just as they did for “The Orange Revolution” of 2005 in Ukraine.****

On December 23, an internet publication called The Ukrainian Week published an interview with this same Judge, who at that November 3 gathering had been propagandizing for support for Ukrainian acceptance of the Association Agreement. He is only a small cog in a giant endeavor, but such little cogs play an invaluable role in the process and can help reveal the grander operation. This Judge, by December 23 apparently “teaching” in Kiev, provides a sort of summary of his role and the roles of other cogs in this US government’s campaign to manipulate Ukrainian opinion to serve its own ends, in this case, to overthrow Yanukovych:

“ I was in Ukraine when it all began. ..America’s top officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, senators [John McCain was one of them], the Helsinki Committee, Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland, condemned [the attacks by the Ukrainian government on the protesters]…..Meanwhile, State Secretary John Kerry and Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland have called on Yanukovych to refrain from the use of force and law enforcers against peaceful protesters. .. Young people and students took to the streets – they are making demands, even though they don’t always agree with politicians…These people have traveled to Europe. They have seen life in the West and the processes there. I had Ukrainian judges for internship here and I talked about these things with them. I talk about this in my lectures at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. It’s very important for people who were born after Ukraine gained independence to begin to see their state differently, in the way that the role of the state is seen in the West [?!] ..If the President really wants to be a guarantor of the Constitution and preserve the rule of law, he must come to terms with the people, the opposition, NGOs and the clergy, discuss compliance rules with them and seek a peaceful solution.”

Such individuals as this judge, along with the parade of US politicians and State Department figures that he described, were working hard in front of and behind the scenes to shape and mobilize Ukrainian public (particularly youth) opinion, and to promote and orchestrate the protest events for the purpose of “freeing” Ukraine’s economy for “free” imperialist plunder.

The well-known leaked portion of a conversation between State Department official Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, wherein THEY are deciding who should be the next rulers of Ukraine provides chilling evidence of the nuts and bolts behind this audacious plot.

What Options Do Ukrainians Have?

However, the question remains: If joining the EU surrenders Ukraine’s independence and if remaining under the thumb of Russia is to be avoided, what is the solution?

Any honest observer who studies history will easily learn that Stalin’s first crimes were against the genuine Communists and Marxists. The fact that Stalin carried out his crimes in the name of communism and Bolshevism caused incalculable damage to the class struggle to this day and led to a prolonged life of capitalism.

The false claim Marxism, Bolshevism, and the Russian Revolution are to blame for Stalin’s crimes in Ukraine is reinforced, obviously, by the shameful fact that these crimes were carried out and supported by Stalinized Communist Parties–by people who falsely called themselves Bolsheviks and Communists– both inside the USSR and abroad. The capitalist class has used every means at its disposal to tirelessly exploit this tragic state of affairs to discredit communism, socialism, Marxism, Trotskyism, and revolution. They seemingly find an endless supply of mercenary charlatan academics, scholars, and experts who live by promoting the “evils of communism” and the glorification of “the West.” As a result, the Ukrainian masses have been taught to shut out the only road to Ukrainian liberation, which is a Marxist understanding of how the world, works and how to escape from the clutches of Stalinism and capitalism.

How fertile is the atmosphere now for the ideas of Marxism, socialism, and particularly Trotskyism in Ukraine right now?

According to Russian socialist organizer Ilya Boudraitskis, who attended the mass protests in Independence Square, “there was no room for the left,” by which obviously includes Marxists and Trotskyists. This is because of the prevailing anti-communism for reasons just discussed and the large numbers of men organized and armed by fascistic groups. “The far right confronts the left activists, Ilya said. “They take their leaflets and flags and sometimes beat them up.” *****

Since Yanukovych fled and his government collapsed, the situation has retained this ominous character. Nicolai Petro, a visiting US scholar, currently living in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, described it in an interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! on February 24. According to Petro although things were quiet in Odessa, the atmosphere in other parts of the country were tense and dangerous partly because roving, armed, masked goons have replaced disbanded state security forces. “All across the country, headquarters of parties are being sacked by their opponents. Vigilante militias routinely attack and disperse public gatherings” they do not approve of. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament is now dominated by a party called Svoboda (meaning Freedom), which even the European Parliament has designated “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic.” One of the first laws passed was one stipulating that only the Ukrainian language could be used for official business. Although this may be an understandable thing for a new Ukrainian parliament to do, in the present context, it is a deliberate arrow aimed at the heart of the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine–which voted for Yanukovych’s Party of Reform. Such a measure can only heighten the crisis and divisions within the working class.

Meanwhile, finding a way to unite, rather than divide, the Ukrainian and Russian speaking workers in the West and the East of Ukraine is essential. They need to be made aware that they have common interests in finding a way to take control over the entire Ukrainian economy, setting up a workers government, nationalize as soon as possible all the resources, confiscate the wealth and property of the oligarchs–property and wealth that the oligarchs stole and/or squeezed from the Ukrainian people. A group called the Left Opposition Collective in Ukraine has issued a Manifesto listing “10 Theses of the Leftist Opposition” that could be an important bridge to these goals. But how much of an audience will it or other revolutionary proposals get if these cannot be freely distributed for fear of brutal attacks by right-wing goons? If these goons are not representing the cause of the working class, and are in fact inhibiting this cause, the workers organizations and their allies need to set up their own militia to protect themselves and their ability to function freely and openly.

Time to Read Leon Trotsky on the Ukrainian Question.

For those who may not know about it, the Russian Revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky–himself born in Ukraine–was Stalin’s main opponent and target who was expelled from the Communist Party, from the Soviet Union, and murdered by Stalin. Trotsky tirelessly opposed and exposed Stalin and his policies as the negation of all that the October 1917 Revolution stood for. In the 1930s, he wrote several articles on the Ukrainian question that are the most brilliant exposition of problems of and solution to “the Ukrainian Question” that are still true today.

These articles need to be read and studied by everyone who cares about the present crisis in Ukraine and who has the strength and will to open a book. In them, Trotsky outlines Ukrainian history and explains why the only way Ukrainians can ever gain their national rights is by creating a free, independent workers and peasants socialist Ukraine: “The Ukrainian Question,” written April 22, 1939 and “Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads,” of July 30, 1939, “Democratic Feudalists and the Independence of the Ukraine,” of August 5, 1939, and “Stalin, the Temporary Holder of Ukraine,” written just following the Stalin-Hitler Pact, September 18, 1939. These are all available in the Writings of Leon Trotsky published by Pathfinder Press in New York. I will quote from the first article, which although written nearly 75 years ago, applies today:

“The Ukrainian question, which many governments and many ‘socialists’ and even ‘Communists’ have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history, has again been placed on the order of the day and this time with redoubled force…The Ukrainian question is destined in the immediate future to play an enormous role in the life of Europe…

In the conception of the old [pre-1926] Bolshevik Party, Soviet Ukraine was destined to become a powerful axis around which the other sections of the Ukrainian people would unite. It is indisputable that in the first period of its existence [ i.e., during the period of Ukrainization in the 1920s], Soviet Ukraine exerted a mighty attractive force, in national respects as well, and fostered the workers’ struggle.

The [Stalinist] bureaucracy strangled and plundered the people within Great Russia, too. But in the Ukraine matters were further complicated by the massacre of national hopes. Nowhere did restrictions, purges, repressions, and in general all forms of bureaucratic hooliganism assume such murderous sweep as they did in the Ukraine in the struggle against the powerful deeply rooted longings of the Ukrainians masses for greater freedom and independence…

Ukraine is in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What do demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence…

We are dealing with a people that has proved its viability, that is numerically equal to the population of France and occupies an exceptionally rich territory, which, moreover, is of the highest strategic importance. The question of the fate of the Ukraine has been posed in its full scope. A clear and definite slogan is necessary that corresponds to the new situation. In my opinion there can be at the present time only one such slogan: A united, free, and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine.” (Writings of Leon Trotsky [1938-39], Pathfinder Press, New York, 1974, pp. 301-304.)”

What other option exists for Ukraine? Ukraine cannot be independent if it remains within the capitalist and market system. It has to break out of the deadly grasp of direct rule by finance capital–like Cuba has tried to do–to begin to take control over its present and future to the extent possible. Obviously, capitalism is a world system and the market dominates international finance and trade. No country by itself can escape it nor can socialism be built in one country. However, by replacing the system of private ownership with public ownership of the national wealth and instituting a national economic plan to meet the common needs, Ukraine can begin to build a better life for itself by collaborating with Cuba and other nations in non-exploitative trade agreements. This can be a holding action until both Ukraine and Cuba get aid from the drastically belated working-class revolutions elsewhere, particularly in the industrially-developed capitalist regions, which could be greatly inspired by such an Ukrainian example. Real revolutionists in Ukraine today must work toward that goal. This means workers organizing their own revolutionary organizations to mobilize the masses around their own needs–Ukrainian, Russian, or any other nationality that resides there–to take over and run their own economy. This is the only way to stand up victoriously against the oligarchs of Ukraine and of the planet.

MARILYN VOGT-DOWNEY was a Russian translator for many years. She translated the writings of Leon Trotsky for the Pathfinder Press. Writings of Leon Trotsky series. She also translated Notebooks for the Grandchildren, the memoirs of a Ukrainian Trotskyist who survived the Stalin era. A collection of her writings on the former Soviet Union appeared in a volume the USSR: 1987-1991: Marxists Perspectives.

Notes.

* Since Washington has achieved “regime change” in Kiev, The Times has been much more frank about the grim future that awaits Ukrainians under European capitalist and IMF rules. See “Amid Political Upheavals, Ukraine Fades Dire Need for Economic Help,” February 25, 2014. Before the “change,” The Times focused almost exclusively on popular attraction to “the West.”.

**Anyone who has attended a peaceful protest knows to beware of masked individuals who break from the crowd and begin breaking windows, setting fires, attacking police, etc. all of which only serve to provoke police attacks, transforming the character of the action, and endangering protesters.

Such persons are usually suspected of being provocateurs.

The success of this project, and similar recent projects show that imperialist domination no longer requires “traditional armies.

***See Ivan Dzyuba, Internationalism or Russification: A study of the Soviet nationalities problem, Pathfinder Press, 1974, a brilliant work by a Ukrainian scholar who is still alive in Ukraine today.

****For a history of such subversive activities in the past, read two books by William Blum, Killing Hope and The Rogue State, Common Courage Press,Maine, 1995 and 2005 respectively.

***** See the interview with Ilya Boudraitskis in Intercontinental Press, February 23, 2014.)

OpEds: After pro-EU putsch in Ukraine, Russia puts military on alert

By Alex Lantier, wsws.org

Russian military exercises.

The Kremlin carried out large-scale military exercises along its border with Ukraine yesterday, amid rising tensions with the Western-backed Ukrainian regime that seized power in Saturday’s fascist-led putsch in Kiev.

Announcing the exercises, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said: “In accordance with an order by the president of the Russian Federation, the forces of the western military district were put on alert at 2pm today.”

The military alert was billed as a “surprise comprehensive interoperability test” of armed forces in Russia’s western and central military districts and its air force command. Some 150,000 soldiers, 90 warplanes, 120 attack helicopters, 880 tanks, and 90 ships reportedly participated.

Though Shoigu claimed the mobilization was “largely unrelated” to events in Kiev, he pointedly noted that the exercises took place “on the border with several countries, including Ukraine.” The alert was widely reported as the first public reaction to the Ukrainian crisis by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who until now was at the Sochi Olympics and did not comment on it.

Shoigu added that Moscow was “carefully watching” the situation in the Crimean Peninsula, a Russian-majority region of Ukraine that includes a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol.

Thousands protested for and against the new Ukrainian regime in the Crimean regional capital of Simferopol yesterday. One person was killed and many wounded amid clashes between Russian opponents of the Kiev regime, many of them Cossacks, and ethnic Tatars supporting the Western-backed regime. Russian protesters demanded the organization of a referendum on secession from Ukraine, which was bitterly opposed by Tatar protesters.

These clashes highlight how the reckless support given to right-wing and fascist opposition groups in Kiev by Washington and the European Union (EU) have driven Ukraine to the brink of a civil war, threatening to escalate into a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Tensions have exploded since the Saturday putsch toppled Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Kiev regime declared Russian to no longer be an official language in Ukraine, while officials in the Crimea and several southern and eastern provinces of Ukraine have said they do not recognize the new regime’s authority.

Conflicts are escalating in particular over Crimea. On Tuesday, the Western-backed interim president in Kiev, Oleksander Turchynov, called an emergency meeting to discuss “not allowing any signs of separatism and threats to Ukraine’s territorial integrity [meaning the events which have taken place in Crimea] and punishing people guilty of this.”

Far-right groups backing the new regime in Kiev threatened to send so-called “trains of friendship,” which are in fact gangs of armed thugs, to take Sevastopol. Officials there are setting up checkpoints and self-defense militias to guard against an assault on the city. In one indication of the reactionary character of the pro-Russian forces, Sevastopol mayor Aleksey Chaly hailed members of the hated Berkut riot police, dissolved by the Kiev authorities, and invited them to come to Sevastopol to defend the city.

Anonymous Russian security officials told the Financial Times yesterday that, while they did not aim to break up Ukraine, they would feel “compelled” to militarily support the Crimean Peninsula if it decided to secede from the rest of Ukraine.

Western officials, who have reportedly exchanged tense phone calls with Russian military authorities in recent days, signaled their opposition. Calling Ukraine a “close” partner, NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he “assumed that all states respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and we have made this clear to all whom it may concern.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a thinly veiled threat Thursday night, warning in an interview on NBC News not only against any use of military force by Moscow, but also that imperialism is preparing the same fate for the Putin regime as the one that befell the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

“The rapidity with which it has moved [the coup in Ukraine] should be a message to Russia,” Kerry said. “Russia needs to be very careful in the judgments that it makes going forward here…”

These events highlight not only the utter criminality and recklessness of imperialist policy, but also the disastrous political and geo-strategic impact of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR. The restoration of capitalism in the USSR produced obscene levels of social inequality—Ukraine’s top 50 oligarchs have a net worth of $112.7 billion, or two-thirds of Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product—and left all the ex-Soviet republics torn by regional and ethnic antagonisms.

The social base of the existing regimes is so narrow that all these countries are vulnerable to subversion by imperialist powers working with determined fascist groups. Under conditions in which the imperialist powers are pursuing a ruthless campaign to isolate and dismember Russia, the ethnic and regional tensions fuelled by these power grabs directly raise the threat of war.

The positions of the pro-Russian factions—aiming to ally themselves with Moscow to preserve their positions through a conflict that could trigger a world war with NATO—is bankrupt and reactionary. The only way forward is the struggle for the independent mobilization of the working class against imperialism, its fascist helpmates, and the corrupt regimes created by the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

The response of the population is the main worry for the fascist-backed regime in Kiev, which announced its cabinet yesterday. It knows full well that its mandate from the imperialist powers is to repay Ukraine’s debts to the major banks and protect Ukrainian oligarchs’ wealth by imposing despised austerity measures upon the population, including deep cuts to state energy subsidies.

Therefore, in a bizarre ceremony, it presented the line-up of ministers to its only popular base: the few thousand far-right protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square. It asked them to shout their approval for the various ministers as they were presented on the square.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom US officials had identified as their preferred leader prior to the putsch because of his close ties to oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko, was selected as prime minister. (See also: US response to leaked call confirms US/EU regime-change plot in Ukraine)

He declared, “We are to take extremely unpopular steps, as the previous government and previous president were so corrupted that the country is in a desperate financial plight. We are on the brink of disaster and this is the government of political suiciders! So welcome to hell.”

Such remarks underscore that the putsch in Kiev had nothing to do with democracy, as is cynically claimed in Western media outlets; it is a naked bid to implement a dictatorship to defend the financial and strategic interests of Western imperialism.

The other ministers introduced included Andriy Parubiy, was named secretary of the security and defense council. The coordinator of security for protesters on Independence Square in Kiev, he is a political associate of Oleh Tyahnybok—the head of the fascist, violently anti-Semitic Svoboda party—with whom he founded the far-right Social-Nationalist Party in the 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the USSR.

The geopolitical dimensions of the coup in Ukraine

Guest editorials—

ukraine-map

By Peter Schwarz, wsws.org

“When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world,” wrote former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his recently published memoirs. Gates was referring to the then-Secretary of Defense, and later US Vice President, Dick Cheney.

The statement sheds light on the geopolitical dimensions of the recent putsch in Ukraine. What is at stake is not so much domestic issues—and not at all the fight against corruption and democracy—but rather an international struggle for power and influence that stretches back a quarter of a century.

The Financial Times places the recent events in Ukraine in the same light. In an editorial on February 23, it wrote: “For a quarter of a century this huge territory perched precariously between the EU and Russia has been the object of a geopolitical contest between the Kremlin and the west.” In 2008, a clumsy attempt by President George W. Bush failed to draw the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, “But the Maidan revolution now offers a second chance for all parties to reconsider the status of Ukraine on the fault line of Europe.”

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 was an unexpected gift to the imperialist powers. The October Revolution in 1917 had removed a considerable part of the world’s surface from the sphere of capitalist exploitation. This was regarded as a threat by the international bourgeoisie, even long after the Stalinist bureaucracy damaged the goal of world socialist revolution and murdered an entire generation of Marxist revolutionaries. In addition, the economic and military strength of the Soviet Union presented an obstacle to US world hegemony.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the capitalist market created conditions for the social wealth created by generations of workers to be plundered by a handful of oligarchs and international finance. The social gains made in the field of education, health care, culture and infrastructure were smashed and left to decline.

This was not enough, however, for the US and the major European powers. They were intent on ensuring that Russia could never again threaten their global hegemony, as is made clear in the above cited statement of Dick Cheney.

By 2009 the US-dominated NATO military alliance had absorbed into its ranks almost all of the East European countries that had once belonged to the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. But attempts to incorporate former Soviet republics into NATO failed—with the exception of the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—due to resistance from Moscow. Ukraine, with its 46 million inhabitants and its strategic location situated between Russia, Europe, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, invariably was at the centre of these attempts.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Polish aristocrat, russophobe and visceral anticommunist, he’s easily one of the most malignant figures in recent world history.

As far back as 1997, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that without Ukraine, any attempt by Moscow to rebuild its influence on the territory of the former Soviet Union was doomed to fail. The core thesis of his book The Grand Chessboard is that America’s capacity to exercise global primacy depends on whether America can prevent the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic power on the Eurasian landmass. (See: “The power struggle in Ukraine and America’s strategy of domination”)

In 2004 the US and the European powers supported and financed the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine that brought a pro-western government to power. The regime rapidly broke apart, however, due to internal strife. The attempt in 2008 to draw Georgia into NATO by provoking a military confrontation with Russia also failed.

Now the US and its European allies are intent to use the putsch in Ukraine to once again destabilize other former Soviet republics as well and draw them into their own sphere of influence. In so doing they risk an open armed conflict with Russia.

Under the headline “After Ukraine, the West Makes Its Move for the Russian Periphery,” the Stratfor think tank, which has close links to the US secret services, writes: “The West wants to parlay the success of supporting Ukraine’s anti-government protesters into a broader, region-wide campaign.”

“A Georgian delegation is currently visiting Washington, and the country’s prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry this week,” Stratfor reports. Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca is also scheduled to visit the White House for a meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden on March 3. “High on the agenda of both visits are the countries’ prospects for Western integration—in other words, how to bring them closer to the United States and the European Union and further from Russia.”

Lilia Shetsova from the US foundation Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (sic) in Moscow, also argues that the coup in Ukraine be extended to other countries and Russia itself. “Ukraine has become the weakest link in the post-Soviet chain,” she writes in a comment for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “We should keep in mind that similar upheavals in other countries are possible.”

Shetsova stresses a feature of the Ukrainian revolution that she wants to retain at all costs: the mobilization of militant fascist forces. “Yanukovych’s downfall is essentially due to the ‘radical elements’ on the Maidan, including among others, the Right Sector, which have become a serious political force.” She continues: “Ukraine’s future will depend on whether the Ukrainians can maintain the Maidan.”

The “radical elements” which Shetsova wants to retain at all costs are armed fascist militias, which base themselves on the vilest traditions of Ukrainian history: the pogroms and mass murder of Jews and Communists carried out during the Second World War. The future role of these fascist militias will be to terrorize and intimidate the working class.

It took just a few hours for the reactionary social content of the upheaval in Ukraine to become clear. The “European values ” allegedly brought to the country by overthrow of the old regime consist of massive attacks on the already impoverished working class. As a condition for loans the country urgently needs to prevent impending bankruptcy, the IMF is demanding the floating of the exchange rate of the hryvna, a brutal austerity program and a six-fold increase in the price of household gas prices.

The floating of the country’s currency will lead to raging inflation, a corresponding increase in the cost of living, and the destruction of any remaining savings by ordinary Ukrainians. The austerity program will be primarily directed against pensions and social spending and the increase in gas prices will mean that many families cannot heat their homes.

Ukraine is to be reduced to a country where well-trained workers and professionals earn wages far below those currently paid in China. This is of especial interest for Germany, Ukraine’s second largest trading partner (after Russia) and, with a volume of $7.4 billion, the second largest investor in the country.

While for the United States the isolation of Russia stands in the foreground, Germany is interested in the economic benefits of Ukraine, which it has already militarily occupied twice, in 1918 and 1941. It wants to exploit the country as a cheap labor platform and use it to drive down wages in Eastern Europe and Germany even further.

According to statistics compiled by the German Economic Institute, labor costs in Ukraine are at the low end of the international scale. At €2.50 per hour worked, average labor costs (gross wages plus other costs) for workers and clerical employees are already well below those of China (€3.17), Poland (€6.46) and Spain (€21.88). In Germany, an hour of labor costs €35.66, i.e 14 times as much.

The Ukrainian Statistical Office estimates the average monthly wage at 3,073 hryvna (€220). Academics are also very poorly paid.

Former President Yanukovych himself was a representative of Ukrainian oligarchs. He only turned down the Association Agreement with the EU because he feared he would not politically survive the social consequences. Now his downfall serves as a pretext to introduce a level of poverty and exploitation totally incompatible with democratic norms and will lead to new social uprisings. It is precisely in order to suppress future social unrest that the fascist militias are to be retained.

Russia mobilizes army groups over Ukraine concerns

Editor’s Note: The dispatch below, originating with the controversial site

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Putin Orders Military Alert To Defend Ukraine Against Western-Backed Fascists

By Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

A report prepared by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and signed by Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu confirms that the Western Military District has been ordered to prepare for “immediate deployment and conflict” to the Crimea oblast of Ukraine after Prime Minister Medvedev warned of threats “to the lives of our citizens” in Ukraine from their newly established and Western-backed fascist government.

In a media release to Interfax, Defense Minister Shoigu further stated: “In accordance with an order from the president of the Russian Federation, forces of the Western Military District were put on alert at 1400 (1000 GMT) today.”

The Western Military District is one of the four operational strategic commands of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and controls the 6th and 20th Guards Armies, formations and units of the Russian Airborne Troops (including the 76th Air Assault Division), and Baltic Fleet coastal defence units under Fleet headquarters in Kaliningrad, as well as the 1st Air and Air Defence Forces Command of the Russian Air Force.

Crimea: Pro-Russian demonstrators clash with Ukraine nationalists as the conflicts continues to engulf the Ukraine.

Important to note, and as we had previously reported on, Putin had previously warned the US of his intention to protect the Russian citizens of Ukraine and “stunned” President Obama when he told the American leader that he was prepared to send over 250,000 heavily armed troops into Crimea to protect the sovereignty of its citizens against further US-EU aggression.

Also, and as we had, likewise, previously reported on, General Staff Chief, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov this past week informed his NATO counterpart of the “immediate order” given to the Black Sea Naval Infantry and Coastal Defense forces in the Crimea oblast to protect the vital Isthmus of Perekop and warned the Western Alliance of Russia’s “full intention” to protect the Russian citizens of Ukraine, even if it means all-out war.

In our 25 February report we further noted how the Obama regime supported fascist forces in Ukraine have horrified Russia as Jewish synagogues have been firebombed, Russian historical monuments destroyed, top Jewish leaders attacked, and how over 15,000 Neo-Nazis wearing the uniform of a Ukrainian division of the German army during World War II chanting “Ukraine above all!” and “Bandera, come and bring order!”began their fascist siege against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych on 15 January, and who the Obama regime unilaterally declared yesterday “is no longer the leader of Ukraine.”

The fascists now controlling Ukraine, it should be noted, are cult-followers of one of the German Nazi regimes main allies in World War II, the Ukrainian independence revolutionary leader Stepan Bandera who was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainian Jews.

This MoD report further states that the fascist leaders in Ukraine have increased their actions against their own Russian citizens by passing a law banning the speaking of the Russian language, and proposing a new law banning all Russian news from their country, a move Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has condemned.

Even though Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Europe’s democracy watchdog, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to condemn the rise of “nationalist and neo-fascist” sentiment in western Ukraine earlier today, this report continues, his appeal has fallen on “deaf ears”causing further panic in Crimea where Sebastopol mayor Alexei Chaliy announced the formation of volunteer“self defence” units as outrage against Ukraine’s new central authorities grows.

russianTanks With many Crimean peoples agreeing with Moscow’s assertion that Ukraine’s revolutionaries are violent, western-backed ultra-nationalists who intend to crush the rights of Russian-speakers and curtail Crimea’s links with Russia itself, this report further warns, one of the greatest immediate threats is to the economy of Ukraine, which is currently experiencing a money crisis which has seen a 30 billion Hyrvnia loss (over $3 billion) in just 2 days for their banks.

As Russia has warned that Ukraine is nearly in default on its loans, which Russian banks will be able to easily absorb, this MoD report notes that natural gas supplies to Ukraine may be needed to be cut off to prevent further losses due to the total collapse of Ukraine’s currency.

As “alarm” spreads across the fascist controlled regions of Ukraine due to Putin’s latest military actions, this report concludes, it must be noted that Western media concerns are still continuing to deceive their citizens regarding the true nature of the “barbarians” currently ruling in Ukraine, a situation, if continued, will lead these peoples towards ignorance of how their own leaders have lied them into yet another global war.

February 26, 2014 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. ]