As the war massacres in Syria continue and millions of refugees flock to all corners of the Middle East, adding to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian, African and Asian proletarians fleeing by land and sea in an attempt to survive, the situation in Ukraine has blown up under pressure from the imperialist powers, with all the contradictions it has been dragging along with it since the explosion of Russia (1989-91), but which are mainly due to material factors linked to its history and geographical, economic and strategic position. Born old and decrepit, with the illusion of being able to gain stable independence at a political as well as an economic level, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie has “settled down” in a territory that reaches across the area of Eastern Europe bordering on Belarus, Poland, Hungary Slovakia, Romania, Moldavia and Russia.
In fact, with its 45 million inhabitants, a surface area inferior only to that of European Russia, a very low average population (77 inhabitants per square kilometre) but densely populated in the east, this country, which has been characterised ever since its foundation by a weak economy (briefly recovering between 2004-6 and then experiencing a crash as a consequence of the world economic crisis), continues to be a clay pot between the two main iron vessels, Germany and the United States (firmly aligned in East Europe ever since the ‘Nineties). Because of the number and diversity of the countries sharing its borders, Ukraine has always, in times of both war and peace, been a sort of “middle ground”, crushed between Poland in the north-west and Russia in the south-east. As such, it has never risen to the levels of a modern nation. Here the imperialism of the great powers is wide awake; so are the potential business opportunities and the financial capital bound up with raw materials but, above all, the growth in armaments is wide awake, since the Baltic area of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, not so far away, are political-strategic areas that are highly likely to explode.
In the twenty-three years that have gone by since its so-called political independence, Ukraine has tried to build a state along the same lines as Russia and the oligarchies have reproduced themselves rapidly and massively, supported by financial dealings linked to the privatization of the entire industrial economy. Coaxed along economically by Russia by means of economic-political agreements on the prices of raw materials for energy, of which it is in extreme need (gas, oil) and for which it is an important crossroads between the Russian areas of production and the western areas of consumption, attracted to the USA from a military point of view (and thus to the NATO, which it aims to join), Ukraine tries to negotiate its own existence in that part of East Europe so pregnant with nationalisms and destined to explode once again as soon as the war alliances of the main players have been defined by the iron law of determinism.
Those fragments of borders, the scattered jigsaw produced by the upheaval in Russia, do in fact become an impossible burden for that indefinable edifice known as the European Union – which risks disastrous consequences if, in response to Yankee ‘recommendations’, it opens its arms to the fragments that risk breaking up into even tinier parts. And so, when Russia, on recovering from the economic and political crash of the ‘Nineties, insisted on the payment of a large sum for electrical power, no longer covered by tollage, the decisive element of the price of raw materials (always present when there is a world crisis of over-production) immediately rose to the surface. This is a factor that leads us back to far more profound economic contradictions, which have nothing to do with a “clash of civilizations between forms of oligarchy and democracy”. Apart from agricultural production (wheat and timber) in its central areas, Ukraine’s economic situation is complemented in the east by an authentic industrial network concentrated in the area of Donetsk (south-east Ukraine), Lugansk and Karchiv, including the area of Donbass, rich in coal, iron and sulphur. Here, on the border with Russia, the greatest concentration of proletarians is to be found: in the coalmines, in the steelworks, in particular, and in the chemical works. On the coast, from Odessa (the city where the Russian revolution started in 1905) right up to the Crimean peninsula stretches a large area which constitutes the industrial lungs of the Ukraine (80% of total industrial production), linked to Russia both traditionally and by economic and political bonds: at the end of the 1800s and up to the first few decades of the 1900s it was here that the bases of the Russian economy were laid and later modernized, producing most of the steel which, at the end of the 1920s, allowed Stalin’s first five-year plan to be completed (and, incidentally, this is where the enthusiasm for stakhanovism began). Here then, just over the recent border between Ukraine and Russia, the interests of the oligarchies linked to coal, steel, oil and gas are entangled. The big fat bourgeoisie “looking towards Russia” fears a break in the economic fabric that has been woven for over half a century and more. In other words, it fears that with Ukraine entering the western economic sphere there will be an irreparable split with the market it has always done business with. This is why it has mobilized the middle classes, which are proclaiming at the top of their voices that, by returning to Russia, the workers will “double their wages, double their pensions, and have better facilities and, above all, jobs”. The central part of the country, with small and medium-sized businesses centring around Kiev, and the westernmost part which was once Polish and Austrian (Lviv and Galicia) are irresistibly drawn to the west. Here the strong attraction of German and US imperialism is to be felt, capturing the illusions of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and corrupting the new middle classes with the scent of dollars and euros and with the mirage of Polish and Czech profits, currently boasted of as the height of the European Union’s economic development.Central Ukraine thus hopes to draw very concrete benefits from a treaty of association with the whole of the European Union, whose total exchange of imports now comes to a sum of 50% of the total, with Russia acting as the counterbalance and alone, as an economic partner, exporting 27 billion dollars’ worth and importing 18 billion’s worth.The three-headed Ukrainian bourgeoisie whose wallets are so divided, and thus also the consequences of their actions and their expectations, nonetheless finds its reason for being in the dense network of gas- and oil-lines coming from Russia, which mark Ukraine’s total dependency on demand from the West and supply from Russia. The independent management of this network by the State company Naftohaz Ukrayny, with its attempt to impose a rise in the price of Russia’s tollage by cutting off the supply of energy, set off the irreparable conflict with Gazprom, to the east of these crossroads, which manages production and distribution and no longer has any intention of offering a discount as it did in the past, but of applying market rates. It is no coincidence that after the North Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea and the Jamal towards Belarus, Gazprom is planning to avoid the whole of the Balkans by building other pipelines directly to the North Sea, avoiding Norway, or further south along the Black Sea where, alongside the Blue Stream leading toTurkey, the South Stream leading to Bulgaria would be laid.
The dire economic crisis, bringing with it a veritable monetary and financial bankruptcy of the Ukrainian State (debt crisis, inflation, high gas bills, interest rates rising from 5 to 36%, bank reserves reduced to a minimum, agriculture and the steel industry paralyzed), then provided the spark that inflamed the thousands of demonstrators who filled Maidan Square in Kiev protesting against Yanucovich’s pro-Russian government. It also re-activated the various economic and political interests, pro-Russian and pro-Europe, of a divided bourgeoisie, anticipating, absorbing and deviating potential class conflict. In the capital, the half-classes have been at centre-stage, with their corporative interests, their vile democratic nationalism and the impulse to get rich, the immediate signs of internal contrast in the bourgeois front. The proletariat have passively followed the miserable patriotic current but now events risk involving them in a possible military confrontation, unless they once again take up their independent path as a class, declaring aloud their defeatism towards any sort of economic or social problem. The clash between imperialisms has become decisive where the barycentre of power has always been: in Crimea, where the lines of force of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea meet those of the NATO’s southern front in Turkey, converging towards the Mediterranean. Having trumped up a non-existent appeal by the Russian-speaking population to Holy Mother Russia, the referendum for independence and clashes between armies in Sebastopol have done the rest.
The drives westwards and the counter-drives towards the east have followed the same dynamics that occurred during the dissolution of Russia, and in the period from 2004 to 2008, when, exiting the previous economic crisis (1997-8) for the first time, the bombastic name of “orange revolution” was given to the internal political and economic contrasts. The objective of this “movement” was not only to negotiate the price of raw materials but also to obtain the strategic economic and financial shift of the Ukraine towards Germany (and thus the European Union), the side that was more economically appetizing to the bourgeoisie (at least the majority of it).
Not least important is the support of the USA, which for years has been holding out the carrot of military support, so badly needed by the bourgeoisie, so it says, since it is unable to maintain an army, a navy and arms capable of contrasting a possible “Russian invasion”. The same dynamics brought the Baltic provinces, economically supported by the USA (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) into Europe and into NATO, just as the US supported Georgia in the Caucasus during the Russian war for control of Ossetia.
Imperialism, which in the West is known as “support for freedom and democracy”, never rests and will not cease to go on pushing right up to the extreme consequences. The opposing front, also consisting of “lovers of peace and democracy”, has, up to now, continued to proclaim its own “support for the oppressed Russian population” (oppressed obviously in terms of their careers, academies and business dealings). But it is not just two players who will be deciding in the future: Obama’s abandonment of Bush’s plans to place missiles and radar in Poland and Czechoslovakia as deterrents to Russia was also due to the German bourgeoisie, which does not look kindly on US-protected Polish and Czech armaments at its borders. It is no coincidence that Germany preferred in this case to place the Luftwaffe’s bombers in the Baltic area, traditionally much nearer to its own area of expansion towards Russia. The massive and determined demonstrations in Kiev, opposed by direct attack from the police, snipers on the roofs and the mass of mercenaries, nationalists belonging to one gang or the other, had no other aim than to advance the business dealings of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie: those who keep the proletariat on a leash in their “brotherly” fashion. The demonstrations in the streets merely exposed imperial appetites, which craftily exploit the historical, territorial, economic and social differences, inevitably raising the winds of war.
Over the border, the harsh and extensive demonstrations by partisans and pro-Russian agents in Karkiv, Donetsk and Lugansk, the occupation of public buildings, the clashes and barricades merely encourage the role play.
The incursions of Ukrainian helicopters against the civilian population and the endless stream of deaths serve to fuel the rancour and anger, setting proletarians one against the other. And the objective of the Russian tanks ranged along the Ukrainian border is exactly the same. If, during the course of events along the Polish border, the peaceful demonstrations in Lviv claimed the right to a sort of political independence and if the action of Russia and of residents in the area allowed Crimea to return to Russia by means of a referendum, this all demonstrates that the times do not yet seem to be ripe for a large-scale conflict: but they are tracing its future outlines and development. For now, things are limited to raising the political price of the contrast. Russia’s response, moving tanks into Sebastopol to protect the fleet, has demonstrated once again that the peninsula continues to be dynamite, just as it was during the two world wars. From here the whole of the Caucasus is under control, from here ships set out to bomb Georgia. Moreover, the Black Sea is the gateway to the Mediterranean. The stalemate and low-level war power of the pawns on the board at present depends on the gravity of the crisis, which crushes any dreams of intervention for the moment. The ranging of tanks and the troops positioned on the Ukrainian border, just like the American warships in international waters off the Black Sea and the Awacs planes surveilling Ukrainian territory remain war games.
The events that have followed one another at an increasing rate since the second Gulf War up to the present world crisis of over-production leave no way of escape and drive us inexorably towards a new world conflict. The political dynamics in the Ukraine could not fail to be affected by the present acceleration which in the long term could lead to territorial division, as happened in the Balkans. The latent interests of varying natures, revived from time to time, between populations that had co-habited for a long time, remained in this condition until the States involved started to fan the flames of economic interests. The Russian intervention “in defence of our countrymen”, for “the self-determination of peoples”, is the same old mise-en-scene as for all imperialist wars: the mise-en-scene of the world wars.
Historically, the facts have shown that the economic interests of bourgeois States cannot be reconciled. As a general rule. On the other hand, even internally it is impossible for a compromise to last long between the various contrasting factions in the bourgeois camp: any compromise whets imperialist appetites and creates an irresistible drive towards conflict.
The bourgeois State must be one only and its Chief of Staff unified. Internal conflicts and political divisions do not modify the dynamics: on the contrary, they force it into a situation with no way out. The power war between Moscow and Kiev would result in the suspension of energy supplies to the European Union, that 25-30% necessary to European consumption of which 80% passes through the Ukraine. The management and ownership of the pipelines enables Ukraine to respond to Russian pressure by blocking or reducing the flow of gas destined for Europe.
In this situation, the major powers (Russia, Germany, USA) will not leave Ukraine an iota of freedom: you can only serve one master at a time. Nonetheless, since the proletariat is the real prey, when it takes to the streets all the bourgeois factions (including the already wavering middle classes) will join under a single leadership, dragging it into the catastrophe of war.
Patriotic propaganda (cultural, historical, democratic, imperial) is the bait and the deadly net used to cover the slaughter. The future will offer no escape from capital’s drive to balkanize the Ukraine: Europe, a jungle of nationalisms to the east, as to the west, will continue to suffer landslides, dragging the Ukraine with it. The dynamics of Capital will destroy those nations that are powerless to withstand the clash with the great imperialist forces and at the same time will continue along the path of its centralization on an increasingly wider scale: divisions will thus follow and, at the same time, centralization and accumulation, the accumulation of capital and consequent over-production with increasingly devastating crises. To save itself from these destructive dynamics, the small offshore traffic of national reform will be unable to afford any acceleration in the development of its own, feeble “peripheral” capital. Advancing balkanization accelerates the development of big international capital, subjugating local capital and trampling over the corpses of ephemeral nations.
The proletariat must give all these patriotic sirens a wide berth, because the bourgeoisie will want to bring back the “national factor”, “economic stability”, “defence and honour of the fatherland”. Imperialist war, disguised as the “freedom of peoples”, “democracy” and “free trade”, serves to stop the proletariat from recognizing the true detonator of wars and revolutions: Capital. Thus, what must be placed firmly on the agenda is economic, social and political defeatism, which – under the guidance of the international communist party, today a minority but with a firmly established and recognizable tradition – must finally result in the communist revolution, the seizing of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. These are the only and inevitable paths to throwing an outdated and now merely destructive mode of production onto history’s scrapheap. As the facts tragically continue to demonstrate.
STOP PRESS
This article was written at the end of April. It does not, therefore, take into account the events that developed later: the killings in Odessa, the referendum for the “independence” of the south-east of the country, with the attendant dispatch of tanks and soldiers to prevent it, the election of the new president of the Ukraine, the constant clashes and tension – all events (which we shall nonetheless be obliged to return to) that do not change our analyses or evaluation.
(June 2014)
