Three Positions

All information about Ukraine tends to be attracted to three main gravity centers.

The position of the US State Department:

Free people of Kiev threw down the dictatorship of Yanukovich and now nobody dares to prevent them to mortgage their country into the World Bank and to turn it into an outpost of NATO. Numerous victims of the military operation of suppressing the south-eastern rebellion are just inevitable vices in the process of democratization, and in fact they were killed by Yanukovich and Putin.

Western democracies and Western mass media make it a point of view that the people of the South-East of Ukraine (along with all their demands) just aren’t humans at all. Most importantly, they’ll never be humans. Even if everyone of them is being murdered right in front of the cameras. And there’s no way to break through this wall.

The events in Odessa (as well as in Mariupol, Krasnoarmeysk and any other hot spots) will be interpreted as follows: dictator Putin attacked the liberated Ukraine, his slaves committed there all sorts of horrible crimes which culminated in their getting killed by… themselves. Oh well, if even they actually didn’t killed themselves, then it was a justifiable self-defense or “casualties” and, therefore, it’s nobody’s fault.

That’s all. Full stop. There will be no changes over the issue.

Position of the Kremlin:

The Maidan-people are just vagabonds who have eaten too many psychedelic oranges (don't ask me what psychedelic oranges are), “gay-europeans”, loonies and fascists. What kind of good, sensible people would overthrow their corrupted government or for that matter – even to rally? By their mass disorders, they have committed a symbolic original sin, turning their backs to the ‘sunlit mother-Russia’. The way to deal with them is to play the march “Farewell of the Slavic Wife”, to depict them as brutal animals, and purge their territories (if this fails, at least purge Bolotnaya Square in Moscow).

These ‘good fellows’ would have long started a full-blown massacre in Ukraine if the forces were comparable. However, the Russian Federation is weaker than the joined forces of the US and Europe, and if it becomes too arrogant, it will be economically crushed. Yet Russian Federation is quite capable to cause some troubles. Russian nationalists carry it sometimes too far, while Putin understands the situation quite well and manoeuvres. This is because unlike the nationalists, Putin himself is not handicapped by believing in his own propaganda.

Position of the communists:

We accept the right of the people to rebellion and to choosing their economic allies. Also, we accept the right of the people to referendum and self-determination. We regret that at the Maidan, socio-democratic agenda was initially substituted with demagogy and nationalism. We have warned and still warn the working people - that the country is being degraded into a right-wing dictatorship, and that harsh consequences will follow the two-year loan program that was accepted by the new government.

Both in Western and Eastern Ukraine, it was people’s yearning for social justice that drove the mass activism. Yet it is clear by now that at the Maidan, that yearning has been used so that to propel the interests of the elite. The bottom of society failed to unite against the top. Consequently, the Ukrainians in the West of the country have succumbed to the illusion that the USA and the EU are gravely concerned about “freedom in Ukraine”, while people in the East believe that the Russian authorities are worried about the “destiny of the Russian-speakers”. In fact, all these two camps are worried about terms of exporting capital and benefiting from the civil war in Ukraine.

The confrontation of these two groups of bourgeoisie creates conditions for the emergence and successful development of the workers’ movement and it is effectively unfolding in the Southeast. Therefore it is our strategy to encourage the local people who stand up for social justice and against the fascism; to consolidate the protesters with democratic and social demands in their fight against reactionary elements inside the protest movement. And we also against the bloodbath of Kiev military terror that is being carried out with full support of the West as well as against military intervention of Moscow. 

No war but class war.

Olga Kazaryan

Liva