The Ukrainian tragedy

Recently in the bookstores there appeared the first book on the civil conflict in Ukraine. The book tells how we came to the civil warfare, which is becoming more and more destructive and bloody with every month. Many of those who had not followed Ukrainian politics (seen as provincial by many Russians), it seems that everything happened quite unexpectedly – as if a sudden flash of "Euromaidan" nationalist hysteria swept after the Ukrainian society. And only then, after a few months, there started the wild and senseless war crimes that seemed previously unimaginable: the missile and bomb strikes on peaceful cities of Donbass [South-East Ukraine], hurricane bombardment of residential houses, and people who were burned alive in Odessa House of Trade Unions or shot after the V-day parade in the town of Mariupol.

This is the price for the lack of interest in society toward what was happening in Ukraine in the recent years, when the alliance of “pro-western” liberals and Ukrainian nationalists has been strengthening. And this unusual (for many outside observers), but quite logical in the context of post-Soviet countries alliance has created conditions for all that followed, that is the victory for Maidan and the civil war for Ukraine.

Supporters of "democratic values" legitimized the fighters who used Nazi salutes, namely those who actually fought with these values; they effectively defended and glorified the pogroms and violence on the streets of Kiev and all over Ukraine. The West has publicly supported all the actions of ultra-right, including the demolition of historical monuments and harassment of political opponents.

And the liberal media has done everything so that their nationalist ideology became dominant in a society where it was considered marginal not long ago. And thousands of cultural and educated people, as if gone mad, suddenly started to "jump"[1] on the main square of the country under xenophobic chants of football fans singing their obscene songs, without any reflection over the consequences for their poor country.

Chauvinistic hysteria which gradually swelled in the society with the help of patriotic mythology, state propaganda and the education system has turned Ukraine into a huge pot, in which there were kindled and fueled various xenophobic sentiments directed against external and internal "enemies of the nation". According to the laws of physics, this boiler was doomed to explode sooner or later. And the energy of this devastating explosion used in their interests by those who during last twenty-three years of independence were engaged in systematic looting of everything that was created in the "totalitarian" Soviet times, that is the energy was used by the richest representatives of the ruling class, who appeared to be the major beneficiaries of the Maidan.

Undoubtedly, they understood that Ukraine in its ‘pre-Maidan” borders is a direct successor of the internationalist Ukrainian Soviet Socialist republic created by the demonized Communists. Ukraine was built on the basis of regions that were different in cultural-historical aspects; therefore, the country could exist only basing on a democratic compromise among all their residents. And the slogan that was proclaimed with Maidan: “to end the legacy of the Soviet Ukraine", would inevitably lead to the collapse of this state. Although, the “patriotic oligarchs" has never cared a fig about the destiny of the state. "There is no doubt that, while speaking under the banner of integrity, unity and sovereignty, the nationalism will actually promote the disintegration of Ukraine. And the chauvinists who speak on behalf of the country actually know it too bad. The same thing happened in Georgia earlier" - we wrote the words five years ago, while watching over the Nazis in Ukraine legitimized by the liberals; while watching how they take control over the Western regions of Ukraine, and then enter the Parliament. And then the collapse of the weak and rotten regime of Yanukovich may open for them the road to power.

And so it happened. The country that for years was brought up in a xenophobic, chauvinist spirit, while blaming all its problems on the legacy of the "Soviets" or wiles of "Russka"[2], naturally became the first state since the end of the WWII, which let the open supporters of neo-Nazi ideology to take the power, legalizing their armed forces, and granting them the right to kill all the dissidents with almost total impunity.

The civil war in Ukraine that became the tragedy for millions of people, is a real blessing for the new Kiev regime that openly uses it in order to retain power, to shift the blame for the economic crisis, the collapse of industry and the banking system, rising prices and social catastrophe (that will be soon deepened by much higher utility prices introduced under the IMF dictation so that to obtain new loans).

What we see now is just the first act of the Ukrainian tragedy, which will go on until the authorities in power are all the same in fact, that is – the free market fundamentalists completely dependent on the West in alliance with the ultra-right radicals. But that is why it is important to remember how they came to power – all those "patriots of Ukraine"[3], who became actually its murderers.

Andrey Manchuk

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