| Developments in Ukraine Will Putin's Referendum Triumph Survive Ukraine's May Elections? Nathan J. Freeman |
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| Since February of this year, events
in the ongoing crisis over Ukraine, Crimea, Russia, and the western alliance led by the U.S.
have been presented from the Western side as a continuing "surprise" sprung by Vladimir
Putin on the West and its friends in Ukraine. Meanwhile, with U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland's boast about Washington's spending of more than $5-billion to destabilize the elected government in Kiev still ringing in the ears of millions in and beyond the U.S. or the EU, it has become more than clear who has been springing what on whom, initiating this latest round of U.S.-Russian tensions. Even admitting all this, however, nobody expected events to unfold with such speed. For weeks, as the German-American political commentator William F. Engdahl has observed, the Russians took their time, sitting on the fence. They watched while today's Brownshirts -- the snipers and rent-a-crowds deployed by the Right Sector and Svoboda (formerly "National Social Party" [sic] -- stormtrooped their way to the central government buildings of Kiev. They appeared disengaged, watching as Nuland and the U.S.-backed interim premier of Ukraine, Arsenii Yatseniuk, congratulated themselves on their quick victory, but stopped short of taking explicit action. They watched President Yanukovych escape to Russia to save his skin, and they telegraphed no overt response when the Brownshirts moved eastward to threaten the Russian-speaking southeast, even listening patiently as Yanukovych's predecessor, Mme Timoshenko, fresh out of gaol, swore to void treaties with Russia and to expel the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its main harbour in Sevastopol. Putin, cool as a cucumber, stayed silent and still when Yatseniuk appointed oligarchs to rule Eastern provinces, ordered children in Ukrainian schools to sing "Hang a Russian on a thick branch," and issued his promise via the oligarch-governor's deputy to hang dissatisfied Russians of the East as soon as Crimea is pacified. Everyday Russians must have thought Putin was being too nonchalant about Ukraine's collapse, waiting so patiently. Russian civil and military officials made a few slow and hesitant, almost stealthy moves. The marines Russia had based in Crimea by virtue of an international agreement (just as the U.S. stations its 5th Fleet in Bahrain) secured Crimea's airports and roadblocks, provided necessary support to the volunteers of the Crimean militia (called Self-Defence Forces), but remained otherwise under cover. The Crimean parliament asserted its autonomy and promised a plebiscite in a month's time. Everything speeded up, with the poll rapidly moved up three weeks to Sunday, March 16. Even before the referendum could take place, the Crimean Parliament declared Crimea's independence. The results of the poll were spectacular enough in their own right, with 96 per cent of the votes were for joining Russia; the level of participation was unusually high -- over 84 per cent. Not only ethnic Russians, but also ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars voted for reunification with Russia as well. A symmetrical poll in Russia showed over 90 per cent popular support for reunification with Crimea, despite liberals' fear-mongering ("this will be too costly, the sanctions will destroy the Russian economy, the U.S. will bomb Moscow," etc.). Most experts and talking heads expected the situation to remain suspended for a long while. According to one school of thought, Putin would eventually recognize Crimean independence, while stalling on final status, as he did with Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August 2008 war with Tbilisi. According to another school of thought supported by many Russian liberals, Putin would surrender Crimea in order to save Russian assets in the Ukraine. Putin's approach fulfilled the proverb about how Russians take time initially to saddle their horses, but then they ride off awfully fast. He recognized Crimea's independence on Monday, before the ink on Sunday's poll results had dried. By Tuesday, he had gathered all of Russia's senior statesmen and parliamentarians in the biggest, most glorious and elegant St George State Hall in the Kremlin, restored to Tsarist-era Imperial glory. There he declared Russia's acceptance of Crimea's reunification bid. Immediately after the speech, the treaty between Crimea and Russia was signed. The peninsula reverted to Russia as it was before 1954, when Khrushchev had passed it to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic without any serious discussion in the Supreme Soviet -- and (according to some) without even recording any vote. The vast St George Hall applauded Putin loudly and intensely. For the Russians, burdened by memories of the stinging defeat of 1991 when their country was taken apart, regaining Crimea was a wonderful reversal. Public festivities unfolded spontaneously in honour of this reunification all over Russia, and especially in Crimea. Russian historians compared the event with the restoration of Russian sovereignty over Crimea in 1870, almost 20 years after the Crimean War had ended with Russia's defeat, when severe limitations on Russian rights in Crimea were imposed by victorious France and Britain. The events of mid-March 2014 have liberated the Russian Black Sea Fleet to develop and sail freely again, enabling it to defend Syria in the next round of East-West confrontation. The cherry on the cake? It must have been the additional joy of outwitting the adversary. The American neocons had initially arranged the coup in Ukraine and sent the unhappy country crashing down, but the first tangible fruit of this breakup went to Russia. The U.S. neocons' role in the Kiev coup was clarified by two further independent exposures. In the first, Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek showed that the anti-Russian campaign of recent months (gay protests, Wahl affair, etc.) was organized by the neocon PNAC (Project for a New American Century, now renamed FPI) led by Mr Robert Kagan -- husband of Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland. The second exposé was an interview with Alexander Yakimenko, the head of Ukrainian Secret Services (SBU) who had escaped to Russia like his president. Yakimenko accused Andriy Parubiy, the present security czar, of making a deal with the Americans. On American instructions, Parubiy delivered weapons and brought snipers who killed some 70 persons within a few hours. Riot police and protesters as well were killed. The U.S. neocon-led conspiracy in Kiev was aimed at the European attempt to reach a compromise with President Yanukovych, said the SBU chief. The EU and Yanukovych almost agreed on all points, but Ms Nuland wanted to derail the agreement, and so -- with the help of a sniper or two -- she did. The Novorossia Challenge
While the Russian victory in Crimea appeared to be a foregone conclusion, Moscow's position elsewhere in eastern and southeastern Ukraine is less clearcut. The confrontation has shifted to the eastern and southeastern provinces of mainland Ukraine, the region known as Novorossia (New Russia) before the Bolshevik Revolution. In these industrial provinces, which did not belong to the Ukraine before Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, the working class has not completely lost its sense of being a class-for-itself despite several decades' destruction of Soviet-era habits and outlook. The public mind remains quite muddled as to who's fighting whom there. In this connection, it cannot be asserted often enough that this conflict is not a tribal one between Russians and Ukrainians. This needs to be reasserted notwithstanding U.S. commentator Patrick Buchanan's claim of this tribal characteristic in his description of Vladimir Putin as "a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethno-nationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern." Is Putin an empire-builder? As others have noted: the quick takeover of Crimea was an action forced upon Moscow by the strong-willed people of Crimea and by the brazen aggression of the Kiev regime. Putin hoped he would not have to make this decision -- but once he decided, he acted. However, it is Buchanan's ethno-nationalist assertion that provides the starting-point of even worse disinformation. At this time the Russian ethno-nationalists, who support the Ukrainian ethno-nationalists, are Putin's enemies. Putin is a proponent and advocate of a non-nationalist Russian world.[1] Meanwhile, as the Russian journalist Israel Shamir and others reminded us recently, social reality in the former Soviet republics since the 1991 collapse belies the simple-minded and brain-dead nonsense shamelessly repeated by the Buchananoid Cold Warriors among the present-day commmentariat. People of Russian culture have been severely discriminated against, often fired from their workplaces. In the worst cases, they were expelled or killed. Millions of Russians, natives of the republics, became internal refugees while millions of non-Russians who preferred Russian so-called universalist culture to "their own" so-called nationalist and parochial ones fled their alleged backwaters for the cosmopolitan centres of Russia. That accounts for the phenomenon that the Buchananoid mindset -- widely accepted among many post-Cold War commentators and "Soviet specialists" from the United States and Canada -- is absolutely incapable of comprehending: modern post-Soviet Russia has millions of Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Tajiks, Latvians and smaller ethnic groups from the republics. Even less comprehensible from the Buchananoid standpoint: despite the discrimination that has become de rigueur during the post-Soviet period, millions of Russians and people of Russian culture remained in the republics where their ancestors lived for generations and the Russian language became a common ground. It is precisely this reality, and the stubborn ignorance maintained about its actual meaning particularly throughout the U.S. establishment, that Putin and his supporters have been able to turn to their political account to such devastating effect against their U.S.-led challengers. Putin's presidency has been defending all Russian-speakers, all ethnic minorities, such as Gagauz or Abkhaz, not only ethnic Russians. Putin defends "the Russian world," including all those russophones who want and need his protection, and perhaps even a majority of the people in the Ukraine -- ethnic Russians, Jews, small ethnic groups and ethnic Ukrainians, in Novorossia and in Kiev. In his speech on Crimea, Putin stressed that he wants to secure this Russian world -- everywhere in the Ukraine. In Novorossia, meanwhile, the need is most acute, for there are daily confrontations between the people and the gangs sent by the Kyiv regime. While Putin does not yet want to take over Novorossia, his hand continues to be forced as it was in Crimea.[2]This has caused Putin to stickhandle carefully, on the one hand, around the matter of recognizing the utterly illegitimate interim government of the putchists in Kiev, while leaving an opening to deal with an "elected" replacement for that government after May 25 on the other. Another Path?
One path possibly on which to avoid this major shift might be for Ukraine to rejoin "the Russian world." While keeping its independence, Ukraine could restore full equality to its Russian language speakers. Russophones deserve Russian-language schools, newspapers, TV, and be entitled to use Russian everywhere, while anti-Russian propaganda should cease, along with fantasies of joining NATO. The Yatseniuk interim government is strongly pulled in both directions at the moment. While officially disowning any talk of joining NATO, they persist -- until a future Ukrainian government can take office following the upcoming May 25 elections -- in putting off the repeal of anti-Russian measures that were the first edicts of the Kiev coup administration. There seems to be nothing in principle standing in the way of such a development. Nevertheless, there are attendant circumstances -- many of them unconnected to the U.S., NATO, the IMF or the Putin Administration -- that operate against resolving any of the contradictions currently blocking the path to a solution. The source of these particular obstacles lies with the so-called oligarchs. According to one source that has access to data current to "the end of 2013," there are "four basic clans[of oligarchs dominating the Ukrainian economy]. Firstly there is the Donetsk clan -- Rinat Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at $16 billion. Its main interests are mining and steel production[placing it heavily in eastern Ukraine]. This clan includes Boris Kilesnikov, the Kluevs, Yury Ivanyuschenko. The second clan is the Yanukovych family[from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine]. They control principally the customs officials, farming and infrastructure. By comparison this clan is a bit poorer[with total assets worth about $1 billion].[Nevertheless,]they have held very powerful administrative positions." (The other two clans are much smaller).[3] Agents from the clans of Kilesnikov et al. in particular are known to have been active in mobilizing the workers in their enterprises to oppose the Kyiv putschists and their program. Similarly, in western Ukraine, other oligarchic clans have their own connections -- alongside those of the CIA -- into the Right Sector, Svoboda and other Banderite elements. The demands of the workers in the east are especially just, but the fact remains that neither they nor their fellow workers in western Ukraine enjoy significant control over political organizing outside the oligarchs' ambit. Conclusion
Largely as a byproduct of the speed of events, the impression is widespread for the moment that the Obama Administration has met its match in Moscow. In fact, at the same time, the Ukrainian crisis -- and especially the desperation of the oligarchs within that crisis -- also illustrates how the danger from further U.S. imperialist intervention threatens to become ever more destabilizing even as others, such as Vladimir Putin, find ways to impose limits on the U.S. imperialists' opportunities to operate with impunity. Notes 1. What is the Russian world? Russians populate their own geographically sprawling universe embracing many ethnic units of various background, from Mongols and Karels to Jews and Tatars. Until 1991, they populated an even greater land mass (called the Soviet Union, and before that, the Russian Empire) where Russian was the lingua franca and the language of daily usage for the majority of citizens. Russians could amass this huge empire because they did not discriminate and did not "hog the blanket," so to speak. Russians are non-tribal to an extent unknown in smaller East European countries, but similar to other great Eastern Imperial nations such as the Han Chinese and the Turks before the advent of Young Turks and Ataturk. Rather than assimilating immigrants from around the world after slaughtering the original indigenous population in North American style, the Russians partly acculturated their neighbours for whom the Russian language and culture became the gateway to the world. To protect and enjoy this diversity, the Russians protect and support local cultures at their own expense. This is called a universalist humanist world-view. It does not endorse persecution or discrimination based on national or ethnic origin. Under the Soviet Constitution, one of the aims was to eradicate the Russian chauvinism promoted by the Czars. Affirmative action in the Soviet republics included provisions such that a Tajik, for instance, would have priority to study medicine in the Tajik republic, before a Russian or a non-Tajik Jew; and he would be able to move faster up the ladder in the Party and politics in that Republic. Still the gap was small, and attempts to push great-Russian chauvinism were regularly opposed from regional centres of Russian governance. After the 1991 collapse of the USSR, the Russian-based universalist world-view was challenged by a parochial and ethno-nationalist one in all ex-Soviet republics except Russia and Belarus. Though Russia ceased to be Soviet, it retained this universalist humanist world-view. 2. The Putin-Medvedev vision for Russia entails strengthening the authority of a single central government but without conceding freedom for any oligarch or group of oligarchs to challenge the authority of the central government. The federal arrangements they envision are intended to protect the oligarchs' economic power on the one hand without conceding to them any of the powers reserved for the central government on the other. "In the old days," so-to-speak, the check against the rise of tyranny at the centre was supposed to be exercised by way of a Soviet-style order, i.e., with a Communist Party controlled by the working people maintaining a continuous check on centralized political power. Pressure was exerted on this system to eliminate the authority of the workers' state until finally the Communist Party was merged with the Soviet state. Such a party could no longer provide a political tool for the oppressed and exploited to resist their oppressors and exploiters and on the contrary became an instrument to facilitate their expropriation as takes place in the state-monopoly capitalist countries. 3. This information comes from a 70-minute lecture entitled "Oligarchical topography of Ukraine," uploaded April 24 to YouTube (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXLUJpqaQpY) by Russian academic Andrei Fursov. It provides a detailed and thoughtfully-compiled contemporary source of invaluable information about the Ukrainian oligarchs. These oligarchic clans send their agents into the ranks of the people, to stir them up to fight for those apparently just objectives that also happen to be useful to the oligarchs at that time. The Kilesnikov-led clan which stands at the head of the Ukrainian oligarchs is heavily invested in precisely those sectors serving the Russian market that will never get a penny of IMF loans. Indeed, the leading elements in the IMF want such industrial assets liquidated. Meanwhile, according to data published recently by the Centre for Globalization Research in Montreal, the only "new industrial program" that the IMF and European Central Bank have in mind for Ukraine is that the 50-km exclusion zone surrounding the decommissioned Chernobyl reactor in western Ukraine become a toxic waste dump for spent fuel from nuclear reactors across Europe. (TML Weekly No. 19, May 17, 2014) |