“Russian spring”: the struggle for democratic rights and social justice

Pavel Gubarev

Genesis of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Maidan as a bifurcation point of “nation-building”

Ukraine is a vast – in European terms – multiethnic country. Situated on the line of the civilizational joint of Western and Russian civilizations, it produced a number of sub ethnic groups and identities, concocted on the basis of admission or rejection of certain cultural and civilizational elements of the neighbouring nations.  Before 1939 Ukrainians existed as ethnic minorities of the adjoining states and were often subjected to repressions on religious, ethnic and cultural grounds, and the ultimate unification of the Ukrainian lands took place only in composition of the Ukrainian SSR. At that time the self-appellation “Ukrainians” was not widely known. This ethnonyme became well-known only in the Soviet period of the history of Ukraine.

The territories, in which Ukrainians constituted ethnic minorities, were also included in composition of Ukraine, particularly, Donbas and the Crimean Peninsula.  The emergence of Ukrainian statehood, which was formed on the basis of Soviet ideology – the principles of internationalism, equality and social justice coincided with the process of unification of Ukraine.  Thus, controversies between the ethnic groups and sub ethnic groups had been muted, and differences in life styles did not have great impact on the lookout of the Ukrainians. The concept of “brotherly nations” implying Russians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians had been developed in Soviet science. Domestic clashes of regional clans did occur, of course; nevertheless, they did not stem from the issue of national identity.

Things changed after the breakdown of the SSSR under the influence of caused by centrifugal tendencies growth of Ukrainian nationalism.

The ideology of independent Ukraine came out to be inherent for the western regions only as well as for Kiev, the city taking its lead from global informational and political trends. In consequences of these processes a new line of controversy between the regions appeared in Ukraine as well as their classification as first-rate and second-rate.

Nationalism, staked against not as much ethnic minorities as against the bearers of the past-time ideology, became the ideology of Ukrainian bureaucracy. At that western regions due to their nationalist and anti-Communist inclinations were declared “cultural elite”, and industrial regions (predominantly Russian and Russian-speaking) – the second-rate citizens. Reforms aimed at granting the regions certain level of independence could have deadened the conflict.  However the ideology of the establishment of a “new Ukrainian” hindered it by forcing a single-language-and-unified-identity system onto the population. Ukraine was presented with the example of unified by Bismarck Germany, and the objections concerning the danger of repetition by Ukraine of certain stages of nation establishment Germany underwent were not viewed seriously.

Maidan in Kiev became the final result of more than twenty-year-long process of materialization of the citizen of a “new type”. It was turned into a giant vessel, in which a prototype of the Überukrainian, having implemented the ideals of the Unitarian project, was to be born. The inhabitants of Donbas and the Crimea found this uniform Ukrainian unacceptable as a means of extermination of their regional sub-ethnic and ethnic identity.  Anti-fascist rebellion in Donbas was directed against this “Überukrainian”, and not against Ukrainian people, their culture and statehood, and as a consequence of this rebellion new Novorussian identity was born.

Insurgence in the Crimea and Donbas as the struggle for democratic rights

Transformation of the Soviet society in the post-Soviet time was carried out under the slogans of democracy and civil rights. Nevertheless, in reality these processes had nothing in common either with people power or with struggle for human rights, and the problem was not only in the loss of fundamental civil rights, which the citizen was provided with in the Soviet society, like the right to labour and social guarantees. In the post-Soviet society the bearers of the “wrong ideology” continued to be persecuted – only “right” and “wrong” ideologies changed places.

Global human rights movement has been displaying weird behaviour in the course of the recent events in Ukraine. Ukrainian and international human rights activists defended the right of the Maidan militants to attack riot police, use combustibles, capture administrative buildings and even equip torture rooms in them. All these actions – to the extent of capture of police stations and plunder of arms rooms – had been presented as peaceful protest, and every attempt of the authorities to administer force caused outrage of the human rights defenders and was viewed as cases of violation of civil rights. Yet, the forces that seized power in Kiev on that very day obtained a carte blanche for all kinds of violence in the South-East. European and American politicians and mass-media that only a day before had been lamenting the use of force against armed with flash bang grenades and traumatic guns “children”, suddenly stopped noticing real war crimes – artillery shelling of schools, hospitals and residential areas of Donbas.

Human rights community has got a long history of ignoring the facts of violation of civil rights justified by statist practicality in Ukraine. It all started with the Language Law, by which the Ukrainian language was declared a single official language in a de-facto bilingual country. At the moment the status of Ukrainian as the official language was merely nominal, as the Constitution of Ukraine and the Language Law guaranteed factual equality of the two languages. The Russian language alongside with Ukrainian should have been used in all spheres of life: in record keeping, education, media and in courts. Nevertheless the Law was ignored in practice. Ukrainian lawmakers with the obstinacy of a maniac cranked out anti-constitutional laws and acts aimed at the limitations of the Russian language sphere of usage, first of all in education and paperwork. This way Ukrainian authorities had forced out of the process of state management the representatives of the industrial regions and at the same time enforced the institute of inequality. The Russian language in Ukraine is the language of the medium class and the language of the workers from the suburbs of the big cities – that is, the language of the most competitive part of masses.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian human rights movement totally ignored the humanitarian and social aspects of the language problem, viewing the struggle of Russian-speaking population for their rights exclusively in the context of irredentism and separatism. Russian irredentism in the Crimea and Donbas was the direct result of this policy. Actualization of the “Novorossiya project” was the response to the long-term discrimination. Notably, Donbas and Novorossiya as a whole remains a multiethnic region. We are absolutely aware of the presence in Novorossiya of a strong Ukrainian component and consider the protection of its rights one of the first-rate tasks in the process of establishment of the new state.

Social guidelines of the “Russian spring”

Donbas and greater Novorossiya are traditional working regions, and their history is inseparably connected with the history of working class struggle for social equality and social justice. Existence in composition of independent Ukraine was fraught for industrial Novorossiya not only with discrimination on the language grounds, but predominantly with the collapse of the social state. It was Donbas that became the center of protest activity in reaction to the establishment and consolidation of the institutes of social injustice in post-Soviet Ukraine at the early stages of Ukrainian independence. Rejection of socialist economic model led to real catastrophe for the region, as decline and closure of unprofitable enterprises, plundering and selling for scrap of plants, factories and mines had been unprecedented and they lowered the life standards of the population to the level of those dating back to the predatory capitalism of the 19^th century.

As a result the criminal oligarchic model that had formed in Donbas created strong political clans. These clans in the process of their struggle for influence in Kiev acquired a habit of using the people of Donbas as a cover, to speak on their behalf. Local elites intimidated the population of the region by the growth of nationalism in Kiev, presenting themselves as protectors of the people’s interests. Nevertheless, as the events of the last year had shown, oligarchs and politicians from Donetsk failed their electorate. They betrayed their people for the sake of retaining a part of their assets, having surrendered power to radical nationalists without resistance. Consequently, the miners, metallurgists and the unemployed of Donetsk had to defend their rights and freedoms themselves with arms in their hands.

The managerial class demonstrated its inability to defend the people’s interests. Thus, the return of this class to Donbas alongside with the return of the old way of life is senseless in our opinion.  Hence, Donbas acquired a unique chance of establishment of a state of a new type – the state based on the principles of social justice and equality.