Then it describes and explains the positions and political activities of the various Ukrainian organisations on the left towards the Maidan uprising, the Anti-Maidan movement and the war in eastern Ukraine. The paper gives a brief overview of the most important (and often still unresolved) questions about major political events in Ukraine starting from 2013. It covers all the major groups and parties who at least identify with the socialist and/or anarchist tradition: from ‘old left’ parties originating from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to ‘new left’ organisations, unions and informal initiatives that did not have any relation whatsoever to the CPSU. The paper seeks to present a balanced, well documented and nuanced discussion covering the full range of positions of the Ukrainian left and activities in relation to the Maidan and Anti-Maidan movements and the war. As casualties begin to mount in the east, the ultimate consequences of Ukraine’s crisis remain troublingly uncertain. Such concerns have been still further marginalized as the pressures of the country’s ongoing emergency have borne down on its political culture, diminishing the space for independent critical thinking. Within an intellectual scene dominated by nationalist themes, Spilne sought to redirect attention to socio-economic questions from an explicitly internationalist, and anti-capitalist, perspective. He became part of Ukraine’s Marxist milieu while studying at the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy, where, despite the institution’s pro-Western orientation, a small leftist subculture emerged in the later 2000s this included the journal Spilne (Commons), of which he is one of the founding editors. Born in 1982 into a Soviet technical intelligentsia family, Ishchenko came of age politically at the turn of the new century, in the tent camps and rallies of the ‘Ukraine Without Kuchma’ movement of 2000-one of the precursors of the 2013 Maidan. Here, Kiev-based sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko discusses the unfolding of the Ukrainian crisis and its outcomes to date, against the backdrop of the political and economic order that emerged after 1991. The combination of escalating local tensions and great-power rivalries poses significant challenges for analysis and political judgement. The spectre of a dismemberment of the country, previously raised as a distant nightmare, has given way to a de facto partition, as Ukraine enters what may be the larval stages of a civil war. At present, the Ukrainian army is engaged in what it calls an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against an array of militias in Donetsk and Luhansk, composed of a blend of local residents and Russian nationalist fighters. The fall of Yanukovych at the hands of a pro-Western protest movement in February brought a surge of opposition in the east of the country, spilling into separatist agitation after Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in March. These divisions have grown through the entwinement of opposed political camps with the strategic ambitions of Russia and the West, the former bidding to maintain its grip over its ex-Soviet bailiwick even as the latter relentlessly expands its sphere of influence. ![]() Since the start of the Maidan protests six months ago, Ukraine has been at the centre of a crisis which has exposed and deepened the fault-lines-geopolitical, historical, linguistic, cultural-that traverse the country. Following the coup d’état, snap parliamentary and presidential elections, radicals integrated into the system of government bodies of the country thus gaining a significant influence mostly on law enforcement and defense (the Ministry of the Interior, Security Service of Ukraine and Armed Forces of Ukraine). The report defines radicals not only in terms of their participant in political movements and parties considered extremist (the Right Sector, Svoboda Party, and Social-National Assembly), but also on the bases of their statements and activities. This expert report (June 2015) reflects the impact of racial nationalists and the respective ideology in post-Maidan Ukraine. One should take into account the development of changes in the Ukrainian regime and society in dynamic that, besides economic and military aspects, has a very important ideological element. Studying the confrontation in the winter of 2013-2014 in the center of Kiev is a necessary, but an insufficient condition to understand the trends of the revolution. ![]() A year and a half after the coup d’état, the Ukrainian revolution goes on.
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