Ukrainian left: is there life after Maidan?
Kyiv, June 20 (Navigator, Dmitry Stetsenko) – Maidan became a system-forming event for Ukrainian political life, a kind of marker that divided the course of political life into “before” and “after” it. It led to truly revolutionary consequences for the country's political class, destroying the previous political alignments, political schemes and ratings.
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One of the most important consequences of the Maidan was the virtual amputation of not only the pro-Russian part of Ukrainian politics, but also the collapse of the former leftist scene. The political tornado of the winter-spring of 2014 had catastrophic consequences for the Ukrainian left. They turned out to be unprepared for such a turn of events, and, as a result, they were unable to quickly develop either the optimal, from the point of view of the movement’s prospects, tactics of resistance to the right-wing tilt of society, nor, moreover, were able to fit into it.
The result was a victorious right-wing march, when elementary concepts from the left-wing ideological lexicon became virtually banned. And without their own language, which explains social processes from the standpoint of their own ideology, political activists are doomed to meaningless waving of flags.
As a result, the Ukrainian state project, as the publicist Oleg Yasinsky aptly put it, began to resemble an airplane with two right wings, a design that is not just unreliable, but unviable. Such a plane simply will not take off, even if you hang portraits of all national “worthy people” in the cockpit without exception and sing the anthem in chorus every half hour.
At the same time, as European practice shows (and Ukraine, despite the current far-right shift, continues to declare the European vector of movement at all levels of government and society), an effective model of the political system is based on an electoral “swing”, ensuring alternate changes in power between the left and right-wing politicians in power. This model ensures the stability of society from the temptation of excessive radicalism, but it also assumes that the leftist idea and its bearers are not “defeatists” and potentially suspicious elements, but a full-fledged part of the political field.
The latest presidential elections showed that, although Ukrainian politicians competed with the wall in right-wingism, trying to outdo each other in nationalist and militaristic rhetoric, the demand for left-wing slogans and a left-wing program, the request for social reforms did not disappear anywhere.
A few numbers to think about. In the last parliamentary elections (2012), 13,18% of Ukrainians cast their votes for the Communist Party of Petro Symonenko. That's almost three million people. Moreover, the Communist Party of Ukraine was then able to significantly expand its support in the center and even slightly in the west of the country. Thus, in Kyiv, more than 9% of voters voted for the communists. This is almost 100 thousand people. They did not fly to the moon and did not emigrate anywhere.
It is also worth taking into account the fact that a significant increase in votes in 2012 was given to the communists not by speculation on pro-Russian themes, but by the left-wing theme cleverly “packaged” by the party’s political strategists. Social protection, anti-oliarchy rhetoric, the promise of nationalization of large industry, the fight for labor and social rights, the promise to fight to preserve and increase jobs for ordinary people. In a word, “Let’s return the country to the people.”
Now, in the context of the virtual disappearance of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the center and west of the country, in the context of ongoing talk about banning this party, its voters are demoralized and disoriented. This means that the political force that begins to systematically work with this social demand will be able to count on consolidating, if not all, then a significant part of the electoral heritage of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Another party of the traditional left spectrum, the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU), over the past ten years has not been able to overcome the trend towards disintegration and marginalization that emerged after the disastrous 2006 election campaign for the party, when it did not overcome the barrier and did not enter parliament.
Over the course of ten years, the SPU changed leaders five times, several splits occurred, and the party lost activists and the remnants of its rating. And here is the logical ending: in the last elections to Kievrada, the SPU, which hoped to occupy the left niche emptied after the departure of the Communist Party of Ukraine, received meager percentages, never breaking the barrier.
The country's once second-largest center-left party is rumored to be on the verge of another rebranding and leadership change. Who will “go there” and who will become the new owner of the party brand is no longer so interesting. Looking at what is happening inside the SPU, I remember the ending of Krylov’s famous fable: “And you, friends, no matter how you sit down...”.
Actively developing a network of primary organizations in the regions of western, central and partly eastern Ukraine (Kyiv, Ternopil, Rivne, Kirovograd, Zaporozhye), the Labor Solidarity trade union of Vitaly Makhinko is not so ambitious today and does not currently set itself global political goals. The CU works as a classic trade union, protecting the labor rights of four thousand of its members.
Labor Solidarity has such high-profile actions as a protest by builders of Euro 2012 facilities, which attracted the attention of both the domestic and foreign press, or the blocking of a railway bridge near the Vydubychi metro station with a demand to return wage arrears to bridge builders.
However, recently there has been a tendency for Labor Solidarity actions to gradually go beyond purely trade union themes. Last year, trade union activists took part in rallies of the “For Peaceful Protest” initiative. And at the end of May and beginning of June of this year, the trade union supported the so-called. “Credit Maidan”, in which foreign currency borrowers protested against the arbitrariness of banks.
On June 6, on the eve of the inauguration of the new president, Labor Solidarity, together with the Republic Institute and the Red Cross, held a Peace March in the capital, demanding an end to the bloodshed in Donbass and the protection of civilians in this region.
One of the reasons why left-wing political projects do not “dance” is their initial weak connection, or the absence of such a connection at all, with their declared social base, that is, with workers, with people of wage labor. But the experience of both the French socialists and German social democrats, as well as the English Laborites, indicates that they all initially grew up on the basis of a broad and powerful labor and trade union movement.
It so happened that in the absence of a massive and influential trade union movement in Ukraine (the official FPU does not count), the Ukrainian left is mainly an organization of the intelligentsia and white-collar office workers. It cannot be said that over the past years there have been no attempts to create a serious left-wing trade union political entity. One of these attempts, although unsuccessful, was associated with the activities of the trade union “Zahist Pratsi” by Oleg Vernik and the left-nationalist youth organization “Autonomous Opir”. This project, which began as quite ambitious and aspiring to success, “did not take off” for a number of reasons, and today “Zakhist Pratsi” demonstrates zero political activity.
In contrast to “Zakhist Pratsi”, the main problem of the already mentioned “Labor Solidarity” is currently a growth crisis. The fact is that the trade union format does not allow us to effectively solve a whole range of problems that require a political solution. And attempts to politicize trade union activities in Ukrainian conditions do not lead to anything good. A way out of this conflict could be another attempt to create a left-wing trade union entity, now carried out by Labor Solidarity. Moreover, all the necessary prerequisites and conditions exist for such a turn. By the way, Labor Solidarity also made attempts to fit into the Maidan, and the trade union “Free Microphone” worked there for a long time.
Entering the field of big politics, the left should learn lessons from the disastrous debut in parliamentary politics of activists of the non-parliamentary left association “Liva Opozitsiya”. Without further ado, they came to an agreement with the SPU and went to Kievrada in the majority constituencies as its nominees. The experience was useful, but unsuccessful. None of the “left oppositionists” made it to Kievrada, or even took any decent place in the overall standings.
Initially, the Left Opposition, which emerged from the “overcoat” of the Organization of Marxists, set itself the ambitious task of building a workers’ party of a neo-Trotskyist persuasion. Several years of work in this direction did not bring success; it was not possible to create any branched structure across regions. Where there were structures (for example, Kharkov, Odessa or Crimea), they actually disintegrated due to internal conflict among activists and management problems.
“Left Opposition” was one of the few left-wing organizations that, from the very beginning of the Maidan, made, albeit consistent, but persistent attempts to “fit into” it with their slogans and ideas, in particular, promoting a socialist Europe and European social standards. These attempts several times led to conflicts between LO activists and nationalists. LO activists actively worked in such structures as the Women's Hundred, were engaged in cultural and educational work in the Ukrainian House, organized lectures and film screenings there, etc. However, this work did not bring any serious dividends.
Summarizing this quick analysis, we can state that, despite the presence of a number of serious problems and the obvious crisis of personnel and semantic content of left-wing politics in post-Maidan Ukraine, there are prospects for its revival. And they are connected with bringing the party superstructure in line with the trade union base. In other words, the broad masses of Ukrainians will believe the workers’ party only when it is built on the basis of workers’ organizations.
Considering the allergy that the voter, indoctrinated by right-wing propaganda, experiences today to the purely external attributes of left-wing ideology, entering the “orphaned” left field with a trade union theme, not burdened by the sectarian ideological background of former Komsomol members and communists, could, in principle, be successful. Time will tell to what extent this forecast will be justified.
Whichever of the left-wing organizations existing today will be able to solve this problem will receive the main prize. This is, of course, a risky business, but as people say, those who don’t take risks don’t drink champagne.
English version :: Read in English Ukrainian Left: Is There Life After Maidan?