Ukrainian New Left and Grassroots Social Protests: A Thorny Way to Hegemony

Radical Left Movements in Europe / Ed. by M. Wennerhag, C. Fröhlich, and G. Piotrowski. Routledge., 2017

Published in Radical Left Movements in Europe / Ed. by M. Wennerhag, C. Fröhlich, and G. Piotrowski. Routledge, 2017, pp. 211-229. The Ukrainian new left provides an important case for understanding how radical movements build connections with grassroots protests, how they operate within broad coalitions and which causal mechanisms, strategies and factors account for their successes or failures. In this chapter I explore a small new left student union, “Direct Action” (DA), that was founded 2008 by ideological anarchists and Marxists and in 2010 led a mobilization involving 10,000 students in over 14 Ukrainian cities against the introduction of paid services in universities. DA was able to articulate a left-libertarian framing during large-scale student protests against the commercialization of education, which initially forced the government to make concessions, but later DA lost its hegemony in the student movement. I apply the Gramscian argument that a “weak civil society” is not an obstacle but an important structural opportunity for a radical movement. It allows radicals to exploit what I call the “primacy effect” – being the first to raise an issue ignored by everyone else – and in this way to favour their own framing of the problem and its solutions, making a serious claim for hegemony in the wider movement. Ultimately, however, retaining hegemony may require additional resources.

Europe-Asia Studies, 2018

This is a review of my book New Generation Political Activism in Ukraine 2000–2014 by Dr. Taras Kuzio. It features in the peer-reviewed journal Europe-Asia Studies. New Generation Political Activism in Ukraine 2000–2014

Using the political process model of social movements (Tilly, Tarrow, McAdam), paper analyzes the origins, dynamics and outcome of the protest movement in Ukraine (December, 2000 – March, 2001). Among structural preconditions of the protest, the paper points to increasingly authoritarian nature of Ukraine’s political system and the absence of an organized democratic opposition to the regime. Transitory opportunities for popular mobilization included division within Ukraine’s ruling elite and the emergence of an influential political actor allied with protesters. Finally, the murder of an independent journalist and public release of evidence implicating top Ukrainian officials in this crime provided emotional impetus for the nationwide protest. Development of the protest movement is viewed as a function of the tactical interaction between protesters, authorities and other political and social actors. Thus, authors differentiate between three stages of the protest cycle in Ukraine. In the incipient stage (1) all the main political actors experienced uncertainty regarding their interests and strategies, which provided protesters with considerable power leverage. During the reactive stage (2), protest diffused to the regions, the authorities tried various techniques to neutralize the protesters, while other political actors looked for ways to use the protest action to advance their interests. The escalation stage (3) of the protest was marked by high public mobilization, effective counters on the part of the authorities, and co-optation of the protest movement by emerging political opposition. Demobilization of Ukraine’s protest movement came as a result of a combination of internal and external factors, including lack of new protest forms, use of violence by protesters, renewed unity within the ruling elite and altered political context of insurgency. Paper traces the movement’s impact by focusing on changed societal attitudes, elite opinion and patterns of the political process in Ukraine in the aftermath of protest actions.

The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe, 2023

This chapter analyses how the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), a communist successor party that was re-established in 1993, lost its place as the most popular party in the first decade of Ukrainian independence to become repressed and marginalised. The chapter shows how the KPU was gradually turning into a political ally of the oligarchic Party of Regions and suffered from repression after the Euromaidan revolution in 2014. It shows that the KPU failed to build more democratic and participatory structures as it failed to institutionalise internal opposition and regularly expelled dissenting radicals. It explains how young KPU members and voters had a lower commitment to the party, while the core Communist supporters were ageing. The chapter also demonstrates how the KPU failed to develop linkages to civil society but instead promoted weak front groups. Many militant communists joined the pro-Russian separatist uprising in Eastern Ukraine. The irremovable leadership that has been personally benefiting for more than 20 years from what was once the largest party in the country chose to keep a low profile. This all explains why the KPU failed to resist against terminal threats to its existence after the Euromaidan victory. Cite as: Ishchenko, V. (2023). Ukraine. In: Escalona, F., Keith, D., March, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Pp. 665-692. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56264-7_23

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. 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 gives a brief overview of the most important (and often still unresolved) questions about major political events in Ukraine starting from 2013. 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 attempts to answer the following questions. How did different left wing organisations try to intervene in the Maidan and Anti-Maidan movements and how successful were their interventions? To what extent were they able to defend the left agenda against liberals and (both Ukrainian and Russian) nationalists? To what extent did they rather follow the agenda of their political opponents? What were the differences not only between the different left wing organisations but also between groups in Kiev and in the provinces? What was the real scale of repression by the new government and by the far right against various left wing organisations? To what extent did the repression specifically against the left or rather against separatist forces challenge the state’s integrity? What are the current prospects and opportunities for left wing politics now in Ukraine both in the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary spheres? Are there any prospects for a ‘left turn’ in the separatist republics? What political lessons should the European and the international left draw from the political events in the Ukraine and what were their results for the local left?

LeftEast, 2020

Ukraine ended the 1980s as one of the most advanced parts of the Soviet super-power with a developed machine-building industry. Thirty years later, Ukraine’s major economic indicators are on a par with many Third World countries. The country is fundamentally dependent on the financial, political, and military support of the West, with politics dominated by a handful of powerful oligarchs, right-wing paramilitaries regularly marching on the streets, and a part of the country annexed by neighboring Russia and another part torn through by the frontline. It can rightfully be called the northernmost country of the Global South. Moreover, there is not any relevant political force with a vision of alternative progressive national development. Several profound contradictions have defined the dynamics of Ukrainian economy, politics and society since the collapse of the Soviet Union: the contradiction between transnational and local capital, those between factions of the local capital, Ukrainian national identity contradictions, geopolitical contradictions with Russia, the US, and EU, and contradictions between civil society, the active public, and Ukrainian society at large. I will first expose them, and then discuss how the Ukrainian new left has been failing to respond to these contradictions with a project for Ukraine’s alternative development.

Ukraine is facing changes of a significant scale. Caused by external and internal factors and processes, these changes will influence the socio-economic and political reality of the majority of Ukrainians. The character and degree of the changes are yet to be defined in the political struggle inside the country. Do workers, as the biggest social class, have the potential to press for their interests in the face of a spiraling crisis? In this article we tried to answer this question by analyzing labor protests in the country. Our research of empirical material of the Ukrainian Protest and Coercion database shows that labor actors have significant bargaining power on local issues but lack coordinated and relatively large-scale mobilization, hence, can hardly influence state-level politics. Being scattered and defensive, lacking solidarity among themselves and without support from allies, workers have few chances to succeed in promoting their agenda. Some possible logical and empirically supported solutions to increase labor bargaining power in this context are also suggested in the article.

Globalizations, 2020

The article traces nationalist polarization and divergence within the Ukrainian new left in response to the Maidan and Anti-Maidan protests in 2013–2014, and the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The ideological left-wing groups in the protests were too weak to push forward any independent progressive agenda. Instead of moving the respective campaigns to the left, they were increasingly converging with the right themselves and degraded into marginal supporters of either pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian camps in the conflict. The liberal and libertarian left supported the Maidan movement on the basis of abstract self-organization, liberal values and anti-authoritarianism. In contrast, the Marxist-Leninists attempted to seize political opportunities from supporting more plebeian and decentralized Anti-Maidan protests and reacting to the far-right threat after the Maidan victory. They deluded themselves that Russian nationalists were not as reactionary as their Ukrainian counterparts and that the world-system crisis allowed them to exploit Russian anti-American politics for progressive purposes.