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Vol. 77/No. 46
who emerged from the government-run eastern coal industry that had strong ties to Russia,
claimed victory. Those around Viktor Yushchenko, who came out of the state banking apparatus
and oriented toward Washington, protested.
Hundreds of thousands of people mainly from the western part of the country took to the
streets, backing Yushchenko and a break with Russia, the so-called orange revolution.
The rule of the oligarchs around Yushchenko lasted six years. Growing disgust with their
thievery and corruption lay the basis for Yanukovich and his gang to take the election in 2010.
Yanukovich tried to play Moscow and Washington against each other. Last year he announced
he would sign the Eastern Partnership, hoping to parlay it into desperately needed aid and
leverage. But Putins threats to shut off Russian gas and promises of cheaper gas prices and
aid scuttled the deal.
Protests against the sudden shift mushroomed after police attacks on a small group of student
demonstrators. Hundreds of thousands marched against the Yanukovich government in Kiev
Dec. 1.
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Vol. 77/No. 47
The forces leading the opposition are capitalist parties with seats in Ukraines parliament. One
of the main groups organizing the protests is the Fatherland party of jailed opposition leader
Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister in Yushchenkos cabinet, representing oligarchs on the outs.
UDAR punch in Ukrainian is led by Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight world boxing
champion who gained his wealth outside of any ties to Ukrainian politics and presents himself
as a savior, a fighter against corruption.
The third party in Independence Square is Svoboda. The party was founded in the early 1990s,
but traces its roots to the Ukrainian partisan army in World War II, which was loosely allied with
Nazi Germany. Party leader Oleg Tyagnibok says Nationalism is love of the land and has
come out against a supposed Jewish-Russian mafia running Ukraine. Members of Svoboda
make up a large part of the muscle defending the square against the cops.
The oligarchs competing allegiances with either side are based on pragmatic interests, not
ideological views on democracy, as is often presented in the big-business press of Europe and
the U.S.
The Eastern Partnership, which Yanukovich said no to Nov. 21, was set up in 2007, aiming to
integrate Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine into the EU with removal of tariffs on imports
and exports.
Yanukovich said he couldnt sign the deal because of steep cuts to government expenditures
and state enterprises demanded by the International Monetary Fund to grant a loan on one
hand and threats of trade sanctions from Moscow on the other. On Dec. 15, the European
Union suspended talks with Ukraine, saying that Yanukovichs words and deeds were
increasingly diverging.
Ukraine, like many other countries in the region, is going through an acute economic and
financial crisis. The government needs $18 billion by March 2014 to roll over debt and pay
Russia for outstanding bills of oil and gas. In addition to the bailout and lower gas prices,
Moscow has also pledged to resume oil supplies to a refinery after a three-year break.
Ukraine relies on Russia for about 60 percent of its gas consumption and the Russian
government has turned the gas off twice in the last seven years. Since July Moscow had
imposed trade restrictions that cost Ukraine $2 billion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the deal is not tied to any conditions and the issue of
Ukraine joining the 2010 customs and trade agreement between Russia, Belarus and
Kazakhstan was not discussed.
Ukraine is Russias traditional breadbasket and a key source of steel, coal and access to warmwater ports on the Black Sea.
The entire eastern industrialized part of the country Yanukovichs traditional support base
has seen very little participation in the demonstrations. The eastern Donbass region accounts
for one-fifth of Ukraines industrial production and export revenues. Russia imports machinery
and manufactured goods. EU imports metals and light industrial products.
The cultural ties are also stronger. Speakers of the Russian language make up 17 percent of
Vol. 78/No. 4
February 3, 2014
White Russian.
At the same time, Ukraine was a key conquest of the empire, serving as a breadbasket for
Russia and major source of its coal and iron production.
Among the central tasks of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution under Lenins leadership was the
emancipation of tens of millions of oppressed peoples from the culturally more advanced
people of the Baltic region to the Muslims of the Caucasus to nomadic tribes of the Far East.
The Bolshevik Partys championing of the right of oppressed nations to self-determination
leading up to the revolution was decisive in uniting, educating and organizing the working class
to take political power, which included forging an alliance with the peasant majority from all
backgrounds.
The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party stated in November 1919 that
Bolsheviks in Ukraine must put into practice the right of the working people to study in the
Ukrainian language and to speak their native language in all Soviet institutions; they must in
every way counteract attempts at Russification that push the Ukrainian language into the
background.
The new policy of Ukrainization helped the Bolsheviks win over the Ukrainian Borotba (struggle)
Party, which merged with the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1920.
Stalin murder machine
But by the early 1920s the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party had begun, personified by the
rise to power of Josef Stalin after the death of Lenin in 1924. Stalin headed a counterrevolution
representing the interests of a growing privileged social layer centered in the increasingly
bureaucratic state apparatus. This reactionary caste reversed the Bolsheviks course and
resurrected the Great Russian chauvinism of the empire, including the re-subjection of
oppressed people, this time under the false banner of communism.
Nowhere did the purges and repression assume such a savage character as they did in the
Ukraine, Trotsky wrote in 1939.
Russification of Ukraine was revived. From 1959 to 1989 the number of Russians rose from
16.9 percent of Ukraines population to 22.1 percent.
When the Stalinist regime in Russia and Eastern Europe finally collapsed under pressure of
growing social contradictions in the early 1990s, the new regime continued to dominate Ukraine,
whose industry remained closely linked to that of Russia. Moscow supplies 60 percent of gas
used in Ukraine and has turned off the spigot twice to force compliance with the Putin
governments demands.
Competing factions of emerging and aspiring capitalists arose following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, drawn largely from remnants of the Soviet bureaucracy. In Ukraine, the factional
contest was partially based on divisions of east and west, Russian and Ukrainian, orientation
toward Moscow and the West. Meanwhile, the national aspirations among Ukrainian working
people against the Russian boot remain strong.
At the end of 2004, in what became known as the Orange Revolution, hundreds of thousands of
people, mostly from the western part of the country took to the streets to oppose the continuing
Russian domination of the country and what they saw as a rigged election that gave the
presidency to Yanukovich, who was then prime minister.
As a result, a new election was called and bourgeois opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko
was elected president, taking office in 2005, but a series of corruption scandals left him with little
support by the end of his term.
Today about four out of every six people in Ukraine are ethnic Ukrainians and speak the
Ukrainian language. One in six are ethnic Russians who speak Russian and roughly one in six
are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian. Russian is the main language in much of the eastern
and southern part of the country, areas which are more economically developed.
Yanukovich returned to the presidency after winning elections in 2010. In July 2012 his Party of
Regions successfully passed a language law that encourages making Russian an official
language in some regions.
The Ukrainian Week reported in March last year that the top eight Ukrainian TV stations
broadcast less than a quarter of their prime-time content in Ukrainian. Less than 5 percent of the
songs on the top six radio stations were in Ukrainian.
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Vol. 78/No. 5
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economic and cultural ties to Russia. Speakers of the Russian language make up 24 percent of
Ukraines population, in some areas in the east its as much as 40 percent.
Serhiy Nihoyan, 21, was one of the protesters killed in the clashes in Kiev. Some 1,000 people
attended his funeral in a village outside the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk Jan. 26. My son died
for Ukraine, his father, an Armenian immigrant, was quoted as saying in the local media.
The national protest movement has drawn other oppressed nationalities into the streets with
their own demands, including the Crimean Tatars of Ukraines southeastern peninsula, among
others.
Among the heterogeneous anti-government demonstrators are several ultrarightist currents
some fielding paramilitary groups that seek to claim the mantle of the national struggle,
including Svoboda, which has members in Parliament; Common Cause; and the Ukrainian
National Assembly.
Russian Revolution advance for oppressed nations
Among the central tasks of the 1917 Russian Revolution under the leadership of Lenin was the
emancipation of oppressed peoples. In November 1919 the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party stated that Bolsheviks in Ukraine must put into practice the right of the
working people to study in the Ukrainian language in all Soviet institutions; they must in every
way counteract attempts at Russification that push the Ukrainian language into the background.
This policy was decisive in winning Ukrainian working people to the proletarian revolution and
voluntary association of Soviet socialist republics.
This course was reversed when a growing privileged layer centered in the state bureaucracy
headed by Josef Stalin rose to power after Lenins death in 1924. They resurrected the Great
Russian chauvinism of the tsarist empire and through bloody counterrevolution trampled over
rights and aspirations of oppressed peoples. Russification a policy begun under the empire to
resettle Russians in Ukraine was resurrected.
Events today are a continuation of a deeply rooted struggle against the Russian boot.
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Vol. 78/No. 6
12
and pro-government thugs and many others kidnapped and beaten since the protests began.
The protests in Ukraine have begun to win support from other opponents of Putins autocratic
rule, including in Russia itself. At a Feb. 1 protest of several thousand in Moscow calling for
freeing 20 people arrested at an anti-Putin demonstration in May 2012, some participants
carried Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the protests there.
In addition to suffering under Russian tyranny, Ukraine has been especially hard hit by the
worldwide capitalist economic crisis. Its economy contracted by nearly 15 percent in 2009,
among the biggest declines in the world.
The Ukraine government owes $5.5 billion in loans due in 2014, $3 billion of it to the
International Monetary Fund, but its foreign currency reserves have dropped by about one-third
over the past year. Another $10 billion is due next year.
The IMF, prior to the latest crisis, has been urging Kiev to cut fuel subsidies and other
government spending as a condition for more loans, steps that would fall heavily on working
people.
President Putin has sought to take advantage of Ukraines precarious economic crisis to
strengthen Moscows hand and to press Yanukovich to take a harder line on the protests.
Russian government freezes loans
While $3 billion of the promised loan was previously released, Putin put a hold on the rest Jan.
29. And Moscow has begun implementing stepped-up border checks on rail and truck traffic
from Ukraine and demanded increased duties on food and machinery cargos. According to
Time magazine, Customs agents forced the Ukrainian trucks to stop, unload their cargo and
wait in the freezing cold while the cargo was inspected piece by piece.
This is not the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Moscow has tightened the
screws to keep Ukraine in line. Numerous times Moscow has threatened to halt supplies of
natural gas and followed through to press Ukraine to pay outstanding bills and kowtow to
Moscows demands.
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Vol. 78/No. 6
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Vol. 78/No. 7
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Vol. 78/No. 8
March 3, 2014
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and enter politics with their own struggles and demands. At the same time, an aspiring capitalist
class drawn mostly from those with ties to the old government bureaucracy began to
accumulate wealth, largely through theft of state property. New governments adopted a course
of reimposing social relations of capitalist exploitation.
The current authoritarian regime of President Putin is run by the remnants of the Stalinist secret
police apparatus and represents a major obstacle. Putin himself was a long-time KGB operative
who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and later headed the Federal Security Service, the
KGBs successor.
While Ukraine won its formal independence in the early 90s, its government functions much like
Moscows, using police repression to stifle opposition to its anti-working-class course.
The imperialist governments in the E.U. and the U.S. are no friends of working people in
Ukraine, Fiske said. They want the Ukraine government to stop subsidizing gas and to cut what
they see as too high a social wage, to ensure repayment of loans and maximize profits.
The struggles for independence from Russian domination in Ukraine is part of the fight to open
up political space and prepare the working class for battles to come, Fiske said. It will inspire
other oppressed nationalities to stand up for their rights against Russian domination in countries
of the former Soviet Union, including within Ukraine itself as with the Tatars in the Crimea.
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Vol. 78/No. 8
March 3, 2014
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Vol. 78/No. 9
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We ordinary people are saying this to the politicians who stand behind us: No Yanukovych is
going to be a president for a whole year, Parasiuk, who told the press he is not a member of
any party, said to a roaring crowd. Tomorrow, by 10 oclock, he has to be gone.
Opposition politicians scurried off the stage. Klitschko later returned and tried to apologize.
Asked by a Reuters reporter when the protesters would take their barricades down, Parasiuk
said, If the Maidan disperses, politicians will stop being afraid. We are not going away.
Yanukovych fled under cover of darkness that night. Organized forces from the Maidan
deployed outside the square. They set up guards at the parliament building and other
government offices. They entered and secured the presidential palace.
In Yanukovych compound opposition forces found a private petting zoo, a collection of vintage
automobiles and other treasures, along with files that the ex-president clumsily attempted to
destroy by submerging them in the Dnieper River.
The heads of the countrys paratroop unit, the Berkut, Alfa special operations forces and military
intelligence went before parliament to declare their adherence to the opposition. On Feb. 26
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced the Berkut were disbanded.
Parliament voted to charge Yanukovych with mass murder and bar him from leaving the
country. As of Feb. 26 he is at large.
While Putin has made no public comment, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he
wouldnt recognize any government that comes to power through revolutionary action by
Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks. He also announced previously promised financial
aid was now on hold. Putin put Russian combat troops on high alert Feb. 26 near the Ukraine
border.
Crowds of ethnic Russians mobilized in Crimea, calling for breaking from Ukraine. They scuffled
with Crimean Tatars supporting the overthrow of Yanukovych. Like the Ukrainians, the Tatars,
who are native to Crimea, have faced national oppression under the Russian czarist empire and
later the reactionary government of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Parliament appointed Oleksandr Turchinov, a deputy from the Fatherland party, as interim
president. Politicians in Kiev are now wrangling over ministries and powers behind closed doors.
Parliament voted to set new presidential elections for May 25.
Sharp economic crisis
Turchinov immediately appealed to the European Union and Washington for immediate and
substantial economic aid. He said Ukraine is sliding into the abyss.
The value of the currency, the hryvnia, has fallen sharply. Ukraines bond rating has been
downgraded so steeply that the country can no longer borrow on international markets.
The Ukraine government will soon be unable to pay public salaries or pensions, the Times
said.
Yuriy Kolobov, the acting finance minister, said Ukraine would need some $35 billion by the end
20
of next year.
Though the West is claiming victory in the tug of war with Russia over Ukraine, the Feb. 25
Times wrote, neither the European Union nor the United States has done anything more than
make promises.
Lack of enthusiasm among U.S. and European capitalists betray their doubts that drawing
Ukraine from Moscow toward European integration would be worth the expense.
The International Monetary Fund has told Ukrainian officials it wont do anything without a
commitment from the country to undertake painful austerity measures, the Times reported,
tough reforms and a near-certain recession as a result.
Given the blatant corruption and graft by politicians tied to newly minted millionaires since
Ukraines independence, the Times said, aspirants for office are regarded with suspicion by
most Ukrainians, who would rather have a new face in the presidency.
We need new people who can say no to the oligarchs, not just the old faces, Irina Nikanchuk,
25, told the Times while demonstrating outside the parliament building Feb. 24, watching
legislators drive up in BMWs and Mercedes.
Calls for new political faces, the Times said, were peppered with angry demands that the
Parliament raise pensions, reopen closed hospitals and find work for the jobless.
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Vol. 78/No. 9
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Vol. 78/No. 11
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respected and championed. It is in that same Leninist tradition that the sovereignty of Ukraine
must be defended today.
Hidden behind the slanders that demonstrators in Ukraine are fascists is a contemptuous view
of workers and farmers, of their backwardness, their supposed ignorance and lack of
sophistication. This begins with disdain toward workers at home, who naturally sympathize
when they see people like them fighting against tyranny.
Working people should oppose Washingtons denial of visas to Russian officials, imperialist
threats of sanctions against Russia or any U.S. intervention in the affairs of Ukraine, military or
otherwise.
Workers in the U.S. and Western Europe should demand imperialist governments provide
unconditional economic aid, not more loans, and cancel all debts to Ukraine on the brink of
economic collapse.
And what if Ukraine joins the European Union trade alliance? We would join struggles by
Ukrainian toilers against inevitable mass layoffs and other hardships the capitalist rulers of
Europe would impose. And we would welcome the deeper integration of Ukrainian workers with
the rest of their class in Europe.
The working class in the former Soviet republics was not defeated with the fall of the Soviet
Union. The goal of the Russian regime in a war against Ukraine would be to deal major blows to
the morale, confidence and combativeness of the working class. This is what the Stalinist
bureaucracy was never able to accomplish, to the chagrin of the capitalist rulers in Europe and
America.
Russian troops out! Defend Ukraine sovereignty! Oppose Moscows war moves!
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Vol. 78/No. 11
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first concerns national minorities situated within the boundaries of the given state.
In view of the deprivations and indignities they have suffered from chauvinist governing powers
in the past and their apprehensions that the new regime may perpetuate such mistreatment,
these sections of the population are entitled to special consideration and concessions.
Discrimination or abuse against any grouping or person because of their ethnic origin, race or
color will be a serious crime in a workers state. Such acts will meet with especially severe
penalties if committed by official sources or government jobholders. One of the functions of
education and culture in the new society will be the creation of a public opinion designed to
forestall and quarantine such manifestations.
The second aspect involves the relations between independent workers states. Socialist policy
and morality demands more than formal acknowledgment of respect for the rights and integrity
of all nations and peoples. Even capitalist states profess to abide by that rule of equality,
however much they disregard it in actuality.
A big, rich and powerful workers state has special obligations. It must lean over backwards in
all dealings with small nations and weaker peoples to give them complete assurance that it is
not misusing its superiority and authority to their detriment. The Stalinized Soviet Union has had
an abominable record in both respects. Moscows maltreatment of its own national minorities,
such as the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tartars and the Jews, its vilification of the Yugoslavs
after the Stalin-Tito split, its vassalization and attempted Russification of the East European
peoples, the withdrawal of economic aid from the Peoples Republic of China, the suppression
of the Hungarians in 1956 and the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 have
been criminal transgressions of the spirit of Leninist policy on the national question. The
haughty attitudes and infamous actions of the Soviet rulers in this domain befit oriental
potentates rather than socialists or democrats.
The right of a people to self-determination is hollow unless it can separate from its oppressor
and form its own sovereign state. Though this democratic right was guaranteed by the
Bolsheviks and is still acknowledged in the Soviet constitution, the slightest hint of it from any
abused nationality under the Kremlins jurisdiction is treated as treason. Revolutionary Marxists
support the demand of any nationality to be free and independent of both the Soviet
bureaucracy and imperialism.
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Vol. 78/No. 12
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hospital on the square, Bondar said. We would put the word out about what supplies we
needed and people from everywhere brought them. The Berkut set fire to the building in the
midst of the February battles.
Union members join Maidan protests
Vasyl Andreyev, chair of the Ukraine Building Workers Union, said in a Feb. 25 interview
published on the Building and Wood Workers International website that although his union did
not officially back the movement to oust Yanukovych, many members decided to go to the
barricades.
The new politicians keep trying to get us to shut down the Maidan, Bondar said.
We have to keep this going, added Konstantyn Samoylenko. There are very few politicians
who are not touched by the oligarchs, the millionaires. Those who own the banks think the
economic crisis in Ukraine has to be covered by the workers and the poor people.
Ukraine has been hard hit by the worldwide capitalist economic crisis. Acting President
Oleksandr Tyrchynov says that the country is heading into the abyss, with more than $13
billion in loan payments, mostly to European banks, due this year.
Antoliavych said Black Lung disease is prevalent among miners in the Donetz region, whose
working and living conditions have gotten worse in recent decades. While the independent
miners union was part of the fight for Ukrainian independence in the 1980s and 90s, before the
fall of the Soviet Union, he said, union officials today do little to protect miners.
The only source of news in the eastern mining areas is Russian television, which is full of lies
about Maidan, Antoliavych said. Coal bosses tried to prevent miners from joining the Kiev
protests by offering overtime bonuses to stay and work.
I hope that these events and the Maidan will help change the consciousness of the workers,
get them more involved, said Anya Tchaikovska, who used to work in a bus and construction
equipment depot and has been volunteering for the last four months to help coordinate food
supplies. If workers demands are not met, there will have to be another Maidan, she said.
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Vol. 78/No. 12
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Vol. 78/No. 12
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There were only two choices on the ballot: for immediate separation from Ukraine and
integration into Russia; or for greater autonomy from Ukraine and possible integration into
Russia at a later time. The ballot boxes were made of clear plastic, making it easy to see how
each person voted.
Moscows show of military force shored up its support among a layer of ethnic Russians who
long for a return to open Russian domination.
I am Russian and my husband is Tatar. We never had a single problem with anyone, Tatiana
Zhritov, whose husband is a car mechanic, told the Washington Post. Now Russia is trying to
divide us, and it is a terrible crime.
Crimean officials announced that 96.77 percent of ballots backed joining the Russian Federation
and claimed there was a 79 percent voter turnout.
Washington and its imperialist allies in the European Union responded by imposing sanctions
on a few dozen Russian officials, mostly visa restrictions and asset freezes.
Earlier in the month the EU announced it would provide $15 billion in loans to Ukraine, which is
in a deep economic crisis. Washington chimed in with $1 billion in loan guarantees. According to
Reuters, the so-called aid package is contingent on Ukraine agreeing to some harsh economic
medicine.
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Vol. 78/No. 12
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Vol. 78/No. 13
April 7, 2014
(lead article)
Miners in Ukraine discuss fight for sovereignty, rights
Coverage from coal region near Polish border
BY JOHN STUDER
SOKAL, Ukraine While the trade unions themselves didnt play a central role in the Maidan,
workers and unionists certainly did, former miner Yuriy Demkiv told the Militant March 23. The
Maidan, Kievs Independence Square, was the scene of bloody street battles with riot police
leading up to the fall of the pro-Moscow government of President Viktor Yanukovych.
Militant worker-correspondents spoke with a number of miners and other working people during
a couple days spent in and around this town of roughly 20,000 on the western border with
Poland. The area is host to seven coal mines; a coal processing plant with 900 workers, the
majority women; and a garment plant with a workforce of 800 that makes socks.
What we have accomplished is an important victory for the entire nation, Demkiv said. But we
dont trust the new government, or any of the political parties. We support the people staying in
Maidan. Those in the Ministry of Energy and the Coal Industry today are the same people who
served under Yanukovych.
But we dont just need to change the faces, he said. We need to change the social and
political policies, to get rid of the regime of bribery. We say freedom or death.
As we talked in Demkivs apartment, the television was tuned to continual coverage of the
Russian governments seizure of Crimea and Moscows provocations in the east and south of
the country, sections with the largest concentration of coal and steel production.
Having understood that the people cannot be defeated even by force, Viktor Yanukovych and
his associates fled, leaving the country devastated, Mikhailo Volynets, chairman of the
Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, said in a March 11 statement on behalf of the
nationwide Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Ukraine was subjected to aggressive
interventions by the Russian Federation.
Unemployment and decreasing living standards have worsened, said Volynets, who opposes
proposals from Washington and European Union governments for policies of austerity.
This targeting of average people is unacceptable and counterproductive, he said, all the more
so in Ukraine, where wages, pensions and other social payments are the lowest in Europe. He
called on unionists worldwide to support Ukrainian workers in their struggle for peace for our
country, its independence, integrity and the inviolability of its borders and for a decent level of
life for Ukrainian workers.
The economic and social crisis workers and farmers in Ukraine face has spurred their struggle
to throw off Russian domination and open political space for discussion, debate and action.
In its coverage of a public protest by railroad workers in November, the confederation reported
that there had been more than 331 workers actions from January through October 2013. In 43
percent of them workers were demanding unpaid wages from bosses or the government.
33
We have not been paid since November, said Olga Shkoropad at the unions office in the
Public Stakeholder Coal Company of Lviv, the coal enrichment plant here, where some 520
women make up the majority of the workforce. The company is 37 percent state-owned with the
rest divided among individual capitalists.
The plant supplies three power plants, Shkoropad said. After these were privatized in 2012, they
began to import processed coal from eastern Ukraine, cutting back production in the west.
Workers believe Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, who is reported to control half of
the countrys coal, steel, iron ore and thermoelectricity industries, is among the plants
controlling owners, Shkoropad said. Ukraines capitalist class is drawn from those who were
well-positioned through ties to the government bureaucracy to claim ownership of state-owned
industry and banking after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor Generals office reported March 22 that a search of an apartment
owned by Eduard Stavytsky, former Minister of Energy and Coal Mines who fled with the fall of
Yanukovych, contained $4.8 million in U.S. cash, 110 pounds of gold bars and diamond, gold
and platinum jewelry.
Workers fight for back pay
The union has been organizing actions near the coal enrichment plant and in Kiev demanding
back pay, Shkoropad said. The plant produces 11 rail coaches of processed coal a day, down
from 37 a couple years ago.
We are also demanding the government keep the coal mines and processing plants open so
that we can keep our jobs, she said.
The potholed-filled road to the plant outside the city reflected the decay of infrastructure that
runs alongside the road to capitalism here. When I first saw people driving I thought they were
drunk, said Volodia, a cab driver. Now I know what they were doing.
The mine equipment we have is decades behind modern technology, said Yura Sheremeta, a
32-year-old miner who builds tunnels at the Chervonograd No. 2 coal mine. Some 1,500 work at
the mine, 800 underground.
We have low seams of coal, with miners on their hands and knees, he said. We put
explosives into the coal face, set them off, and go in with shovels to fill up the trams and get the
coal out. Nothing has changed under either of the last two regimes. Sheremeta was referring to
the rule of Yanukovych and his rival, former President Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed on
charges of corruption. Representatives of Tymoshenkos Fatherland party dominate the interim
government now in power.
There is no safety protection in the mine, Sheremeta said. Workers sign off on safety forms
everyday, but it means nothing. One of my co-workers was killed in 2006, crushed to death by a
shuttle coach.
The union officials did little in response, he said. Workers rely on themselves for safety, not
on the union or mine managers.
Profit drive kills miners
34
One hundred sixty-one coal miners in Ukraine were killed on the job in 2011, according to
official reports, roughly two workers for every million tons produced. This is among the highest
mining fatality rates in the world.
In July 2011, 28 miners were killed in an underground explosion at the Suchodilska-Shidna
mine in the Luhansk region, southeast of Kiev. The law says that the trade union representing
miners who are killed must be involved in the official investigation. Seven of the dead miners
were members of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, but none of the unions
representatives were allowed to take part.
Seven coal miners were killed last month in an underground methane explosion at the
Pivnichna mine near Donetsk in the east, BBC reported.
There were 300 mines in Ukraine in Soviet days, Volynets said March 20 in the unions Kiev
office. Today there are 143. Forty-three of those are private, and they are the richest mines
with the biggest reserves. The others are the most dangerous with more deaths.
Our independent union was born out of big battles in 1989 and 90, breaking from the old
Soviet official union, fighting for pay they wouldnt give us and higher wages, he said. The
union led a mass march of miners from every mining area in the country.
One of the main problems we face today, Volynets said, is the spread of illegal mines in the
east.
These mines, known as kopanki, reportedly produce some 10 percent of the countrys coal
output. Kopanki miners work under dangerous conditions and receive no government benefits.
The illegal mines were born after the fall of the Soviet Union, when many state-owned mines
and other industries closed and tens of thousands were thrown out of work. Today they are a
big business. The coal, greased by corruption, flows onto the state coal market and is counted
as production from state mines.
My soul is with the people in the Maidan, said Sheremeta. I was deeply upset when I saw
Russia take over Crimea without any fight. I was inspired by some of the soldiers who showed
spirit and resistance. And I admire the Tatars who spoke out and protested against the invasion.
We are a sovereign nation, he said. We have spirit and we will continue to fight. If we dont
succeed this time, we will have another Maidan.
And I think there will be one in Russia too.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7813/781301.html
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Vol. 78/No. 13
April 7, 2014
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BY FRANK FORRESTAL
KIEV, Ukraine Russian troops took over the last of 189 Ukrainian military bases in Crimea
March 23 as part of their seizure of the peninsula and have taken up threatening positions along
Ukraines eastern border.
Meanwhile, the imperialist powers of America and Europe imposed financial sanctions, for
which working people of Russia will bear the brunt. And Washington beefed up joint military
maneuvers in the Black Sea with a number of former Soviet republics and other governments in
central and eastern Europe.
Col. Yuli Mamchur, former head of the last Ukrainian base in Crimea, had become a symbol of
resistance to the Russian annexation for his refusal to evacuate the air force barracks. He was
whisked into Russian custody after he and the troops under his command finally surrendered
the Belbek base in face of overwhelming force.
A uniform is not for sale. You cannot buy it. You cannot sell it, Ukrainian Capt. Aleksandr
Lantukh told reporters outside the base in Belbek a day after it was taken by Moscow, reported
the Washington Post. Most of the troops on the base remained loyal to Ukraine.
But Ukraines interim Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh, who resigned after Moscow snatched
Crimea, said only about one-quarter of Ukrainian troops stationed throughout Crimea are
expected to leave the peninsula and remain under Ukrainian command, with most of the rest
joining the Russian military, reported McClatchy news service.
About 12 percent of the population in Crimea is Tatar, an oppressed nationality that has lived
there for centuries. Nearly 30 percent of Crimean Tatars voted in favor of reunification with
Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliyev of the new pro-Moscow Crimean
government announced March 18, two days after a rigged referendum there. Temirgaliyev also
said Crimean Tatars will have to vacate part of their lands.
Considering that only 0.54 percent of Tatars actually voted; its disingenuous to say that 30
percent supported Russia, a reader commented online in response to Temirgaliyevs
statements as reported in the Moscow Times.
My family is in Crimea and I am very concerned, Lenara Smedlyaeva, who works at a Tatar
restaurant near the Maidan here, told the Militant.
I try to visit my family every three months, but I dont know if that is possible now, said
Smedlyaeva, who works with Crimea SOS, an organization of Crimeans in Kiev. Her
grandmother was deported by the Russians during World War II, she said, when the Soviet
government of Premier Joseph Stalin forcefully expelled the entire Tatar population from
Crimea; nearly half did not survive the exodus.
My grandmother was deported on May 18, 1944, to Perm in the Urals, Smedlyaeva said. She
spent the next 45 years in the south of Russia working in the forests as a laborer, a very hard
job. Our family was so glad when she returned to the Crimea in 1989.
Top NATO commander Philip Breedlove described Russian military forces conducting
maneuvers along Ukraines eastern border March 23 as very, very sizable and very, very
ready, reported Reuters. Moscow has its eyes not only on eastern Ukraine, but Transdniestria,
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which declared independence from Moldova in 1990 and lies some 300 miles from Ukraines
eastern border. The speaker of parliament there has called for the province to be incorporated
into Russia.
Interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called for decentralization of power in
eastern Ukraine in an effort to blunt Russian designs and provocations there.
Donetsk Mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko is among many political figures in the east who
support Yatsenyuks calls for greater regional powers while opposing any Moscow-engineered
referendums for closer ties with Russia.
Washington has imposed sanctions on 20 individuals and a major bank in Russia. Billions of
dollars were wiped off the value of companies linked to some of Russias wealthiest oligarchs
yesterday as the effect of U.S. sanctions on President Vladimir Putins inner circle shook the
countrys financial sector, reported the Financial Times.
Russian Deputy Economy Minister Sergei Belyakov told a local business conference in Moscow
March 24 that the economic situation shows clear signs of a crisis. The ruble is down 11
percent against the dollar this year.
Washington reinforced joint naval and air exercises in the Black Sea, adding at least a dozen F16 fighters jets. The March 21-April 4 maneuvers, which had been planned since 2013, involve
the militaries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia,
Ukraine, as well as Turkey, Belgium and NATO representatives.
Moscow has stepped up economic pressure on Ukraine, sealing the border to most trucks,
raising prices of natural gas pumped in from Russia and shutting down a chocolate factory in
southern Russia owned by Ukrainian capitalist Petro Poroshenko, who announced plans to run
for president of Ukraine in the May 25 elections.
The government of Ukraine has requested $15 billion in loans from the International Monetary
Fund to maintain bond payments and stave off financial collapse. IMF officials are demanding
Kiev slash 20 percent from its budget, cut energy subsidies, devalue its currency and take steps
to squeeze higher productivity from the working class as conditions for the loan package.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7813/781302.html
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Vol. 78/No. 14
(lead article)
Ukraine workers resist pressure to demobilize
IMF offers more debt, Moscow hikes gas price
The Maidan Kievs Independence Square remains a center of resistance for working
people fighting for democratic and political rights in Ukraine. Above, March 30 demonstration.
BY FRANK FORRESTAL
KIEV, Ukraine Thousands assembled in Independence Square here March 30 to mark the
40th day since the killing of the heavenly hundred, a reference to the demonstrators murdered
by Berkut riot police under the government of President Viktor Yanukovych days before it was
overthrown in a popular rebellion.
What motivated me to come to Maidan recently was the police violence against the people. I
also came to stop the attacks from Russia and stand with Ukraine, said Sergey Nikolayevich, a
mason and former brick factory worker from Sumy in northeastern Ukraine. Ive been working,
but unemployment in my town is around 40 percent.
Our main worry is the attempt by the government to dissolve Maidan, said Oleksei Kuznitsov,
a former truck driver, who came from Donetsk last December. But the Maidan remains popular
and many continue to bring us potatoes, meat, bread, everything we need, he said. While
talking to Kuznitsov, a water tank truck was filling gallon jugs for camped protesters.
The demobilization of working people is one thing the capitalist rulers of Ukraine and Russia, as
well as the U.S. and its imperialist allies, would all like to see.
The U.S. and Russia have differences of opinion about the events that led to this crisis, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in a press conference following a March 30 meeting in Paris
with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But the two sides agreed, Kerry said, to work
with the Ukrainian government to assure the following priorities: the rights of national
minorities; language rights; demobilization and disarmament of irregular forces and
provocateurs; an inclusive constitutional reform process; and free and fair elections monitored
by the international community.
Moscow has deployed some 40,000 military troops and has been establishing supply lines
along Ukraines eastern and southern borders, including in Transnistria, a pro-Russia
breakaway region of Moldova southwest of Ukraine. Another 25,000 Russian troops occupy
Crimea to the south.
In a March 15 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Moscows annexation of
Crimea on the basis that up until six decades ago the peninsula had been part of Russia, a
possession of the czarist Russian empire before 1917. And he made similar claims to other
regions in Ukraine. After the [1917] revolution, the Bolsheviks may God judge them, added
large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine, Putin said.
Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik Party brought to power in 1917 fought to
reverse centuries of Great Russian chauvinism. But the Soviet Unions policy of backing the
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rights and national aspirations of the many peoples oppressed under the czarist empire was
reversed as part of a counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin that began in the 1920s.
The Ukrainian military today reduced to some 140,000 troops, only 6,000 of whom are
considered ready for duty has been seeking money from big Ukrainian capitalists and
organizing collections from Ukrainian working people.
And the government has sought to end the Maidan protest by recruiting young demonstrators to
the National Guard. We have to disarm them, because they simply cannot have arms, said
Ukraines new defense chief and First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema.
Meanwhile, working people are organizing their own defense guards. In a recent trip to the
eastern city of Krivii Rig, union members showed a flyer calling on all who are not indifferent to
the fate of their families and our country to organize voluntary local peoples self-defense
detachments.
We organized self-defense units here, starting with members of the miners union, said
Samoilov Juriy Petrovych, the local leader of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine
at the big iron ore mine in Krivii Rig, March 26. We were facing attacks from what they call
Tatushka, which are groups of thugs recruited from among unemployed, lumpen elements. Here
they were organized by the guard detachments of the mine owners.
Now were building on this to organize to meet whatever challenges to come from the cops,
the thugs or Russian forces.
Effective April 1, the Russian government raised by 80 percent the price of natural gas imports
into Ukraine. Russias union of milk producers is asking for a ban on Ukrainian dairy products,
and Russian steel companies are pressing for protectionist measures against Ukrainian ore.
Imperialist aid increases debt
The International Monetary Fund announced in Kiev March 27 an agreement to loan up to $18
billion to the Ukrainian government over two years. The deal, subject to approval by the IMF
board, is designed to prevent Kiev from defaulting on interest payments on its foreign debt. By
the end of 2003, the countrys foreign debt had climbed to more than $17 billion. By 2012 it had
soared to $135 billion.
Ukrainian Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told Ukraines parliament that gross
domestic product could drop 10 percent this year unless urgent steps were taken, reported the
New York Times. Steps include freezing the minimum wage and raising gas prices by more than
50 percent by May 1, followed by further increases under a fixed timetable through 2018.
Since the Russian occupation of Crimea, thousands of Tatars have left the peninsula.
Temporary shelters have been organized in several Ukrainian cities, including here in Kiev.
On March 20, the Ukrainian parliament, after decades of foot dragging, adopted a resolution
recognizing the Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people with the right to self-determination in
Ukraine. Mustafa Dzhemilev, a central leader of the Crimean Tatars and member of the
Ukrainian parliament, said at a press conference in Kiev March 22 that the resolution was good,
but a shame that it was done so late.
Dzhemilev also criticized Moscows ban on some 200 Crimean and other Ukrainian politicians
39
from entering Crimea, including Dzhemilev, who voted for the dissolution of the Russianimposed parliament there.
Putin recently told Dzhemilev that he would do everything to protect Crimean Tatars from any
possible aggression, according to Monkey Cage, a blog of the Washington Post. But his
wooing of the Tatars who were brutally oppressed by the czars and Stalin has largely
fallen on deaf ears.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7814/781401.html
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Vol. 78/No. 14
41
Parhomenko and Alexander Karpen, one of the other unionists at the meeting, worked at the
Interpipe factory complex. When Parhomenko came home after work one night in January 2013
three men had broke into his apartment. They told him to stop his union activities or your
mother, your family will have problems. They beat him with a chain, knocking him unconscious.
Parhomenko was then refused treatment at a company medical facility, where doctors said he
was a drug addict. Company agents called police and sought to frame him on criminal charges.
Union defends framed-up workers
The union organized his defense. It proved the cops and hospital staff acted under company
orders. Doctors were punished, but Parhomenko was fired nonetheless.
Workers continued to fight and eventually won his job back. I credit the Maidan, Parhomenko
said. We are fighting to build unions in as many plants as possible now.
After the Yanukovych government passed a law in January gutting free speech and the right to
protest, unionists joined a protest of some 3,000 in the center of Dnepropetrovsk.
The Right Sector played an important role in holding back the regimes riot police in Maidan,
Oleksyevych said. The political party is one of the rightist, ultranationalist groups active in
Ukraine. But Ukraine is multinational, with Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians and Russians. Trying to
divide the Ukrainian people is an obstacle to our struggle. Its like giving a present to Putin.
Recently, members of the Svoboda party, another rightist group, stormed into a television studio
that featured pro-Russian news, beating the station manager until he signed a letter of
resignation.
The unionists responded by carrying a banner at the local Maidan reading, You cannot shut up
the journalists, Ukraine needs freedom without regulation.
Didnt get paid for a year
We didnt get paid for a year at our plant, said Evgenii Derkach, who works at a plant of 7,000
that makes military rockets. Under the Soviet Union, it produced many of the large
intercontinental ballistic missiles designed primarily to carry nuclear warheads. For years,
Derkach said, Soviet officials officially denied that the city of Dnepropetrovsk existed. But it was
hard to hide a city of 1 million people.
People were fired illegally for organizing protests against the lack of payment, he said. I
survived by living with my parents. Other workers got second jobs.
One week ago we won all our back pay, Derkach said. We believe the protests all over the
country made this possible.
The oligarchs who have taken over the plants say were private, so the laws dont apply here,
said Oleksyevych. But were waking up and fighting back.
The school administrators try to fire union activists, said Lariss Kolesnik, a leader of the
Teachers Union. They pay special attention to their work, looking for excuses to get rid of
them.
Our union was born six years ago, when the local government wanted to turn our school into a
shopping center, Kolesnik said. No one thought we could stop them, but we talked to the
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leaders of the miners union and they helped us. And we won.
Our union is still small. Many teachers are afraid, she said. But we have been able to win a
number of fights for back wages, including for teachers who are not members of the union.
The new temporary government in Kiev is pushing to dissolve the Maidan, Oleksyevych said.
But this is not the answer. We need to transfer the power to the people. We will organize as
many Maidans as we need to get there.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7814/781406.html
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Vol. 78/No. 15
(lead article)
Ukrainians answer Moscow provocations in east, south
Ukraine rulers, IMF foist debt burden on workers
BY JOHN STUDER
Small armed bands backed by Moscow stormed government buildings in the Ukrainian cities of
Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv April 6 and Mykolayiv the following day in provocations designed
to lay the groundwork for possible Russian intervention.
Roughly 100 pro-Moscow agents occupied the regional government administration building in
Donetsk near Ukraines eastern border. They declared a Peoples Republic of Donetsk,
announced they would organize a referendum May 11 on separation from Ukraine and called on
Russian President Vladimir Putin to send troops, some 40,000 of which are amassed near the
border.
A similar number seized the local Security Service of Ukraine office in Lugansk, where they
broke into an armory and seized AK-47 assault rifles.
A group of pro-Moscow agents also seized the Security Service of Ukraine office in the
northeastern city of Kharkiv, but were pushed out two days later by elite Ukrainian units, who
arrested 70.
Police were doing nothing at all, they were just walking amid the thugs, Zinoviy Flionts, an
eyewitness in Kharkiv, told the Kyiv Post. The guys who took over the administration were
either some Russians or simply criminals brought from somewhere.
On the night of April 7, similar forces attempted to take over the administration building in the
southern city of Mykolayiv, but were repulsed by local volunteer self-defense units.
The operations echo the provocations that prepared Moscows invasion of Crimea, which was
followed by a rigged referendum at gunpoint March 16 and seizure of the peninsula. Since then,
thousands of Crimean residents Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians and others have left the
peninsula. More than 1,000 families in Ukraine have opened their homes to receive the
refugees.
There is a script being written in the Russian Federation, for which there is only one purpose:
the dismemberment and destruction of Ukraine and the transformation of Ukraine into the
territory of slavery under the dictates of Russia, Ukrainian Interim Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk said April 7.
These moves do not represent any sharp rise in tension in the majority Russian-speaking east
of Ukraine, the Kharkiv Human Rights Group said April 7. This is reflected in the relatively small
numbers involved, the group said, and flies in the face of recent polls and demonstrations in the
region showing majority sentiment for Ukraine unity.
The Donbass News published an open letter from people in the city urging the interim Ukrainian
government to deal with the indecisive actions by local authorities to counter threats to
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Vol. 78/No. 15
47
Three hundred fifty women work underground in the mine, said Elena Maslova, a 15-year
veteran in the mine and the locals director for gender equality. There are some 40 positions
that women are barred from. Most work in pump stations, on conveyors and in the explosives
warehouse. Among underground miners, 10 percent are women.
When we demanded improvements in pay and working conditions for women, the company
told us if we kept complaining they would just replace us with men, she said. So they hired a
man and put him in a position usually filled by women, at the pay women get. But he refused to
stay on the job.
The existence of our independent union is important, she said. The old unions, dating back to
before the Soviet Union collapsed, just parrot what the government and the bosses say.
The official unions, and the educational system in the country, are only good at preparing future
slaves for industry, Vitalievych said. Weve got to involve the younger workers, the younger
miners.
The Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine (NGPU) was born out of strikes, protests
and massive marches in 1989-91, which were at the center of political ferment that helped
prepare the way for an independent Ukraine. Miners coupled demands for higher pay, better
working conditions and the right to strike with political demands, including the end to Russian
domination.
In October 1990 members of union strike committees across the country met in Donetsk and
established the new, independent miners union. The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of
Ukraine, which the NGPU is part of, was created literally in the tent camps of the working-class
people, the federation explains on its website.
Coal production crisis hits workers
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the coal industry in Ukraine has taken big blows. The number
of mines has tumbled from over 300 to 143. Forty-three of the more productive mines have
been privatized. One company, DTEK, owned by a syndicate run by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraines
richest capitalist, accounts for almost half of the countrys coal production.
Thousands of miners were thrown out of work in the transition, leading to widespread
unemployment in coal regions in the east and west of the country.
Explosions, roof falls and silicosis lung disease take a heavy toll on miners. Mines in Ukraine,
along with those in China, are the most dangerous in the world.
Since the 2008 worldwide financial crisis, sagging demand and falling prices for coal have hit
the industry hard in Ukraine. The government closed nearly 20 percent of state-owned mines
and cut production in the others. Akhmetov said DTEK plans to both raise production and
seriously decrease the number of employees, industry journal Coal Age reported in December.
Miners in the U.S. are facing similar assaults, Militant correspondent Frank Forrestal, a former
coal miner in western Pennsylvania, told the Ukrainian miners. Coal bosses have closed less
profitable mines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the union has had a base, and
48
opened nonunion ones in the West. At the same time working conditions have gotten worse as
bosses cut corners to defend their profits.
Forty years ago there was a big social movement in the coal fields to enforce safer conditions
to lower the prevalence of black lung that strengthened the union, Forrestal said. But today
black lung is coming back.
The more we talk, said Elena Maslova, the more Im reminded of something we used to think
about the need for all proletarians of the world to unite.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7815/781555.html
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Vol. 78/No. 16
(lead article)
Moscow intervention spurs protests in Ukraine, Russia
BY JOHN STUDER
Small pro-Moscow paramilitary units have seized government and police buildings in a number
of cities across eastern Ukraine, including Donetsk, Horlivka, Kramatorsk and Mariupol. These
provocations are part of an operation by the capitalist government in Russia to destabilize
Ukraine, create a pretext for possible further intervention and deal blows to the popular
movement that drew hundreds of thousands into action speakers of Ukrainian and Russian
alike and toppled the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.
Similar provocations in Crimea served as a prelude to Moscows annexation of the peninsula
last month and the mobilization of some 40,000 Russian troops near Ukraines eastern border
where they remain today.
On April 15, Ukrainian army special forces troops finally began to move against forces
organized by Moscow, liberating the airport in Kramatorsk.
Meanwhile, workers and others have been organizing local self-defense units in response to
ongoing provocations. What happened in Zaporizhia was instructive, Euromaidan PR reported
April 16. The pro-Russian protesters turned out to be mostly members of a local criminal gang,
paid to stir up trouble. People came out by the thousands to surround them. Its no secret that
people are organizing and arming themselves in the East in pro-Ukrainian partisan groups.
In Sverodonetsk and Lysychansk, law enforcement and miners worked closely together to shut
down any outbursts of separatism, Voices of Ukraine reported April 15.
The Ukraine government April 15 released recordings of phone calls between four Russian
military operatives in eastern Ukraine and their handlers in Russia. A handler applauds the
agents reports of killing Ukrainians and instructs one, code-named Shooter, to do an interview
with Russian TV and demand federalization, governors elections and emphasize that the
Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine parliament] should not be allowed to accept external financial support
without support of two-thirds of oblasts [provinces].
For the most part, police forces in the east unchanged since the overthrow of Yanukovych
either permitted or helped to organize provocations. A big majority of cops in Donetsk defected
to the Moscow-backed forces, taking the regional administration building and appealing for
Russian President Vladimir Putin to send troops.
But the provocations have received very little support among working people. Sergei
Baryshnikov, a 53-year-old former history professor who was recently proclaimed a deputy in
the pro-Moscow Donetsk Peoples Republic, told the Wall Street Journal April 9 that miners
and steelworkers havent joined the pro-Russia movement.
In Luhansk, 35 miles from the Russian border, more than 1,000 took to the streets to protest the
provocations April 13. Sizable rallies also took place in Odessa and Zaporizhia. More than 1,000
rallied in Kharkiv April 12. And hundreds of miners and others rallied in the city square of the
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51
Meanwhile, the Ukraine economy continues to deteriorate. The hryvnia, the countrys currency,
has lost more than 35 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of 2014. The
countrys debts continue to grow. And Moscow has imposed higher prices for Russian gas
imports.
The International Monetary Fund said it will provide $18 billion in loans on the condition that
Kiev takes steps to boost profitability and attract foreign investment. Ukraines interim
government has agreed to slash the subsidy for energy costs to workers and to put a cap on
wage raises and pensions.
Unemployment continues to grow as orders for plants and mines connected to Russia are being
cut. Wages at the mine have been lowered, Yuriy Petrovych said from Krivii Rig, where ironore miners work for EVRAZ, a Russian group. Promised big project investments to develop the
mine have all come to a stop.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7816/781601.html
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Vol. 78/No. 16
Cuba has treated over 25,000 since 1986 Ukraine nuclear disaster
(front page)
BY SETH GALINSKY
Twenty-eight years ago, on April 26, 1986, one of four reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded, spewing clouds of radiation for 10 days and
contaminating the surrounding area.
Within a few years, hundreds of children began suffering from thyroid cancer. The most striking
fact is not the scope of the disaster, but the selfless response of revolutionary Cuba, which
continues to this day. For anyone familiar with Cubas internationalist foreign policy since the
1959 revolution, this is no surprise.
According to the World Health Organization, by 2005 more than 6,000 children in Ukraine and
Belarus were diagnosed with thyroid cancer as a result of Chernobyl. Early treatment has
achieved a survival rate of close to 99 percent.
The meltdown itself was completely avoidable, as was the massive release of radiation resulting
from the lack of a secure containment vessel.
But perhaps the most egregious example of Moscows callous indifference was the refusal to
rapidly evacuate affected areas and failure to prevent hundreds of thousands of children from
drinking milk contaminated with radioactive iodine-131 in the immediate aftermath.
Thirty people firemen, emergency and power plant workers died within a few weeks,
mostly from acute radiation poisoning.
As cases of thyroid cancer began to grow, the first group of 139 Chernobyl children arrived for
treatment in Cuba on March 29, 1990. Since then Cuba has treated more than 25,000 people
affected by the disaster, including at least 21,340 children. Cuban doctors have also been
working in Ukraine.
The Pioneers, which organizes children between five and 15 years old in Cuba, turned over
their recreation, learning and health complex at Tarar beach on the outskirts of Havana to the
project. Once patients are on the island, the Cuban government pays for everything from
medicine to food, clothes, paper and pen.
There were countries like Italy, Spain and Israel which brought small groups of children to their
countries for vacation maybe 40 or 50 children at a time, all together, Dr. Julio Medina,
director of the Tarar hospital, told MEDICC review in 2004. But no other country offered a
program, a medical assistance program completely free of charge at this kind of massive level.
Cuba provides those in the program with attention for any medical need, regardless of whether
it is related to Chernobyl or not, from dental work and immunizations to treatment of Hepatitis B
or other diseases.
Classes conducted in Ukrainian are taught by teachers from Ukraine, whose salaries are paid
by Cuba.
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The year after the program began, the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost 85 percent of its
foreign trade almost overnight, leading to a severe economic crisis marked by shortages of food
and other basic necessities that Cubans refer to as the special period.
These were difficult days for the Cubans, Oleksandr Savchenko, one of a group of Ukrainians
who came to Tarar in mid-1990 told Granma. We were witnesses to how much they sacrificed
so that we didnt lack food or medicine.
Cuba has a great heart
Even the New York Times couldnt ignore Cubas contribution. He needs many medicines
antibiotics, hormones that are very expensive, Larisa Ukrainskaya told the paper in 1995,
referring to her 17-year old son who was being treated in Cuba at the time. Cuba needs
everything bread, milk, coffee, detergent, all kinds of clothes, pencils, paper. They help, and
they dont ask for money. This little country has a great heart.
It would have been easy to make excuses and say dont send one more child, then Cuban
president Fidel Castro said in a Nov. 27, 1992, speech in Havana. The USSR and the socialist
camp disappeared a while ago and we kept taking care of the Chernobyl children, in spite of the
[U.S.] blockade, in spite of the special period we are going through, because its an ethical and
moral question. Cuba treated everyone sent from Ukraine, Castro noted, even if their illness
was unrelated to the Chernobyl disaster.
Cuba has maintained the program without pause and without regard to changing governments
in Kiev. After the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych earlier this year Ernesto Senti, Cubas
ambassador to Ukraine, made clear that Cubas aid would continue.
Many people who are unaware of our ideals still wonder what Cuba might be after, Dr. Medina
told Granma in 2009. Its simple: we do not give what we have in excess; we share all that we
have.
http://themilitant.com/2014/7816/781604.html
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Vol. 78/No. 16
55
national minority within the boundaries of every national republic and region must be
guaranteed. In all this work special attention must be given to those exceptional conditions
arising between formerly oppressed nationalities and nationalities who were formerly their
oppressors.
5. A consistent implementation of inner-party democracy in all the national republics and
regions; an absolute repudiation of the attitude of command toward non-Russians, of
appointment and transfer from above; a repudiation of the policy of arbitrary division of nonRussian Communists into rights and lefts; a most attentive promotion and training of local
proletarian, semiproletarian, agricultural proletarian and (anti-kulak) peasant activists.
6. A repudiation of the Ustryalov* tendency, and of all kinds of great-power tendencies
especially in the central commissariats and in the state apparatus in general. An educational
struggle against local nationalism upon the basis of a clear and consistent class policy on the
national question.
7. Transformation of the Soviet of Nationalities into a really functioning institution bound up with
the life of the national republics and regions, and really capable of defending their interests.
8. Adequate attention to the national problem in the work of the trade unions and to the task of
forming national proletarian cadres. Business in these unions to be transacted in the local
language; the interests of all nationalities and national minorities to be protected.
9. No franchise under any circumstances for exploiting elements.
10. A fifth conference on nationality questions to be called on a basis of real representation of
the rank and file.
11. Publication in the press of Lenins letter on the national question, which contains a criticism
of Stalins line on this question.
*
N. Ustryalov was a member of the Cadet Party who fought in the White Army, a loose
confederation of monarchist and other pro-imperialist forces, in the civil war following the 1917
Russian Revolution. After the victory of the Bolsheviks, he went to work for the Soviet
government believing that capitalism could be restored gradually. He supported Stalin as a step
toward this goal.
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Vol. 78/No. 17
May 5, 2014
(front page)
Ukraine opposition spreads to provocations by Moscow
Miners build protests, organize self-defense
BY JOHN STUDER
More than 5,000 miners, students and other workers rallied April 17 in Donetsk, Ukraine, in a
show of growing opposition in eastern Ukraine to provocations by Moscow-backed forces.
Similar actions took place in Luhansk, Kramatorsk and other eastern cities.
Starting April 6, small bands led by armed troops in uniforms without insignia began seizing
government administrative buildings and police stations, proclaiming themselves partisans of an
independent Donetsk Peoples Republic and calling for Russian military intervention. Some
40,000 Russian troops have been deployed along the Ukrainian border since March.
Among the Russian government-organized forces are local titushkis hired lumpen thugs
and small groups of backers of the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin. Theyve
been building barricades, stealing arms from government offices, intimidating residents and
assaulting supporters of a united Ukraine.
Some workers, particularly members of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, the
countrys largest union, have organized self-defense units to counter the assaults on Ukraines
sovereignty. In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, some 15 units comprising about 100 volunteer
combatants control nine checkpoints at entrances to the city, reported Dmitry Tymchuk, who
established the Center of Military and Political Research in Kiev in February to counter Russian
government propaganda about Moscows invasion of Crimea. He previously served in the
Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
The people here are saying Enough, Mykola Volynko, president of the 12,000-member
Independent Miners Union in the eastern Donbass region, told Russias opposition TV Rain
April 9. We will build a new Ukraine. We are defending ourselves, our families, and we want
to live in a normal state.
Thuggish actions by Moscow-backed bands have brought more and more people into
opposition to Russian government intervention, despite being inundated with Russian television
propaganda slandering demonstrators who overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych as fascists
and anti-Semites.
Here are a lot of people, 22-year-old Grigory Burchik told SETimes at the April 17
demonstration in Donetsk. But I know even more people support Ukraines independence.
Many are scared by pro-Kremlin forces.
The silent majority of neutral citizens that are well accustomed to adapting to all circumstances
is now experiencing a colossal revolution in their minds, Sasha Popov wrote in a Facebook
post from Kramatorsk April 17 that was put up on the Euromaidan PR website. And the fact that
the backbone of the Russian separatists is made up from the local well-known dirty criminals
dissolves all remaining illusions.
In Slovyansk bands raided neighborhoods that are predominantly Roma, an oppressed
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green camouflage garb, claim they are activists from the people who are preserving order.
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theory and practice proved in actual test to be incompatible. A close look at the facts, however
including in Dmytryshyns own book shows that Lenins words were put into practice. The
national rights and aspirations of Ukrainians and other oppressed people were later crushed not
as the inevitable result of the Russian Revolution, as Dmytryshyn and others claim, but by a
bloody counterrevolution led by Stalin and falsely carried out under the banner of 1917.
Ukrainian nation forged in battle
The Ukrainian nation was forged in battle against Russian, Polish, Hungarian and Austrian
occupation over centuries. Serfdom was first introduced in Ukraine by Polish landlords in the
western part of the country during the late 1400s and 1500s.
In 1783 Czarina Catherine II imposed the particularly onerous Russian serf system on the areas
under czarist domination and organized to Russify Ukraine, encouraging thousands of ethnic
Russians to displace other inhabitants of the region.
In the mid-1800s cultural and political stirrings in Ukraine began to concern the ruling classes of
the empire. Among these was the creation of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, a secret
society that existed from 1845-47. It advocated a program of social equality, the end of serfdom,
an end to national oppression and a federation of Slavic states. The czar suppressed the
Brotherhood, arresting and exiling its leaders, including former serf Taras Shevchenko, today
considered Ukraines national poet.
In 1863 the czar banned virtually all publications in Ukrainian. In 1876 this was extended to the
importation of Ukrainian-language books and even public readings and theater.
Czarist regime swept away
Workers and peasants swept away the czar in February 1917 and began to organize
themselves into soviets, including in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. Like in other parts of the
Russian empire, the first government coming out of the revolution in Ukraine was led by
Mensheviks, a split from the Bolsheviks that sought an end to the monarchy but opposed the
overthrow of capitalism or the establishment of a government of workers and peasants.
Consistent with its bourgeois-nationalist course, the Menshevik provisional government based in
the Russian city of Petrograd refused to recognize the demand for autonomy by the Rada, the
new government in Ukraine.
With force you will not keep but only anger the Ukrainians, Lenin wrote. If you yield to the
Ukrainians you will then open up the road to trust between both nations, to their brotherly union
as equals.
In October, working people led by the Bolsheviks, demanding all power to the soviets (workers
councils), overthrew the provisional government and took political power. The Bolshevik-led
government immediately recognized Ukraines Rada. But the capitalist-dominated Rada
opposed the October Revolution, fearing the support the Bolsheviks were winning among
working people in Ukraine, especially among peasants who had already seized control of almost
a third of the estates of the large landlords. The Rada allowed the German, Austrian and other
imperialist armies to operate freely in territory under its control.
The German and Austrian governments soon repaid the Rada by overthrowing it and returning
property and political power to the landlords under the rule of Gen. Pavlo Skoropadsky.
For the next several years Ukraine was embroiled in war. Control over much of the country
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shifted back and forth between the Red Army and worker and peasant soviets on one side, and
on the other the imperialist-backed forces of czarist generals Anton Denikin and Pyotr Wrangel,
with help from invading armies of Poland and Germany.
The civil war devastated Ukraine. According to Social Change and National Consciousness in
Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Bohdan Krawchenko, by 1921 industrial production was onetenth the 1912 figure. A famine caused by the war that ravaged the Soviet Union killed 1 million
people in Ukraine.
Lenin fights for Ukrainization
In November 1919, as soon as the Red Army had dealt decisive blows to Denikins White Army,
the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party took measures to increase the political
action and self-confidence of peasants then comprising 80 percent of Ukraines population
and draw them into the government. The resolution ordered the transfer of the landed estates
to peasants possessing little or no land.
At Lenins urging the Central Committee passed a resolution instructing party members in
Ukraine to remove all barriers in the way of the free development of the Ukrainian language
and culture. [Party] members on Ukrainian territory must put into practice the right of the
working people to study in the Ukrainian language and to speak their native language in all
Soviet institutions; they must in every way counteract attempts at Russification that push the
Ukrainian language into the background and must convert that language into an instrument for
the communist education of the working people.
Despite resistance within the Bolshevik Party in Ukraine and Russia, including from Joseph
Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin, Lenin won the political battle. As a result the Bolsheviks won over
the Borotbists, a faction of the Social Revolutionaries who were fighting for Ukrainian
independence. The Borotbists fused with the Ukrainian Communist Party in March 1920,
helping to transform the party there from majority Russian to majority Ukrainian. Ukrainian
communists held key posts in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the party, replacing
communists from Russia. Mykola Skrypnyk, a key fighter for Ukrainization, held numerous
positions in the party and government. Oleksander Shumsky, a leader of the Borotbists, became
peoples commissar of education. Mykola Khvylovy edited a weekly supplement to the
Ukrainian-language daily Visti VUTsVK.
While revolutionaries led by Lenin had the upper hand, the fight was not over. Between late
September 1922 and early March 1923, the final months of his active political life, Lenin waged
a battle within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to combat Stalin and
the growing privileged government bureaucracy he spoke for and which threatened to
undermine the alliance of workers and peasants.
A central part of Lenins final fight was against the resurgence of opposition to selfdetermination for oppressed nations led by Stalin. I declare war to the death on Great Russian
chauvinism, Lenin wrote in October 1922. I shall eat it with all my healthy teeth as soon as I
get rid of this accursed bad tooth.
Even after Lenins death in January 1924, the course he set in motion in Ukraine continued
almost through the end of the decade.
Flowering of culture
Dmytryshyn reports that the number of publications written in Ukrainian mushroomed from
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747 books in 1917 to 2,920 in 1927-28. Circulation of Ukrainian language periodicals rose in
1924 alone from 72,000 copies to 205,000.
In 1922 less than 20 percent of students in Ukraine were Ukrainian. By 1928 they were more
than 50 percent.
Among other examples was the rapid growth of cinema. According to the Encyclopedia of
Ukraine, just four films were produced in Ukraine in 1923. This grew to 16 in 1924, 20 in 1927
and 36 in 1928. The number of movie theaters went from 265 in 1914 to 5,394 in 1928. Many
films dealt with Ukrainian national themes, including a 1926 film on Shevchenko.
That all came to an end as Stalin consolidated control over the Soviet government apparatus
and the Communist Party. At first he began reversing the Leninist course silently, quietly,
without public justification, Ivan Dzyuba, a Ukrainian communist, wrote in 1965 in
Internationalism or Russification? which called for a return to the Leninist road of Ukrainization.
The resolutions Lenin fought for were simply put aside and replaced by quite opposite
decisions. By 1926 Stalin was pushing out of the party or trying to silence some of the most
prominent proponents of Ukrainization.
In 1932 Stalin launched a reign of terror against Ukraines peasants, workers and
revolutionaries. In order to impose a truly crushing and demoralizing defeat, Stalin consciously
organized to starve millions to death.
Several million peasants were wiped out in the artificial famine of 1933, Dzyuba wrote. They
died during the forced collectivization of Ukraines peasantry and confiscation of food that was
then exported to capitalist countries.
Stalin liquidated virtually the entire leadership of the Bolsheviks in Russia. From 1936 to 1938,
99 of the 102 members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine were
murdered.
Nowhere did restrictions, purges, repressions and in general all forms of bureaucratic
hooliganism assume such murderous sweep as they did in the Ukraine in the struggle against
the powerful, deeply-rooted longings of the Ukrainian masses for greater freedom and
independence, Trotsky wrote in April 1939.
Anyone who defended Ukraines sovereignty against the extreme Russian nationalism was
slandered as a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist and an opponent of internationalism, Dzyuba
noted.
The bloody repression unleashed on Ukraine by the Stalinist murder machine under the false
banner of defending the revolution was not an inevitable extension of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
The truth is the opposite. It was the truly internationalist Leninist policy which safeguarded the
interests and the full development of the socialist Ukrainian nation, Dzyuba wrote.
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themselves suddenly branded as sub-human Orientals, fit only to eke out a miserable slave
existence in the factories of the Master Nation conducting a victorious war. An era opened up of
arrests, concentration camps, and forced labor on the territories of the German state.
All those who were able once again took to the forests, taking along some of the youth who had
no desire to choose between the Ukrainian SS (storm troopers) and the German labor camps.
The struggle continued; all that changed was the face of the enemy, while the Polish and
Rumanian oppressors had now become allies. Nevertheless the collapse of Germany once
more rekindled hopes for an independent West Ukrainian state. The peasants were convinced
that the Western powers would keep the promises they made over the radio and through their
secret emissaries; and that, at long last, the eternal minority would become a nation.
But nothing came of it. The victorious Soviet army made its second entry.
Year after year this whole people was engaged in desperate combat; even the children
participated, serving as scouts and messengers. They were likewise arrested, clapped in prison,
and later sent to a camp. Bridges were blown up, warehouses pillaged, munition depots raided
by surprise, small groups of soldiers killed in ambush. The enemy took revenge by burning halfabandoned and half-ruined villages, and by deporting the inhabitantsat any rate, those unable
to hide. New punitive expeditions were sent without cease, only to get lost in most cases in the
merciless countryside before attaining their goal. From time to time a nest of bandits is
uncoveredthose who do not fall in battle are shipped to Siberia for life.
So the insoluble tragedy goes on and on, simply because several million Ukrainians refuse at
any price to become collective farm workers and prefer to remain independent peasants. Are
they backward, incorrigible petty bourgeois? Perhaps so. But the punitive expeditions, arrests of
hostages, burning of villagesare these the just and correct methods for converting them? It
is hard to answer such a question in the affirmative. The right of nations to self-determination
was ever a part of the Bolshevik program. The bureaucratic epigones try to get around this by
claiming that West Ukraine is merely an appendage to East Ukraine. But one might with equal
justification claim that Holland, or the Flemish sector of Belgium are a part of Germany, or that
Normandy and Brittany are part of England.
As late as summer 1953 the Soviet government had still not succeeded in establishing
tranquility and order in the Ukraine, not even the peace of the cemetery. Each month new
victims of endless waves of arrest and of unending punitive expeditions keep arriving in the
camps. Despite this, despite huge losses, not from battles alone but also from cold, hunger and
disease, the partisan movement has not been wiped out.
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their bellies ripped open and signs of torture. The lie was carried by Russian governmentcontrolled media, but before long the truth came out and the story was dropped.
A growing number of journalists have been kidnapped, taken to buildings seized in Slovyansk,
and tortured, including Simon Ostrovsky from the U.S.-based Vice News and Irma Krat, editorin-chief of Hidden Truth TV and the leader of a womens self-defense unit on the Maidan in
Kiev.
Vasily Sergiyenko, a journalist in Korsun-Shevchenkivskiy and active member of Automaidan, a
movement of car drivers against Yanukovych, was abducted from his home April 4, taken to a
nearby forest, stabbed and beaten, and buried after his head had been severed.
Ponomaryovs forces also kidnapped seven U.N. military inspectors with the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, and paraded them before the press April 27. They also
grabbed three members of Ukraines federal security service, known as the SBU, in Horlivka
when they tried to make an arrest in the murder of councilman Rybak.
On April 28 gunmen shot Gennady Kernes, mayor of Kharkiv, a former supporter of Yanukovych
who had been backing reconciliation with the new government in Kiev. He is still alive in an
induced coma.
After a pro-Ukraine rally of 2,000 gathered in Donetsk April 28, dozens of thugs armed with
bats, metal rods, knives and smoke bombs appeared and attacked. More than 10 protesters
were taken to the hospital. Local cops stood aside and some handed over their riot shields to
the thugs, who returned them to police after the assault. Five supporters of the citys Shakhtar
(Miner) Donetsk soccer team who were defending the rally were taken hostage for a day.
Russian commandos move in
Thirty armed commandos drove in minivans from Slovyansk to Konstyantynivka April 28 and,
with no opposition from local cops, took over the police station. The next day they seized the
regional administration building in Luhansk, a provincial capital of 465,000. Again, local cops
stood aside.
The credit for a number of these operations has been taken by a Russian military intelligence
operative who goes by the name Igor Strelkov. He was first identified by the Ukrainian SBU in
mid-April as an operative code-named Shooter, who was taped directing pro-Moscow
provocations.
Strelkov introduced himself to the press April 27 as the commander of the Slovyansk militia.
The platoon that came to Slovyansk with me was formed in Crimea, I wont pretend to conceal
that, he said. Many have previous combat experience, he said, in Chechnya, Central Asia and
a few in Syria.
The SBU reported that Strelkov flew from Russia to Crimea Feb. 26, the day pro-Moscow
paramilitary troops seized the parliament building there.
Those who brandish weapons now think they have all the power, one woman told the Journal,
and they appoint their own mayor.
What will happen to anyone who stands against you? Elizaveta Antonova, a reporter from
Gazeta.ru, asked Slovyansk mayor Ponomaryov April 24. The liquidation will occur, he
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replied.
What do you plan to do with people who consider themselves part of Ukraine? she asked. Let
them stay, he said, but let them keep a low profile and behave themselves quietly.
Call for workers self-defense
The miner-led Donbass Self Defense Battalion issued an appeal April 28 to Ukrainian Minister
of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov: We call on you to involve Ukrainian patriots extensively to
resolve this situation, help establish volunteer formations, coordinate our activities with those of
the National Guard, and immediately give us arms.
In the eastern cities of Krivii Rih, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and others local volunteer units have
helped prevent pro-Moscow bands from taking over government buildings or carrying out other
provocations.
Despite everything there is already a guerrilla struggle, Volinko told the Moscow Echo. While
the central government is sitting on the fence people are resisting.
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Vol. 78/No. 19
(lead article)
Ukraine workers fight to defend sovereignty
Tatars resist Moscow occupation of Crimea
BY JOHN STUDER
Agents of the Russian military and local recruits, which include criminal gangs, have stepped up
provocations across Ukraines eastern and southern regions, laying the ground for direct
intervention by Moscow.
Workers, youth and others have joined demonstrations in support of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Some 3,000 people marched May 4 in Dnepropetrovsk, many of whom gathered for a soccer
match there featuring the Ukrainian Premier League teams from the home city and Lviv in the
west. Among the chants by fans from both sides were East and West together and Glory to
Ukraine.
Soccer fans from all across the country, including from the Donetsk Shakhtar (Miner) team,
Kharkiv Metalist (Metalworkers), and other cities in the east, have taken part in pro-Ukrainian
demonstrations and volunteer self-defense units.
More than 1,000 marched in Odessa May 2, including fans of both the local Chernomorets
(Sailors) team and the visiting Metalists from Kharkiv, who were playing later that day. The
supporters of Ukrainian unity were set upon by a couple hundred armed supporters of Russian
annexation.
The soccer fans were unarmed they were marching with Ukrainian flags, while the opposite
side appeared fully geared as if they came for war, journalist Zoya Kazandzhy told the Kiev
Post. Citizens quickly organized themselves and thats the only thing that helped us yesterday.
As outnumbered attackers began retreating, they opening fire with Kalashnikovs and pistols. A
young football fan was fatally shot.
After a more than one-hour battle, the vigilantes fled into the nearby Trade Union building. The
two sides continued to hurl Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at each other and the building
caught on fire. Led by self-defense units, supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty rescued several
dozen attackers by bringing a scaffold up to the wall so they could escape safely from windows
on the second and third floor. Self-defense forces also protected escaping provocateurs from
angry demonstrators seeking retribution for the attack on their action.
Ukrainian government authorities report 46 dead, eight from the street violence and the rest
from the burning building. Hundreds were injured. Of the bodies recovered from the building, 15
were Russian citizens and five from the Russian-occupied breakaway region of Transnitsia in
nearby Moldova, according to the Kiev Post.
Ukrainian cops, who stood aside during the melee, arrested more than 100 pro-Moscow
attackers who were still on the roof after the fire department arrived more than an hour after the
fire started.
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On May 4, anti-Ukraine gangs attacked the police station, and the cops released those in
custody.
Russian government-controlled media twisted the events of May 2 to smear supporters of
Ukrainian sovereignty and fuel further provocations.
Moscows line is that the mass mobilizations that in February overthrew Ukrainian President
Viktor Yanukovych were comprised of fascist anti-Semites operating under orders from
Washington with the goal of provoking war between Ukraine and Russia.
RT, an English-language pro-Russian news media, ran an interview with Serbian historian
Nebojsa Malic May 5 promoting a fantastic conspiracy claiming that those who attacked the proUkrainian rally were not pro-Moscow forces, but Right Sector people deployed to Odessa in
order to both create a powerful atrocity to draw Russia into open conflict and intimidate any sort
of population that is against the coup government [the interim Ukrainian government that
replaced the Yanukovych regime] by saying, Look, if you continue opposing us, well murder
you in the most gruesome manner possible.
At the same time, pro-Moscow annexationist forces continue to occupy government buildings in
Donetsk, Luhansk, Slovyansk and other eastern cities. Ukrainian army units are attempting to
isolate them in preparation for retaking the buildings.
In an anti-working-class slant typical of the U.S. big-business media, the Wall Street Journal
described the May 2 events in Odessa as rioting between pro- and anti-government mobs, and
called the Russian military operatives and thugs under their direction assorted activists
opposed to Kiev.
Tatars mobilize for Ukraine
The Russian governments operation in east and south Ukraine echoes Moscows seizure of
Crimea in March, where paramilitary thugs took over government buildings to create a pretext
for an invasion by thousands of Russian troops, followed by a fraudulent referendum for
independence at gunpoint to justify incorporation of the peninsula into Russia.
The Crimean Tatars, among Crimeas earliest inhabitants who today comprise some 12 percent
of the peninsulas population, refused in their great majority to participate in the referendum.
Moscow responded by barring the central leader of the Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, from his
Crimean homeland.
Dzhemilev drove to Crimea May 3, but was stopped at the border by Russian troops. Some
5,000 Tatars met him by the border, where they rallied in his support and against Russian
occupation.
May 18 will be the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population on
orders of then Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who slandered them en masse as agents of Adolf
Hitler. Almost half the population died in the forced journey to Uzbekistan and other parts of the
Soviet Union. Tatars began to return in large numbers in the 1990s.
I plan to go to Crimea and try to get there on May 18, Dzhemilev told a press conference in
Kiev May 5. It would be most prudent of the Crimean authorities to let me in.
Discriminatory laws have never stopped Crimean Tatars in the past, he said. Crimean Tatars
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are the fulcrum of resistance against the regime of occupation. We will not condone the
occupation.
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Vol. 78/No. 20
(lead article)
Workers defend Ukraine in face of fraudulent vote
Respond to thug attacks by secessionist minority
BY JOHN STUDER
Miners and other workers across eastern Ukraine continue to mobilize in defense of the
countrys sovereignty in face of ongoing interference by the Russian government, highlighted
May 11 by a fraudulent peoples referendum calling for secession from Ukraine.
The May 11 vote was organized by small groups of heavily armed paramilitary units. These
forces have seized Ukrainian government, military and police facilities in roughly a dozen cities
in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and employed kidnappings, beatings and murder to
intimidate working people.
The activities of trade union organizations have become considerably hampered because of
intimidation and physical violence against trade union activists, Mikhailo Volynets, president of
the Independent Trade Union of Coal Miners of Ukraine, said May 8.
Even in areas under pro-secessionist groups control, there were very few voting stations.
Armed groups were stationed near ballot boxes where one could vote on the question: Do you
support the act of self-rule of the Donetsk Peoples Republic? In Krasnoarmeisk New York
Times reporter Andrew Kramer said a poster calling for rejection of the European Jewish
choice was hung near the ballot box.
Ukrainian government officials and reporters like Kramer say that some 25 to 30 percent of
people voted and that supporters of secession showed up with piles of photocopies of yes
ballots. The commandos, who claimed to have counted the entire vote by nightfall, said the
turnout was almost 100 percent for secession.
Meanwhile, demonstrations of thousands in favor of Ukrainian sovereignty have taken place in
Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Odessa and other eastern and southern cities in past weeks. A
recent Pew opinion poll reported that 70 percent in eastern Ukraine favor keeping the country
united while 18 percent favor secession.
To maintain an atmosphere of terror, armed thugs have assaulted and threatened unionists and
other supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty. An armed squad appeared at the entrance to a coal
mine in Makiivka and demanded workers take down their Ukrainian flag, threatening to throw
explosives down the mine shaft. The miners sent out their self-defense unit and drove them off.
Olexander Vovk, a leader of the Independent Trade Union of Miners at the Russia mine in
Novogrodivka, was kidnapped and tortured May 4. He was taken to a detention and torture
section at the Donetsk Administration Building, where he met miners and others being held and
beaten. Some have disappeared.
The Russian government propaganda machine has pumped out fantastic slanders against proUkraine demonstrators as fascist. What is happening at the moment is not simply marches
praising Nazi criminals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said May 7 about Ukraine,
this is the manifestation of fascism alive. The last time Moscows efforts to smear working-
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class fighters as fascists hit this level was during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when
toilers there rose up and overthrew the Soviet-backed government of Matyas Rakosi widely
known as the Stalin of Hungary fighting for a political revolution, workers councils and a
return to the revolutionary policies of Lenin.
Miners demand double our wages
The miners union at the EVRAZ iron ore mine in the eastern city of Krivyi Rih has launched a
fight to double the miners wages. The union joined protests in support of the overthrow of
Moscow-backed former President Viktor Yanukovych and formed self-defense units to protect
workers and government buildings.
A union leaflet points to the effect on workers wages of skyrocketing inflation while the profits of
the company bosses in Russia have doubled over the year before. We marched through the
streets of Krivyi Rih and to mine owners offices shouting our wage demands, Alexandr Bondar,
a union leader at the mine, told the Militant by email May 12.
Self-proclaimed leaders of the Peoples Republics in Donetsk and Luhansk announced they
were calling for the Russian government to send troops to help them. But Russian President
Vladimir Putin has responded cautiously. In an announcement the week before, he urged
secessionist forces to put off their referendum and seek negotiations with Kiev. After they went
ahead with the vote anyway and announced they had won, the Russian government said it
respects the referendum and welcomes all possible efforts to start negotiations between Kiev
and separatist regions, the Wall Street Journal reported May 12.
Putins government faces opposition to military intervention in Ukraine among Russian
capitalists, concerned about capitalist stability and profits, and working people, who face their
own struggles against attacks on their living standards and rights and are adverse to war.
Russias international sales last year were smaller than the Netherlands and heavily dependent
on exports of oil and gas, whose prices on the world market are falling.
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Joseph Stalin against the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Russian bosses and their
government have no need for a red glow to mask their anti-working-class character. They are
embarrassed by it.
When Putin conjures images of the past its always to promote Great Russian domination, using
references to Peter the Great and lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union for the loss of Russian
power over other peoples. He explicitly attacks the revolutionary policies of the early Soviet
Union under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, who led the fight for self-determination of Ukraine and
other oppressed nationalities. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks may God judge them,
added large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine, Putin said
March 18 following the annexation of Crimea.
Likewise, the Stalinist phrases of the separatist paramilitaries repulse most workers and
farmers, whose only living memory of the Soviet Union is the Stalinist murder machine that,
under the false banner of communism, brutalized them, kept them out of politics and blocked
them off from fellow workers around the world. The armed separatist bands in the east and
south never got a foothold or were quickly driven out of the largest cities, including Kharkiv and
Dnepropetrovsk, as well as Odessa.
A May 18 YouTube posting by Igor Strelkov, a Russian commando proclaimed Commander-inChief of the Donetsk Peoples Republic, provides striking confirmation of the separatists
isolation. I do not expect that even a thousand men from the region can be found, he
complained.
Most of his troops, he said, consist of men older than 40, and many of those who came to his
forces for arms left, using them to protect their homes from crime and criminals.
At the same time, Russian capitalists face substantial economic and political challenges at
home. The Russian economy is heavily dependent on exports of gas and oil, whose prices are
falling. Life expectancy for a 15-year-old male, according to the World Health Organization, is
lower in Russia than in Haiti, Mali or Afghanistan. For women, life expectancy is lower than
Cambodia.
The main thing that [President Putin] is worried about is that what happened in Ukraine will
happen in Russia, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova told the Washington Post May 11. Tolokonnikova
was one of two members of the group Pussy Riot who spent nearly two years in prison for
demonstrations of political dissent against the Putin government.
Steel, mine boss defends empire
Meanwhile, Rinat Akhmetov deployed workers from his two steel plants in Mariupol May 14 to
join city cops to patrol the city and oust separatist forces from local public buildings and
organize street patrols. Thousands of workers signed up.
Akhmetov, whose net worth is estimated at $12.2 billion, appropriated the most modern and
profitable mines and mills in the gang wars over seizure of state property that followed the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He is the largest private employer in Donbass and was a
central backer of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February as a result
of popular mobilizations against his regime.
Akhmetov, who commands a private company army of more than 3,000, including former elite
Ukrainian commandos, was making a business decision to keep Donbas in Ukraine, as the
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Kiev Post put it. He launched the patrols in a meeting he called that brought together cops,
representatives of the union at his mills and representatives of separatist forces holding city hall.
The union leadership signed off on the deal, but has no responsibility for the operation.
By making it look like political confrontations, some people are pushing our city to chaos but in
reality it is pure banditry and crime, Igor Kurganov, a worker in the mechanical testing shop at
Azovstal plant, said, explaining why he joined the patrol in comments posted by the company on
its website. I would not want to live in a city ruled by wolves or by a wolf pack!
The corporatist-style patrols of cops and workers, dressed in company jackets, began to clear
separatists out. Pro-Russian-government forces melted away, along with signs of the selfdeclared peoples republic. Workers driving company backhoes dismantled their barricades.
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Vol. 78/No. 21
June 2, 2014
(front page)
Tatars in Crimea take to streets, defy Moscows ban on protests
Despite big police presence and protest ban by Moscow-installed Crimean government,
thousands of Tatars join May 18 commemoration of their mass deportation by Stalin in 1944.
BY JOHN STUDER
Defying a ban by Russian authorities, more than 20,000 Crimean Tatars rallied in Simferopol
May 18 to commemorate the day 70 years ago when the Tatar community some 200,000
people was deported en masse to Uzbekistan, Siberia and the Urals by the government of
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. In the arduous journey some 40 percent died from starvation,
disease, cold and other causes.
People, homeland, Crimea, the crowd chanted. We will only be respected if we are united,
said Refat Chubarov, head of the Tatars Mejlis assembly.
They are watching us, they are afraid of us, said chief Mufti Emirali Ablaev, pointing to Russian
military helicopters circling overhead. The Crimean peninsula was seized by the Russian
Federation from Ukraine in March.
Thousands more protested in other Crimean cities, as well as in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and
in Turkey, home to many Tatars who came in waves fleeing czarist and Stalinist persecution.
On May 16, Moscow-appointed Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov announced a ban on
all public meetings through June 6. The next day riot police began mass training exercises in
the square where the Tatar rally was set to take place.
The Crimean capital of Simferopol looked like a city prepared for mass riots on May 18, the
Kiev Post reported. Tatars and others from across Ukraine gathered outside a mosque in
Akmechet, a suburb of Simferopol, that was built on wasteland by Tatars who returned to
Crimea in the early 1990s. Thousands carrying the Crimean Tatar flag marched past parked
buses full of armed police, the Post said.
How could we not gather? Elina Asanova, who runs a nursery school in Simferopol, told the
paper. We held this meeting every year for 23 years and nothing ever happened: no
provocations, no clashes, nothing.
More than 32,000 Russian intelligence forces descended on Crimea in 1944, giving Tatars 30
minutes to gather their belongings and then loading some 194,000 into cattle cars for summary
deportation. Tatars in the Red Army fighting German troops were demobilized and sent to
forced labor camps in Siberia and the Urals.
Tatars were barred from returning to Crimea until the late 1980s and those who went back
found that their homes and farms had been seized.
The May 18 rally also protested the Russian governments annexation of Crimea. Tatars, who
now make up some 12 percent of the peninsulas population, backed the massive mobilizations
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across Ukraine that overthrew the pro-Moscow regime of President Viktor Yanukovych.
Another chant at the rally was Mustafa! Mustafa Dzhemilev is the long-standing leader of the
Crimean Tatar national struggle. He was jailed repeatedly in Russia in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Dzhemilev, who was banned from Crimea by Russian authorities May 3, participated in the
protest in Kiev.
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June 9, 2014
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Ukrainian sovereignty.
Isolation, frictions roil separatists
As they become more and more isolated and demoralized, conflicts are cropping up among the
hundreds of armed separatists who have seized some government offices and proclaimed in
a surreal caricature of the Stalinist Soviet Union peoples republics in a dozen cities in
eastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, the self-declared mayor of Slovyansk, a military center for separatist
forces set in motion by Moscow, announced May 21 he no longer recognized the Donetsk
Peoples Republic. He threatened to send in his paramilitary forces to restore order there.
Poroshenkos election, along with that of former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko
as mayor of Kiev, has also led to increased pressure to close down the tent city that houses
more than 1,000 remaining Maidan veterans in the central square in Kiev.
But many camped there intend to stay. The revolution is not finished, Ivan Stratyenko, one of
the defense commanders on Maidan, told Reuters. We dont want a state dominated by
leaders, he said. Maidan shows that people are starting to wake up.
Miners fight for wages, sovereignty
Faced with soaring inflation and wage cuts by a Russian-based EVRAZ iron-ore mining
company, miners in Krivyi Rih have been pressing demands for wages to be doubled, Yuriy
Petrovych, leader of the city-wide Independent Trade Union of Miners there, told the Militant
May 27.
Weve faced threats from company security forces, who told us our protests were a threat to
the region, Petrovych said. But we have a strong self-defense organization, and we pushed
them aside. Were asking workers everywhere to get out the word about our fight.
At the same time, a few hundred miners in the east, organized by the old, discredited miners
union were bused into Donetsk May 27 to protest the Kiev government. The union dates back to
before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has kept aloof from the class struggle that has
unfolded since.
In 1989 and throughout the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian miners mobilized strikes
and marches across the country for higher pay, better safety protection and political
independence from Moscow.
In 1990, they broke from the old union and set up the Independent Trade Union of Coal Miners
of Ukraine. This union, along with a sister organization, the Independent Trade Union of Coal
Miners of Donbass, has continued to mobilize miners to defend their wages and working
conditions.
They have organized miners across eastern Ukraine to form self-defense units, like the one in
Krivyi Rih, and to battle to defend workers from separatist gangs that have attacked union
militants, attempted to shut mines down and sought to close down political space.
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Therefore the miners of Ukraine stand up for the united and independent Ukraine, he said. The
miners and the confederation call for solidarity with workers of Southern and Eastern regions of
Ukraine.
While most workers in the east favor a united Ukraine, polarization is growing.
Ukraine is one country, and should stay as one country, Lyudmila, a retired high school
teacher, told AP, adding that she was afraid to give her full name for fear of separatist
retaliation.
Though she still strongly backs national sovereignty, she also says she has no sympathy or
confidence in the new government in Kiev.
Many workers agree. And some, influenced by the never-ending media barrage from Moscow
the only news broadcasts permitted by separatist commandos who seized control of towers
in Donetsk and Luhansk are drawn to support the separatists, looking for a way out of the
chaos, uncertainty and hardship.
The new Ukrainian president elected May 25, Petro Poroshenko, is a multi-millionaire chocolate
tycoon who capitalized on the looting of state property following the downfall of the Soviet Union
and independence of Ukraine in 1991. The Poroshenko government plans to slash government
expenditures to comply with conditions for International Monetary Fund loans and increase
profitability on the backs of working people.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the press last month that Greece where
official unemployment has topped 26 percent for the last year would be a good model for
what is coming in Ukraine.
The IMF itself expects the loan conditions it demands from the Ukrainian government will throw
the country into deep recession, contracting by 5 percent over the rest of the year. Central to the
plan is elimination of government social subsidies, especially for heating, and suspension of
unaffordable wage and pension increases.
On May 29, the State Property Fund announced it will auction off 38 state-owned coal mines as
part of the deal. These mines had received a nearly $1.8 billion state subsidy to stay open and
working. This is more than 30 percent of the 120 functioning coal mines in the country. The
most profitable mines were grabbed and privatized years earlier.
Miners and other workers have been resisting. Iron-ore miners in Krivyi Rih have organized
marches and rallies fighting for doubling their wages, drawing support from area steelworkers
and others.
On May 23 we organized a solidarity rally for the Krivyi Rih miners, Aleksei Oleksyevych,
leader of the independent miners union in Dnepropetrovsk, told the Militant. We organized a
picket outside the EVRAZ offices here, saying high salaries, the foundation of the unity of
Ukraine.
Members of the miners union from four state-owned peat production companies
Cherkasytorf, Rozhnytorf, Rivnetorf and Volinjtorf rallied outside the Ministry of Energy and
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Russia is still Ukraines single biggest trading partner and supplies much of the countrys
energy. In March, Russian state-owned Gazprom raised the price of gas to Ukraine by 80
percent and is demanding Ukraine pay more than $4 billion in supposed debts for fuel.
Moscow has its own problems, including an economy dependent on energy exports at a time
when prices are declining. The vast majority of Russian capitalists, concerned foremost with
political stability and foreign relations that maximize profits, dont want war. And neither do most
workers, tired of more than a decade of combat in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Georgia.
Moscow pulls back from threat to intervene
The Russian government has backed off from its threats of direct military intervention and
withdrawn troops from the Ukrainian border. Putin has recognized the election of Poroshenko
and as part of recent negotiations has offered to reduce the price of gas.
Meanwhile, the heterogeneous separatist forces in eastern Ukraine are dividing. Separatist
strongholds are increasingly being taken over by units calling themselves the Vostok Battalion,
apparently made up of mercenaries tacitly backed by Moscow from Chechnya, Ossetia and
other areas.
Near midnight June 8, camouflaged gunmen broke into the house of Vasyl Serdyukov, editor of
Serditaya Gazeta, a newspaper that supports Ukrainian sovereignty, took him and his son for
several hours and ransacked his home and office.
Residents in Donetsk reported June 10 that Oleg Zhelnakov, who is active in pro-Ukrainian
demonstrations, was detained by separatist thugs and beaten.
Some 20,000 people have fled the region since April, according to the London Financial Times,
most heading west to Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev and other cities, and some to the south or to
relatives in Russia. Thousands of Crimean Tatars have also fled increasingly repressive
conditions in their native homeland since its annexation by Moscow in March.
Many arrive in Kiev almost every day now, Sergey Shevchuk, a participant in the protests in
the capital that brought down the Yanukovych regime, told the Militant June 9. These are
workers, bringing children and carrying almost no money. He is one of a number of volunteers
working to find them housing and financial aid.
Shevchuk says he has been transformed by the struggles of the past few months and remains
committed to defend Ukraines sovereignty.
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working-class solidarity. The first group of 139 children arrived for treatment in Cuba on March
29, 1990. When the Ukrainian government didnt have planes to transport them, Cuba sent two
planes, one just finishing repairs in Uzbekistan that had not yet been painted. The children were
greeted by Cuban President Fidel Castro when they landed.
Over the past 24 years Cuba has treated more than 25,000 people affected by the disaster,
including at least 21,340 children, at a special clinic established at Tarar, near Havana. Cuban
doctors have also been working in Ukraine.
Even at the height of what Cubans call the special period of economic hardship when the
Soviet Union collapsed, there was no letup in the program providing free medical treatment to
all who needed it.
I knew about the Cuban program for the children, said Mikhail Remezenko, a union official of
the Nuclear Power Workers union and former worker at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant who
accompanied Militant correspondents. Children with serious radiation illnesses came back with
greatly improved health. So many were cured. We are very satisfied with what the Cubans did.
Olga Svyntytska, who lives in Prybirsk and works resettling former residents from the exclusion
zone who want to move back to the region, said her cousin went to Cuba as part of the
program. Viktoria Babek, who lives in Slavutych, and is vice chair of the Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Workers union, said many knew about the program from watching TV. We were glad to
see how the Cuban government took the really sick kids and how their stay there improved their
health, she said.
At the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev, the solidarity from Cuba is featured in a large display panel,
with photos, letters from family members, and a copy of the Cuban daily Granma from March
31, 1990, showing a gathering of Ukrainian mothers with their children. Irina Ivasenko, president
of the Ukrainian Association of Children of Chernobyl, tells Granma she is struck by how such a
small country has such a huge heart.
Workers fight pay, pension cuts
The authors of this article hooked up with Remezenko at Chernobyl Park in the exclusion zone,
which was opened on the 25th anniversary of the explosion. A long row of signs carry the
names of the 187 towns in Ukraine and Belarus that were evacuated. Another monument marks
the murderous effects of Washingtons nuclear assault on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Twenty-eight firefighters from the plant and from two fire departments in Chernobyl and Pripyat
were killed fighting the fires after the explosion, Remezenko told us. In their honor, firemen
donated money to build a life-size monument in front of their fire station. The government
refused to pay for it.
Like many of the nuclear workers, Remezenko lives in Slavutych, a town of 25,000 built to
house workers forced to abandon Pripyat.
We are among the lowest paid and worst-treated nuclear workers, Sergey Akamovych, an
executive committee member of the union, told us. We dont produce any energy to sell so we
dont make them any profit.
But there is still room for corruption, he said. Only 60 percent of the governments allocation for
Chernobyl makes it to the plant each year. The rest, he said, disappears.
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Some 2,700 workers from Slavutych work at Chernobyl, dismantling the remaining reactors,
processing leftover nuclear fuel and preventing new radioactive leaks. It is a slow and
dangerous process. All four reactors are closed; the last shut down in 2000. Two reactors
No. 5 and No. 6 were under construction at the time of the explosion and still stand, partially
built and surrounded by a gaggle of cranes.
Approximately 200 tons of fuel, plutonium and other highly radioactive fission by-products
remain in the bowels of the destroyed reactor No. 4.
Somewhere between 600,000 to 800,000 workers known as liquidators were involved in
the cleanup effort. Thousands of coal miners were drafted from across Ukraine to dig a tunnel
under the wreckage and install a coil to cool the concrete floor and reinforce cracks.
At first they were granted special government benefits because of the danger of the work,
including two years of pensions for each year they worked. But nuclear workers more and more
had to fight successive Ukrainian governments over wages and pensions. In February 1999,
workers set up tent camps outside government offices in Kiev and the countrys five nuclear
plants demanding they be paid more than $15 million in outstanding wages.
The fighting example of workers who have been involved in the cleanup and maintenance of the
Chernobyl nuclear site is part of the political struggle taking shape in Ukraine today. Protests by
liquidators took place from 2011 through 2013 from Kiev to Kharkiv to Luhansk, opposing the
pension cuts ordered by President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in popular antigovernment demonstrations in February.
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The press publishes reports of people taking advantage of our help, of people in refugee
shelters asking for vodka and cigarettes instead of food, said Alesey Ryabchyn, a student who
moved from Donetsk two weeks ago with his wife and daughter and is now volunteering with
Euromaidan SOS. Dont believe such stories. This conflict has brought out the best in the
Ukrainian people. Our priority is helping those in need, no matter what side theyre on.
A woman and her husband decided to take in some refugees, she posted on her website
francevna1. Two women, Anna and Valya, from Kramatorsk came.
A real information war is underway where they came from, the woman said. They thought that
people in central Ukraine hated the Donetsk people, that horrific Banderites are standing on the
roads to Kiev those from Maidan with rifles, to shoot at people from Donbass.
You know, when I tell my guys how we were greeted here, nobody will believe me, she said
Anna told her.
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Cuba had such a high level of medical care, she said. Ukraine couldnt match it. And the love
the Cuban people gave, the doctors and everyone, was something else again.
In 2012, Ukrainian bureaucrats in the health care system convinced then-president Viktor
Yanukovych they should take over all treatment of Chernobyl victims, and the government
ended relations with the program, Piltyay said. We continued to fight, and in 2013 Yanukovych
said he would allocate funds in the next budget to send 100 more children.
Yanukovych was ousted in February at the height of popular anti-government mobilizations. As
of now, the future of the program to get Ukrainians to Cuba for treatment is unclear.
Some people still get care in Cuba, but they have to raise the funds to cover transportation
themselves, she said. Cuba is willing to continue the program and we hope we can find a way
to get the funding. There are hundreds of young Ukrainians still on the waiting list, she said.
Cuba says they do what they do for moral and ethical reasons, so they never kept count of
what it cost, Piltyay said. But we estimate they spent more than $2 billion. We will never forget
what Cuba has done.
Second Homeland
The group gave two gifts to the Militant, one a book in Russian entitled Second Homeland
which is how all the young women described Cuba. The book describes the Cuban medical
program in Tarar. Piltyay and some of the other women are pictured in the book.
The second was a painting by Inna Molodchenko, a young woman who came to the interview
with her mother Tatiana. Molodchenko is the first on the waiting list.
For the first eight years of her life Inna couldnt chew, Tatiana Molodchenko said. She had the
benefit of six surgeries in Cuba over a number of visits, which make it possible for her to
swallow. She also had skin disease and difficulty moving her hands.
I first went to Cuba in 2008 and just came back from spending a month there in January 2014,
said Tatiana Bernadska. It really did feel like a second homeland. The doctors were special,
and the Cuban people are special people. They helped us as if we were their own kids.
My grandfather was an engineer in Chernobyl, Yulia Palamarchuk said. I didnt have any
confidence in myself when I went to Cuba. The Cuban people helped me with love and
understanding, helped me learn to love myself.
The whole program educational programs, concerts, dancing, cultural exchanges, a library
with books in Russian, teachers from Ukraine to help us, all paid for by the Cubans the whole
environment was great, she said.
My head was injured at school and when they sent me to the doctor, he said I had brain
cancer, said Yulia Panasiuk. They performed surgery on me in Kiev, but when I woke up they
told me there was nothing they could do and I had six months to live. My family found out about
the Cuban program by chance.
The other young women have similar stories. Because the Ukrainian government took no
organized responsibility for the program, it was not widely publicized.
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I saw the Cuban doctors and they moved fast, in three days I was on my way to Tarar,
Panasiuk said. I thought I would be there for 45 days, but ended up staying for treatment for
five years with my mom.
When I got back to Ukraine, my health deteriorated again, she said. I came back to Cuba for
more surgery. You can still see I have some paralysis on my left side. They gave me physical
therapy to rebuild my mobility.
The Cuban doctors were fighting to help me. I am really glad destiny gave me the chance to go
to Cuba, she said. The experience taught us a different attitude toward people.
Many of the young women said that while they were in Cuba they learned about the fight to free
the Cuban Five and they have helped to get out information about it in Ukraine.
Solidarity with Cuba important
I worked as a liquidator, one of those who helped to evacuate people, Burka told us. Hundreds
of thousands served as liquidators. Some were volunteers; others were conscripted for military
duty.
The area I was assigned to was supposedly empty, already evacuated, with very high levels of
radioactivity, said Burka. But people continued to live in the village as late as May 17, more
than three weeks after the meltdown, she said. At first they only evacuated people who were
vomiting.
In 1989 the contamination zone was extended, which prompted the evacuation of 50,000 more
people, she said. It was after this that the Cuban program began. We were very grateful to the
Cuban people, they were the only country to show this kind of human solidarity, all at their own
expense.
The Cuban program didnt get enough publicity, she added. Many people didnt know about it,
this was the only limit on those who could take advantage of it. We need to get that information
out now and get the program strong again. We will never forget the Cuban people.
This was an irreplaceable program, Piltyay said. It showed that the Cuban Revolution is alive
and that solidarity with Cuba is very important.
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There is an exchange of fire among the separatists, Iryna Verigina, from the eastern city of
Luhansk, told a Ukrainian television station July 8. They are shooting at each other.
Since hundreds of rebels flooded into the city [Donetsk] at the weekend, Reuters reported July
8, armed men have been out on the streets, setting up new barricades and checkpoints and
stopping pedestrians and motorists.
Russia stands back
The capitalist government of Russian President Vladimir Putin has not acknowledged the
paramilitaries calls for Russian military intervention. On the Fourth of July Putin sent a message
to U.S. President Barack Obama calling for improvement in relations between the two
governments.
A state-funded poll released July 7 showed two-thirds of Russians oppose the country sending
troops into Ukraine. Most workers are weary of war following decades of Russian military
interventions from Afghanistan to Chechnya and Georgia. They face falling wages, 7 percent
inflation and seek greater political rights and space to organize. Russian bosses are foremost
concerned about maximizing profits and political stability in Russia and the surrounding region.
Moscow also faces growing discontent among workers and farmers in Crimea, annexed and
occupied by Russian troops since March. Prices have soared 20 to 50 percent. As Russia cut
off trade with Ukraine, store shelves went bare. Tourism, the main industry, plummeted, cutting
jobs and pay. Medication prices have soared beyond the reach of working people. Few Russian
banks opened up to replace Ukrainian banks closed by the new regime.
Farmers report they expect a good harvest, but everything else from irrigation to credits to
export possibilities has been disrupted. On a scale of one to five, we are at negative three,
Sergei Tur, head of the Association of Farmers and Landowners of Crimea told the New York
Times July 7.
Oppressive measures against the 300,000-strong Crimean Tatar population, who
overwhelmingly oppose Russian rule, have grown. On July 7 Moscow banned Refat Chubarov,
the leader of the Tatar ruling Mejlis assembly, from entering Crimea for five years. Mustafa
Dzhemilev, the long-standing leader of the Tatars and leader of the Mejlis until last year, was
slapped with a similar ban in April.
Support for the Crimean occupation among Russian working people is low. The governments
appeal to give up a days pay to help fund costs of the annexation got little traction. In our
department, not one of us made the donation, hospital worker Tatyana told Reuters July 6.
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tsarist empire, for example, in Latvia, Poland and the Ukraine, but also in West-European
countries, in neutral countries (Switzerland, Holland and Norway) and in countries which have
suffered from the war (Austria and Germany). The revolution in Germanyclearly shows how
history has formulated the question in relation to Germany: Soviet power or the bourgeois
parliament, no matter under what signboard (such as National or Constituent Assembly) it
may appear.
Soviet power is the second historical step, or stage, in the development of the proletarian
dictatorship. The first step was the Paris Commune. The brilliant analysis of its nature and
significance given by Marx in his The Civil War in France showed that the Commune had
created a new type of state, a proletarian state. Every state, including the most democratic
republic, is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another. The proletarian
state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. Such suppression is
necessary because of the furious, desperate resistance put up by the landowners and
capitalists, by the entire bourgeoisie and all their hangers-on, by all the exploiters, who stop at
nothing when their overthrow, when the expropriation of the expropriators, begins.
The bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic republic, in which
the property and rule of the capitalists are preserved, is a machine for the suppression of the
working millions by small groups of exploiters. The socialists, the fighters for the emancipation
of the working people from exploitation, had to utilise the bourgeois parliaments as a platform,
as a base, for propaganda, agitation, and organisation as long as our struggle was confined to
the framework of the bourgeois system: Now that world history has brought up the question of
destroying the whole of that system, of overthrowing and suppressing the exploiters, of passing
from capitalism to socialism, it would be a shameful betrayal of the proletariat, deserting to its
class enemy, the bourgeoisie, and being a traitor and a renegade to confine oneself to
bourgeois parliamentarism, to bourgeois democracy, to present it as democracy in general, to
obscure its bourgeois character, to forget that as long as capitalist property exists universal
suffrage is an instrument of the bourgeois state.
1In the first days of November 1918, while war still raged across Europe, German workers and
soldiers rose in revolt, forming revolutionary councils across the country. Their uprising toppled
the German Empire on November 9 and brought Germanys participation in the war to an abrupt
end two days later, thereby halting the first world interimperialist slaughter. The overthrow of the
regime of Wilhelm II, German kaiser and king of Prussia, coming a little more than a year after
that of the Russian tsar, opened the second front in the struggle against the international
imperialist system. It helped lessen the imperialistss attempts to isolate the Russian workers
and peasants republic established under Bolshevik leadership in November 1917. Together
with the Russian example, the German experience convinced millions of workers of the need for
a new, Communist International.
2The Spartacus League had originated as a revolutionary current in the Social Democratic Party
of Germany (SPD), initiating and spearheading opposition to the SPD majority leaderships
open support in August 1914 to German imperialist war policy. When the workers overthrew the
kaiser on Nov. 9, 1918, the main social-democratic currents formed a provisional government.
The Spartacists advocated replacing this government with one resting on the mass-based
councils of workers and soldiers formed during the uprising.
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