Ukraine insurrection against brutality and state corruption

As the anti-government movement in Maidan Square hunkers down for its tenth week of occupation in sub-zero temperatures, the battle-lines have changed. Starting as a largely pro-European Union movement last November, the remarkable courage and determination of Kiev’s people has changed the stakes.

The massive reaction of the authorities produced a defiant opposition to the brutality of the notorious security forces and to widespread state corruption. That’s why what is effectively an insurrection has spread to the eastern parts of Ukraine, despite the area’s historic ties to neighbouring Russia.

The centre of Kiev has become a charred and frozen war-zone with some of the thousands of occupiers sheltering in occupied buildings and others behind barricades made of ice. They are sustained by well-organised support from both locals and those further away.

Hundreds of women ferry food, hot drinks, blankets and medication, braving not only freezing temperatures, smoke from burning tyres, but also live bullets from plainclothes snipers, not to mention batons, tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.

At least two of the movement’s leaders have had to flee Ukraine and take refuge in neighbouring countries. There is evidence of death squads and that snipers surrounding Maidan Square are deliberately targeting protesters’ eyes.

Over 40 journalists are reported injured and there is video evidence of police beating and stripping a Cossack protester in a freezing street.

Dmytro Bulatov, the founder of Auto Maidan – which organises car owners in support of the occupation – disappeared on January 22. Two days before, Bulatov had urged opposition leaders to settle on a single protest leadership. He was only found eight days later, having been tortured by the police. Only the vigilance of his supporters prevented further beatings while he was in hospital. He has apparently now left the country.

Oleksandre Danylyuk, leader of the anti-government group Spilna Sprava which organised the occupation of three strategic buildings, fled to London last week after the police issued a warrant for his arrest. He is wanted on suspicion of !organising riots that caused the death of people or serious harm to them," according to the Interior Ministry's database of wanted people. The offense carries up to 15 years behind bars, says the Kyiv Post.

Danylyuk and Bulatov have been luckier than 50-year-old Yuri Verbizky, who was beaten and left to die of the cold in a forest near Kiev. His colleague, Ihor Lutsenko managed to escape with a concussion and missing teeth. He was rescued by a passing motorist.

Meanwhile, the website for Berkut, the state’s special police force, has been flooded with anti-Semitic materials alleging that the Jews are to blame for organising at Maidan. Berkut proudly publishes photos of its brutality to protesters.

As poet Yuri Andrukhovych has written, the state repression and collusion with autocrats like Putin has hardened the resolve of the movement. They are fired up, he says  “by an exceptionally hot mix of despair, hope, self-sacrifice and hatred”. He adds: “”Yes, hatred. Morality does not forbid hating murderers. Especially if the murderers are in power or in direct service of those in power.”

Ukraine became an independent state in 1991 for the first time in its long history, apart from a brief moment around 1918-1919. For most of the 20^th century it was part of the Soviet Union. During the Stalinist period, Ukraine experienced famine during which millions died as a result of forced collectivisation.

Political independence following the break-up of the USSR did not mean economic independence from the greedy tentacles of Putin’s state in Russia, nor from their Ukraine’s own oligarchs. The transition to a full-blown capitalist economy meant poverty for the majority of Ukraine’s workers and its women in particular. After the 2008 global crash, Ukraine’s economy staggered deeper and deeper into debt.

Ukraine’s embattled president Viktor Yanukovych, who has just returned from a few days’ “rest” signed an economic pact with Russia in December rather than the EU. But the anti-government protesters are wise to the fact that there are sinister strings attached to any deal with Putin even if they don’t yet appreciate that the EU sees Ukraine as another pool of cheap labour to exploit.

There is a wide spectrum of forces at work in the Ukrainian movement, including the “Right Sector”. This has been seized up by Putin’s propaganda machine to discredit the movement. But there are also others, amongst them Narodniy Nabat (People’s Bell) and  Avtonomniy Opir (Autonomous Resistance) and Volna Zemlya (Free Land). They recognise the state as their enemy even if there is no clear view yet about what to replace it with.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Mandela's passing leaves unfinished business

The death of Nelson Mandela marks the closure of an era of independence struggles in Africa which ended colonial rule and brought political freedom. But despite Mandela’s heroic and self-sacrificing struggle, his vision of a just and equal society eludes the vast majority.

The African National Congress which Mandela came to lead was formed in 1912 in response to the South African Land Act (rubber-stamped by the British) which banned black people from buying or renting land in 93% of the country. By the 1940s, the ANC was deeply under the influence of the South African Communist Party (SACP).

The malign influence of Stalinism had already taken its toll on the party. The SACP, which did not believe in the armed struggle, proposed a cautious, non-revolutionary two-stage approach to the South Africa situation. First, it was necessary to achieve a Western-style democracy. Only then could you reform the state and make progress towards socialist ownership and so on. In other words, stage two was postponed to the indefinite future.

In 1961 the country’s Afrikaans whites outvoted the English-speaking whites in a referendum to leave the British Commonwealth and establish the Republic of South Africa. The new republic's government pushed ahead with the formation of the racist apartheid state, which deprived the black majority of all human, political and economic rights. A mass strike called by the ANC was met with brute force. 

The new republic's government pushed ahead with the formation of the racist apartheid state, which deprived the black majority of all human, political and economic rights. A mass strike called by the ANC was met with brute force. The time for talking was over.

As Nelson Mandela said in his famous speech from the dock at the Rivonia freedom trial in 1964: "What were we, the leaders of our people, to do? Were we to give in to the show of force and the implied threat against future action, or were we to fight it out and, if so, how?"

It was at this point the ANC reluctantly agreed to form Umkhonto we Sizwe, an armed struggle organisation designed to bring young people already planning insurrection under its control.

Mandela quoted the Umkhonto we Sizwe manifesto: "The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices – submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom".

Mandela and seven other leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe were sentenced to life imprisonment. His amazing courage and resilience inspired the heroic resistance of two generations of black South Africans.

This, combined with sanctions and a growing economic crisis, forced the white government led by F. W. de Clerk to release Mandela and concede black people the right to vote. As a result, on a momentous day in 1994 Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

However, the new constitution may have dismantled apartheid laws but it left the South African state itself – its army, police force and bureaucracy, its education institutions and most crucially its forms of ownership of land and natural resources – largely untouched.

Mandela's ANC successors have co-opted themselves into this state, and trampled his vision of a just South Africa into the dust. Its lowest point so far came in August 2012 when they sent armed police in to repress striking miners. They opened fire and 34 workers at the Marikana platinum mine were massacred, mostly shot in the back.

Black people remain largely landless and many are homeless in their own country. Gold and other minerals remain in the hands of the global corporations and the majority of black people have no say whatsoever. The ANC elite has grabbed hold of political power, and the ruling group’s main role is to maintain the status quo and enrich themselves. As we say goodbye to an amazing leader in the shape of Mandela, these are facts that can't be ignored.

Throughout his life Mandela was committed to peace, and today it is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of Obama and Cameron praising him for this quality whilst they themselves are the worst kind of warmongers engaged in drone wars and reckless armed interventions. And with their anti-terror laws, torture, imprisonment without trial and mass surveillance of their own populations, the US and UK secret services put apartheid's notorious BOSS in the shade.

Africa is facing a new kind of recolonisation, with global agri-business seizing billions of acres of land, and the corporations totally in control of mineral wealth, aided by corrupt and complaisant governments. Half mast flags, statues and public displays of mourning are of no use to Mandela's people. Revitalising and finding new approaches to achieving his vision of an equal society would be his best memorial, and the only one worth having.

Penny Cole

Anti-Putin movement marks end of an era

Russia’s street protest movement, which has shaken not only the Kremlin’s autocrats but global financial markets, is the largest for two decades, and is the end of an era.

The pro-capitalist triumphalism of the early 1990s has turned into disenchantment, not just with the sham democracy which voters experienced earlier this month, but with the corruption of a mafia-style capitalism.

The demands for a fair election are part of a much bigger movement of discontent which is sweeping Russia under conditions of the global economic crisis.

On Saturday, up to a 100,000 Russians from Vladivostok in the east, to Moscow and St Petersburg, right through to central London, demonstrated against the rigged parliamentary elections.

A map on Spandex, Russia’s largest search engine, showed the protests scheduled for Saturday in around 100 cities around the country, with links to details for each event on a Russian social networking site.

Placards denounced "False elections, false laws, false authorities” and protesters shouted “rogues and thieves give us back our elections”, and called for a “Russia without Putin”. Up to 50,000 came to a rally held on an island in Moscow.

Their five-point demands are:

• Freedom for political prisoners
• Annulment of the election results
• The resignation of Vladimir Churov, head of the election commission, and an official investigation of vote fraud
• Registration of the opposition parties and new democratic legislation on parties and elections
• New democratic and open elections.

The demonstrators defied pre-emptive strikes by the regime, which saw the arrest last week of opposition leaders like blogger Alexei Navalny, Solidarnost leader Ilya Nashin, Eduard Limonov of the unregistered Other Russia party and Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights group. In Ulyanovsk, Lenin’s birthplace, all the protest leaders were arrested, but the protests went ahead nonetheless.

Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by Putin’s “cyber-warriors” also focused on preventing Russia’s 51 million internet users from accessing anti-regime media websites.

President Medvedev has announced an inquiry into voting procedures on his Facebook page, while rejecting a re-run of the election, the central demand of the protests. He was met with an immediate and often mocking response by people saying they did not believe him.

The protests are the largest since the turmoil in August 1990 when thousands took to the streets of Moscow to thwart a putsch aimed at removing the then leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Since replacing Boris Yeltsin, ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin has reversed the democratic gains promoted by Gorbachev to enable an oligarchy to establish capitalism in Russia. When Putin was barred from standing for election for a third term in 2008, he was appointed as prime minister. He insists he will run for president again in March.

From a massive majority in earlier elections, support for Putin and his United Russia party has fallen to an all-time low, especially as the global economy has swung into a downturn. On Friday, shares in Russian companies saw massive drops as investors fear continuing political instability, as well as lower demands for oil.

One school of thought claims the Russian democratic movement is funded and inspired from Washington, pointing to financial backing from the National Endowment for Democracy for bloggers like Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov’s People’s Freedom Party and the election watchdog Golos.

But to denounce those angry with the Russian political system as pawns of the West is ludicrous and insulting. As one demonstrator said: “I don't think any citizen of the country can say he is very happy with anything. We don't have an independent judiciary, there is no freedom of expression – all this combined creates a situation where people are forced to protest.”

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Solzhenitsyn's place in history

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who is being buried in Moscow today, was the most indomitable of the post-war opponents of the Stalinist terror machine in the Soviet Union, who paved the way for countless others.

The 1962 publication of Solzhenitsyn’s, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was an extraordinary event both in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. Its unembellished depiction of life in a Siberian prison camp made its reality spring to life for millions of readers.

Despite his youthful enthusiasm for Marxism and distinguished service in the Red Army where he was twice decorated for gallantry, Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945 by Stalin’s secret police. He was sentenced without trial to eight years in labour camps and permanent internal exile for having criticised Stalin’s conduct of the war in a letter to a friend.

The publication of Ivan Denisovich was possible only due to the personal intervention of Stalin’s successor as secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev and the courageous support of Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of the literary journal Novy Mir. It was an immediate sensation in the USSR.

But although it was studied in Soviet schools and three more of his books were published in 1963, two years later the author became a non-person. Khrushchev had been ousted in 1964, and the terrifying power of the secret police was reimposed.

Solzhenitsyn’s manuscript of his epic account of Stalinist repression, The First Circle, and archives were confiscated by the police. He appealed unsuccessfully to the Writers Union to defend literary freedom in 1967 but was instead expelled from membership. While forced into silence in his homeland, his books Cancer Ward and The First Circle appeared abroad. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but could not travel to Stockholm to accept it.

Stig Fredrikson, a Swedish journalist living in Moscow, helped him smuggle out the works he continued to write in secret. Fredrikson explained later how the author had hidden copies of the manuscript with a few trusted friends. One woman in Leningrad, had a copy of his account of Stalinist labour camps, The Gulag Archipelago. “She had buried it in the ground, but somehow the KGB found out,” Fredrikson wrote later. “They interrogated her for days and nights until she confessed where she had hidden it. She was then released but went home and hanged herself. She felt that she had betrayed Solzhenitsyn's confidence in her.”

Because of his status as a symbol of resistance, the authorities could not arrest Solzhenitsyn, so they expelled him from the Soviet Union in 1974 and stripped him of his citizenship. The cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko gave him support at this time. He was invited to live in the United States, where he spent the next 19 years on an isolated farm in Vermont, working on a history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel.

From opposition to Stalinism he moved to an increasingly nationalist, backward looking view of history. He was an outspoken critic of US consumer society, but at the same time yearned for a return to pre-revolutionary Russia. In a long manifesto published in 1990, he envisaged a purely Slav Russia with a key role for the Orthodox Church.

By now Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost made it possible for his books to be published in the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland in 1994. Gorbachev paid tribute to the writer yesterday, saying: “He was a great man, who was amid the first to raise voice against Stalin’s regime in defence of people that fell victims to it.”

Although Solzhenitsyn denounced the corruption and incompetence of post-Soviet Russian rulers, especially Yeltsin, his political trajectory to deeply backward Russian nationalism dovetailed with Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule. He accepted an award from Putin last summer, a ruler who, in the words of an exiled Russian journalist, “has revived the long-forgotten category of the political prisoner, and of the forcible confinement of critics in psychiatric clinics”.

But whatever his later evolution, nothing can detract from Solzhenitsyn’s contribution to the exposé and eventual fall of Stalinism.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. December 11, 1918-August 3, 2008

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary