Defend Ukraine's right to self-determination

Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the threat to invade other parts of Ukraine on a trumped up pretext, is a reactionary response to a popular uprising for democracy in Kiev and a diversion from serious economic problems confronting the Putin regime.

As leaders East and West seek to blame one another, the key issue – Ukraine’s right to self-determination is being swept under the carpet. The excuse for the invasion of Crimea – that the Russian-speaking majority had to be saved from “fascists” – is part of a fake narrative dreamt up in Moscow and one used down the ages.

Moscow claims that the Maidan uprising in Kiev has been run and financed by Western reactionary forces and is aimed at suppressing Ukraine’s Russian speakers. Yet the Maidan uprising which began in November 2013 was first and foremost a popular revolution, which included many elements in Ukrainian society, amongst them – but not led by – right wing nationalists against a corrupt, autocratic regime. 

Many Jews took part in the uprising, for example. An ex-Israeli special forces soldier led a Kiev fighting unit against the Yanukovych government. Volodymyr Groysman, a former mayor of the city of Vinnytsia and the newly appointed deputy prime minister for regional policy, is a Jew.  

 

A language law introduced last week by Kiev’s parliament to reverse a provocative act by ex-president Yanukovych was yesterday vetoed by Ukraine’s caretaker president Turchynov. He acknowledged it had been a mistake.

While Putin’s provocative actions are a blatant infringement of Ukrainian sovereignty, the Russian bear has found some allies in strange places. British media commentators including Jonathan Steele and former British ambassador Rodric Braithwaite are calling for NATO and John Kerry to “back off”. As Timothy Snyder writes in the New York Review of Books:

"Interestingly, the message from authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Kiev was not so different from some of what was written during the uprising in the English-speaking world, especially in publications of the far left and the far right. From Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review through Ron Paul’s newsletter through The Nation and The Guardian, the story was essentially the same: little of the factual history of the protests, but instead a play on the idea of a nationalist, fascist, or even Nazi coup d’état.”

The first time Ukraine saw even a glimpse of nationhood in modern times was in 1919 when the Zluty unity agreement was signed and the Ukrainian People’s Republic came into existence. Areas of the country were, however, ceded to Poland.

Early Bolshevik policy strongly asserted the right of all nations to self-determination in the former Tsarist empire and elsewhere. During the 1920s, under Mykola Skrypnyk’s Ukrainization policy, the Soviet leadership encouraged a national renaissance in the Ukrainian language, literature and the arts.

Crimea became an autonomous part of Ukraine in 1954 after being gifted by Nikita Khrushchev. It was his effort to make up for Stalinist oppression, when 7.5 million people – mostly Ukrainians – died in the Holodomar, a terror-famine deliberately imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and several other countries as an act of genocide.

The Stalinist policy of starvation and repression was followed up from 1944 by ethnic cleansing with the forcible deportation of over 200,000 Crimean Tartars. Even Tartars fighting in the ranks of the Red Army were demobilised and sent to labour camps.  

Not too surprisingly, Stalinist repression had led some Ukrainians to welcome German forces after the invasion of the USSR in 1941. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought with the Soviet Red Army and Moscow named Kiev as a hero city.

Ukraine’s longing for nationhood re-emerged as a powerful force encouraged by Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy and, finally, the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. It inspired the human chain of 300,000 Ukrainians which led to independence of today’s Ukraine.

         

After Ukraine declared its state sovereignty in 1990 and its independence in August 1991, a dispute flared up over the status of the Crimea. It was settled by an agreement in 1992, by which Crimea was granted autonomous status within Ukraine.

But Vladimir Putin – following in Stalin’s footsteps, has never accepted Ukraine’s right to exist. In 2008, he said to George Bush that if Ukraine joined NATO, Russia would annex Crimea and eastern Ukraine: “Don’t you understand, George — Ukraine is not even a nation! What is Ukraine? Part of her territory is Eastern Europe, and part, a considerable part, was given by us!”

A succession of leaders representing either a Western-leaning bourgeois or oligarchs looking to Russia have failed to develop Ukraine and played one community off against another. Corruption became endemic with Tymoshenko and then Yanukovych enriching themselves. Now Ukraine is bankrupt. The European Union, for all its mouthing about democracy, has no intention of bailing out any leader in Kiev.

Underlying Putin’s aggressive nationalism is his deep fear of a people’s uprising within Russia itself. The superficial success of the Sochi games was accompanied by a contempt for the corrupt abuse of public funds, disdain for local people’s rights and ecological devastation.

Russia of course has huge oil and other natural resources. But the recent growth of some sectors, which saw the enrichment of oligarchs and parts of the middle classes in the 1990s and noughties, is in crisis. Interest rates have shot up, the stock market fell 9% this morning and the rouble is at an all-time low. A massive capital flight has been under way for years. Much of it has ended up in luxury homes in Knightsbridge, laundered by Western banks or in the shape of football clubs.

Putin has quickly reversed the pre-Sochi cosmetic release of opponents, like Pussy Riot. He closed down one of the few remaining television stations that criticised the monstrous Sochi Olympics. Protests by anti-invasion activists in St Petersburg and Moscow were quickly suppressed by riot police.  He remains what he has always been: an autocrat presiding over a corrupt capitalist oligarchy who brutally suppresses and kills his opponents.

It is indeed rich of Kerry, Hague and other Western leaders to mouth criticisms of Russia’s military intervention – bearing in mind the US-UK-NATO invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and bombing of Libya along with remote killing by drones in Pakistan.

Opposing Putin’s act of aggression in no way, therefore, implies support for NATO and the EU. They can no more represent the aspirations of Ukrainians than Yanukovych or Putin can, while the new government in Kiev has no solutions either. All the people of Ukraine, whatever their mother tongue, have the right decide their own future free of interference from outside forces. That principle is an absolute.

A World to Win editors

Putin's £31 billion nightmare

Vladimir Putin says that he is not anti-gay. And adds that he’s even in favour of the right to self-determination. For the macho Russian president, black is white and white is black.

Replying to the BBC’s Andrew Marr’s softly-softly questioning, Putin said that no harm would come to gays at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. But in bigoted remarks, Putin had already casually linked gays to paedophilia and warned athletes to say away from children.

As to self-determination, this astonishing claim is made by the man who oversaw a reign of terror in the republic of Chechnya when he first came to power, reflecting the Great Russian chauvinism so beloved of Kremlin leaders.

The release of Pussy Riot singers and oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky at the end of December (scheduled in any case) are being promoted as a signal that Putin’s dictatorship is easing up.

But the Russian state has set its propaganda machine into overdrive to hoodwink the world and its media that Putin’s authoritarian state has suddenly dropped its persecution of gays, journalists, ethnic minorities and political opponents.

He is backed in this by a motley crew of apologists, starting with the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter. Blatter was not long ago denounced by David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell for condoning racism.

Blatter’s anti-boycott stance is echoed by CNN writer Frida Ghitis who wants Sochi to be made “the gayest ever event”. She is favour of “engagement”, saying a boycott is wrong and that gay rights activists should brave Putin’s police. But Ghitis recently defended former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s record in Lebanon, so perhaps her advice is a bit suspect.

The sustained propaganda campaign is entirely in aid of achieving the Russian president’s cherished aim of hosting the Olympics – a project he has been promoting since 2007.

After the Olympic dust settles, the true cost of Sochi will be borne by all but the super-rich. In other words, the citizens of Sochi, of Russia and the entire ecology of the once stunningly beautiful Black Sea resort.

The wrath of the Russian state will descend on anyone who challenges the authorities and their backward anti-gay laws. Further anti-gay legislation is being prepared which could remove parenting rights from gay people.  

Spending on the Games is astronomical, with cost running at an estimated £31 billion, three times the cost of London 2012 and even more than even the Beijing Olympics.

A 30-mile road transport link between Sochi and a skiing venue is estimated to have cost £5bn, more than the whole budget for the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics. For that kind of money, the entire road could have been paved with a six-centimetre layer of black truffles, says author Marc Bennetts.

Critics estimate that one third of the budget has gone into the pockets of Putin’s cronies. One old friend, Arkady Rotenberg, has received construction orders worth £4.5 billion – beating the entire cost of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

Added to construction costs and kickbacks is security. Putin is terrified of a terror attack by groups opposed to rule from Moscow. So to prevent this, 40,000 security forces are supposed to enforce a ring of steel.

Local residents are being forcibly thrown out of their homes which have been bulldozed. No compensation is paid. Fisherman are losing their livelihoods due to pollution. Ecologists are warning that construction could lead to disaster due to poisoned drinking water and flooding while migrating birds who used to stop in Sochi will now find the area turned into venues for the Games..  

Environmental activists like Yulia Naberezhnaya, spokeswoman for the Russian Geographical Society in Sochi, who have warned about pollution of water supplies, are being harassed. Some have had criminal cases opened against them.

Are any more reasons needed for boycotting these Games?

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

'Monstrations' take aim at Putin's regime

Dire Straits former front man Mark Knopfler has cancelled his June gigs in Moscow and St Petersburg. With good reason.

“Given the crackdown by Russian authorities on groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, I have regretfully decided to cancel my upcoming concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg,” he says on his website.

Knopfler’s boycott strengthens opposition to the continuing crackdown on opposition to the rule of President Vladimir Putin, which began last year. Putin’s authoritarian regime is being increasingly compared to that of Joseph Stalin by critics. Next week, opposition leader Alexey Navalny is due to go on trial on concocted corruption charges.

The most notorious protesters to be jailed are the Pussy Riot girl band, who were found guilty of “hooliganism” after a performance praying for deliverance from Putin in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral back in February 2012.

Their trial provoked a worldwide storm of protest supported by Madonna, Sting, Patti Smith, Paul McCartney and many others, but two Pussy Riot members remain incarcerated.

Corrective Labour Camp No.28 in the Perm region in the Urals mountains, where 24-year-old band member Maria Alyokhina is serving her two-year sentence, has broken the law  by holding her in solitary confinement for over 90 days. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, is being overworked in another prison while she awaits her parole appeal on April 26.

Knopfler’s support will hearten the hundreds of protesters who gathered yesterday in central Moscow, holding up placards with the faces of jailed activists and calling for the “freeing of hostages” and an end to Putin’s regime.

A former opposition deputy, Gennady Gudkov, said that the rally was for all political prisoners in Russia. Gudkov said there were “dozens and even hundreds” of political prisoners. A bigger protest is planned for May, the anniversary of repression in the run-up to Putin’s re-election.

Up to 2,000 organisations have been targeted with inspections and searches in connection with the NGO law. Organisations raided include the respected Memorial group, which was founded in the late 1980s to document the crimes of the Stalin period and beyond.  

The new law says non-governmental groups (NGOs) linked to politics must register as "foreign agents" – an accusation which was scrawled on the walls of Memorial’s offices.

Before the crackdown, Memorial released a CD documenting the 44,500 people whose death was personally authorised by Joseph Stalin. Facsimiles showing Stalin's initials (which appear on 357 lists) scribbled in bright red pencil were published by Moscow News online last week

“For any normal person, this proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Stalin knew,” said Memorial’s project director Yan Rachinsky,” said. Memorial also provided arrest shots for "La Grande Terreur," an album of arrest shots from the archives of Memorial and the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

The scale of artistic protest against the regime is extraordinary, according to Russian art curators. It includes activist Artyom Loskutov from Novosibirsk.

“The police did a lot to promote him as well,” writes Dmitry Sukhodolsky.

Special agents who usually deal with terrorists and the Russian mafia turned up on his doorstep and searched his apartment. They “found” a few grams of marijuana.  Loskutov was eventually made to pay a fine, became a star on the Internet and moved his “Monstrations” to Moscow.  

The “Monstration” is a parody of Soviet-style parades, where workers from different factories plodded through the streets “voluntarily” on holidays, bearing placards and slogans.

“The return of this Soviet-era practice in the early 2000s prompted Loskutov’s ‘Monstration’ – an annual carnival where young people rid themselves of negative energy by taking these ‘grown-up’ traditions to absurd lengths, says Sukhodolsky

“Siberian police were extremely irritated by these brightly dressed throngs of youth brandishing placards with statements like: “MAMA, FORGIVE ME, I PROMISE I’LL VACUUM!”; “PIGS ARE PEOPLE TOO!”; “KEEP YOUR CITY CLEAN, EAT A PIGEON A DAY!”

Parodying such slogans goes deeper than a joke just as Putin proposes to re-introduce Stalin’s award for the “hero of Socialist Labour”. Toppling the Putin regime needs more than cultural boycotts of course. But pricking the bubble of the system's rhetoric is a great start.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Punk band trio victims of Kremlin crackdown

The prolonged detention of three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot shows just how unsafe the Kremlin feels in the wake of the continuing protests against the rigged presidential elections which Vladimir Putin 'won'.

At concerts over the weekend, singers Franz Ferdinand and the Red Hot Chili Peppers expressed support for the Pussy Riot band members who have been condemned to remain in a Russian jail for another nine months pending their trial on absurd charges.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Maria Alyokhina have languished in jail since March on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.  Their rendering of “Blessed Virgin, Mother Mary, Drive Putin Out!”, in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral of, has enraged ultra-reactionary church leaders as well as Putin.

Prosecution lawyer Mikhail Kuznetsov accused the young women of being “the tip of an iceberg of extremists, trying to break down the 1,000 edifice of the Russian Orthodox Church by creating a schism, guiding the flock through trickery and cunning not to God but to Satan”. The decision to keep the trio in jail until next January was taken in a closed hearing at the end of last week.

If convicted on trumped up charges (former KGB officer Putin will know all about those), the three face up to seven years in prison. One of the women's lawyers, Mark Feigin, called the ruling illegal and described it as a show of force by the Kremlin in the face of growing calls for the women's release. "It's not a matter of law. It's not a matter of reason," he said.” It’s a way of saying, 'We can do what we want.'"

The ruling has to be seen as part of a series of sinister machinations aiming to roll back rights and freedoms so strongly asserted by Russians in recent years, particularly during the December 2011 protests. The last three months have seen brutal crackdowns all around the country.

When tens of thousands took to the streets on May 6 against Putin’s election victory, police detained over 600 people and assaulted many more. Fourteen people are charged with organising and participating in mass riots and violence against police officers.

Repression is widespread, and not only against political campaigners. Some 1,500 kilometres from Moscow, in Bashkortostan’s Prison Colony No. 4, 900 inmates are on hunger strike in protest against the beating to death by prison employees of Sergei Lasko on July 17.

A series of measures have targeted constitutional rights to freedom of speech, access to information, the right of assembly and association. On Friday just before the summer recess, the regime rushed through legislation which close observers of the Moscow scene are describing as an “anti-constitutional coup”.  

Putin has just signed a law which means that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who engage in political activity must register with the Justice Ministry as “foreign agents” and print it on all their publications – with the concomitant association of espionage and treachery. Failing to comply can mean six months’ suspension without a court order and up to three years in jail.

At risk are organisations like Amnesty, Transparency International which monitors corruption and the Golos (Voice) group, which collected and published allegations of last December’s election fraud. Golos’ deputy director Grigory Melkonyants says the law aims to make the work of NGOs more difficult, to intimidate and to blacken their image and disgrace them for getting money from abroad.

Of course the Russian Orthodox Church – which also receives money from abroad - is exempted from the law.

At the weekend, veteran human rights campaigner, Ludmila Alexeyeva celebrated her 85th birthday, saying the Russian state was “cruel to dissidents”, in what her supporters saw as a criticism of Putin’s regime. Ever the cynic, Putin sent her congratulations. But few are fooled by his attempts to gloss over the truth.

The May 6 committee is appealing for the widest possible publicity and support for its international day of action this Thursday. They believe that the fate of dozens of innocent protesters and those already in jail is at stake. 

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary