On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 11:19 AM, gojko rakic wrote:

> 
> To learn about Maidan events you could read one old interview with
> Volodymyr, who wrote many analysis based on intensive data and facts by
> his research,
> https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/volodymyr-ishchenko-towards-the-abyss
> 
> 

I drew the attention of the list to the NLR article you cite when it appeared 
in April, 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion. No one has influenced my 
view of Ukrainian developments from Maidan to the war more than has Volodymyr 
Ishchenko.

https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/16027

In introducing the article, I commented that “it's remarkable how so many of us 
can profess agreement with the analysis of the conflict as generally and 
admirably presented here by Ishchenko - including universal condemnation of the 
invasion - and yet come to such diametrically opposed conclusions about whether 
to call for a ceasefire and an end to the war or more and better NATO arms 
shipments to Ukraine to continue it.”

I said "I was particularly interested in Ishchenko's take on the Minsk Accords 
since this has been a cornerstone of debate and division on the left, with the 
pro-Ukraine faction arguing that Ukraine was justified in rejecting the accords 
because they were one-sided and forced on the country by Russia, and others 
like myself seeing Ukraine’s refusal to abide by them as the key factor 
preventing a peaceful settlement.”

I didn’t comment about the views he expressed about Maidan but, like yourself, 
agreed with his analysis of the uprising. While he and we defend Maidan as a 
popular expression of the fundamental democratic right to freedom of speech and 
assembly, Ishchenko did not shy away from noting that it "was captured by 
several agents, all of whom participated in the uprising and contributed to its 
success, but who were very far from representing the whole range of forces 
involved or the motivations that drove ordinary Ukrainians to support 
Euromaidan.

"Predominant among these agents were the traditional parties of the opposition, 
represented by, among others, Petro Poroshenko who became President of Ukraine 
in 2014. These oligarchic parties were structured around a ‘big man’, on 
patron-client relations: lacking any other model, they reproduced the worst 
features of the cpsu—heavy-handed paternalism, popular passivity—voided of its 
legitimating ‘modernity project’.

"Another smaller but very important agent was the bloc of West-facing ngos and 
media organizations, which operated more like professional firms than community 
mobilizers, with the lion’s share of their budgets usually coming from Western 
donors. During the uprising, they were the people who created the image of the 
Euromaidan that was disseminated to international audiences; they were 
primarily responsible for the narrative about a democratic revolution that 
represented the civic identity and diversity of the Ukrainian people against an 
authoritarian government.

"Then there were the far-right groups—Svoboda, Right Sector, the Azov 
movement—which, unlike the ngos, were organized as political militants, with a 
well-articulated ideology based on radical interpretations of Ukrainian 
nationalism, with relatively strong local party cells and mobilizations on the 
streets.

"Western states and international organizations also gained increasing 
influence, both indirectly—through their funding of civil-society ngos—and 
directly, because they provided credit and military help against Russia, as 
well as political support. These were the four major agents that grew stronger 
after the Euromaidan—the oligarchic opposition, the ngos, the far right and 
Washington–Brussels.

His most recent view of the conflict appeared last month in the French 
publication Révolution Permanente, translated and reproduced in the online 
publication of the Socialist Project group in Canada.

https://socialistproject.ca/2024/12/ukraine-real-desire-to-sacrifice-oneself-for-the-state-is-very-weak/

Here he takes stock of the war weariness which has set in among the population: 
"There is no enthusiasm, or at least, this enthusiasm is limited to a much 
smaller group of people than in 2022”, he says.  The entire interview is worth 
reading, but I was drawn to his comments on the state of the tiny Ukrainian 
pro-war far left which many on this list have strongly identified with in the 
past.

Ishchenko has never been impressed with “the young left milieu (which) had no 
more than 1,000 activists and sympathizers in the whole country, even in the 
best years of its development, and their numbers have been declining since 
then.” Their main influence has been outside the country where they have 
"integrated better with the democratic socialists and the liberal left in the 
West” with a social base "closer to the pro-Western NGO-ized 'civil society' of 
the middle class in Ukraine."

Some of them, he now believes, "are tending to revise their positions on the 
war, especially in response to the brutal conscription. It is really difficult 
to claim that the war is still some kind of 'people’s war' when the majority of 
Ukrainians do not want to fight...There is also criticism of the 
ethno-nationalism coming from this left environment because it has become too 
difficult to ignore how Ukraine has changed in two years, with the spread of 
discrimination against Russian speakers and the regime’s ethnic assimilation 
policies.”


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