Thanks to Andrew Pollack, we were able to scan in and reproduce an
article that appeared in the Autumn 1989 International Marxist Review by
Zbigniew Kowalewski titled “For the independence of Soviet Ukraine” that
details the tragic failure of the Bolsheviks to understand the need for
Ukrainian self-determination. To give you an idea of how Great Russian
chauvinism persists in the Kremlin and among those self-proclaimed
Marxists who repeat Putin’s talking points, the article states:
The national aspiration to sobornist’, the unity of the country, was
thus openly flouted. It was with the “Katerynoslavian” right wing of the
party that there was the most serious confrontation. It formed a Soviet
republic in the mining and industrial region of Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih,
including the Donbas, with the aim of incorporating it into Russia. This
republic, its leaders proclaimed, was that of, a Russian proletariat
“which does not want to hear anything about some so-called Ukraine and
has nothing in common with it”. This attempted secession could count on
some support in Moscow. The Skrypnyk government had to fight against
these tendencies of its Russian comrades, for the sobornist’ of the
Soviet Ukraine within the national borders set, through the Central
Rada, by the national movement of the masses.
That’s from 1919. Nothing has changed evidently. What is all the more
difficult to understand is the tendency to view Ukrainian national
aspirations as reactionary given the openly Romanovist inclinations of
the Russian government today. At least when Christian Rakovsky, the
Bolshevik colonial administrator of Ukraine, pushed for russification,
he did so in the name of the socialist revolution. Those who now back
Russian domination of an historically oppressed nation do so in the name
of Gazprom and the pro-Russian oligarchy.
The article refers to the same kinds of stupidities committed in the
name of Marxism against Poland, another country that had suffered from
Czarist bullying. I strongly recommend a look at Paul Kellogg’s article
titled Substitutionism versus "Self-emancipation: The Theory of the
Offensive, the Russo-Polish War of 1920 and the German March Action of
1921" that covers the Kremlin’s bungling to the north of the Ukraine. It
is an important contribution to the necessary critical re-examination of
the early Comintern’s history.
For the independence of Soviet Ukraine
By Zbigniew Kowalewski
full:
http://louisproyect.org/2014/04/20/lenins-party-great-russian-chauvinism-and-the-betrayal-of-ukrainian-national-aspirations/
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