International Critical Thought

ISSN: 2159-8282 (Print) 2159-8312 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rict20

Ukraine and Russia: Two States, One Crisis

Boris Kagarlitsky

To cite this article: Boris Kagarlitsky (2016) Ukraine and Russia: Two States, One Crisis,
International Critical Thought, 6:4, 513-533, DOI: 10.1080/21598282.2016.1242087

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2016.1242087

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INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT, 2016
VOL. 6, NO. 4, 513–533
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2016.1242087

Ukraine and Russia: Two States, One Crisis

Boris Kagarlitsky
Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, Moscow, Russia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This paper demonstrates that the international crisis in Ukraine is Russia; Ukraine; oligarchy;
accompanied not just by a matching domestic Ukrainian crisis, European Union; NATO;
but also one in Russia. Though the crisis in Ukraine is much more Maidan
severe—including a civil war—the two crises have much in
common: both are crises of oligarchic rule, economic dependence
on resources and a crisis of social services. Within an overarching
narrative of the development of the twin crisis and their
interrelations, the article provides insights into the dynamics of
these crises which are at considerable distance from the
stereotypes peddled in liberal and even some left cultures in
Ukraine, Russia as well as the West.

Post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia may both be dominated by oligarchies but their political
dynamics are markedly different. Russia’s natural riches enabled a system of permanent
and self-reproducing compromise, based on continual consensus-building among elites
combined with welfare measures to gain popular acceptance for the resulting elite consen-
sus. It was perfected under Vladimir Putin and is far from the image of authoritarian dic-
tatorship the Western media portrays. By contrast, the Ukrainian oligarchy had fewer
resources and less capacity to build consensus both within itself and within the population
as a whole.
In Russia in the 2000s, individual consumption grew steadily to reach a historic peak in
2008 and, while social inequality was high, the “lower orders” also experienced improve-
ment. So most Russians were content. The problems lay chiefly in chronically inadequate
investment in infrastructure, declines in the quality of education and health care, the
moral and physical obsolescence of industrial plant, and the degradation of science. The
country, in other words, was feeding on its future (IGSO 2013).

Crisis and opposition in Russia

The crisis of 2008–9 exposed the weaknesses and contradictions of the Russian economy.
Though ruling elites, fearful of undermining stability, responded cautiously and some
middle-class protests broke out in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2011 and 2012, they
failed to evoke a wider response. Most people were not prepared to risk hard-won stability
and wellbeing for the sake of risky measures with uncertain outcomes. The protests even-
tually withered away also because their liberal leadership marginalized the left within

CONTACT Boris Kagarlitsky goboka@yandex.ru

© 2017 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
514 B. KAGARLITSKY

them, ensuring that they would remain isolated from wider society and its concerns. The
liberal anti-Putin, pro-Western agenda only increased support for the existing order, so
obvious were the former’s dangers.
The marginalization of the left prevented both the liberal opposition and the govern-
ment from understanding that the political events of 2011–12 were rooted in the increas-
ing stress imposed on the middle class by economic slowdown, which is why key
neoliberal demands—such as inflation control or rollback of welfare—were not part of
the opposition agenda. The liberal opposition interpreted its lack of support, however,
as reflecting a general “zombification” of Russians hopelessly poisoned by propaganda
and incapable of understanding Western values by overcoming their “serf mentality.”
Indeed, many among the liberal intelligentsia considered the mass of the population an
“inferior race,” culturally or even genetically incapable of functioning in line with the
requirements of “advanced democratic society.”1 This attitude was also at play in the
Ukrainian events of 2014 including the uprisings in Crimea and the Donbass.
By 2013, Russian authorities could confidently announce an “end to the turbulence,”
though deep problems and contradictions remained. The economy continued to deterio-
rate, the rouble to weaken and industrial production to stagnate and, after Russia’s entry to
the World Trade Organization in the summer of 2012, go into decline. The twenty-first
century equilibrium of Russian society was thus already deteriorating and was finally shat-
tered by events in Kiev.

The Ukrainian drama

Without the financial and material resources needed to facilitate genuine compromise—
for instance, Ukrainian steel was much more vulnerable than Russian oil to swings on the
world market—Ukraine witnessed permanent conflict between various oligarchic clans for
control over existing public resources, making Ukraine’s so-called democracy a typical oli-
garchic republic with a disenfranchised population combined with pluralism in the oligar-
chy. For nearly two decades, each crisis was resolved by a makeshift bargain within the
oligarchy. The 2008 economic crisis dealt this system a fatal blow.
Not only did the crisis render the political system inoperable, it brought in new players
including the EU (European Union), the United States and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization). Their motivations are worth pausing over: essentially, given its crisis,
expansion became critical to stabilizing the Western neoliberal order. Neoliberalism
had caused the debt crises in the EU’s southern member countries and they needed to
move away from it. But this was precisely what the EU’s neoliberal elites were not prepared
to allow, and one way this contradiction could be at least evaded for a time was to expand
the system. Ukraine, and potentially Russia too, represented potentially important mar-
kets. Moreover, Ukraine could also serve as a source of cheap, disciplined and relatively
educated workforce that could further loosen EU’s labor markets and help weaken its wel-
fare states. Moreover, their rulers were becoming obstacles to the desired restructuring.
The earlier arrangement between Eastern European elites and the Western capitalist cen-
ter presupposed that these elites could manage integration of these countries into the
1
Boris has a tendency to use quotation marks as “scare quotes”. Essentially they are ways of distancing himself from words
and phrases others use, in this case the liberal intelligentsia, which he is merely reporting but does not agree with.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 515

capitalist world economy, but now Western ruling circles seemed to prefer enabling their
corporate elites to exploit these countries directly, eliminating inefficient and corrupt local
intermediaries.
The post-2008 United States, for its part, unable to help other countries out of crisis,
only became more aggressive, expanding military capacity and NATO activity. This
kind of “military Keynesianism” has historically been—as under Truman and later Rea-
gan—the one sort of state intervention accepted by free-market orthodoxy.
By the autumn of 2013 the Kiev government was effectively bankrupt. When President
Yanukovich approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it made signing an
Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU a condition of any loans. Desperate
Kiev bureaucrats agreed and events now took a catastrophic turn.
The Association Agreement would effectively shut down Ukraine’s industry and inte-
grate Ukraine into Western political and military structures. Since formal NATO member-
ship would have required a change to the Ukrainian constitution, and since leading
European NATO powers were also not keen on this, the Association Agreement settled
for de facto membership.
Oligarchs and workers based in industrial production stood to lose from the agreement,
particularly their markets and opportunities for technical cooperation throughout the for-
mer USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Under pressure from Ukrainian industrialists, Yanukovich refused to sign the agree-
ment at the last minute and provided the pretext for opposition protests against a presi-
dent refusing to “follow the European path.” Now 20,000 protesters gathered on Kiev’s
Maidan (Independence Square) to begin an indefinite occupation.
This was not unusual: similar “Maidans” occurred regularly in Ukraine. This time,
however, it was superimposed on acute economic, financial and political crisis. As in Rus-
sia, pro-Western liberals enjoyed ideological hegemony in the opposition movement.
However, whereas the Russian opposition was initially democratic, the ideology of the
Maidan was aggressively nationalist and included ultra-right groups with ties to the Svo-
boda party rooted in the fascist and nationalist movements of the 1930s and 1940s. Such
formations could thrive in part because of attitudes fostered by the Ukrainian bourgeoisie,
its economic liberalism, pro-Western geopolitical orientation and cultural nationalism.
Whereas in Russia, parties of the Duma monopolize the business of serious opposition
and discourage mass protests, mass protests are possible in Ukraine but the political spec-
trum is heavily weighted towards the center and the right which are supported and funded
by dominant interest groups. To this bias, Yanukovich had made his own contribution,
encouraging fascist and semi-fascist formations as a potential electoral alternative to the
right-wing nationalist opposition. Thus, the Ukrainian ultra-right was no marginal
phenomenon but rather, the radical wing of the mainstream. Given this, left groups
were simply driven from the square, and their activists beaten up.
Right-wing radicalism was based mainly in western Ukraine, where the economic crisis
and the destruction of industry had brought about a large-scale marginalization of the
population, especially its younger members. The difference between Ukraine’s east and
west is not merely cultural. It has deep economic and socio-historical roots. Soviet Ukraine
was part of the all-USSR economy. The territories of the patchwork nation that is present-
day Ukraine were united to expedite planning by linking eastern industrial areas to
southern ports and the agrarian west. With the end of the USSR, the territory as an
516 B. KAGARLITSKY

integrated unity lost its raison d’être. While Russian markets kept Ukrainian industry
going in the east, the western provinces became increasingly dependent on remittances
sent by Ukrainian guest workers in EU countries. Cultural divisions now articulated
this economic disarticulation. Nationalists absurdly tried to impose Ukrainian as the
sole official language on a population which had always used Russian more than Ukrai-
nian with a third being ethnic Russian, and another third Russian-speaking Ukrainian,
and among which the use of Russian has expanded in the post-independence period
thanks to its status as the dominant language of business, trade and production. While
the limited industrial production in the west fared poorly after independence, industry
in the east continued to function, and recent struggles are about its control. Kiev, as the
country’s administrative and financial center, has been parasitically reliant on eastern
wealth, which also helps it keep the east under control through meager handouts.
While the oligarchs who control eastern Ukraine live in Kiev’s mansions, attended by
servants and in-house ideologues, the largely Russian-speaking eastern working-class is
frustrated and angry. They produce as much as 80% of Ukraine’s GDP but see little of it.
Yanukovych the easterner and his Party of Regions could control the east’s clientelistic
networks. Concessions to union leaders and promises to workers amid deteriorating con-
ditions held out the hope that if Yanukovych remained, the east would not be let down
completely. However, once the far right aligned itself with the neoliberal elites in Kiev
amid Maidan protests in November 2013, the situation spun out of control.
Few Maidan participants concerned themselves with ideology as one oligarchic group
sought to take over from another. The Donetsk clan of Yanukovych alienated the domi-
nant elite in the capital and had to be replaced. Ironically, the very economic devastation
caused by neoliberalism—with high unemployment creating a whole generation of young
people without jobs or with only precarious jobs—made the coup of February 2014 poss-
ible. They became easy targets for the far right, who offered to give some meaning to their
lives by organizing and paying them as members of neo-Nazi gangs.
For many of the 10–15,000 unemployed youth from the west who were brought to Kiev
and installed as protestors on the Maidan, this was the only job they had ever had in their
lives. With nowhere else to go, many remain there to this day. At some point, some of
them took up arms, spontaneously, it would appear. As armed clashes began in mid-Feb-
ruary 2014, Yanukovych, demoralized by the loss of western support, fled to Russia and his
administration crumbled, abandoning the supporters and the police squads that had pro-
tected them even though it still had sufficient funds and resources to continue the struggle.
Though the west backed the coup d’état that followed, it had no clear plan.

A new government to save an old system

The government promptly sought to shore up its support in the radical right by promising
to repeal a law giving official status to Russian and minority languages. Ironically, the Rus-
sian-speaking Kiev intelligentsia was caught up in this nationalist fervor, brandishing its
few painstakingly learned words in the “national” language, while the western provinces
remained aloof from it. In political terms, the coalition of three parties (Batkivshchina,
UDAR and Svoboda) that was now forged was an alliance of radical neoliberals, nation-
alists and fascists—a formula unusual in Europe until now, but one that might serve as a
precedent for other countries.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 517

The authorities knew very well that the abolition of language rights would spark an
explosion of discontent in south-eastern Ukraine, but they did not care because the region
was the base of the opposition Party of Regions. In thus transforming social and political
contradictions into national ones, the new regime also sought to portray Russia, which
would inevitably condemn this policy, as the prime cause of all Ukraine’s problems,
past, present and future.
The effective collapse of the Party of Regions unleashed a vast latent potential for social
protest that had built up over decades. The south-east erupted.
While Kiev now counter-posed “Ukrainianness” to everything Russian, the masses of
the south-east were culturally linked to Russia as well as Ukraine. Though they looked
to Russia for help and protection, Russian elites were not just unready to perform this
role, but consciously opposed to taking it on. Though they feared the West’s growing influ-
ence in Kiev, they also feared the masses of angry workers revolting in Donetsk, Luhansk
and Kharkiv. Unfortunately for them, Russians enthusiastically embraced the “Russian
Spring” in Ukraine and the political protests of 2011 and 2012 meant that the Kremlin
could not ignore them.
The “Crimean question” soon became acute. This substantially Russian region had been
transferred to the Ukrainian Republic in 1954 out of economic and administrative expe-
diency. No one imagined that these administrative boundaries might become state
frontiers.
Despite occasional dissatisfaction with Ukrainian authorities, the status of an auton-
omous region within Ukraine remained tolerable until nationalists seized power and pol-
itical and administrative chaos ensued. As Crimeans inevitably turned to Moscow for
protection, Russian forces restricted themselves to what journalists later called “polite
intervention.”
They did not storm the bases of the Ukrainian troops, but marched around them. They
tried to persuade the latter to hand over their weapons. When they refused only because
the weapons were state property, the Russians responded with understanding.
After Kiev lost control, more than 90% of Crimeans voted for the reintegration with
Russia in a referendum. These events in Crimea aroused great expectations in Donetsk,
Kharkov and Odessa, but Crimea was exceptional: Russian naval installations and troops
were already in Crimea and its special juridical status allowed for an organized transfer of
power.

The catastrophe of the middle class and the revolt of the underclass
What began in Kiev in late 2013 was the latest “revolt of the middle class” (Kagarlitsky
2006). Since the beginning of the new century, such uprisings have rolled across the
world, from the United States to Brazil and the Arab countries. Russia and Ukraine
have not been exceptions. While sharing many social characteristics, their political
agendas have ranged from demands for a combination of democratic and popular social
reforms to undemocratic assertions of primitive group egoism through democratic rheto-
ric. This variation is no accident. The perpetual insecurity of the middle class in contem-
porary society makes it prone to ideological and political instability. If middle class protest
is more often than not progressive in the countries at the core of the world system and less
so on the periphery, it is simply because the former middle classes are larger and more
518 B. KAGARLITSKY

conscious of their position as hired workers. They have fewer illusions about their position
and prospects. By contrast, narrower peripheral middle classes are more often inclined to
elitist illusions and to feeling threatened not by neoliberal reforms, but by the claims of the
invariably “backward” lower classes to a bigger share of the pie. There are exceptions, of
course. A strong civic tradition and a left movement can enable radical democratic mod-
ernization with the support of part of the middle class—as has happened, for example, in
Venezuela. But such support can be fickle.
The largely middle class left intelligentsia, unmoored from the working class, has felt
the pull of its ties of class and kinship. This has deradicalized the left intelligentsia and,
when its middle class kin become reactionary, it tends to mislead and confuse, objectively
(and not only objectively) furthering the interests of reaction. The victims of this process
can include the middle class itself.
The events of the spring of 2014 had to happen sooner or later. Their direct precursors
occurred in Bosnia where, in defiance of all conventions, crowds of enraged workers and
unemployed came onto the streets to oppose the established system, uniting under com-
mon slogans and shattering traditional political schemas based on the division of society
into ethno-religious groups.
The struggles in eastern and southern Ukraine, like those in Bosnia, sharply altered the
sociology of political life. The masses, with their demands, interests, hopes, illusions and
prejudices took the lead. They did not conform to romantic revolutionary images: their
class-consciousness was initially undeveloped but they learned in action.
Ironically, the movement in the east began with the same methods as the Maidan’s
right-wing radicals. Street demonstrations progressed quickly to the seizure of administra-
tive buildings. However, the Donetsk and Lugansk activists, whether they were rebellious
crowds or disciplined armed groups, whether dismissed or deserting former police special
forces or other Ukrainian law enforcement organs (some units quit the service practically
in full strength, taking their weapons and ammunition with them), refused to limit them-
selves to seizing administrative buildings. They went on to seize local militia stations as
well and announced the founding of their own people’s republics. These began acquiring
the attributes of an alternative regime in Donetsk in particular. Official Kiev now took to
calling its own law enforcement agents Russian spetsnaz, special forces. However, this
backfired: given widespread Russian sympathies in the area, these accusations only
enhanced their reputations and encouraged more people in the localities to join the
protests.
While both the Maidan and the anti-Maidan forces received foreign money and were
subject to foreign influence—American and Western European in the case of Maidan and
Russian in the case of anti-Maidan (though there were rumors of some Russian oligarchs
investing money in the Maidan side as well)—the West spent many times more money.
And from the Western side, the job was done more wisely and effectively. Equally, neither
Maidan’s February victory nor the successful revolt in eastern Ukraine could be attributed
solely to foreign interference.
The differences between the two movements were, moreover, even more important.
There was, of course, the far right ideology of the Maidan and the demands for social
rights in Donetsk, accompanied in the latter case by the singing of the Internationale—
which reflected the fundamentally different social nature and class basis of the two move-
ments. Of course, the revolt of the south-east was as much a negation of the Maidan as its
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 519

offspring and continuation, just as October 1917 was of the February revolution. Revolu-
tions, in their uncontrollable course, draw in fresh strata of society, new groups and classes
that earlier have not taken part in politics.
Hitherto, politics in Ukraine was the privilege of “active society,” the liberal intelligen-
tsia and middle classes of the capital who could always summon a certain number of
unemployed young people for effect. Many liberals and even leftists saw politics as a
business for professionals or as entertainment for the middle layers in which the mass
of working people were passive spectators if not guinea-pigs to be experimented on.
These middle class liberals and leftists simply could not conceive the mass of silent and
apparently apolitical people, preoccupied with their everyday struggle for survival, playing
active and independent political role as anything other than an unlikely nightmare.
Neither the pro-Russian sympathies of the local population, nor even Kiev’s declared
intention to repeal the status of Russian as a “regional language” triggered the revolt. Dis-
content had long been building up and the dramatic worsening of the economic crisis that
followed the change of government in Kiev was the last straw. Steep increases in prices of
gas and medicines followed the IMF agreement and a social explosion became inevitable.
The use of nationalist rhetoric and anti-Russian propaganda stalled it in the east but had
the reverse effect in the east.
Yegor Voronov, one resident of Gorlovka, wrote on the Ukrainian site, Liva (The left):
I find it hard to believe the change in my compatriots. Only six months ago they were simple
common folk who watched television and complained about the bad state of the roads and of
the communal services. Now they’re fighters. In several hours by the provincial adminis-
tration building I didn’t meet a single person who’d come from Russia. The people were
from Mariupol, Gorlovka, Dzershinsk, Artemovsk, Krasnoarmeysk. . . . the people we travel
with every day on the bus, stand next to in the queues, argue with when they leave the
door to the stairwell open. They weren’t the Kiev middle class, set apart from the people
by their special “circumstances,” but everyday workers. And there’s no denying, there are
plenty of unemployed in these parts. Here were all the people who for the past month and
a half had been “begged” in the private offices and state enterprises to take a cut in their mis-
erable wages. So here’s another conclusion—the more the wages of Donbass residents are cut
or squeezed today, the more protestors Kiev will get in the east. (Voronov 2014; translated
from Russian)

The Donbass rebels had little political knowledge and no clear program of action. Their
confused slogans, mixing religious, Soviet and revolutionary symbols, undoubtedly
offended strict connoisseurs of proletarian ideology. The trouble was that the ideologues
were so remote from the masses as to be unable and unwilling not only to instill “correct
consciousness” in their ranks, but even to help them make sense of current political ques-
tions. While the movement groped its way spontaneously and painstakingly along its pol-
itical path, articulating their mood of anti-oligarchic and social protest, most of the left,
except for a few activists in Donetsk and Kharkov, occupied themselves with abstract dis-
cussions in the expanses of the internet.
Inevitably, therefore, the Russian and Ukrainian liberal intelligentsia had only hatred
and contempt for the protesting workers, deriding them as “lumpens,” “trash,” “hooli-
gans” and most amusingly, vatnik (quilted jackets), referring to the American cartoon
figure SpongeBob Square pants, to suggest simpletons unswervingly loyal to the state auth-
orities and completely taken in by government propaganda. In this sense, of course, it was
520 B. KAGARLITSKY

the intellectuals uncritically parroting even the most absurd Kiev propaganda who
deserved most to be regarded as vatnik. While the propaganda services of both Moscow
and Kiev lied, the latter did so more recklessly and inventively, showing not the slightest
regard for the truth and not even considering whether the television images they showed
bore any relation to the commentary. The latter consisted solely of impassioned accounts
of armored vehicles heroically beating off crowds of Russian special forces troops, who
were trying to force-feed the hungry soldiers with jam and home-made pickles.
Such discourse took leave of logic, trying to trace Maidan’s political roots in a mytho-
logized and prettified 1917 revolution while employing the same arguments against the
revolution actually occurring in south-eastern Ukraine as were used against the Bolshe-
viks. This is the result of a quarter-century of reactionary hegemony and left collapse in
the countries of the former USSR. Play-acting at political correctness and observance of
minority rights took the place of class and mass politics as the intelligentsia forsook its
popular mission of working with the masses and for the masses and occupied itself
with refined cultural and ideological games.
By contrast, the movement in Donetsk, with all its contradictions and even absurdities,
such as icons and tricolors alongside the red flag, harked back to the consciousness out of
which workers’ actions arose in the nineteenth century and the Donetsk Republic to the
spontaneous political formations that working people created during earlier uprisings
and revolutions. This was the real working class—crude, muddle-headed and devoid of
political correctness. Those who disliked it needed to go and work with it. Thankfully,
no one could prevent them from reaching out to the masses with their red flags and social-
ist leaflets (unlike the Maidan, where flags were torn up, and left agitators beaten and
expelled).

Hostages of the Maidan

Faced with incontrovertible evidence of the unconcealed hegemony of the right over Mai-
dan and its clearly reactionary direction, left-liberal ideologues limited themselves to mak-
ing trite excuses—“fascists and Bandera followers weren’t the only ones on the Maidan”—
as though the composition of the crowd was more important than those directing the
movement. The situation would probably have been less dangerous if Maidan consisted
solely of fascists. While their socialization ensured that the Banderist “hundreds” were
tending to become fascist, not all of them were. Maidan became a real threat to democracy
mainly because the ultra rightists managed to win the leadership of large numbers of
ordinary middle class people of the capital, as well as of student youth and a section of
the intelligentsia. Knowing this did not prevent some left-liberal intellectuals from joining
the movement instead of speaking out against it. Nor was the Ukrainian liberal left alone:
Russia’s “Open Left” group and the French Le Monde Diplomatique also saw Maidan not
as an expression of definite social interests and political tendencies but as a cultural con-
flict between the Russian culture of serfdom in Donetsk and the Western culture of free-
dom in Maidan.
As such the left liberals handed ordinary people over to the right for whom they were
“human material” to be reworked for right-wing uses. Without a competing agenda, which
the right prevented, this was inevitable. Maidan’s liberal backers thus helped create a
psychological and cultural atmosphere for the right and its antisocial measures.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 521

Of course, speaking out against the Maidan in the face of mass-media pressure and con-
servative-nationalist hegemony was difficult and could be dangerous as Maidan militants
used violence against dissenters even before the coup.
As demonstrations spread to other parts of Ukraine, crowds, and their mood and style
of speech changed dramatically. The critics of the Donetsk Republic collected evidence
with the tenacity and mean-spiritedness of a provincial prosecutor in charge of a case
that is plainly collapsing. By contrast, the Maidan was forgiven for its aggressive use of
violence, for the Molotov cocktails that were thrown not at armored cars but directly at
people, at the conscript soldiers whom the government had drawn up in cordons.
The Donetsk Republic was condemned when its supporters tried to stop tanks with
their bare hands, without weapons or violence. However, the protests in eastern Ukraine
and on the Maidan were indulged even when they included the portraits of Bandera, the
“flags of a foreign state” (the EU), Nazi symbols, racist slogans and, most importantly,
openly antisocial, reactionary and antidemocratic agenda of the official leaders of the
movement.
Dual standards may be the norm for propaganda, but what about intellectuals, who
pride themselves on their independence and critical thinking?
The “green” and anarchist intellectuals should have found in the Donbass everything
they claimed to want for many years: non-violent resistance, stopping the state’s military
machine in its tracks and spontaneously organizing self-ruling local groups. For Marxists,
there were masses of workers on the streets. Why weren’t these intellectuals rejoicing?
Why were they joining in the chorus of fascists and pogrom instigators, calling for bloody
retribution to be visited on the rebels, or at best, maintaining a shameful silence?
Classically, the intelligentsia is supposed to share in the “concerns and needs of the pop-
ular layers,” while articulating them, cleansing them of everything mean, petty and hap-
hazard, and helping the masses to “elevate themselves” to the level of their historic
interests. The Donbass struggle has had no such intellectual support. The point is not
that the intelligentsia must offer uncritical support to any movement, and nor are we com-
plaining about a “tragic mutual incomprehension” dividing the intellectual elite from the
masses. The “peculiarity of the moment” is that today “educated society” is not only on a
different wave-length from the masses, not only does it have different moods, concerns
and hopes, but it views them as its main enemy, more detestable than Putin’s regime. Rus-
sian intellectuals cannot criticize Russians for their support for it and hate the regime all
the more so because of it. That Putin’s regime is not quite so confident of mass support is
all that distinguishes it from the opposition intelligentsia. In their profound, shared
estrangement from the mass of society, these two groups are in an odd fashion united.
It would appear that the intelligentsia, liberal as well as left, is being transformed into
merely technical functionaries unconnected from any popular, national or social tasks.
That is why resistance to government attacks on enlightenment, science or education,
not to mention health care, is so ineffective.
The left is charged with instilling the masses with rational thinking and the ability to
recognize their objective interests. If movements are to be judged according to the extent
to which this has been done, the verdict on Maidan is quite clear: the hostility of the radical
rightists to rationalism has permitted no such engagement with the masses with the result
that aggressive nationalist irrationalism came to dominate the movement.
522 B. KAGARLITSKY

The Kiev and Moscow intelligentsia simply could not believe that workers and the
lower orders of urban society—despised as apolitical “lumpens”—could suddenly come
onto the streets, begin acting independently, organize themselves and make history. Natu-
rally, therefore, they looked for political manipulators, hirelings of the oligarchs, and even
foreign agents, including Russians. It was true that the masses in the south-east, or even in
Kiev, had taken little part in politics hitherto. The young middle-class residents of the capi-
tal, whom television viewers had grown used to seeing in the Maidan demonstrations soon
began to be replaced by new people who a few weeks earlier had been preoccupied with
earning money to support their families, and who would have considered participating
in any kind of street protest a pointless waste of time. They were not just coming onto
the streets, but blockading trucks full of soldiers, organizing themselves and taking
decisions. A genuine revolutionary transformation was taking place in the consciousness
of the masses—not in the notorious “public opinion” that was shaped by the privileged
intelligentsia. The intelligentsia’s uncritical support for Maidan was not only morally cat-
astrophic but hard to reverse. It isolated the intellectuals from the revolutionary protest in
eastern Ukraine as well as from Maidan supporters who became doubtful and disillu-
sioned and could turn against the new government. Ordinary people can change their
views, even to the direct opposite, relatively easily and without shame. But not intellec-
tuals. Ordinary people are always able to say simply, “They deceived me.” Intellectuals
have to confess: “I deceived people.”

Donetsk in the shadow of Moscow

The significance of events in the south-east extended far beyond Ukraine. No sooner than
the Donetsk Republic was proclaimed, official Moscow let it be understood, in no uncer-
tain terms, that it made no claim to Ukraine’s rebellious provinces. This was neither dip-
lomatic nor a concession to the West; the conflict was simply far greater than anything the
Kremlin found convenient or manageable. Unlike Crimea, where the process was con-
trolled and where, after two or three demonstrations, the transfer of power was carried
out by the local elite, Donetsk and Lugansk had witnessed the elemental force of a popular
movement which simply could not be managed from outside.
This movement is decentralized, and has repeatedly thrown up hitherto unknown lea-
ders. It has formulated and developed its agenda as events have unfolded. Absorbing such
an organized and active population at a time of growing social crisis in Russia itself was
hardly advisable. So the rebel republics have had to rely overwhelmingly on their own
resources. To the extent permitted by popular support for their cause within Russia,
increased by the government’s own patriotic propaganda, official Russia has left them
to their own fate.
The popular movements in Donetsk and Lugansk were part of a broader ferment that
included significant opposition demonstrations in Odessa and Kharkov. It promised to
spread even farther among similar populations estranged from the leaderships in Moscow
or Kiev. Western commentators, however, were interested not in Ukraine’s home-grown
political processes but only in the unrest on Russian machinations, relating appalling stor-
ies of Russian aggression. Television shows ran interviews with Kiev ministers and depu-
ties who tearfully implored Europe to save their country from the enraged bear. European
politicians also vented their fury. Given their actual restraint, Russian officials were
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 523

honestly taken aback at the reaction from the official West. While the reputation of Putin’s
Russia was already worse than that of Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, what Russians witnessed
in 2014 was unprecedented. Nothing resembling it occurred during the Cold War, the
Chechen conflict, the clash between Russia and Georgia, not to mention Yeltsin’s shelling
the Russian parliament, applauded by the liberal West. Though after Crimea, Russian
authorities repeated, like a mantra, that they respected the territorial integrity of Ukraine,
and called on the West to work out a joint approach to the crisis, Western criticism con-
tinued. The more absurd the declarations issued from Kiev, the more avidly and delight-
edly were they lapped up in the West. Only after the Geneva agreement of April 17
between Ukraine, Russia and the West was there a certain softening: the European officials
discovered abruptly that in Ukraine it was “necessary to deal with groups that answer
neither to Kiev nor to Moscow,” and recognized that “clear proof” of interference from
Moscow was lacking. Of course, Moscow was also warned that if it did not behave itself,
such proof might soon be discovered.
The Kremlin’s arguments had no effect: Western politicians knew perfectly well that
there was no Russian invasion but admitting this would make it clear that Kiev had
gone to war on its own people. To admit the Donetsk People’s Republic was an indepen-
dent political phenomenon would require posing the question of the reasons for the pop-
ular protest. Talk of Kremlin agents and of Russian troops, alleged to have occupied close
to half of Ukraine without firing a shot or even being seen, played a propaganda role
against the Donbass republics was not unlike that played by stories of German spies
and of money from the German General Staff against the Bolsheviks in 1917.
It aimed not only to discredit Kiev’s opponents as traitors, but also to conceal the class
essence of the movement in Donbass. Western intellectuals, politicians and publics half-
consciously feared the mention of an actual and ongoing class struggle. Though Kiev auth-
orities directed the same accusations at the south-eastern rebels as Yanukovich’s had
against Maidan, the former were grotesquely magnified in the Western press.
The rebels—those who sought unification with Russia, those who sought a federal
Ukraine and those who simply wanted the repression to stop—had certainly been count-
ing on support from Moscow. However, as we have seen, Moscow took an ambiguous pos-
ition. While clearly supporting the movements’ aims, it was not prepared to support a
popular revolution, not even to expand the Russian state. Revolutions are sometimes
exported, but there are few state officials who would want to import one.
Modern-day Russia has sought neither to conquer Ukraine nor dismember it simply
because the Russian leadership has lacked any strategic plan whatsoever. Two circum-
stances have exacerbated the situation. First, effectively consolidating the annexation of
Crimea and defending it internationally required sacrificing the interests of the Ukrainian
south-east. At the same time, popular Russian support for the Donetsk insurgents placed
the Kremlin in a difficult situation: to encourage such support meant encouraging a cul-
ture of popular mobilization. But to change course could also have the same effect, turning
the patriotic moods cultivated by the Russian authorities themselves into protest.
So Kremlin policy has necessarily been ambiguous and contradictory. There was, how-
ever, a curious moment of truth when an agreement between Russia, Ukraine and the
West was signed in Geneva on April 17. Before the meeting even began, the Russian
side, allegedly for technical reasons, renounced its demand that rebel representatives
take part in the talks and while it was later disclosed that the Russian delegation had
524 B. KAGARLITSKY

represented eastern Ukrainian organizations, specifically, the Party of Regions and other
oligarchic structures, no mention was made of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the only
force that genuinely united the population and controlled the territory. Worse, the text
of agreement indicated clearly that Moscow would not object to the liquidation of the
Donetsk Republic:
Among the steps for whose implementation we call are the following: all illegal armed organ-
izations must be disarmed; all unlawfully occupied buildings must be returned to their legit-
imate owners; and all occupied streets, squares and other public places in all cities of Ukraine
must be cleared. An amnesty must be put in place for all protesters except those who have
committed serious crimes. (Translated from Russian)2

It would seem that a key aim of the agreement was to refuse recognition to the Donetsk
Republic. The subsection on disarming “illegal formations” was written to permit Kiev
authorities wide interpretative latitude. Though formally, the subsection proposed disar-
mament by both sides, Kiev would, of course, retain its army, the security services and
the National Guard while the Donetsk Republic had only its “unlawful” militia. Lavrov’s
claim that unlawful formations included the National Guard cannot be found in the agree-
ment, not surprisingly given that the National Guard was set up by an official decision of
the government, with the consent of the Supreme Rada. As for the “feral” hundreds and
the elements of the Right Sector that had not yet been legalized through incorporation into
the National Guard, the Kiev government itself dreamt of disarming these, since conflicts
with them had arisen already.
The demand for relinquishing occupied buildings and removing barricades on streets
and squares was even more lopsided: it meant the effective self-liquidation of the Donetsk
and Lugansk republics with the return of Kiev-appointed administrators even though their
appointments provoked the uprising.
These draconian provisions were not counterbalanced by any concessions for the
republics. No call for Kiev to end its so-called anti-terrorist operations against them, no
suggestion that military units be withdrawn to their normal stations despite their failures
and decrepitude.
In sum, Moscow joined the West in demanding the capitulation of the uprising in
exchange for an abstract promise to begin an open and “inclusive” constitutional process
without any direct talks with the insurgents or any undertakings by Kiev about how this
would be carried out. Russian diplomats were in such a hurry to sign the Geneva agree-
ment that they did not even bother to demand the removal of the disgraceful ban on
the entry of Russian adult males into Ukraine even though it violated international
norms and amounted a breach of human rights.
Official Kiev lost no time in exploiting the opportunities it had been given. Premier
Arseniy Yatsenyuk heaped threats onto the Donetsk and Lugansk rebels, demanding
their immediate surrender while pointing out that the Geneva agreement required Russia
to “condemn extremism.”
Not surprisingly, the Geneva agreement was followed by the arrest of Konstantin Dol-
gov, one of the leaders of the Kharkov left-center coalition, Popular Unity, attacks by the
Right Sector on Donetsk Republic checkpoints, and acts of repression against activists. Not

2
See http://uapress.info/ru/news/show/22058.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 525

only was the government of Turchinov and Yatsenyuk in no mood to make concessions,
but it would have been prevented from doing so by the radical nationalists on whom it
relied even if it was.
Donetsk leaders stated that they were pleased that the Geneva agreement represented a
“change in the position of the countries of the West in relation to the Ukrainian events,”
but having taken no part in it, they did not consider themselves bound by it. A rebel
declaration stated:
We are forced to state that our warning concerning the juridical worthlessness and political
absurdity of an “all-Ukrainian” dialogue without the participation of the lawful representa-
tives of eastern Ukraine and of the Donetsk People’s Republic has, unfortunately, proved
completely justified. Ignoring the will of the people of the Donbass has had a predictably
sad outcome: the results of the discussions can only be assessed as a set of pointless, semi-
coherent appeals, impossible to realize in practice, directed by obscure figures at unnamed
people, and subject to implementation over an indeterminate period and in unknown
fashion. At present these appeals reflect neither political realities, nor the new legal situation
that has arisen since the proclamation of the sovereign Donetsk People’s Republic, on whose
territory they have no legal force. (Translated from Russian)3

The Geneva agreement had no chance to be implemented. For those in Donetsk,

Lugansk, Odessa, Kharkov (and even Kiev) who had hoped for Russian solidary interven-
tion, the events of April 2014 were a disappointment. However, they were also a sober
awakening: making it clear that the revolution needed to rely on its own strength. This
strength was considerable and Kremlin’s actions notwithstanding, it included the sympa-
thy of Russian society.

The Odessa tragedy

The first attempt to crush the resistance in the south-east militarily failed in April when
unarmed crowds halted the advance and won over the soldiers. Nevertheless, the violence
continued to escalate.
A major incident occurred at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2. More
people died in it than over several days of fighting in the Donbass, though in Kramatorsk
the same day government forces also excelled themselves, killing 10 unarmed local resi-
dents trying to block armored vehicles.
The catastrophe in Odessa represented a turning point in the civil war that began with
Ukrainian government forces attacking Slavyansk and other cities that had raised the flag
of the Donetsk Republic. Inevitably, the ferocity on both sides increased and the splitting
of the country became unavoidable. The Odessa events also became a watershed for public
opinion in Ukraine and Russia.
Civil wars brutalize society and there is no reason to assert that “pro-Russian activists”
and supporters of federalization were admirers of Tolstoy and Gandhi. They too brand-
ished weapons and fired shots during the street clashes. And it is quite possible that a
“pro-Russian” demonstrator fired the first shot. How much did that matter if most died
by burning or other causes? What we know is that several hours of “fierce street battles”
resulted in four or five dead from both sides according to reports. This means that firearms

3
See http://voicesevas.ru/news/yugo-vostok/387-oficialnoe-zajavlenie-mid-dnr-ob-itogah-.html.
526 B. KAGARLITSKY

were not used in a really serious way; otherwise, the number killed would have been
greater. Official accounts state that there were more than 40 bodies in front of the trade
union building, and by unofficial counts more than a hundred. As the Ukrainian prose-
cutor’s office was obliged to admit, no weapons were found in the House of Trade Unions.
Since excesses are inevitable in revolutions, civil conflicts and mass disturbances, in cri-
ticizing the Ukrainian Maidan it is best to focus on the political content of the movement
—its ideology, leaders and motive forces. From the very beginning, however, it was
obvious that the actions of the “Euromaidan hundreds” clearly exceeded any norms of
“acceptable force” recognized in modern society. Though there is no dearth of revolts
and mass demonstrations in today’s world, before Euromaidan it was rare for Molotov
cocktails to be thrown directly at people. European anarchists have often set fire to
armored police vehicles and have thrown petrol bombs into empty, locked bank and office
buildings, wisely abandoned by their staff. But attempts to set fire to police standing in a
cordon, or to premises with people inside, were something almost unprecedented. Noth-
ing of the sort occurred even during the “Arab Spring,” in Tunisia or Egypt.
Moreover, while spontaneous violence in the streets is one thing, acts of vengeance, per-
mitted and approved by the authorities and justified through propaganda, are something
else, distinctive of a totalitarian political movement and of its ideology. Democratic move-
ments condemn excesses; fascism elevates them to heroic status. This is what we saw in
Odessa on May 2 and 3.
Such pogromist violence was supplemented by state repression. Immediately after the
burning of the House of Trade Unions, hundreds of activists of the Odessa anti-Maidan
movement were detained while the pogromists roamed free and Odessa governor, Vladi-
mir Nemirovsky, even spoke of the “lawfulness of the actions by supporters of the Euro-
maidan.”4 It may have been premature to describe the Kiev government as fascist in
February or March 2014, but as time went on, such a characterization appeared less
and less far-fetched.
Appalling as it was that the activists who were burned to death or who died of smoke
inhalation in the House of Trade Unions, who were beaten on the ground outside, who
were shot after the “cleansing” of the building by exultant supporters of the Kiev regime,
or who, after suffering wounds and burns, were arrested by the police, the internet howls of
triumph of Maidan supporters were even more so not least because they did not all come
from the radical right. Moscow and Kiev intelligentsia, the mildest of people in their every-
day lives, delightedly posted triumphant reports of mass murder while engaging in con-
spiratorial speculations which, for all their contradictions, agreed that whoever was to
blame for the deaths, it was not the people who personally set the fires and did the killing.
Even before the walls of the burnt-out House of Trade Unions had cooled and the first
corpse was identified, it was reported that no one from Odessa was among the victims, that
the dead were all Russians or from the Trans-Dniester region, as if this justified the exter-
minist violence. And when it was revealed that the victims of the pogrom were indeed
from Odessa, no one acknowledged that he was misinformed, reconsidered his view, apol-
ogized for spreading the lie or published more accurate information. Instead, we learnt
that the victims had set fire to themselves, that they did not allow themselves to be

4
See http://rabkor.ru/columns/editorial-columns/2014/05/07/ashes-2/, and http://timer-odessa.net/news/nemirovskiy_
nazval_boynyu_v_odesse_zakonnoy_267.html.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 527

saved, or that for some reason they hid in the House of Trade Unions deliberately in order
to provoke an attack.
While bloggers are not in the same category as people who throw petrol bombs at other
human beings, public approval of violence stimulates its escalation. The raptures over
Euromaidan created the psychological and political atmosphere in which the Odessa tra-
gedy became possible. The intelligentsia enabled new crimes. The civil war was not only
unfolding in Ukraine; Russia too was drawn into its orbit. For some time this was only
in the form of public discussion, and on the level of words. But as events in Ukraine
showed, words are readily transformed into actions. Words can have the effect of remov-
ing moral, psychological and cultural inhibitions. The speakers realize the degree of their
responsibility only when it is too late, including for themselves.

War in earnest
After the Odessa tragedy, the slide into civil war became irreversible. To the residents of
Donetsk and Lugansk it became obvious that if the republics did not hold out, their inhabi-
tants would meet the same fate as the anti-Maidan demonstrators in Odessa. The demand
for federalization of Ukraine was now increasingly replaced by calls for full independence
or for unification with Russia, though Russia remained cool to the prospect. A referendum
on May 11, 2014 affirmed the Donetsk People’s Republic as the continuation of the
Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic founded in 1918 by the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolu-
tionaries and crushed by German forces, whose bayonets imposed on the Ukrainian
south-east the bourgeois-nationalist regime of the Central Rada in Kiev. Almost a century
later, a civil war was again unfolding on the same front lines and with the same social
(though not yet political) content.
While there was armed struggle in Donetsk and Lugansk provinces, resistance was not
limited to them. In Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye and other cities of Ukraine, clandestine
organizations were set up to establish a new state—Novorossiya. In Kiev and central Ukrai-
nian provinces, resistance was organized mainly by left groups, including the Borotba
(“Struggle”) Union. The authorities responded by sacking Borotba offices and issuing arrest
warrants for its leaders. In late July, the Communist Party of Ukraine was effectively banned,
even though its leaders had restricted their activity to parliament. Now the Kremlin was
forced to support Donetsk and Lugansk. Ensuring that its nominees were appointed to
key posts, it sought to keep political spontaneity to a minimum. At the same time, Moscow
collaborated with Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who earlier had financed the Party of
Regions, and who this time was attempting to influence both sides in the conflict simul-
taneously. People aligned with Akhmetov held positions in the Ukrainian administration
and in the structures of the Donetsk Republic, where they did their utmost to slow and
obstruct decisions on nationalization and other radical demands of the insurgents. It did
not help that Donetsk and Lugansk institutions were ineffective, full of random appointees
and unprepared for serious independent work. When it emerged that Moscow’s aid would be
restricted to supplying obsolete weapons from stocks dating back to the days of the Soviet
Army, the republics’ unreadiness for war became obvious. It was only the monstrous incom-
petence of the Ukrainian military, together with the unconcealed reluctance of the rank-and-
file Ukrainian troops to shed blood in punitive operations that allowed the hurriedly
assembled units of the rebel militias to survive the first two months of battle.
528 B. KAGARLITSKY

Slavyansk, whose defense was led by the Russian volunteer, Igor Girkin, (nom-de-
guerre “Strelkov”) was the center of resistance. Strelkov, a little-known expert on military
history, was transformed into a popular commander. By the time they broke out of Sla-
vyansk in July 2014 and marched toward Donetsk, Strelkov’s detachments somewhat
resembled a regular army.
The Crimean based military analyst, Boris Rozhin, known on the internet as Colonel
Cassad, notes that behind-the-scenes talks continued throughout June, while a thin stream
of humanitarian aid flowed to the militia. The two sides fought listless battles while vainly
groping toward a compromise. Akhmetov, who still had influence in Donetsk, organized
Mariupol’s surrender to Ukrainian government forces. Meanwhile,
. . . people in Donetsk occupied themselves with anything and everything, with squeezing
money out of businesses, with dividing up posts within the administration, with disputes
over humanitarian aid, with drawing up constitutions of varying degrees of craziness—
with everything, in fact, except the war. (Rozhin 2014; translated from Russian)

The situation changed dramatically when, on July 1, the Ukrainian army launched an
offensive. Slavyansk, where Donetsk militias were concentrated, was surrounded. After a
heroic defense, Strelkov eventually broke through the encircling Ukrainian forces and
marched to Donetsk just in time to prevent Kremlin appointees from surrendering the
city to the Kiev government. In the radical purge that followed, the conspirators were forced
to resign. Some left for Moscow and others for Kiev. This occurred against a background of
growing political radicalization. Figures close to Akhmetov were removed temporarily from
decision-making roles. Strelkov was instrumental in forcing supporters of capitulation such
as the head of Donetsk police Andrey Pozhidaev, DNR defense minister Aleksandr Khoda-
kovsky and city mayor Aleksandr Lukianchenko from their posts. Before long they were
joined by the parliamentary speaker and titular head of the republic, Denis Pushilin.
As left-wing and nationalist volunteers poured into Donetsk and Lugansk from Russia,
social demands mingled with defense of the “Russian world,” though few could explain
what exactly this meant.
The left wing of the movement acquired greater definition at a meeting in Yalta on July
7. Representatives of left organizations in Novorossiya met with Russian co-thinkers and
Western anti-war activists. The Yalta Declaration (see the appendix to Desai, Freeman and
Kagarlitsky's article in this issue) proclaimed the goal of overcoming oligarchic capitalism,
establishing a mixed economy with a developed public sector, and of creating a “social
republic” in Ukraine. For Russia too, the program of the “social republic” corresponded
to pressing tasks. In practice, a combined movement, aimed at bringing about radical
changes in both countries, was coming into existence.
In August, a joint letter was published by Donetsk rank-and-file militia fighters
demanding the implementation of “social republics,” the nationalization of the oligarchs’
property and other social reforms. Boris Litvinov, a communist who had broken with the
official leadership of the party, took the chair of the Supreme Soviet and a law was adopted
reversing the commercialization of health care initiated previously and recurrent if some-
what timid attempts were made at nationalization.
In the Lugansk Republic, radical and left groups converged around Aleksey Mozgovoy,
the commander of the Prizrak (“Specter”) Brigade. Mozgovoy was not left-wing but a petty
bourgeois democrat who acted as a supporter of direct democracy and criticized the
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 529

oligarchy on the basis of general concepts of “justice.” Even so, socialists and communists
gravitated to him, joining the Prizrak Brigade, and Mozgovoy’s statements were actively
distributed on left sites. The Lugansk Republic, however, limited itself to making symbolic
concessions to the growing left movement. In particular, Soviet symbols appeared on the
republic’s new coat of arms.
Moscow was disquieted by growing left and radical tendencies in the republics. From
late August, the struggle had to be waged on two fronts. While all tendencies were agreed
on beating off attacks by the Ukrainian government army, groups linked to Moscow and
the local oligarchy sought to keep radicals away from decision-making and create con-
ditions for compromise with Kiev. Moscow also used its influence to create the conditions
for its own reconciliation with the West. Within Russia, pressure on supporters of Novor-
ossiya was intensifying. In particular, the accounts of the Novaya Rus Foundation, used to
finance the work of a school for political activists in the Russian city of Belgorod (see essay
by Anna Ochkina in this issue for more details on the school), were blocked. This school
was a joint project of Ukrainian leftists and the Moscow-based Institute for Globalization
and Social Movements.

Turning-point in the war

The middle of August also marked the failure of another offensive by Ukrainian govern-
ment forces, the last in Kiev’s summer campaign. As with previous offensives, the Western
media, while assiduously denying their readers real information, began with reports of
government successes and optimistic forecasts followed by silence. As before, the attacking
forces were cut off from their bases, and ended up surrounded. While these victories boded
well for the people’s republics of Novorossiya, a serious political and administrative crisis
was unfolding.
It took the form of the replacement of the leadership of the republics. The leader of the
militias, Igor Strelkov was not spared. In the best Soviet tradition, it was announced that he
was “transferring to other work.” The move against Strelkov was made at a time when he
was in Moscow, far from his troops.
Strelkov’s removal was vengeance by Kremlin forces defeated in early July and was
accompanied by a campaign against Strelkov in the Russian mass media. Despite his sym-
pathies for the pre-revolutionary monarchy and nostalgia for the Russian empire, Strelkov
had actually aided radicalization in the republics. Famed for his honesty and openness
(evident in his detailed accounts of his difficulties and failures which contrast so sharply
with Kiev and Moscow’s propaganda), Strelkov and his associates stressed repeatedly that
they would not allow Novorossiya to be transformed into a second edition of pre-Maidan
Ukraine, going athwart the Kremlin plans.
Unlike other Donetsk and Lugansk leaders, who traveled constantly to Moscow to beg
vainly for assistance, the commander of the militias was to be found with his troops in the
line of battle. There, as events showed, it was safer for him politically than in Moscow’s
corridors of power.
How Strelkov was lured to Moscow, and what was done to him there in order to extract
from him his “voluntary” resignation (if in fact he signed such a statement at all), we can
only guess. Was he threatened with stoppage of Russian supplies to the liberated terri-
tories? The republics were dependent for food and ammunition on outside supplies
530 B. KAGARLITSKY

because of inept management, and though Strelkov removed those responsible from their
posts in July and early August it was likely a lever that was used by the Kremlin intriguers
to get rid of Strelkov.
After his removal, those with links to the oligarchs were appointed to a series of key
posts. Around this time, Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsarev, representing no one and driven
out of Donetsk by the militia fighters, unfurled a “new flag of Novorossiya” in Moscow, an
upside-down version of the old imperial banner and an obvious counterbalance to the flag,
dark red with a cross of St. Andrew, under which the militias were fighting.
The Russian press now reported an agreement between Moscow bureaucrats and Akh-
metov. In the best traditions of the ancien régime, the Kremlin bureaucracy had decided to
sacrifice the liberated territories to its new vassal, in exchange for his services as a mediator
in its relations with Kiev and prospectively, the West. At the same time, contacts between
Russian and Ukrainian diplomats were revived and discussions were under way on the
ultimate fate of the south-east with Moscow calculating that Kiev would be ready for com-
promise after the failure of their August offensive.
But sentiment in Novorossiya and Ukraine, and the overall logic of a revolutionary pro-
cess into which Russian society too was gradually being drawn, were headed elsewhere.
The militia and activists constructing a new state were no longer prepared to be docile
agents of outside decision-making and early sympathies with an abstract Russia were giv-
ing way to mounting hatred for Kremlin bureaucrats and their sabotage and treason. The
same moods were growing, avalanche-like, within Russia itself. As for Strelkov, a new
group of field commanders, following his example but more left wing, was taking his place.

Cease-fire
Novorossiya had survived the August offensive, having encircled the attackers near
Lugansk and capturing large quantities of weapons, including heavy artillery. These suc-
cesses, however, also strengthened the “peace party” in Moscow.
With the disastrous situation in the rear, Poroshenko faced military catastrophe.
Thankfully for him, neither a large radical Russian-speaking Novorossiya state nor a rad-
ical transformation of Ukraine figured in Moscow’s plans. Relying once more on Akhme-
tov, whose agents had regained their positions in the people’s republics, Moscow chose
Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the politically moderate commander of the “Oplot” militia,
for the Donetsk premiership.
On September 4, Novorossiya and Kiev signed a cease-fire agreement in Minsk which
did not halt the blood-letting so much as reveal and sharpen the political disputes in each
of the camps, beginning with the militias.
Although both sides were exhausted, it was clear that Kiev’s army had suffered a cata-
strophic defeat. The militias had advanced along the entire front, leaving behind them
“cauldrons” containing Ukrainian units cut off from supply lines and allowed out only
after surrendering their weapons. Militia detachments advanced on Mariupol, the large
port and industrial center captured by government forces early in the campaign, while
advance groups of the insurgents appeared on the border of Zaporozhsk Province. In
these circumstances, Russian insistence on an immediate cease-fire was actually designed
to save Kiev’s army from utter rout.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 531

Given Moscow’s initial inconsistencies and later compromises with Kiev and the West,
distrust of the Kremlin grew constantly in the militias, as did outrage within Russia at the
Moscow leadership’s lack of principle.
Characterizing the approach of Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s advisor in charge of Ukraine
policy, Boris Rozhin writes:
The main interest of the circles that Surkov represents has been in avoiding a direct confron-
tation with the United States, such as would threaten their assets in the West and their ability
to do business there. Their ultimate concern has been to prevent a complete fiasco that would
directly affect Putin, to whom they would have to explain why, after all the enthusiastic rheto-
ric, Russia was time after time being openly humiliated in Ukraine—first with Yushchenko
being installed, then Yanukovich being overthrown, then Novorossiya being handed over as
well. (Rozhin 2014; translated from Russian)

By September, the Kremlin vacillation was transformed into a more or less logical pol-
itical line: to deny both sides a decisive victory. If the Kiev appeared to be winning, Novor-
ossiya would get aid, and if the militias made gains, Kiev would. The Kremlin held an
extremely important lever: military supplies from Russia. The Poroshenko government
needed components for armored vehicles, while the militias required weapons, ammuni-
tion, food supplies and military specialists. Russian companies profited by supplying both
sides. While Russian aid to the insurgents in August improved their position, it also
strengthened Moscow’s influence on decisions in Donetsk and Lugansk. As Rozhin put it,
Anyone who received humanitarian assistance was in favor, while those who were denied it
were at best on the side-lines. At certain times the tap of humanitarian aid supplies would be
turned on arbitrarily so as to further the interests of certain field commanders, and turned off
for those who proved obstinate. In this way, Moscow increased its ability to regulate the pro-
cesses that were occurring. (Rozhin 2014; translated from Russian)

The Minsk agreements marked the end of active military conflict and a turning point
for Novorossiya and indeed Russia. Though Kremlin had finally succeeded in imposing its
control on the leaderships of the rebel republics, the Russian elite lacked both a clear strat-
egy and a coherent project for Novorossiya, reluctant as they were to support its radical-
ism. After the Minsk accords, the search for compromise and agreement with the West
(and correspondingly, with the Poroshenko administration in Kiev) became Moscow’s
overriding strategic priority for which the Kremlin was prepared to sacrifice a great
deal, including permitting the reestablishment of Kiev’s control over Donetsk and Lugansk
provided it observed certain niceties. The only concession Moscow could not make was on
Crimea. That would be political suicide especially since the people of Crimea were ready to
resist any such reestablishment of Ukrainian control with arms.
Even as the militias were being starved of ammunition and weapons, Russian officials
were stressing their respect for Ukrainian sovereignty, granting it discounts on gas. However,
Moscow’s offers were rebuffed by Kiev and the West and Russian authorities finished up in a
strategic impasse, the only escape from which would involve political and social changes
within Russia itself. Confronting the West required breaking both with neoliberal economic
policies and purging the pro-Western elite from state leadership. There was no chance to
work out a resistance strategy confronting the West. But it was exactly the neoliberal elite
that was leading the country into this struggle. This reluctant resistance was provoked not
by ideological convictions or supposed aggressiveness of Russia’s rulers but resulted from
their inability to satisfy their foreign partners without destroying their own country.
532 B. KAGARLITSKY

Agreements and assassinations

The true winners in the elections that took place in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s
republics on November 2, 2014 were not Donetsk leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko and
his Lugansk counterpart Igor Plotnitsky but the Russian presidential administration:
both were willing to implement Moscow’s policies whether or not they were in the inter-
ests of insurgent republics.
Curtailing or increasing supplies of foodstuffs, weapons and ammunition, and directing
them to one or another of the rebel units, Russian administrators gradually established the
configuration of forces they needed, blackmailing the discontented and encouraging the
loyal. After supporting the late August militia offensive, Moscow compelled the fighters to
halt a few kilometers from Mariupol. Had they captured it, it would have altered the strategic
relationship of forces sharply, giving the rebels a large port undamaged by war and allowing
them to trade independent of Russian territory. Having been halted, the militias had to accept
the Minsk peace agreements and the inevitability of Kiev’s control over the rebel territories.
In January 2015, Novorossiya’s victories in a short outbreak of hostilities were followed
by the Minsk-2, a more detailed version of the original Minsk agreement. It was a blow to
Novorossiya’s independence as well as radical change. The left and radicals had been
gradually but crudely excluded from political life of republics. In Donetsk, Pavel Gubarev’s
party, at least as popular as Zakharchenko’s, was excluded from running before there was
an attempt to assassinate Gubarev. Though he survived, he ended up hospitalized in Rus-
sia. Though moderate parliament speaker of Donetsk People’s Republic, Boris Litvinov,
was careful to meet all the legal requirements in setting up his Communist Party of
Donetsk, it could not be registered to take part in the elections.
Things were worse in Lugansk where some of the most popular militia leaders were
assassinated. In January 2015, Aleksandr Bednov, known as “Batman of Lugansk,” was
killed by a special police unit. Aleksey Mozgovoy, Lugansk’s Che Guevara whose “Prizrak
Brigade” attracted leftist and internationalist groups and who was involved as a fighter and
a grass-roots organizer, was killed in May 2015 by an unidentified armed group, though
his comrades implicated local officials. Finally, other rebel leaders critical of Minsk agree-
ments and the pro-oligarchic policies of the new pro-Kremlin administration of the
Novorossiya republics were also killed. They included commanders Eugeniy Ishenko,
the mayor of Pervomaysk, Pavel Dremov who protested against corruption in Lugansk
administration, and dozens of officers and combatants of “Troya” special forces battalion
in Donetsk. In June 2016, surviving members of “Prizrak Brigade” published Mozgovoy’s
diaries whose introduction stated: “all we had fought for is now betrayed.”5
While such elimination broke remaining resistance to Kremlin control over Novorossiya,
it didn’t solve the major problem: what to do with these territories and how to reach reconci-
liation with the West without undermining positions of Putin and his entourage domestically.
Events in Novorossiya can be expected to unfold not so much according to the vagaries
of the political struggle in Donetsk or even in Kiev, but by changes in the situation within
Russia, including the development of the economic crisis, the growth in the number and
size of social protests, and the increasing confusion of the ruling elites, who still have no
workable plan of action. A sharpening of the political struggle to “Ukrainian” proportions

5
See Mozgovoy’s diaries: http://maxpark.com/community/129/content/5304793.
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 533

can therefore be expected. But this time, the resistance would unfold simultaneously on
both sides of the frontier.

Conclusion
The Ukrainian crisis not only brought Russia’s ruling elites into serious conflict with the
West, but also made them reliant on mass support, which they could no longer control
through normal propaganda.
The situation is similar to that in Britain during the war against Nazism. While defending
their own interests, many capitalist factions in Russia realize that without domestic support
of working people they cannot cope with challenges from outside and propaganda must be
replaced by real concessions. Since Russian elites were not united, some groups can buy off
the workers at the expense of others and if they do so, a new relationship of forces could emerge.
Such concessions would become more urgent if the masses succeeded in organizing a substantial
social bloc. The contest for external markets would meanwhile turn into a struggle for domestic
sales. Acting according to the logic of neoliberalism, Russian capital had put its stake on foreign
markets, but precisely this had driven it into an inevitable confrontation with the West. Now it
requires different policies and a different ideology and that entails a great political price.
Russian attempts to control events in eastern Ukraine have turned out badly, spon-
taneous protest having followed its own logic, and its own people there now escape its con-
trol, as the former Russian security agent Strelkov did. The Kremlin needed to solve a dual
problem: how to stop the movement from radicalizing and how to restrain the radicals and
preserve the current regime in Ukraine which would automatically set in train a cycle of
broad and massive changes in both countries, putting in question the survival of the exist-
ing order in both Ukraine and Russia.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Boris Kagarlitsky is professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and director
of the Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements (IGSO). He specializes in Russian
and international economic history, Russian politics, and international left. His recent books
include: The Revolt of the Middle Class (Moscow: Kulturnaya revolutsiya, 2006), Empire of the Per-
iphery: Russia and the World System (London: Pluto Press, 2007), Back in the USSR (London: Sea-
gull Books, 2009), and From Empires to Imperialism: The State and the Rise of Bourgeois Civilisation
(London: Routledge, 2014).

References
IGSO (Institute for Globalization and Social Movements). 2013. “Zhit’v Rossii” [Living in Russia].
Levaya politika 20: 12–44.
Kagarlitsky, B. 2006. The Revolt of the Middle Class. Moscow: Kulturnaya revolutsiaya.
Rozhin, B. 2014. “Про ‘перемирие’” [Pro peremirie]. Colonel Cassad (blog), September 7. http://
colonelcassad.livejournal.com/1773476.html.
Voronov, E. 2014. “Starogo Donbassa bol’she net” [Old Donbass is dead]. http://egovo.jimdo.com/
2014/04/13/старого-донбасса-больше-нет/.