Commons/Спільне

One of our editors, Volodymyr Ishchenko, interviewed by British newspaper “The Commune”

What was the society that existed before 1989-91, and was its collapse the historic victory of capitalism over communism?

There are a lot of rather boring discussions in the left-wing movement on “class nature” of USSR, whether it was “state capitalism”, a “degenerated workers’ state” or anything of this kind. Often a specific position on this question becomes a basis for founding political organisations and sectarian rivalry; often such discussions substitute for the real political actions necessary here and now. This is not to ignore this discussion at all, but to point out that it is not so important what exactly we call the Soviet society but what we think should and could have been done to improve it.

Was revolutionary action necessary or was it possible to push the Soviet nomenklatura to some progressive reforms? The answer to this question largely determines our attitude to the 1989 protests. With hindsight we can say that the 1990s neoliberal reforms were disastrous for the Ukrainian economy, culture and society in general. But should we consider the 1989 mass protests as just legitimating cover for privatising property by the part of the old Soviet elite? I would say no. Many people in Ukraine and in the USSR in general genuinely aspired towards some kind of democratic socialism with a “human face”, some even for a self-governing, libertarian socialism.

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Andrey Ishchenko (Odessa)

A tragic death, which took place on April 17 in Odessa, of Maksim Chaika, a right-wing football fan and one of the leaders of a radical nationalist organization “SICH”, has immediately lead to heated discussions on the Internet. Whereas everything is clear for the closest companions of the killed: “the white warrior” had perished in the unequal battle with “degenerative subcultures”; more “reputable” national-democratic editions promote a more sophisticated version. In their opinion, those responsible for the tragedy are some “Russian militants”, controlled by the leader of “Rodina” (“Motherland”) party Igor Markov. What happened after that on the Internet were lamentations of the “genuine Ukrainians” from every quarter about “the nationally conscious fellow” killed by “Moscow agents”. However, they paid little attention to the fact that the killed was Russian-speaking and on the whole was rather a “white” racist than a traditional classical Ukrainian nationalist. Where does the “Russian hand” come from in this story?

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Antifascists and human rights activists consider Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko’s recent statement to be intended to manipulate the public opinion and pressurize the investigation. They said it on April 24 in Kiev.

On April 21 the President said he would personally monitor investigation of the death of Ukrainian neo-Nazi Maksim Chayka who was killed during the fight between the far-right extremists and antifascists in Odessa.

“We really doubt that the inquest will be impartial and unbiased now, after the intervention of the President of State”, said Vladimir Chemeris from Respublika Institute, the human rights watchdog. He stressed that in the statement published by his press officer Iryna Vannikova, Mr. Yuschenko defined the incident as murder, not as self-defense.
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On April 22 the president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko made an official statement that there is «an extremist organisation “Antifa”» in Ukraine and demanded from SBU (Ukraine Security Service) – «to check all the information concerning coordination of its activity by the foreign anti-Ukrainian organizations». This is an exceptional incident: the president points out to the law enforcing services that there are extremists in Ukraine, names them, and insinuates who their real organizers and patrons are.

But where the president got such information?

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