War in Ukraine and the politics of the left (international conference)

The war in Ukraine and politics of the Left International Conference 6-7 September 2014, Kyiv Organizers: Commons: Journal of Social Criticism, Center for Social and Labor Studies As a result of military operations in Ukraine many industrial and infrastructure facilities have been destroyed. Dozens, if not hundreds thousand people, have lost their jobs, even more […]

Ukraine’s Fractures

First published in: Ukraine’s Fractures. An interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko. In: New Left Review 87, May-June 2014 Since the start of the Maidan protests six months ago, Ukraine has been at the centre of a crisis which has exposed and deepened the fault-lines—geopolitical, historical, linguistic, cultural—that traverse the country. These divisions have grown through the […]

Ukraine has not experienced a genuine revolution, merely a change of elites

Volodymyr Ishchenko Two popular labels are being ascribed to events in Ukraine: it was either a democratic – or even social – revolution, or it was a rightwing – or even neo-Nazi – coup. In fact, both characterisations are wrong. What we have have seen is a mass rebellion, overwhelmingly supported in western and central Ukraine […]

About “Russian” trace in Odessa events

Andrey Ishchenko 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 […]