The "Ukrainian Spring" has been a popular subject for all people. Various perspectives have been exhibited: US and Russian, Ukrainian and European. When not viewed as the manifestation of Vladimir Putin's megalomania, or US overreach, the conflict has been interpreted as the rebirth of the Cold War, as Russia's belated attempt at empire restoration, or as Western expansion.
Some basic categories were invoked, be they of national character, or morality, good and evil, Nazi vs democratic. Some saw the events as the clash between a corrupt political system that is failing to stop the march of liberal democracy; others as US-driven globalism hitting against the rock of some backward particularism, informed by Orthodoxy and an outdated political system. More sophisticated and informed concepts such as historical development or complex make-up of the Ukrainian nation were also invoked.
However, what is mostly missing is old-style class analysis of the type I thought I left behind when I emigrated from Russia some 30 years ago. The West has generally entered the post-industrial stage; it tends to find the category of proletariat-bourgeoisie conflict as outdated and less useful than, say, ethnicity or religion. But what is unfolding in Eastern Ukraine has all the makings of a classic Marxist drama.
Corrupt, Kiev-based oligarchs have entered into alliance with ultraconservative forces of the western Ukrainian region, a region which is agricultural, pre-modern and is extremely hostile to all things Russian, including modernisation. The rather obvious purpose of this alliance is to impose a Western version of shock-therapy upon a country that has so far resisted it, because its economy is heavily intertwined with Russian resources and consumption.
Complete story at - Marx's last stand: Eastern Ukraine - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
Some basic categories were invoked, be they of national character, or morality, good and evil, Nazi vs democratic. Some saw the events as the clash between a corrupt political system that is failing to stop the march of liberal democracy; others as US-driven globalism hitting against the rock of some backward particularism, informed by Orthodoxy and an outdated political system. More sophisticated and informed concepts such as historical development or complex make-up of the Ukrainian nation were also invoked.
However, what is mostly missing is old-style class analysis of the type I thought I left behind when I emigrated from Russia some 30 years ago. The West has generally entered the post-industrial stage; it tends to find the category of proletariat-bourgeoisie conflict as outdated and less useful than, say, ethnicity or religion. But what is unfolding in Eastern Ukraine has all the makings of a classic Marxist drama.
Corrupt, Kiev-based oligarchs have entered into alliance with ultraconservative forces of the western Ukrainian region, a region which is agricultural, pre-modern and is extremely hostile to all things Russian, including modernisation. The rather obvious purpose of this alliance is to impose a Western version of shock-therapy upon a country that has so far resisted it, because its economy is heavily intertwined with Russian resources and consumption.
Complete story at - Marx's last stand: Eastern Ukraine - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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