On 8/5/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/10/22/left-ukraine-origins-borotba/Words worth listening to:
The left in Ukraine and the origins of Borotba
By Greg Butterfield posted on October 22, 2014
Interview with Borotba leader Victor Shapinov, Part 2
Borotba leader Victor ShapinovWW photo: Greg Butterfield
Borotba leader Victor Shapinov
WW photo: Greg Butterfield
Simferopol, Crimea — On Sept. 22, Workers World conducted an extensive
interview with Victor Shapinov, a coordinator and leading theoretician
of the Marxist organization Union Borotba (Struggle) of Ukraine.
Shapinov currently lives in exile with other Borotba activists in
Crimea, under threat of arrest from the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev.
Additional installments of the interview will appear in coming weeks.
Workers World: Tell us about your background and the founding of Union
Borotba.
Victor Shapinov: I was born in Russia near Moscow, where I also went to
school and university. At age 18 I joined the communist movement and the
Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP), which still exists.
For several years, I communicated with Ukrainian leftist and communist
militants. In Russia, it was not the best time for left activities.
There was a lot of repression. So in 2005, I moved to Kiev and began to
organize there, mostly with former members of the Communist Party of
Ukraine (KPU). In this way I began to work with Sergei Kirichuk and
others who later participated in founding our movement.
In the late 1990s, the Communist Party was very popular. Many people
believed that its chairperson, Peter Simonenko, could win the
presidency. But the party leadership was very passive and always wanted
to make deals with the bourgeois camp of Ukrainian politics. Grassroots
activists were very upset, especially the young members, and there were
a lot of splits from the KPU at this time.
We always tried to bring these forces together in some way. So we formed
the Che Guevara Youth Movement, which became famous for organizing a
rally against privatization and for renationalization of big factories.
It was the biggest anti-capitalist mobilization ever held in Kiev [since
the breakup of the Soviet Union — WW].
Afterward, we set up the Organization of Marxists of Ukraine. It was the
result of the merger of several groups. It turned out to be very broad
and academic, and not very revolutionary.
After assessing the development of this organization, and following
further splits in the Communist Party, we were able to found the Borotba
movement. We began this work in 2011 and held our founding congress in
May 2012.
It’s important to explain about the Communist Party of Ukraine. At that
time, its leadership was always seeking alliances in parliament with
whichever capitalist party was strongest. Not many people in the West
know this, but before allying with the Party of Regions of [deposed
President Victor] Yanukovich, they were partners with the party of Yulia
Timoshenko [far-right politician associated with the 2004 “Orange
Revolution” and today part of the Kiev junta].
It was an unprincipled position by the KPU leadership, and for us, it
meant we couldn’t just be the left wing of the Communist Party. Besides,
comrades who wanted to be the left wing of the party were always swept
out. Every year groups of good communists were expelled.
Alexei Albu, one of our comrades, was a left-wing leader of the
Communist Party and Komsomol, the communist youth organization, in
Odessa. He resigned and joined in organizing Borotba. Other militants in
Odessa followed his example.
We focused on organizing within the labor movement. But by late 2012 and
early 2013, the issue of fascism and radical nationalism came to the
fore. Borotba was the first party to organize a protest against the
fascist Svoboda Party entering parliament. We held a rally of 500 people
in Kiev.
We never supported the Yanukovich regime, though, because we knew it was
one of the reasons for the rise of the far right. Its politics were
directed only to the interests of the biggest businesses, the so-called
oligarchy. It bestowed money and power on the oligarchic groups, and
these in turn supported the neo-Nazis. We could see that the fascists
were an instrument that they used in politics.
WW: Borotba seems unique in the post-Soviet left in bringing Marxists
from many backgrounds and historical currents into a united communist
organization. How were you able to achieve that?
VS: We worked hard on it. It involved both theoretical and
organizational work.
From the theoretical side, we tried to focus on the contradictions that
exist in society now and analyze them from the point of view of Marxism.
We see that the splits that were part of the communist movement in the
past are not so important now, or we see them in a very different way.
We saw that there were some groups that are like reconstructors [this
term refers to people who re-enact historic military battles, like Civil
War re-enactors in the U.S.]. They want to refight the old battles.
We don’t want to be like this. We want to make real politics for the
working class and oppressed peoples, and not play at being Stalin, or
Trotsky, or Mao Zedong, or whatever. Because those people did not play
at being Marx or the Jacobins. They made revolutionary politics for
their times.
From the organizational side, when we started to create Borotba, we
decided to try and look upon ourselves and what we were doing through
the eyes of the people, not through the eyes of competing leftist groups.
How do the common people see us? That is a practical criterion for our
work, not the opinions of some publications that spend all their time
critiquing other leftists. If you don’t waste a lot of time on that, you
have more time to observe how the people see you and how to reach them.
Even how bourgeois journalists see us is more important. How will they
try to show our activities? Because the majority of people watch
television or read the bourgeois press, it is important how we are
represented to them.
Even if they write that we are “communist bastards,” it will be very
good. Many people who are our potential supporters don’t believe in the
capitalist media. But they see only the capitalist media because they
don’t have any alternative. So if they read that we are bad, maybe they
will think we are good!
It’s a question of how to use the possibilities offered by bourgeois
politics and the bourgeois media to promote our work. Don’t be a
sectarian who only goes to a picket line with their own newspaper to
sell and tune everything else out.
I can’t say that we were so successful in these things, because the
situation in Ukraine gave us very little time to realize our plans.
Next: Part 3 — After the coup: Borotba and the AntiMaidan movement
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Also see:
1.Meet Borotba
2.Ukraine communists ‘face to face with 21st century fascism’
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