George Orwell adaptation of I Corinthians xiii

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. ... And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

Who can control the post-superpower capitalist world order?

In a divided and dangerous world, we need to teach the new powers some manners

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/06/superpower-capitalist-world-order-ukraine

To know a society is not only to know its explicit rules. One must also know how to apply them: when to use them, when to violate them, when to turn down a choice that is offered, and when we are effectively obliged to do something but have to pretend we are doing it as a free choice. Consider the paradox, for instance, of offers-meant-to-be-refused. When I am invited to a restaurant by a rich uncle, we both know he will cover the bill, but I nonetheless have to lightly insist we share it – imagine my surprise if my uncle were simply to say: "OK, then, you pay it!"

There was a similar problem during the chaotic post-Soviet years of Yeltsin's rule in Russia. Although the legal rules were known, and were largely the same as under the Soviet Union, the complex network of implicit, unwritten rules, which sustained the entire social edifice, disintegrated. In the Soviet Union, if you wanted better hospital treatment, say, or a new apartment, if you had a complaint against the authorities, were summoned to court or wanted your child to be accepted at a top school, you knew the implicit rules. You understood whom to address or bribe, and what you could or couldn't do. After the collapse of Soviet power, one of the most frustrating aspects of daily life for ordinary people was that these unwritten rules became seriously blurred. People simply did not know how to react, how to relate to explicit legal regulations, what could be ignored, and where bribery worked. (One of the functions of organised crime was to provide a kind of ersatz legality. If you owned a small business and a customer owed you money, you turned to your mafia protector, who dealt with the problem, since the state legal system was inefficient.) The stabilisation of society under the Putin reign is largely because of the newly established transparency of these unwritten rules. Now, once again, people mostly understand the complex cobweb of social interactions.

In international politics, we have not yet reached this stage. Back in the 1990s, a silent pact regulated the relationship between the great western powers and Russia. Western states treated Russia as a great power on the condition that Russia didn't act as one. But what if the person to whom the offer-to-be-rejected is made actually accepts it? What if Russia starts to act as a great power? A situation like this is properly catastrophic, threatening the entire existing fabric of relations – as happened five years ago in Georgia. Tired of only being treated as a superpower, Russia actually acted as one.

How did it come to this? The "American century" is over, and we have entered a period in which multiple centres of global capitalism have been forming. In the US, Europe, China and maybe Latin America, too, capitalist systems have developed with specific twists: the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism. After the attempt by the US to impose itself as the sole superpower – the universal policeman – failed, there is now the need to establish the rules of interaction between these local centres as regards their conflicting interests.

This is why our times are potentially more dangerous than they may appear. During the cold war, the rules of international behaviour were clear, guaranteed by the Mad-ness – mutually assured destruction – of the superpowers. When the Soviet Union violated these unwritten rules by invading Afghanistan, it paid dearly for this infringement. The war in Afghanistan was the beginning of its end. Today, the old and new superpowers are testing each other, trying to impose their own version of global rules, experimenting with them through proxies – which are, of course, other, small nations and states.

Karl Popper once praised the scientific testing of hypotheses, saying that, in this way, we allow our hypotheses to die instead of us. In today's testing, small nations get hurt and wounded instead of the big ones – first Georgia, now Ukraine. Although the official arguments are highly moral, revolving around human rights and freedoms, the nature of the game is clear. The events in Ukraine seem something like the crisis in Georgia, part two – the next stage of a geopolitical struggle for control in a nonregulated, multicentred world.

It is definitely time to teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners, but who will do it? Obviously, only a transnational entity can manage it – more than 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant saw the need for a transnational legal order grounded in the rise of the global society. In his project for perpetual peace, he wrote: "Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion."

This, however, brings us to what is arguably the "principal contradiction" of the new world order (if we may use this old Maoist term): the impossibility of creating a global political order that would correspond to the global capitalist economy.

What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or a representative world government? What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?

Today, in our era of globalisation, we are paying the price for this "principal contradiction." In politics, age-old fixations, and particular, substantial ethnic, religious and cultural identities, have returned with a vengeance. Our predicament today is defined by this tension: the global free circulation of commodities is accompanied by growing separations in the social sphere. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global market, new walls have begun emerging everywhere, separating peoples and their cultures. Perhaps the very survival of humanity depends on resolving this tension.

Domination of Eurasian Energy Corridors (2)

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/op291_ukraines_energy_policy_balmaceda_2004.pdf



http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/98-00/nation.pdf

The Domination of Eurasian Energy Corridors

Geoffrey PYATT: “The United States is powerfully committed to Ukraine’s success, Ukraine’s democracy, and Ukraine’s prosperity”

Mykola Siruk

3 September, 2013 

http://www.day.kiev.ua/en/article/topic-day/geoffrey-pyatt-united-states-powerfully-committed-ukraines-success-ukraines

Geoffrey Pyatt, the new US Ambassador to Ukraine, had a very active and quite original start in his diplomatic office in Ukraine. Prior to his arrival to Ukraine, he published a video address to Ukrainians in which he emphasized that he would be constantly using social networks for communication. What was more unusual in comparison to, for example, the Russian ambassador, who seizes every opportunity to popularize Russian history, was that the American ambassador said he was studying Ukrainian and was interested in the history of Ukraine. From day one, he has put his words into actions. Pyatt has already visited several museums and even published a video blog after a visit to the Oles Honchar Museum. For Ukraine’s Independence Day, he sang “Chervona ruta” together with the embassy’s staff and posted the recording on the embassy’s website.

“You presented me so gorgeously in your paper. So how could I not take an opportunity. Fantastic, Fantastic, thank you so much.” Such comments he made when The Day had given to himмthe book The Power of the Soft Sign and Route No.1 with our project “101 reasons to love Ukraine.”

“This morning I was glad to see you put doctor King on the front page. I am already learning about your history. I was so interested when I visited the World War II museum. I knew about the Paton bridge but I never realized that Paton bridge – the connection it had to the welding machine that Paton laboratory invented which did electron welding which is what enabled the construction of these long metal bridges. So this is great. I will read this with great interest. Thank you.”

Mr. Ambassador, you’ve said that your top priority is to support Ukrainian people’s European choice and that this will be your “main focus all the way up to the Vilnius Summit.” How can the United States help Ukraine concretely so that the Ukrainian government indeed walks into the door that Europe keeps open for Ukraine, or in other words, Association Agreement is indeed signed in Vilnius?

“Right. Thank you for the question. Thank you for correctly reflecting the priority that I have placed and my government has placed on supporting the Ukrainian people’s European choice. And I would emphasize, to begin with, that my role is to support a decision that the Ukrainian government has made – and the Ukrainian people have made – to move ahead to, as you say, walk through the door that Europe is holding open. It’s notable to me that in a very divided political environment, this is one of the issues on which there is broad agreement across the Ukrainian political spectrum. The president, the various opposition parties all agree that it is important to take advantage of this opportunity which the Association Agreement provides. In terms of what United States can do, I would flag a couple of things. And I hope you noticed the statement which President Obama put out on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, where he emphasized his support for Ukraine’s European future. So I think what we can do is twofold. One is to contribute to the debate which is taking place here around the benefits of the Association Agreement. And  on this I look forward to working with my European colleagues, but it’s very clear to me that our common hope to see Ukraine developed as a modern democratic prosperous state can only be advanced by progress with the Association Agreement. And that means fulfillment of the conditions that Europe has established. I’ve said before that we see the Association Agreement and we see Vilnius not as an end state but as a marker on the road to building this modern state. I welcome the opportunity to engage with Ukrainian politicians, to engage with Ukrainian society on the benefits that we believe Ukraine will enjoy from signing the Association Agreement and securing the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. In terms of economic growth, in terms of economic opportunity, there would be clear benefits to Ukraine associating itself with the world’s largest economic bloc. Another area where we can help is with your other big neighbors. And in this regard, let me underline that we share the view of our European partners which was annunciated in Brussels that it is simply unacceptable for any country to seek to block or prevent Ukraine from moving ahead towards its European future. We see Ukraine as part of Europe. We want Ukraine to move towards a closer institutional relationship with Europe and I will do everything that I can with my colleagues here at the mission to help advance that objective.”

Numerous articles have been published in Western media recently about Ukraine choosing between the EU and Eurasian Union. You had a meeting with President Yanukovych. Is your impression that he is really pondering this choice?

“Let me say a couple of things. I am going to be very protective of my private conversation with the president and other senior leaders. So I have to be diplomatic about that. But I will say that the president, like other leaders I have spoken with in Ukraine, was very clear regarding the priority that he places on Ukraine’s European choice. But I will also emphasize I do not see the issue as you’ve characterized it as ‘either-or.’ It’s not Europe or Russia. It’s Europe and Russia. And I like very much what Prime Minister Azarov said in his description – and I believe it was in a Cabinet meeting – but I saw a press report of his description of his conversations in Moscow. And he offered a view that in an age of globalization, in an age of global economic connectivity, it is illegitimate and inappropriate for anybody to try to build walls. And I agree completely with the prime minister. I think the way to imagine this is that the Association Agreement will open opportunities to deepen Ukraine’s social economic and commercial ties to Europe, even while preserving the very important historical, economic and people-to-people ties you have with Russia.

Ukraine is in a fantastic position: has a border with four EU member states. It has the opportunity to become the eastern frontier of a large European economic space at the same time that it serves as Europe’s gateway to the Eurasian heartland and Europe’s gateway to one of the most dynamic economic regions of the world which stretches all the way to Shanhai and Vladivostok.

So, I do not think it’s ‘either-or’ – I think it’s ‘either-and,’ it’s  Europe and Russia. But it is very-very important to our vision of Ukraine’s European future that that Association Agreement succeeds.”

These days, as you, probably feel too, there is a fairly tense situation regarding Vilnius. Ukraine, on its part, has not yet fulfilled certain conditions for signing the Agreement, plus Russia steps up its pressure to make Ukraine join the Customs Union. In addition, spy scandal erupted between the United States and Russia. Hence, some experts are concerned that America may “swap” Ukraine for Snowden. And it seems such concerns are not without merit: we have this kind of experience. These were NATO summits in Istanbul in 2004 and in Bucharest in 2008, when Ukraine was denied. Can something similar happen in Vilnius?

“I do not even want to give that question the legitimacy of a serious answer because I do not see it as a serious prospect. The US-Ukraine relationship stands on its own solid foundation. The US-Ukraine relation is based on our strategic interests and our convergent outlooks, and so I would discourage any suggestion of trades-off or compromises in that agenda on the basis of other relationships. And let me leave it at that.”

By the way, since you are studying Ukraine’s history, don’t you think it was the West’s mistake not to grant MAP to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, which President George W. Bush supported, and he visited Kyiv right before the Bucharest summit?

“I was not part of those discussions. In 2008 I was living in Vienna and I was focused on things like Iran and Syria, working closely with my European partners on that. But I wasn’t part of these discussions in 2008 so really I do not think it would be useful for me to speculate on that. But again, our agenda today stands on its merits. And I am very-very confident of the United States’ commitment to fulfilling the very large ambition that we have for our strategic partnership with Ukraine. And my mission here in Kyiv is to seek to fulfill that ambition.”

We hear calls to live as good neighbors with Russia, and we ourselves would have very much liked to have mutually beneficial relations with the northern neighbor. According to the Budapest Memorandum the United States and Russia are the guarantors of Ukraine’s security. Several days ago President Obama cancelled his summit with President Putin in Moscow and announced a pause in the relations with Russia which hasn’t been observed for quite a while in the US-Russia relationship. What corollaries can this have for our nation?

“I would say two things. Again, I will leave the question of US-Russia relations to Ambassador McFaul and my other colleagues. But I am very-very confident of where we are on US-Ukraine relations. And I can assure you there is no pause in US-Ukraine relations, and in fact what I want to do is to hit fast-forward button, to use your analogy, on the US-Ukraine strategic partnership and I think we have a very good chance to do that as we look towards the Vilnius Summit and beyond.”

What do you think of the article in Den by Edward Lukas “Syria Has Proved That Russia Is not Our Friend” (http://www.day.kiev.ua/en/ article/syria-has-proved-russia-isnt-our-friend)? In this light, how should the West treat Russia?

“I  will leave Russia to my good friend and colleague Ambassador McFaul. I am sorry, it simply is not my place. But what regards Ukraine, I am very confident about the favorable opportunities that we have ahead of us.”

It is known that the US has taken a tough stance on Ms. Tymoshenko – although her case is not that simple. Maybe, as you were getting ready for your Ambassadorial duty here, you attended a Senate Committee hearing in May, where Representative Cohen raised the most high-profile cases from the Kuchma presidency time – those of Gongadze, Yelyashkevych, and Podolsky. It has been reported that criminal cases have been started in Ukraine to pursue those who ordered crimes against the abovementioned individuals. Do you consider pursuing those cases and bringing the culprits to justice important of the development of Ukraine’s democracy?

“Let me say two things. I paid very close attention to the Helsinki Commission hearing that Foreign Minister Kozhara attended. And for the United States regarding the specific issue that you raised of the Gongadze case, I read with interest the interview that Myroslava Gongadze published. And I also have paid very close attention to the wider issue of press freedom in Ukraine. You’ve read my other interviews, so you know that I have said that Ukraine’s democracy and the continued deepening of Ukraine’s democracy is the bedrock of our bilateral strategic partnership. It is the foundation on which everything else is constructed. And in that regard, questions of media freedom and the fact that you have a vibrant media environment in Ukraine is one of the key attributes of our bilateral relationship. So we are concerned about any steps which appear to be reducing the space for media freedom. And we believe that it is important, in cases like the Gongadze case which are of particular concern, that there be a complete investigation. I know also that it has drawn the attention of the OSCE special rapporteur for media freedom who I met with in my office in Washington, probably a little less then year ago now. And I know that she has addressed the Gongadze case as well. But let me emphasize for the United States: our broad concern is with the principle of media freedom, where Ukraine has a good story to tell. And it is important that we sustain and deepen that media freedom.”

Also, connected to the previous question, another one involving Kuchma. In a recently released documentary Battle for Ukraine by famous Russian (and formerly Hollywood) film director Andrei Konchalovsky, Kuchma, remembering the time of the Orange Revolution, says “It’s not me who governed poorly, it’s America who led people out on the Maidan.” What would you say to this?

“I have not seen the film. So I really cannot address it. I would come back to the point for United States and me personally, one of the most inspiring things about Ukraine today is the genuine democracy and the passionate commitment to democratic principles that I have found among the politicians, among civil society, among the journalists. You have the democratic DNA which allows you to build the modern European democracy that we hope for. That is an enormously satisfying and attractive characteristic. And I certainly will work in my tenure here to strengthen and to consolidate that.”

It is great that your support for Ukraine’s aspiration to true energy independence is a priority for you. We welcome the presence of such important companies as ExxonMobil and Chevron which plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into shale gas development in Ukraine. But as we know, Russia has extensive experience in countering US plans: for instance, in 2007, Russian task force attempted to influence Czech public opinion, through Czech media, public and political figures, concerning deployment in the Czech Republic of a radar as an element of missile defense. Is the US prepared to face resistance to shale gas projects in Ukraine? Do you see a way out of the situation after the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Council vote that blocks the permission to develop shale gas there? Has such contingency been foreseen?

“Well, as you saw in my TRK Ukraine TV interview, my view on Ivano-Frankivsk is sign of the healthy status of Ukrainian democracy. It is good that this kind of debates is happening. We have had the same debates is the United States. I am very confident that as these debates continue and as our companies have the opportunity to share with political and civil society leaders what they are prepared to do, what the experience has been in the United States. I think the US experience with non-conventional gas is very important for the decisions that Ukraine will have to make. This has been a game changer in the United States. It has helped us to achieve greater energy independence. It has helped to drive employment in the United States. It has helped to improve the competitiveness of American companies. I am very optimistic that these new energy plays in Ukraine have the potential to do some of the same which would be good for America, but it will also be very good for Ukraine and it will be particularly good for the communities that host these resources. And I look forward to visiting Lviv – I  will be there this weekend. I  will be talking to political leaders. I look forward to hearing their concerns. I will share with them some of the lessons we have learned in the United States. But I know that this is an important decision and I know that this is the decision which has important long term economic benefits. Because what we are talking about here is investments which will pay their benefits over years and years and have the potential to generate – if the resources are found, if the gas is there the way the companies expect, and if the government has the correct policies in place – this could generate jobs and economic growth for decades and decades. So it is in the same way that unconventional gas has been a game changer in America. It has the potential to be a game changer in Ukraine. And I am not afraid of having debate about that.”

You are sometimes referred to as the rising star of US diplomacy, who can get things done, like in the instance with huge commercial contracts. What do you consider to be your success?

“You are very kind to say this. I said in my swearing-in statement in Washington DC and I truly believe this: I am in a business where the most important factor is the people. And my most important responsibility is to lead the very large team of both American and Ukrainian colleagues we have here at the embassy. So, you ask me, where do I think I have been successful? Where I have been successful in the past and will hope to do in my current role is to build a strong team of colleagues all of whom draw on their strengths to advance the strategic objective of the United States.”

What is the most important task or objective that the US Government set for you to solve in Ukraine?

“My most important objective is to fulfill the promise of the US-Ukraine strategic partnership, to advance the three priorities I have talked about: Ukraine’s place in Europe, Ukraine’s energy independence and the deepening of Ukrainian democracy. But all of that happens under the umbrella of the strategic partnership which was launched by Secretary Rice and President Bush’s Administration and was inaugurated by Vice President Biden under President Obama. So it is a framework that the United States has committed to at very highest levels of our government with a strong sense of ambition.”

Can you share ideas about how Ukrainian diaspora in the United States can be encouraged to invest more in Ukraine, and what hampers this?

“Thank you for asking this question. And I would say a couple of things. I see this as helping to strengthen the ties at the people-to-people level between our countries. And our strongest bilateral relationships are those which are focused at the people-to-people level. Our new press spokesperson Yaryna is a perfect example – somebody who has fluency in the language, who has family roots in Ukraine. I see this as helping to build confidence. It helps us to understand better the challenges Ukraine is working through. And also Ukrainian diaspora in America can help you to understand what America’s agenda is here. I am deeply confident that Ukraine has no better friend than America. The United States is powerfully committed to Ukraine’s success, Ukraine’s democracy and Ukraine’s prosperity. And that comes from the people of our country.”

You said you are interested in deeper study of Ukrainian history. Can you tell us what books or textbooks do you use to learn about our history?

“Right now what I am finishing is Bloodlands which is a fantastic and sobering introduction to the incredible violence that was inflicted upon this society first by Stalin and then by Hitler. But also as you read that history you cannot help but be inspired by the resilience of Ukrainian culture, the strength and endurance of Ukrainian culture underneath these various external forces that came across the country. So it is a very dark period of history, a dark period in Europe’s history. But it is important to understand, so I have been working through that.”

Do you know about researcher of Holodomor James Mace, an American who worked at Den and whose studies exposed Holodomor in Ukraine to the world [note – Den daily has a special history section and a professor of history on staff who takes care of it; Den published collections of history essays from this section as separate books].

“I have not read his works, but I look forward to looking into them.”

Den has a special project called “101 reason to love Ukraine” – what do you think of such an undertaking? Maybe you can name a couple of reasons to love Ukraine?

“On people, I should say since we are here at the American Embassy, I can’t help but name Sikorsky who, of course, is somebody from Kyiv, who has made a huge mark on America and American technology. Generally what I have been most impressed by so far is the people. I have had a wonderfully warm reception. You can’t help but be impressed by hospitality, the cultural richness of this society. I count that as a highlight. It is also a beautiful country. I saw that in my second week in the office, when I traveled to Crimea to meet with the President, much of which looks like my home in California. But really I am very interested to travel all over the country and to see the incredible resources and the fantastic people that you have.”

When I have interview with former ambassador John Tefft he told me that he used to get 5 e-mails with you in a day. What have you asked him?

“Yes. Actually I will share a secret. After I have moved out of my house in Washington DC, I was living with my family at a hotel in Northern Virginia. It was the same hotel that Ambassador Tefft was in. So we walked our dogs together and we had lots and lots of conversations. And he impressed upon me the incredibly warm feelings that he has from his time in Kyiv and the incredible importance that he saw behind this particular moment in the country’s history. We, America, have made a 22-year investment in our bilateral relationship with Ukraine. But we are coming up on an incredibly important period now as we look towards the Vilnius summit and the decisions that will be made around the Association Agreement. So, we talked a lot about these issues.”

You’ve said you intend to experiment with various social networks – Twitter, Facebook – and a blog in order to explain American policy and to understand problems and expectations of Ukrainians. Which of the received questions and comments from our citizens strike you most?

“Very-very thoughtful questions. The most inspiring conversations I have had in Ukraine have been with the young people. There are so many impressive inquisitive inspiring young people in this country today. It gives me a great deal of hope about Ukraine’s future. I am focused on the social media: Twitter, Facebook, the videoblog – as a way to better connect with that generation who usually does not read a newspaper – they are getting their information in different ways. Some of the questions are about visas and routine issues. But a lot of them are also about America and what does America seek. I hope you saw the video that we did for Independence Day which has gotten many-many views. But what was so interesting to me was the warmth towards America in many of the comments. But also the questions that emerged in comment strings about what is America’s agenda in Ukraine. And I can be very clear: America’s agenda in Ukraine is to help Ukraine achieve its vision as a modern prosperous democratic European state. A lot of the questions focused around these issues. I am going to answer as many of them as I can – some on video, some just on the Facebook, but we will be very engaged across these different channels.”

Do you agree with Christopher Hill about the role of twitter diplomacy? He recently wrote an article by this name for Project Syndicate.

“I have not read Ambassador Hill’s article, but I will take a look at it. I will be very honest with you. I think sometimes there are not enough characters. Diplomacy, international relations involve long abstract concepts. And sometimes that does not fit well into the characters of a Twitter massage. But if it helps to have direct connection, I will want to pursue it.”

By Mykola SIRUK, The Day

Barbarism with a Human Face

Slavoj Žižek

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n09/slavoj-zizek/barbarism-with-a-human-face

Again and again in television reports on the mass protests in Kiev against the Yanukovich government, we saw images of protesters tearing down statues of Lenin. It was an easy way to demonstrate anger: the statues functioned as a symbol of Soviet oppression, and Putin’s Russia is perceived as continuing the Soviet policy of Russian domination of its neighbours. Bear in mind that it was only in 1956 that Lenin’s statues started to proliferate throughout the Soviet Union: until then, statues of Stalin were much more common. But after Krushchev’s ‘secret’ denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, Stalin’s statues were replaced en masse by Lenin’s: Lenin was literally a stand-in for Stalin. This was made equally clear by a change made in 1962 to the masthead of Pravda. Until then, at the top left-hand corner of the front page, there had been a drawing of two profiles, Lenin’s and Stalin’s, side by side. Shortly after the 22nd Congress publicly rejected Stalin, his profile wasn’t merely removed but replaced with a second profile of Lenin: now there were two identical Lenins printed side by side. In a way, this weird repetition made Stalin more present in his absence than ever.

There was nonetheless a historical irony in watching Ukrainians tearing down Lenin’s statues as a sign of their will to break with Soviet domination and assert their national sovereignty. The golden era of Ukrainian national identity was not tsarist Russia – where Ukrainian national self-assertion was thwarted – but the first decade of the Soviet Union, when Soviet policy in a Ukraine exhausted by war and famine was ‘indigenisation’. Ukrainian culture and language were revived, and rights to healthcare, education and social security introduced. Indigenisation followed the principles formulated by Lenin in quite unambiguous terms:

The proletariat cannot but fight against the forcible retention of the oppressed nations within the boundaries of a given state, and this is exactly what the struggle for the right of self-determination means. The proletariat must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and for the nations that ‘its own’ nation oppresses. Unless it does this, proletarian internationalism will remain a meaningless phrase; mutual confidence and class solidarity between the workers of the oppressing and oppressed nations will be impossible.

Lenin remained faithful to this position to the end: immediately after the October Revolution, when Rosa Luxembourg argued that small nations should be given full sovereignty only if progressive forces would predominate in the new state, Lenin was in favour of an unconditional right to secede.

In his last struggle against Stalin’s project for a centralised Soviet Union, Lenin again advocated the unconditional right of small nations to secede (in this case, Georgia was at stake), insisting on the full sovereignty of the national entities that composed the Soviet state – no wonder that, on 27 September 1922, in a letter to the Politburo, Stalin accused Lenin of ‘national liberalism’. The direction in which Stalin was already heading is clear from his proposal that the government of Soviet Russia should also be the government of the other five republics (Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia):

If the present decision is confirmed by the Central Committee of the RCP, it will not be made public, but communicated to the Central Committees of the Republics for circulation among the Soviet organs, the Central Executive Committees or the Congresses of the Soviets of the said Republics before the convocation of the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets, where it will be declared to be the wish of these Republics.

The interaction of the higher authority, the Central Committee, with its base was thus abolished: the higher authority now simply imposed its will. To add insult to injury, the Central Committee decided what the base would ask the higher authority to enact, as if it were its own wish. In the most conspicuous case, in 1939, the three Baltic states asked to join the Soviet Union, which granted their wish. In all this, Stalin was returning to pre-Revolutionary tsarist policy: Russia’s colonisation of Siberia in the 17th century and Muslim Asia in the 19th was no longer condemned as imperialist expansion, but celebrated for setting these traditional societies on the path of progressive modernisation. Putin’s foreign policy is a clear continuation of the tsarist-Stalinist line. After the Russian Revolution, according to Putin, the Bolsheviks did serious damage to Russia’s interests: ‘The Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large sections of the historical south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic make-up of the population, and today these areas form the south-east of Ukraine.’

No wonder Stalin’s portraits are on show again at military parades and public celebrations, while Lenin has been obliterated. In an opinion poll carried out in 2008 by the Rossiya TV station, Stalin was voted the third greatest Russian of all time, with half a million votes. Lenin came in a distant sixth. Stalin is celebrated not as a Communist but as a restorer of Russian greatness after Lenin’s anti-patriotic ‘deviation’. Putin recently used the term Novorossiya (‘New Russia’) for the seven south-eastern oblasts of Ukraine, resuscitating a term last used in 1917.

But the Leninist undercurrent, though repressed, persisted in the Communist underground opposition to Stalin. Long before Solzhenitsyn, as Christopher Hitchens wrote in 2011, ‘the crucial questions about the Gulag were being asked by left oppositionists, from Boris Souvarine to Victor Serge to C.L.R. James, in real time and at great peril. Those courageous and prescient heretics have been somewhat written out of history (they expected far worse than that, and often received it).’ This internal dissent was a natural part of the Communist movement, in clear contrast to fascism. ‘There were no dissidents in the Nazi Party,’ Hitchens went on, ‘risking their lives on the proposition that the Führer had betrayed the true essence of National Socialism.’ Precisely because of this tension at the heart of the Communist movement, the most dangerous place to be at the time of the 1930s purges was at the top of the nomenklatura: in the space of a couple of years, 80 per cent of the Central Committee and the Red Army leadership were shot. Another sign of dissent could be detected in the last days of ‘really existing socialism’, when protesting crowds sang official songs, including national anthems, to remind the powers of their unfulfilled promises. In the GDR, by contrast, between the early 1970s and 1989, to sing the national anthem in public was a criminal offence: its words (‘Deutschland einig Vaterland’, ‘Germany, the united Fatherland’) didn’t fit with the idea of East Germany as a new socialist nation.

The resurgence of Russian nationalism has caused certain historical events to be rewritten. A recent biopic, Andrei Kravchuk’s Admiral, celebrates the life of Aleksandr Kolchak, the White commander who governed Siberia between 1918 and 1920. But it’s worth remembering the totalitarian potential, as well as the outright brutality, of the White counter-revolutionary forces during this period. Had the Whites won the Civil War, Hitchens writes, ‘the common word for fascism would have been a Russian one, not an Italian one … Major General William Graves, who commanded the American Expeditionary Force during the 1918 invasion of Siberia (an event thoroughly airbrushed from all American textbooks), wrote in his memoirs about the pervasive, lethal anti-Semitism that dominated the Russian right wing and added: “I doubt if history will show any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be committed so safely, and with less danger of punishment, than in Siberia during the reign of Admiral Kolchak.”’

The entire European neo-fascist right (in Hungary, France, Italy, Serbia) firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, giving the lie to the official Russian presentation of the Crimean referendum as a choice between Russian democracy and Ukrainian fascism. The events in Ukraine – the massive protests that toppled Yanukovich and his gang – should be understood as a defence against the dark legacy resuscitated by Putin. The protests were triggered by the Ukrainian government’s decision to prioritise good relations with Russia over the integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Predictably, many anti-imperialist leftists reacted to the news by patronising the Ukrainians: how deluded they are still to idealise Europe, not to be able to see that joining the EU would just make Ukraine an economic colony of Western Europe, sooner or later to go the same way as Greece. In fact, Ukrainians are far from blind about the reality of the EU. They are fully aware of its troubles and disparities: their message is simply that their own situation is much worse. Europe may have problems, but they are a rich man’s problems.

Should we, then, simply support the Ukrainian side in the conflict? There is a ‘Leninist’ reason to do so. In Lenin’s very last writings, long after he renounced the utopia ofState and Revolution, he explored the idea of a modest, ‘realistic’ project for Bolshevism. Because of the economic underdevelopment and cultural backwardness of the Russian masses, he argues, there is no way for Russia to ‘pass directly to socialism’: all that Soviet power can do is to combine the moderate politics of ‘state capitalism’ with the intense cultural education of the peasant masses – not the brainwashing of propaganda, but a patient, gradual imposition of civilised standards. Facts and figures revealed ‘what a vast amount of urgent spadework we still have to do to reach the standard of an ordinary West European civilised country … We must bear in mind the semi-Asiatic ignorance from which we have not yet extricated ourselves.’ Can we think of the Ukrainian protesters’ reference to Europe as a sign that their goal, too, is ‘to reach the standard of an ordinary Western European civilised country’?

But here things quickly get complicated. What, exactly, does the ‘Europe’ the Ukrainian protesters are referring to stand for? It can’t be reduced to a single idea: it spans nationalist and even fascist elements but extends also to the idea of what Etienne Balibar calls égaliberté, freedom-in-equality, the unique contribution of Europe to the global political imaginary, even if it is in practice today mostly betrayed by European institutions and citizens themselves. Between these two poles, there is also a naive trust in the value of European liberal-democratic capitalism. Europe can see in the Ukrainian protests its own best and worst sides, its emancipatory universalism as well as its dark xenophobia.

Let’s begin with the dark xenophobia. The Ukrainian nationalist right is one instance of what is going on today from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from Central Africa to India: ethnic and religious passions are exploding, and Enlightenment values receding. These passions have always been there, lurking; what’s new is the outright shamelessness of their display. Imagine a society which has fully integrated into itself the great modern axioms of freedom, equality, the right to education and healthcare for all its members, and in which racism and sexism have been rendered unacceptable and ridiculous. But then imagine that, step by step, although the society continues to pay lip service to these axioms, they are de facto deprived of their substance. Here is an example from very recent European history: in the summer of 2012, Viktor Orbán, the right-wing Hungarian prime minister, declared that a new economic system was needed in Central Europe. ‘Let us hope,’ he said, ‘that God will help us and we will not have to invent a new type of political system instead of democracy that would need to be introduced for the sake of economic survival … Co-operation is a question of force, not of intention. Perhaps there are countries where things don’t work that way, for example in the Scandinavian countries, but such a half-Asiatic rag-tag people as we are can unite only if there is force.’

The irony of these words wasn’t lost on some old Hungarian dissidents: when the Soviet army moved into Budapest to crush the 1956 uprising, the message repeatedly sent by the beleaguered Hungarian leaders to the West was that they were defending Europe against the Asiatic communists. Now, after the collapse of communism, the Christian-conservative government paints as its main enemy the multicultural consumerist liberal democracy for which today’s Western Europe stands. Orbán has already expressed his sympathy for ‘capitalism with Asian values’; if the European pressure on Orbán continues, we can easily imagine him sending a message to the East: ‘We are defending Asia here!’

Today’s anti-immigrant populism has replaced direct barbarism with a barbarism that has a human face. It enacts a regression from the Christian ethic of ‘love thy neighbour’ back to the pagan privileging of the tribe over the barbarian Other. Even as it represents itself as a defence of Christian values, it is in fact the greatest threat to the Christian legacy. ‘Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity,’ G.K. Chesterton wrote a hundred years ago, ‘end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church … The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them.’ Doesn’t the same hold for the advocates of religion too? Fanatical defenders of religion start out attacking contemporary secular culture; it’s no surprise when they end up forsaking any meaningful religious experience. In a similar way, many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they end up flinging away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. The ‘terrorists’ may be ready to wreck this world for love of another, but the warriors on terror are just as ready to wreck their own democratic world out of hatred for the Muslim other. Some of them love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture to defend it. The defenders of Europe against the immigrant threat are doing much the same. In their zeal to protect the Judeo-Christian legacy, they are ready to forsake what is most important in that legacy. The anti-immigrant defenders of Europe, not the notional crowds of immigrants waiting to invade it, are the true threat to Europe.

One of the signs of this regression is a request often heard on the new European right for a more ‘balanced’ view of the two ‘extremisms’, the right and the left. We are repeatedly told that one should treat the extreme left (communism) the same way that Europe after the Second World War treated the extreme right (the defeated fascists). But in reality there is no balance here: the equation of fascism and communism secretly privileges fascism. Thus the right are heard to argue that fascism copied communism: before becoming a fascist, Mussolini was a socialist; Hitler, too, was a National Socialist; concentration camps and genocidal violence were features of the Soviet Union a decade before Nazis resorted to them; the annihilation of the Jews has a clear precedent in the annihilation of the class enemy, etc. The point of these arguments is to assert that a moderate fascism was a justified response to the communist threat (a point made long ago by Ernst Nolte in his defence of Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism). In Slovenia, the right is advocating the rehabilitation of the anti-communist Home Guard which fought the partisans during the Second World War: they made the difficult choice to collaborate with the Nazis in order to thwart the much greater evil of communism.

Mainstream liberals tell us that when basic democratic values are under threat from ethnic or religious fundamentalists, we should unite behind the liberal-democratic agenda, save what can be saved, and put aside dreams of more radical social transformation. But there is a fatal flaw in this call for solidarity: it ignores the way in which liberalism and fundamentalism are caught in a vicious cycle. It is the aggressive attempt to export liberal permissiveness that causes fundamentalism to fight back vehemently and assert itself. When we hear today’s politicians offering us a choice between liberal freedom and fundamentalist oppression, and triumphantly asking the rhetorical question, ‘Do you want women to be excluded from public life and deprived of their rights? Do you want every critic of religion to be put to death?’, what should make us suspicious is the very self-evidence of the answer: who would want that? The problem is that liberal universalism has long since lost its innocence. What Max Horkheimer said about capitalism and fascism in the 1930s applies in a different context today: those who don’t want to criticise liberal democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.

What of the fate of the liberal-democratic capitalist European dream in Ukraine? It isn’t clear what awaits Ukraine within the EU. I’ve often mentioned a well-known joke from the last decade of the Soviet Union, but it couldn’t be more apposite. Rabinovitch, a Jew, wants to emigrate. The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him why, and Rabinovitch answers: ‘Two reasons. The first is that I’m afraid the Communists will lose power in the Soviet Union, and the new power will put all the blame for the Communists’ crimes on us, the Jews.’ ‘But this is pure nonsense,’ the bureaucrat interrupts, ‘nothing can change in the Soviet Union, the power of the Communists will last for ever!’ ‘Well,’ Rabinovitch replies, ‘that’s my second reason.’ Imagine the equivalent exchange between a Ukrainian and an EU administrator. The Ukrainian complains: ‘There are two reasons we are panicking here in Ukraine. First, we’re afraid that under Russian pressure the EU will abandon us and let our economy collapse.’ The EU administrator interrupts: ‘But you can trust us, we won’t abandon you. In fact, we’ll make sure we take charge of your country and tell you what to do!’ ‘Well,’ the Ukrainian replies, ‘that’s my second reason.’ The issue isn’t whether Ukraine is worthy of Europe, and good enough to enter the EU, but whether today’s Europe can meet the aspirations of the Ukrainians. If Ukraine ends up with a mixture of ethnic fundamentalism and liberal capitalism, with oligarchs pulling the strings, it will be as European as Russia (or Hungary) is today. (Too little attention is drawn to the role played by the various groups of oligarchs – the ‘pro-Russian’ ones and the ‘pro-Western’ ones – in the events in Ukraine.)

Some political commentators claim that the EU hasn’t given Ukraine enough support in its conflict with Russia, that the EU response to the Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea was half-hearted. But there is another kind of support which has been even more conspicuously absent: the proposal of any feasible strategy for breaking the deadlock. Europe will be in no position to offer such a strategy until it renews its pledge to the emancipatory core of its history. Only by leaving behind the decaying corpse of the old Europe can we keep the European legacy of égaliberté alive. It is not the Ukrainians who should learn from Europe: Europe has to learn to live up to the dream that motivated the protesters on the Maidan. The lesson that frightened liberals should learn is that only a more radical left can save what is worth saving in the liberal legacy today.

The Maidan protesters were heroes, but the true fight – the fight for what the new Ukraine will be – begins now, and it will be much tougher than the fight against Putin’s intervention. A new and riskier heroism will be needed. It has been shown already by those Russians who oppose the nationalist passion of their own country and denounce it as a tool of power. It’s time for the basic solidarity of Ukrainians and Russians to be asserted, and the very terms of the conflict rejected. The next step is a public display of fraternity, with organisational networks established between Ukrainian political activists and the Russian opposition to Putin’s regime. This may sound utopian, but it is only such thinking that can confer on the protests a truly emancipatory dimension. Otherwise, we will be left with a conflict of nationalist passions manipulated by oligarchs. Such geopolitical games are of no interest whatever to authentic emancipatory politics.

25 April

Americans' ignorance of Europe

http://themetapicture.com/americans-were-asked-to-place-european-countries-on-a-map/





see more at:
http://themetapicture.com/americans-were-asked-to-place-european-countries-on-a-map/