Commentary: The lessons of Ukraine, or, how to avoid fascism and violence

Reflections on the recent developments in
Ukraine and their connection to current affairs in the Czech Republic.

Whoever learns of what is happening in Ukraine
through the Czech media, with a few honorable exceptions, must have the feeling
that the revolution there is a fight of good against evil, a fight for democracy,
European values and freedom, and also a fight for capitalism, which is, so to speak, firmly guarded by a strong wall of NATO troops.
Czech viewers are being told that this is basically our Velvet Revolution minus
Havel, a fight for the freedom of all Ukrainians and the independence of their
country from Putin’s Russia, while the reality, of course, is quite different.

Whoever reads the Russian media coverage of
Ukraine, on the other hand, gets the feeling that these recent events are a
putsch conducted by fascist street-fighters and football hooligans paid by the
opposition parties (who are supported by the governments of Germany, Poland,
other European countries and the United States) to battle Ukrainian police
units – essentially yet another battle between good and evil, the aim of which
is to bring Ukraine into the EU and its army into NATO, to destroy its industry,
and to exploit its market as a dumping ground for Western goods that are past
their sell-by date. While this Russian view can be somewhat inspirational for
the consumers of an exclusively Western viewpoint, reality is, of course,
completely different from this account as well.

Fear in the Crimea

Whoever tries to follow the events in Ukraine
directly, not just from the reporting by independent local media, but also from
the direct eyewitness accounts of its population, the opponents of and participants
in the anti-government unrest, its artists, political scientists and independent
figures, as well as accounts from the completely ordinary people in various
parts of the country, will probably be well and truly confused. The reality of
contemporary Ukraine is inconceivably multilayered, and those layers often
contradict one another and are in a rapid process of transformation.

It is basically the case, for example, that the
west and center of the country (which is economically and socially more
problematic, more aware of Ukraine as an independent nation, and historically
more pro-Western) has different priorities than the east and south of the country
(which is more diverse in terms of nationality, more industrialized, and more
economically tied to Russia). However, that does not mean all the demonstrators
in Kiev come from the west of the country, although the Crimean Parliamentary
declaration that the citizens of Crimea fundamentally reject the idea of living
in a Banderite, Nazi Ukraine does have the support of the vast majority of
those living on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (the Crimean
Tatars, Crimean Turks, Jews, Russians and dozens of other nationalities) who have
already experienced the practices of “Ukrainianization”
first-hand.

It can’t go on like this

The protests that began last fall as a relatively
insignificant demonstration by several hundred (or at the most 2 000) promoters
of the opposition political parties were, at their core, a harmless reaction by
the Kiev intelligentsia to President Yanukovich’s refusal to sign an
association agreement with the EU. After his Berkut special police units
brutally beat up the students involved, the protests grew into an
out-of-control expression of outrage by more than 100 000 people angered
by this police brutality against defenseless, peaceful, unarmed young people.

This was no longer about accession to the European
Union (which is considered a dubious proposition by half of the Ukrainian
population) but about the fact that this was the last straw when it came to
people’s patience with the regime. The current regime is personified by
President Yanukovich and his “family”, an inner circle of hand-picked allies
whose despotic power and extensive reach affects all areas of Ukrainian life by
either corrupting or terrorizing the people.

Yanukovich next sparked a fundamentally
exponential increase in this sudden hatred for his regime (which had been
tolerated for years) when he used Parliament, which he controls, to adopt a
package of laws criminalizing all protest activities, including mere
participation in a demonstration. It was precisely this resistance to
Yanukovich that expanded into unprecedented dimensions, affecting various
layers of society and bringing them together in a desperate attempt at a
revolution led by the unifying vision that “it can’t go on like this – come what may, we will either change this or
if not, let God’s will be done.”

News reports surfaced of the beating and torture
of randomly arrested demonstrators, often peace-loving protest participants. The
first fatalities of the situation made it even more dramatic and exacerbated.

Revolutionary solidarity

It is impossible to ignore the fact that the vast
majority of the revolutionaries on Independence Square have created a colorful, diverse,
even motley society where age, political convictions and social position are not
determining factors. At the barricades in the city center there is strict discipline and
order – no one is allowed to drink alcohol and everyone must obey the orders of
the commanders.

Special volunteer brigades work in shifts,
constantly cooking and distributing hot food and tea, supplying the fighters
with warm clothing, maintaining the “fire-pits”, providing medical services,
and supplying not only food, water and wood, but fireworks, fuel, the raw
materials for Molotov cocktail production, and shields. A general euphoria
predominates, the hope that “once we win, things will be better” – as does fear
of the regime’s reprisals.

One must humbly pay one’s respects to the
explosion of bravery and civil disobedience being experienced these days by
most Ukrainians, as it provokes a painful contrast to the civic passivity that
tolerates the practices of our own oligarchs here in the Czech Republic, who
are similar to those in the Yanukovich family in many respects. Be that as it may, the lessons of the Ukrainian mass rebellion also
have a bitter, cautionary flavor.

With Hitler on their crests

Concerns are rising that these angry, spontaneous
protests against the further asset-stripping and pilfering of Ukraine by the
small group of oligarchs in power will be exploited by nationalist, ultra-right
political forces that are gaining more and more sympathy from the
radically-inclined segment of society with each day of fighting on the
barricades, as well as exercising actual power in the streets. These people are
putting themselves forward as “the only ones determined to bring down
Yanukovich and restore order to the country.”

The military/political Right Sector group, which
mainly brings together radicals from various nationalistic groups (such as Patriots
of Ukraine, Stepan Bandera’s Trident, Ukrainian Nationalists, or White Hammer)
including football hooligans, comprises the hard core of the street-fighters on
Hruševský Street. In the eyes of many Ukrainians, these people have been
transformed from feared hooligans into revolutionary heroes.

This is happening under the political patronage
of the ultra-nationalist, xenophobic Freedom Party and its leader, Oleh Tyahnybok; the party has been categorized as
an extremist, nationalistic organization that identifies with the ideology of
German National Socialism (see the annual report of the Steven Roth Institute
for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism) and that also espouses
the legacy of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists by annually
celebrating the wartime establishment of the Ukrainian division of the Waffen
SS. The party has previously made it onto municipal councils in several western
areas of the country and is seated in Parliament.

While many Ukrainian fascists and nationalists
now manning the barricades call such claims the “Trojan horse” of Yanukovich’s
propaganda, it is the case that a four-meter-square portrait of Stepan Bandera was
hung over the entrance to Kiev City Hall, while there are droves of black
Banderite banners and blue flags with the yellow logo of Freedom on the barricades,
and some fighters are wearing crests on their helmets such as the logo of the
SS, "wolf-hook" runes
similar to Nazi swastikas, or the infamous neo-Nazi code-numbers of 14 (for American
white nationalist David Lane’s Fourteen Words – "We must secure the
existence of our people and a future for White children") and 88 (for “Heil
Hitler”). Helmets and uniforms that are strikingly similar to Nazi uniforms are
also a big hit there.

The other guys are the fascists

On the other hand, most of the
demonstrators who are ultra-radical nationalists also distance themselves from
any mentions of or questions about a link to fascist forces, responding
irritatedly with claims that Yanukovich and his “family” are the “real”
fascists, as are the members of the Berkut police units, whose methods are on a
par with the fascists’. This is not just about brutality when beating up
defenseless students or pressure and terror against all of Yanukovich’s
ideological opponents, but also, for example, about his aggressive hatred
toward sexual minorities – Yanukovich’s promoters often call efforts to
integrate Ukraine into Europe the “dictatorship of Jew-rule by European gays.”

The tragedy is that the cumulative violence and
felonious methods employed in the fighting (the armed robbery and
kidnapping of the “enemy”, who is beaten, tortured and, in more than one case, slaughtered)
is leading to growing brutality on both sides and increasing concerns that a
real civil war will break out. That, of course, could grow into a conflict
between the superpowers should the EU and USA start supporting one side and
Russia the other.

The rise of the nationalists in Ukraine is
prompting reactions from all over the country as well as from abroad. In the
western city of Uzhhorod, for example,
several hundred Ruthenians and members of other minority nationalities are
demonstrating against the Galician nationalist radicals who want to occupy the
local seat of power.

The minorities are concerned about the rise of hatred against “anyone
not Ukrainian”. Similar concerns are being heard from the Crimea and other
areas to the east and south where Crimean Tatars, Russians, and dozens of other
nationalities live in addition to Ukrainians.

This unrest and the active, militant engagement
of the ultra-nationalists in it are also sparking reactions of admiration from
European right-wing extremists. The Russian Nazi group Wotan Jugend, which has branches
in the Czech Republic and Ukraine, has repeatedly said that the engagement of
rightist radicals on the barricades in Kiev is an irreplaceable lesson for the
future of the whole European neo-Nazi scene.

Ukraine as a lesson

When watching the dramatic footage from Ukraine,
many here in the Czech Republic reassure themselves that it’s all happening “far
away to the east” where people have a “different mentality” and “different
problems”, that the conflict basically doesn’t concern us much. The Czech media
occupy a similar position.

The reality, however, is that Ukraine’s original
catastrophe was that its oligarchy has asset-stripped and pilfered its coffers,
leading most of its population into poverty and social privation. The “tunneling”
of the country, paradoxically, did not begin with the Yanukovich “family”, but
with the oligarchic clans of Yulia Timoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko, who were, of course, pro-European and
pro-Western in their foreign policy.

It is precisely the economic crisis and social
exclusion that have so harshly impacted all levels of Ukrainian society,
spawning an abrupt rise in public favor for fascist propaganda and nationalist
forces. In the Czech Republic too, forces that are openly nationalistic and
xenophobic are gaining more and more public support.

We should learn two lessons from
the Ukrainian protests: To follow the example of the civic engagement and
courage with which the Ukrainians have stood up to their regime, and to prevent
our unnecessary passivity from creating space for the rise of our own Czech
ultra-nationalists, who are always prepared to show people who is to blame
(often scapegoats such as national, political, religious or sexual minorities)
and to offer them swift justice in the name of the nation.