But the basic problems are still unresolved. This was graphically illustrated in early October when an uprising took place among the Crimean Tatars protesting the attitude of the local authorities to Tatar settlements.2 Kravchuk, in unison with the leadership of the Russian dominated Crimean Supreme Soviet, branded the protests "extremist", apparently to uphold this fragile alliance and keep the situation in the Crimea "governable". The risk that the legitimate national interests of the Crimean Tatars in this connection will be subordinated to other political interests is considerable.
In the economic sphere, the Kravchuk
The bureaucracy in session THIS month's Russian Congress of People's Deputies saw sharp disputes between Russia's President Boris Yeltsin and the Congress majority over how best to defend the interests of the country's ruling elites.
Yeltsin emphasizes the need for a severe economic rationalization programme which can win Western aid. To gain support for this break with the past he attempts to appeal to popular anti-bureaucratic sentiment. The Congress majority, defending a range of special interests, calls for support for existing industry and a more vigorous campaign to uphold Russia's domination over the former Soviet space. They are less concerned about Western public opinion.
After a series of defeats in Congress votes, Yeltsin threatened his opponents with a referendum to decide whether the government or the Congress should rule.
Despite the "democratic" arguments employed by both Yeltsin and his critics, their real social base is narrow and their methods necessarily authoritarian. The Congress itself is a remnant of the Gorbachev era packed full of apparatchiks.
Mass democratic movements capable of sustained anti-bureaucratic action have yet to emerge in the republics of the former Soviet Union; if one is to be formed it will have to appeal to the material interests of the great majority of the team has stopped short of implementing "shock therapy" on the lines employed by Gaidar in Russia. The approach to privatization has been more cautious and ambiguous, insofar as the workers and management retain a measure of control, while the initial onslaught on social gains was not as aggressive as in Russia. However, the freeing of all food prices by July and runaway inflation has caused a sharp drop in living standards and there is no sign that this decline is stopping.
When Kravchuk's new prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, addressed the Ukrai1. For an account of Russian relations with the CIS "near abroad" see "More Equal than the Others", in IV 237. 2. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars were deported by Stalin to Central Asia and Kazakhstan 23 in 1944 as a "collective punishment" for their alle ged collaboration with the Nazi occupation forces.
International Viewpoint # 241 • December 21, 1992
UKRAINE nian Supreme Soviet in November, he painted a picture ot an economy that was in the process of rapid disintegration:
"Within the first nine months of this year, the GNP of Ukraine has dropped by 18%, national income by 11.5%, the volume of industrial production by
19.7% and the output of consumer goods by 12%. Particularly disturbing is the reduction in the price of food: the production of meat has dropped by 24%, cheese production by 31% and of milk by 28%... The living standards of the people are declining disastrously. In the first half of this year, wholesale prices rose 15.6 times in Belarus, 14.6 times in
Russia but 22.3 times in Ukraine."3
Ukraine is in an extremely exposed position as trade relations with its partners in the former Soviet Union gradually shift to a hard currency basis, because it has to import much of its raw materials for its industry from abroad, and especially from Russia.
### Strained economic relations with Russia
Economic relations between Russia and Ukraine have also been strained.
While Russia, at least for a time, zealously obeyed the orders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about strict monetary control, Ukraine retained a looser credit policy. This was met with a series of counter-measures from Russia, including suspending all credits to Ukrainian enterprises in September.
In the end this was a major factor in Ukraine's decision to leave the rouble zone. Earlier this year, Ukraine had introduced the karbovanets coupons as as parallel currency to the rouble and on November 12 it became the sole legal tender. The Ukrainian karbovanets, however, has the dubious privilege of being even more "wooden" than the Russian rouble. The rouble is exchanging at about 450 to the dollar while the karbovanets trails behind at 650 to the
The karbovanets is only meant to be an intermediary step on the way to a full-fledged Ukrainian currency, the hryvna, but because of the generalized financial chaos, the introduction of the hryvna has been postponed several
The West and its institutions have adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the Ukrainian economic reforms. Most have refused to commit themselves, and the IMF has several times complained about the "hesitant" and "contradictory" nature of the reform. This recently prompted Kravchuk to warn that Ukraine may not 24 nuclear arms if no Western economic ratify the START Treaty on strategic and military aid is forthcoming.4
Meanwhile, on the domestic scene, the stakes seem to have been raised with the instalment in mid-October of the new premier Leonid Kuchma. A former director of the huge Yuzhmash arms manufacturer, Kuchma has been dubbed the "Ukrainian Volsky" (after the leader of Russia's industrial party and key opponent of radical free marketeer Gaidar). Kuchma is demanding wide-ranging powers to carry through a drastic
Izvestiya described the decision of the
Ukrainian Supreme Soviet to grant these powers under the headline "The Ukrainian government receives economic powers to introduce dictatorship over the economy". The government will be authorized to decide on "the legal regulation of property relations, business affairs, social and cultural development, customs and excise, scientific and technological policies, the financial system, taxation and state policy on wages and
The request for these powers was justified by Kuchma in the following manner: "we have to understand that people have been driven to a point where slogans about privatization, social demagogy and political speculations could spark a spontaneous mass uprising."5 But he did not present the Supreme Soviet with any concrete measures and by all accounts the medicine on offer will be a mixture of free market mechanisms
(included stepped-up privatization) and some support for state industry.
The granting of wide-ranging authority to Kuchma — to begin with until May 1993— is yet another sign of the slide towards increasingly authoritarian solutions; a tendency prevailing not only in Ukraine but in many of the post-Soviet states.
Criticism of the patriarch
President Kravchuk, who picked Kuchma, is himself a bonapartist figure "hovering above" the different parties; though even this "father of the country" is coming in for increasing criticism as conditions deteriorate.
The opposition forces, however, are heterogeneous and divided. The Rukh movement, which started out in 1989 as a broad national-democratic front, has undergone a de facto split. One faction, primarily based in Kiev and led by, among others Ivan Drach, has joined hands with the Kravchuk wing of the old ruling nomenklatura, while another faction, featuring Vyacheslav Chornovil and more traditionally nationalist elements from western Ukraine, maintain a rather more independent position.
Meanwhile a coalition of supporters of liberal economic reform came together in June to form the New Ukraine political movement. It is head is Volodymyr
Lanovy, a former minister of the economy, who is proposing a reform course
The Ukrainian Communist Party was dissolved in August 1991 by its former ideology secretary, Kravchuk himself.
There are today several organizations that claim to be the successors of this party: the All-Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks) and the Ukrainian Communist Party are small Stalinist groups, while the Union of Communists is somewhat broader, but still situating itself within the bureaucratic tradition of the former ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
By far the most important party with its origins in the Ukrainian CP is the
Ukrainian Socialist Party (USP). It may have some 30,000 members, but most of its leaders are former middle ranking party apparatchiks. The party is quite heterogeneous and draws eclectically on different traditions within social democracy, "Soviet communism" and Western Marxism.
In some of the big cities, such as Kiev,
Kharkhov and Odessa, there are groups of anarchists and left socialists, which are numerically much weaker than the ex-Communists. In general, however, these groups have experienced declining membership and influence since their prime in the perestroika period. Revival of workers movement
But at present, the workers' movement is the player with the biggest potential to alter the political situation in a progressive direction and thereby open up new possibilities for the left. The Ukrainian workers' movement has recently been showing new signs of life: in early September the Association of Free Trade Unions organized a strike of transport workers, with some miners joining in; and in mid-November miners in the Donetsk region struck for 24 hours against a law on the settling of labour disputes - struggle supported by other groups of workers.
Even if these signs of increasing resistance among the population are modest, the Kravchuk-Kuchma faction, dressed up in the new clothes of nationalism, could soon face growing opposition from a people tired of misery and empty promises. * 3. Izvestiya, November 19, 1992. 4. Reuters, November 16, 1992. 5. Izvestiya, Ibid.
National
rebirth
and
economic
reform
SERGEI KLIMOVSKY is a "veteran" of the Ukrainian left: he was a founder of the Socialist Workers Party of Left Forces and edited the short-lived journal Revolutsia, which attempted to create a common framework for the revolutionary left wing. In the interview published below he gives his appreciation of the main developments in Ukrainian politics after the demise of the Soviet Union. The interview was conducted in Kiev by Poul Funder Larsen.
HAT is the main thrust of the economic reform carried out by
Kravchuk and his government?
Does it envisage the same kind of
IMF-style monetary policies as the one introduced by Yeltsin in
Russia?
In my opinion there is no major difference as regards the substance of the reforms in Russia and Ukraine. Kravchuk, however, does not proceed as quickly as Yeltsin and he is apparently meeting less resistance on the side of the opposition. One cannot say that the course of Kravchuk is aimed simply at the restoration of capitalism; it is rather an attempt at maintaining the old totalitarian structures under new conditions and keeping control over the key sectors of the economy, while granting some freedom to private entrepreneurs.
So far, privatization has been going very slowly, though it is underway. But the problem is that there is no "national" Ukrainian capital which can take part in large-scale privatization of state enterprises even if they are sold off cheap. Kravchuk -like the leaders of most other republics -is hoping for massive investments from the West, but preferably in the form of credits for the state than for specific enterprises.
By all accounts, however, these hopes are not justified. There are obviously some enterprises that may be sold to foreign capital, but this will be the exception either out of dire economic necessity or because of shady deals between the top layers of the bureaucracy and Western investors.
As in Poland, efforts are made to show that the state enterprises cannot compete with the private ones, and thereby discredit the very notion of state ownership. But the problems for the state enterprises are to a large extent a result of the break down of economic ties among the republics after the disintegration of the Soviet Union -meaning for Ukraine that it has lost its former markets, particularly in Russia.
It is clear that the perspective of an integration of Ukraine into the capitalist world market presupposes a structural change of the Ukrainian economy that would reduce it to a secondarv position. Many enter prises will either have to close or adapt to the role of appendages of Western companies. • How is the national question as posed in Ukraine linked to the issue of the economic reform?
In a sense, the market reforms of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Kravchuk have been carried under the banner of a return to the order that existed before October 1917with a glance at contemporary experiences in the West. There is in the Russian reforms a certain connection back to the
"Westernizers" of the last century who wanted to draw on the experience of Western capitalism.
In Ukraine and the other non-Russian republics the ideological basis for the implementation of the reforms is found in nationalism and the idea of national rebir-
UKRAINE th. The old party- and state-bureaucracy has with few exceptions embraced these ideas, and Kravchuk is the political expression of this layer. The elite formerly basing its rule on "communist" ideas is now using Ukrainian history in a revised and partly falsified way to preserve its position under the new conditions.
Rukh, which initially played the role of a democratic movement supporting the gradual reorganization of the Soviet Union, has for now lost its position as a major player in Ukrainian politics, though it is still one of the biggest formations in Ukraine.
In a way, Rukh has followed the trajectory of the Polish Solidarnosc. Originally, there were two main wings of Rukh - one nationalist and one democratic. Presently the nationalist wing has taken the lead, propagating a more orthodox version of Ukrainian nationalism than did the democrats.
After the August 1991 coup, a paradoxical situation arose in Ukraine, because there was no genuine opposition left. Rukh, which until then had acted as a special form of parliamentary opposition realigned itself with Kravchuk. Indeed, Kravchuk turned Rukh into a kind of presidential party.
• What does the weakness of the popular movements mean for the possibility of building a socialist alternative independent of the old apparatus and the various ex-
Communist groups who are presently the main leftwing"
formations?
In the ex-Soviet Union and most parts of
Eastern Europe we will see protracted stagnation, where rapid upheavals are unlikely. Instead there will be long-drawn out struggles both among former republics and inside the republics between different political tendencies representing the bureaucracy and the emergent bourgeoisie.
The economic deterioration will inevitably bring about the conditions for social 25 explosions, but the state apparatus has
International Viewpoint # 241 • December 21, 1992
UKRAINE experience in defusing such social tensions, and may be successful in doing so for a while. However, as the idea of buil ding capitalism in the ex-USSR is increasingly discredited (and depending on how fast this happens) a peculiar myth about the "golden age" of the USSR is likely to develop on the one hand, while on the other there will be a renewed search for leftwing alternatives.
We will soon see worker protests of a more or less spontaneous character, which in the present situation will not decisively influence the restructuring of society. The main political question is to organize these outbursts and make the people the subject of political change. This presupposes a political organization of a new type which can unite these forces and realize their potential. • Is there any possibility of collaboration between the small revolutionary leftwing groups and parts of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, which is the main successor to the former Communist party?
The SPU is right now primarily trying to re-establish the old links of the outlawed CP and to secure itself an economic and organizational basis. This is their first step in preparing for the next parliamentary elections.
After a period with openly nationalist forces — or at least forces using nationalist phraseology - in power, and the Socialist Party as the main opposition force, it is very possible that they could do well in general elections and even win them.!
However, this would not mean a qualitative change in the situation. Rather, it would mean an abandonment of perhaps the most extreme expressions of nationalist ideology and a continuation of the current Kravchuk reforms with a bit more of a "human face". * 1. This interview was conducted before the recent victory of the ex-CP in Lithuania headed by Brazauskas - a development with many affinities to the scenario described by Klimovsky genuine political force.
One has to add two more factors, which were not specific to the Ukrainian situation. Firstly, the fact that the CPSU, in spite of its inclination towards social reformism. was laying claim to a "socialist orientation", which forced all leftwing groups to constantly dissociate themselves from it, or, as the anarchists did, to stand up for openly communist positions - leading to unavoidable contradictions and the loss of an independent profile and perspective.
Secondly, in comparison with the preceding period, the restructuring of post-Stalinist society was carried out not under the banner of a return to the original, pure Marxism and a correct understanding of Lenin — as was the case in the 1985-86 period — but under the slogan of restoring the order of the pre-October revolution period in harmony with nationalism in the republics.
In general, the attempts by different small, independent groups to return to "classical Marxism" were soon exhausted, and they had either to give up or to fuse organizationally with groups inside the
The impasse of the