Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 24 – It is
notoriously easier to spark a protest movement than to control its direction thereafter
or to ensure that it does not become a model for others one does not want to be
involved. That risk is now on display in
eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow activists are not only seeking to undermine
Kyiv’s control but also attacking their own oligarchs.
Moscow has actively promoted and
organized protests in eastern Ukraine against the authorities in Kyiv as part
of its effort to weaken and dismember that country, but the Kremlin is likely
to be less pleased by one direction these protests are taking: attacks on their
own oligarchs, a group with which the Kremlin has sought to work and on which
it relies in Russia itself.
As Aleksey Verkhoyantsev of “Svobodnaya
pressa” noted yesterday, “experts have long predicted that the political crisis
in Ukraine would soon acquire a social dimension” and that the mixing of these
two elements “could lead to unpredictable [and potentially uncontrollable] consequences”
(http://svpressa.ru/politic/article/86185/).
Boris Shmelyov,
an expert at the Moscow Institute of Economics and a professor at the Russian
Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, told him that one of the reasons for this
is that “for the majority of citizens of Ukraine living in the South-East, the
term ‘federalization’ is not very well understood.”
The ordinary miner there isn’t
interested in such details, and consequently “now we see that the residents of
the Donbass are advancing social demands” which are both more understandable to
them and more explosive. As the situation in Greece shows, such demands will
only intensify as Kyiv seeks to meet the demands of the IMF.
Verkhoyantsev asked Shmelyov
directly: Could this movement escape the control “not only of Kyiv but of
Moscow as well?” Might the radicals “who today are calling for the creation of
peoples republics in the South-East refuse to recognize the power of the
oligarchs and, for example, nationalize the mines and other major enterprises?”
The Moscow economist did not respond
directly but said that dual power already exists in many parts of eastern
Ukraine but that real control is passing more or less quickly into the hands of
those opposed to Kyiv. The social dimension of the protests will only accelerate
this process, but at the same time, it will radicalize the anti-Kyiv forces.
“The dissatisfaction with the oligarchs in the
Donbass and Luhansk is great,” Shmelyov said. They are to blame for much of the
suffering of local workers. “Social anger is growing, and this will lead to a
conflict between the population and the owners of factories and mines.” And that in turn may lead the new powers to
nationalize those facilities.
Consequently, what we are seeing, he
continued, “is not only the increasing collapse of Ukrainian statehood and the
sharpening of regional conflicts in Ukraine. We are seeking the destruction of
that liberal-oligarchic model of social-economic development on which Ukraine
had been developing in recent years.”
Aleksandr Shatilov, a sociologist at Moscow’s
Finance University, agreed, adding only that the tensions between workers and
owners were growing not just in eastern Ukraine but throughout the
country. He predicted that it was quite
likely that there would be “a war not only against Kyiv but also against the
Ukrainian oligarchs.”
And Sergey Vasiltsov, a KPRF Duma
deputy who is director of the Center for Research on the Political Culture of
Russia, agreed as well and said that despite the problems workers have in
uniting, it is quite possible that demands for “’a state without oligarchs’”
would soon be sounding in Ukraine.
Vasiltsov said the solution was for
eastern Ukraine to become part of Russia because there is no place now in the
world for smaller states. They must be part of some larger one or the
satellites of some other.
It is certainly true that the
passions of the miners and workers in eastern Ukraine could at least in the short
term help Moscow to further undermine Kyiv. But their attacks on the oligarchs as
a group simultaneously pose a threat to the Kremlin because they strike at the
basis of the power of Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia.
And just as activists in three
Russian oblasts have asked Moscow to “invade” their regions so that they can
have the rights Putin has promised Crimea, so too some in the Russian
Federation may take away from this latest turn of events in Ukraine not just
the nationalist one the Kremlin has been promoting but a social and class one
as well.
To the extent that happens, Putin’s
Anschluss of Crimea and his continuing subversion of eastern Ukraine could have
serious blowback inside the Russian Federation, causing Russians to question the
rule of the wealthy and powerful and thinking about how much better it would be
for themselves if they could have “a state without oligarchs” too.
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