It’s been a while since I posted anything new on this blog. Since I’ve just returned (to western Europe, at least) from a trip to Ukraine, and since I’ve had a few requests to share my impressions, here they are. This is not a scholarly analysis, and it avoids the vigorous debates going on among political and sociological observers — which, from the outside, may appear as “glass half full, glass half empty” polemics. It is just a general overview rooted in my years of visiting this country.
Nihilist vs. Kagarlitsky
22 04 2015Russophone leftists Nihilist.li provide a “take-down” of prominent Russian left-wing intellectual Boris Kagarlitsky, translated here. Kagarlitsky has been an influential voice on Western Left understandings of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Nihilist arose from the ashes of Left Affair (Liva Sprava).
Comments : 11 Comments »
Categories : Maidan, Ukrainian Left politics
Kroker & Weinstein: Maidan as third force
9 03 2015With their talk of supernovas, black holes, and event-horizons, Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein’s “Maidan, Caliphate, and Code: Theorizing Power and Resistance in the 21st Century” is not exactly social science in any recognizable form. Read as poetry, however, its rendition of the state of affairs in and between Ukraine and Russia is provocative and worth reading.
Comments : 13 Comments »
Categories : Maidan
CSR: Sociological profile of protests
2 08 2014The Center for Society Research has released its extensive report analyzing protests taking place in Ukraine between November 21 of last year and February 23, 2014. The report, according to its authors,
“is the first attempt to analyze Maidan based on the results of systematic research on protests, repressions and concessions of protesters in Ukraine.”
Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Euromaidan, Ishchenko, sociology, Ukrainian protests
Categories : Maidan, Uncategorized
“Contradictions of the Euromaidan”
7 03 2014While this interview is two weeks old, it adds depth and content to some of the claims made in Volodymyr Ishchenko’s analysis. Both come from a radical left perspective.
Some interesting quotes:
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Categories : Maidan, Uncategorized
Ishchenko: No revolution, just a change of elites
7 03 2014Of all the political analysts I trust in Ukraine, Volodymyr Ishchenko has been the most critical of the Maidan and the new government. While his views should be contextualized among others (some of which I have shared on this blog), he expresses concerns that should be taken seriously. The following is his summary of the “new order.”
Ukraine has not experienced a genuine revolution, merely a change of elites
Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: Ishchenko, Ukrainian politics
Categories : Maidan
Arel: “Crossing the Line in Ukraine”
20 02 2014Dominique Arel‘s comments delivered yesterday at the roundtable “Why Ukraine Matters?”, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 19 February 2014. Arel has held the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa since 2003.
Crossing the Line in Ukraine
by Dominique Arel
My unvarnished thoughts on the deadliest events in Ukraine since the end of the UPA insurrection sixty-five years ago:
Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: Arel, Ukraine
Categories : Maidan, Uncategorized
Viatrovych on “the long road to freedom”
15 02 2014This post takes a slightly different form than most on this blog, as it both summarizes and comments on an article not found (yet) in English translation.
Volovymyr Viatrovych’s “The Long Road to Freedom” — an article which, in its title, is intended to echo Nelson Mandela’s autobiography — is one of the most interesting and detailed analyses I’ve read of the Ukrainian Maidan protest movement. Viatrovych himself is a very well positioned observer — a leader of the Maidan’s Civic Sector, which remains one of the most pluralistic and broadly based of the visible groupings in the Maidan movement.
The article presents a summary and evaluation of both the nonviolent revolution represented by the Maidan in all its variants, and the “violent turn” represented by the street actions of January 19th and some of those that have followed.
He begins from the premise that the Yanukovych regime cannot fall unless three prerequisites are met: (1) the revolution spreads to encompass a maximally broad spectrum of Ukrainian society; (2) a part of the pro-government elite and armed forces shift their allegiance to the opposition; and (3) the world community supports the movement, if only morally.
Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: left-wing, revolution, right-wing, Ukraine, Viatrovych
Categories : Maidan, Uncategorized