As Ukraine slides towards civil war, anarchist group Autonomous Workers Union appeals to
the working class to reject both sides and instead fight for their common class interests.
---- There is a continuing confrontation on Ukraine?s territory between the groups of
local and Russian ruling class which play off the working people one against another and
stir up enmity, bringing the country closer to the state of civil war. The events in
Mariupol? are the embodiment of this confrontation. Many people, the combatants and
civilians, contract military staff and conscripts, as well as volunteers, have suffered on
both sides of the conflict as a result of the ?anti-terrorist operation? ---- This is a
critical situation for working people. The government treats all protesting Anti-Maidan
people alike: soldiers don?t understand who they shoot at, and the ones who are being shot
at don?t understand what they die for.
Both sides of the condlict manipulate their ?foot soldiers? with a particular cynicism,
and because of this the working people fight for the ideas that do not have anything in
common with their material, class interests. Ukrainian military units and other armed
groups fight for the senseless ideals of national-patriotism and ?unity of a nation?,
while separatists fight for the creation of a new state and/or joining Russia. In all
cases the aim is the borgeois national state with its bureaucrats, police, judges,
prisons, capitalists and paupers.
Even now there are already dozens of victims and deaths as the consequence of struggle
between those two reactionary movements. Army incompetence, on the one side, and the
combatants? depravity, on another side, increase the losses significantly.
The highest ranks of Anti-Maidan movement are generally made up of military retirees, as
well as senior police officials, which are loyal to the previous regime. Therefore, the
leadership of the ?people?s republics? in the Eastern regions of Ukraine may indeed be
styled as the junta ? the dictatorship of the law enforcement and armed forces.
Fascist groups and criminals present in this movement make the overall character of junta
deeply reactionary and radically contrary to the class interests of the working people in
the Eastern regions.
Pro-Russian propaganda portrays separatist combatants as fighters of anti-fascist
resistance. According to this propaganda, ?anti-terrorist operation? started by Ukrainian
government is nothing else but the attack of Ukrainian fascists from ?Right Sector?, whose
role in these and many other events is disturbingly blown way out of proportion.
?Right Sector? is a poorly coordinated coalition of several far-right organizations. Its
social structure consists of far-right youth and criminal groups. The social structure of
?people?s republics? combatants is mainly similar: teenagers, gangsters and declassed
elements. The popular appeal of ?Right Sector? in the present moment is very low (even
lower than that of the totally discredited Communist Party of Ukraine); moreover, ?Right
Sector? is in the state of an undercover war with Ukrainian government.
Owing to the constant PR from the pseudo-antifascist international community, ?Right
Sector? acquires the dreadful image of a powerful organization which almost rules the
Ukrainian state, which is obviously not true. But we are not trying to minimize the
problem of fascist movements in Ukraine. AWU repeatedly emphasized the escalation of
far-right violence, aimed particularly at leftists, as early as 2012, during Yanukovych?s
regime. AWU activists were also attacked. One of our comrades was almost killed by the
neo-nazis who had attacked him with knives. Also, the location of this year?s May Day
march had to be moved due to the threat of clashes with far-right.
Resisting the fascist movements has been one of the primary tasks of anarchist movement in
Ukraine for a long time. Unlike many post-Stalinist ?antifascists? in Western countries we
know this problem firsthand and not from the Internet. And yet, we and our comrades
managed to organize May Day anarchist marches with social, anticapitalist and antinational
agenda in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr.
Anarchists do not intend to give ground to the nazis and to the right-liberal government.
It was AWU that organized the radical left protest campaign against the ?Bat?kivshyna?
ruling party.
We are ready to continue the fight against the state, capital and the far-right who
protect them. But this fight is a hundred times more difficult when the state, the church,
police structures and fascist movements are united into one force. Such is the situation
in Donbass, where the ?army of Donetsk people?s republic? is headed by Igor Strelkov, the
Russian undercover man and a great fan of the historical Tsarist White Guard movement;
where the organizer of the referendum, the founder of ?Orthodox Donbass? movement,
consults with the leader of the oldest post-Soviet neo-Nazi movement, legendary Aleksandr
Barkashov; where activists of Anti-Maidan manifest their solidarity and respects to
another icon of European fascists ? Aleksandr Dugin; where co-chairman of the ?Donetsk
people?s republic government? Denis Pushilin openly regrets the revolution of 1917 that
put end to tsarism and calls it a ?bloody disaster?.
Social slogans did not fit into the manifests and official documents of separatists, while
there are many phrases about the class peace and the interests of the ?small business?.
Criminal and fascist junta on the East at present organizes the tortures and abductions of
trade union activists.
Nationalism is the deadly enemy of the working people. This is proved by the current
events in Ukraine, when fascists on both sides help the ruling class to physically fight
down the working people. The question is ? how many victims and destructions are needed
before Ukrainian proletariat realizes it.
We demand from the Kyiv government to remove the troops from the cities immediately, and
from the Eastern junta to stop terrorizing peaceful working people. Our own goal is to
keep up the resistance at all fronts and to build revolutionary labour movement against
all the odds.
We call on our fellow Ukrainian workers to line up behind our common class interests,
among which are peace and solidarity, but not the senseless fight for keeping the
territories or their separation. Class struggle does not have anything to do with the
fight for redistribution of power. Whoever wins in the confrontation between the
government and separatists, ? we will lose, that is why its boycott is our priority.
Ignoring the government?s decisions, renouncing the militarism, striking and building the
revolutionary labour movement ? such are our weapons against the war imposed upon us. We
can count only on ourselves and the international solidarity from other left-radical
organizations. If we don?t start to rise now we will face the most difficult times.
No gods, no masters, no nations, no borders!
Workers of the world, unite!
From
http://avtonomia.net/2014/05/14/regime-kyiv-junta-east-awu-kyiv-statement-conflict-eastern-regions/
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