🚀 go-pugleaf

By: Felix Kreisel  May 24, 1994

Some of you may remember my post of February last which dealt
with the forces tearing apart the new Ukrainian state. It was reposted
about a month ago under a descriptive title "Balkanization of Ukraine".

It is now time to take into account the new developments in
this story; it has a lot to teach us about the future of all the
ex-Soviet rtepublics.

The London "Financial Times" today headlined this gripping drama
with a cynical headline "Ukraine and Russia fail to agree on Crimea".
Just to remind you, the new pro-Moscow Crimean parliament recently
took steps to separate from Ukraine with a view to rejoining Russia.
This was done because Ukrainian economic collapse exceeds Russian
and the local Crimean population is under an illusion that the local
economy will benefit by reuniting with Russian.

Again as a reminder, while Russian production fell about 25% over
the past year, Ukraine's production fell over 40%. Some industries
have suffered a total collapse and the response of the Ukrainian
population has indicated a growing regionalization of the
state. The last elections saw Kravchuk's support plummet, various
centrist nationalists suffered as well. Pro-Russian populists
won in the East, South and the Crimea; extreme nationalists
maintained their hold over the western sections of Ukraine (Lviv,
Halychina).

Over the past few weeks to the festering disagreement between Ukraine
and Russia over the Black Sea Fleet was also added a new conflict
over Crimean sovereignty. Kravchuk and Yeltsin try to preserve
their flagging authority by rattling sabres and whipping up 
chauvinism of both the Great Russian and Great Ukrainian variety.

There are now numerous rumors about armed forces of both Ukraine
and the Russian controlled Black Sea Fleet moving into the area.
Each side accuses the other of bellicose moves and denies
analogous moves of its own. The mass media controlled by these
two regimes add to this war hysteria. One more inflammatory
factor is the rise of both Russian and Ukrainian fascists.
The "FT" reported that Russian cossacks were patrolling the
Crimean parliament in Simferopol. At the same time, this
voice of international bourgeoisie reported: "... the spokesman 
for the extreme Ukrainian nationalist UNA-Unso group in Lviv, 
in western Ukraine, said that some 200 volunteers were being 
despatched to Crimea to help secure it as part of Ukraine".

It is becoming clear that the ex-Stalinists (like Yeltsin and
Kravchuk), who became bourgeois nationalists (and democrats) a
few years ago, have only one solution to the economic and social
collapse. They will plunge the areas of the former USSR into a 
series of fratricidal ethnic and national wars, while on the side 
they try to sell to the West anything of value that is not nailed
down.

The opinions are my own.	FJK	(617)253-8625