====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Various people on the left have appealed to a couple of articles that Trotsky wrote in 1939 in respect of Ukraine. They can be found here < http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html > and here < http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm >. A major problem with them is that they do not take into account something which, if it did not exist 75 years back, certainly does now: a sizeable mixed Russian and Ukrainian population in Eastern and Central Ukraine, that is, in a fairly large chunk of the country. One article actually refers to the creation of 'a powerful and purely Ukrainian proletariat' having been formed by Soviet industrialisation, although there were fair numbers of Russians in factories and mines in Ukraine prior to the October Revolution, let alone prior to the First Five-Year Plan. For decades in Eastern and Central Ukraine, Russians and Ukrainians have lived and worked together, with many mixed marriages and friendships, there's a vernacular language, Surzhik, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. The nationalist discourse on either side ignores all this: it does not fit in with their preconceptions. Socialists should, I hope, welcome such a development. What concerns me is that the parallel Russian and Ukrainian nationalist agitation will, if it gets worse, force Russians and Ukrainians in the mixed areas of Ukraine to have to choose their allegiance and identity -- towards Moscow or towards Kiev. In a way, this was posed in the abstract when the Soviet Union broke up, but is now threatening to become a practical reality with the official nationalist agendas being run from Kiev and Moscow. We saw what this led to in Yugoslavia. If the governments in Kiev and Moscow keep raising the heat, as they appear to be doing, then the consequences will be appalling. Trotsky's articles here, 75 years old and not able to deal with a vitally important social development in a fairly large part of Ukraine, are of little use, as is the concept of national self-determination when that concept, when exercised by nationalist zealots, merely serves to divide people from one another. Paul F ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
