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> > Unfortunately, this list for most users is useful only because of the > occasionally linked articles with a few words of comment. > > Hundred of thousands of words aren't so useful. > Clay Claiborne, Louis Proyect, Sergii Kutnii and others have posted a lot of material about the facts about what is going on in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, etc., and refuting the incredible stream of lies from the revisionist world. I don't agree with all of CC or LP's analysis, but I think the material they have posted is extremely valuable, and I hope they continue to post more. Not everyone has the time to go through all the ins and outs of every claim, or the connections to find the statements from the more serious sources. For myself, I don't find it especially useful when people repeat a "few words" of condemnation of the masses who have risen against backward forces which the revisionists embrace. One can find that anywhere, from RT to Workers World to certain bourgeois liberals. Well, those words are useful here, but only insofar as they inspire others to refute them. Since the crisis in Ukraine began, I have looked for sources on what's going on. I have read much material from various sources. The material from various Ukrainian trends which are independent of the revisionists has been quite valuable, although these trends have had a hard time developing an adequate political stand. (For example, the material from the Autonomous Workers Union is quite significant, and one sees the dedicated efforts of activists to move Ukraine forward, but their anarchist stand blocks them from figuring out what to do in a complicated situation since as that of Maidan and anti-Maidan.) It is said by some that there are many divisions among Ukrainians, and even among Ukrainian workers, coal miners, etc. It's true that there are divisions. But the history since independence shows that a certain slow, zigzag progress takes place. And without Russian interference, the present complicated political situation would not have given rise to armed conflict. Independence in 1991 did not bring utopia to Ukraine, and Ukraine has suffered immensely from the economic miseries of modern capitalism. But there has been slow political progress among the Ukrainian masses; the situation is still freer in Ukraine than in Russia; and the political progress is important for preparing the masses for something better. The overthrow of Yanukovych was a typical Ukrainian political event, a bit of progress and a lot of complication. (That's actually how things move forward everywhere, insofar as they do sometimes move forward, in the present situation in which the workers movement and the left are disorganized and in crisis everywhere.) But it took Russian government interference to turn this into mass bloodshed, and it takes revisionist blindness to fail to see the important of the masses having risen up against Yanukovych, and having risen up despite the lack of a mass political force that could represent their interests. And it takes revisionist blindness to judge things solely from the standpoint of the rivalry of the EU or Eurasian Union capitalists. It's no secret that the Russian government and Russian chauvinists don't accept the right to self-determination of Ukraine and other former regions of the USSR. It's not secret that Putin acted punitively, even while Yanukovych was still president, out of fear that Ukraine wouldn't take part in Eurasianism. The Russian government and the revisionists are ready to fight to the last Ukrainian (whether Russian ethnic Ukrainian or not) to force Ukraine to do what they want. This is a crime against both the people of Russia as well as those of Ukraine, and those who close their eyes to what's going on are harming the interests of the Russian working class (in Russia) as well as those of Ukrainian working people (including Russophones and Russian ethnic Ukrainians). -- Joseph Green > > ________________________________________________ > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/jgreen%40communistvoice.org ----------------------------------- Joseph Green m...@communistvoice.org ------------------------------------ ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
