‘In the Western European left, there’s a desire to put up a wall and ignore what’s happening in the east’

First published in Spanish at Ctxt. Translation by Adam Novak from Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.

Denys Gorbach (Kryvyi Rih, 1984) is a sociologist. The research from his doctoral thesis at Sciences Po (Paris) is contained in the book The Making and Unmaking of Ukrainian Working Class (Berghahn, 2024), which recounts how economic changes altered the values of the working class in Ukraine, focusing on his city, Kryvyi Rih, in the south-east of the country. Kryvyi Rih was considered the “iron heart of the USSR”. It has several mines and a large steelworks. It is the birthplace of President Zelensky.

Gorbach also became involved in helping Ukrainian refugees in France and studied their situation. He currently researches the social concept of conspiracy theories at Lund University (Sweden). He spoke to CTXT.es by video call to discuss Ukrainian politics and the war.

In the book you argue that post-Soviet Ukraine, in its privatisation process, did not fully integrate into the neoliberal economy and that “a socialist appearance wrapped capitalist practices”.

Well, it depends on what we understand by neoliberal. There wasn’t large-scale privatisation with foreign investors as occurred in Poland, Hungary or the Baltic countries, for example. The ruling class was afraid.

I was surprised to find a literal confirmation of this idea in the writings of those who participated in these events, such as an adviser to President Kuchma,1 who governed during the era of major privatisations. These people had been trained in Marxist political economy during the Soviet era and tried to use that knowledge to build the capitalist economy. This adviser wrote that their explicit objective was to create a Ukrainian national bourgeoisie before opening the market to foreign capitalists.

This ruling class, which was building itself, maintained the existing moral economy, a moral economy that we can call socialist, supposedly socialist, supposedly Soviet, which implied mutual obligations between rulers and ruled.

And some of these restrictions have been maintained until today, for example, there are still restrictions regarding land ownership, if I’m not mistaken.

The removal in 2020 of the moratorium on land purchase and sale (in force since 2001) was one of the major neoliberal steps that Zelensky took. Even Poroshenko,2 the president with the most neoliberal rhetoric, decided not to do this. And when Zelensky did it, Poroshenko opposed it and organised protests against it.

Land ownership was already privatised, but there exists this fear that, if you allow it to be bought and sold like any other good, large companies will be able to monopolise it.

It’s a taboo subject in popular consciousness. It’s also present in the popular imagination about the Second World War. Since my childhood I’ve heard stories that the Germans took the land of Ukraine away in trains to Germany. It’s probably not true, but it shows the value we give to land.

So yes, it was a very problematic issue. And Zelensky finally did it. But even with all the pressure from international financial institutions that pushed him to do it, he established a series of limitations. (According to the law, the acquisition of land by foreigners or entities with foreign capital must be approved by referendum.)

He also passed a harsh labour reform in the middle of the war, in 2022.

Yes, I think this can be explained within the framework of the shock doctrine, proposed by Naomi Klein.3

Zelensky and his team are part of a new generation of politicians who have already grown up under capitalist conditions. I get the impression that they are sincerely against the oligarchs and are also against the trade unions, because they see both institutions as obstacles to the development of the free market. So they’ve done some things to fight against the concentration of capital in the oligarchy, but they’ve also gone against the trade unions and the socialist regulation, so to speak, of labour relations.

In the midst of war, obviously this wasn’t Zelensky’s greatest concern, but Halyna Tretiakova, a parliamentarian from his party who chairs the Social Policy Committee, took advantage of the occasion to push through three terrible labour liberalisation laws in 2022.

There’s been much talk of the two different political identities that exist in Ukraine, linked to the western and eastern regions. In the book you call them “ethnic Ukrainian” and “Eastern Slavic” identity, but I think you’re somewhat critical of the way these identities are usually explained.

One of the criticisms I receive most is that I don’t nuance enough. You always have to put these terms in many inverted commas. The identity I call “ethnic Ukrainian” isn’t necessarily a matter of ethnic nationalism as such, it’s a set of vague political ideas that combines sympathy for the West, preference for a more liberal economic model and a more important role for the Ukrainian language. Opposed to this is another very, very complex set of ideas, what I call “Eastern Slavic”, which includes maintaining stronger ties with Russia and the post-Soviet world, being neutral on the language question or defending the status quo, which is the predominance of Russian, and perhaps greater regulation of the economy. I think it’s better not to call them “pro-Russian” because this isn’t necessarily true, especially since this war began. They often define themselves as non-nationalists, but I think it’s a form of nationalism that doesn’t recognise itself as such.

I keep looking for better words to describe this duality... It’s not a duality, it’s a spectrum, a continuum. It must be perceived with much scepticism.

Would you say this “Eastern Slavic” identity is closer to the left?

Again, it depends on what we understand by left.

Of course.

Of course, it’s closer to the left in terms of flags and symbols. The Soviet Union and all that. But this doesn’t always translate into support for equality policies. In Ukraine the left-wing parties moved very quickly to cultural politics.

You argue that those identities were exacerbated by the oligarchs for electoral purposes.

Yes, I try to explain that it’s not an ancient matter. In the 2000s, from the so-called Orange Revolution4 onwards, there were changes to the Constitution that gave more power to Parliament. So the capitalist class of oligarchs had to adapt. Before they went directly to the president. Now they had to invent parties to participate in politics. And those parties had to show some type of ideology. At first they tried to follow the typical European model with left and right, but they quickly realised it wasn’t worthwhile. It was easier to apply the lowest common denominator, which was national identities. Easy to convert into slogans, into television adverts. My argument is that this is how these two camps were formed. Then the more pro-Western, pro-Ukrainian language ones were called oranges.

You asked me if the more pro-Russian ones were more left-wing. Rhetorically yes, and they also defended the preservation of some welfare policies, but at the same time, in this camp was the most powerful fraction of the capitalists.

Because they were the ones who controlled the large industries?

Yes. The pro-Western fraction was like a second tier of the oligarchy.

When discussing these questions, the difference between the more industrial regions and the more agricultural ones is also usually mentioned.

Yes, in the south-east of Ukraine there’s a highly industrialised belt, very urban, with high population density. At macroeconomic level, these regions were the richest, the ones that produced most. Now we don’t know what’s going to happen, because they’re ageing industries and I can’t imagine capitalists queuing up to invest 50 kilometres from a front line, even if it weren’t active. So now the economic geography is changing, investments are concentrated in the west. I don’t know what’s going to happen to those millions of people who live from industry, who are somehow proud of it.

These regions where there was greater sympathy for Russia are the ones that the Russian invasion has most destroyed.

Yes, yes. Some people who are there, with whom I stay in contact, sympathised with Putin and feel it as a betrayal. The most “pro-Russian” said this wasn’t going to happen, that it was propaganda from Ukrainian nationalists.

And now they’re disappointed. Well, not only disappointed. They are victims. The greatest number of victims, the greatest destruction of infrastructure and housing, has occurred precisely in cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv.5

You yourself said you didn’t expect the Russian invasion.

Yes, I don’t mind admitting it. I’m one of those people who thought this wasn’t going to happen.

I’m still in a very large group chat with workers from the steelworks. In the book I talk a bit about that chat, about how politics invaded the conversations and many people felt rejection towards it.

The afternoon before the invasion there were still debates. They said things like “who do you take us for? Do you seriously think Putin is going to attack? Of course not”.

The next day, everyone moved on to talking about practical matters. What do we do? Where do we go? Very practical things about how to face something that twelve hours before they didn’t think was going to happen.

Sometimes journalists write that everyone has changed from the Russian language to Ukrainian. That’s only true, in part, amongst the intellectual middle classes in cities like Kyiv. In the army there are thousands of people speaking Russian. In a Russian-speaking region like mine, people reject this rhetoric.

In 2014, the government of Viktor Yanukovych decided not to sign an economic association agreement with the European Union and to negotiate with Russia. Ukraine had trade relations of similar importance with both blocs.

At that moment, yes. Ukraine as an economy had managed to maintain itself in an intermediate space between the two blocs. Approximately half of exports went to the European Union and the other half to the former Soviet Union. Exports to Russia and the former Soviet Union were high-tech, like helicopters, engines or train locomotives. Exports to the European Union were raw materials, because Ukrainian industry couldn’t compete with companies like Alstom or Siemens, but both were important.

Today President Yanukovych is remembered as very pro-Russian, but in reality he spent most of his presidency under the European Union banner. Not because he was a convinced Europeanist, but because this was the consensus decision amongst the elites. The problem is that those elites also depended on energy, on cheap oil and gas from Russia.

I was an economic journalist at that time, so I remember it very clearly. Every week I wrote the same thing. Putin says Ukraine must pay more for gas. The International Monetary Fund says Ukraine must liberalise energy prices for households. The Ukrainian government says “my god, we can’t do this”. It says “we have to maintain our relationship with Russia, but Russia has to understand that we want to sign this treaty with the EU”.

From 2012 Russia started a sequence of trade wars. One month it was milk, the next locomotives. It was quite explicit. It was like saying “this is just the beginning of what awaits you if you sign that treaty”.

What did the Ukrainian government expect, the Ukrainian capitalist class, at that moment? They expected that the European Union would give them some type of economic support or compensation for what they were going to lose, for the rise in gas prices. And it never happened. There’s a video of Yanukovych talking with Merkel at the Vilnius summit.6 He tries to say with body language that he’s in a complicated situation. And the EU’s response was no, that they couldn’t do any of that. Then Yanukovych turned towards Russia. It was all much more fluid and contradictory than the story tells.

Then the revolt known as Euromaidan erupted and, subsequently, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the independence uprisings in Donetsk and Luhansk.

The official viewpoint in Ukraine is that everything was completely organised by Russia. There’s also the other viewpoint that it was completely organised by the CIA. If you’re a specialist in international relations, it’s normal that you see things that way. I’ve always been more interested in social processes. In Ukraine it’s totally taboo to speak of civil war, you get cancelled, but from an analytical viewpoint, I don’t see any problem in saying that yes, between 2014 and 2022 there was a conflict that had elements of civil war, with strong external influences. For anyone who wants to delve deeper, I recommend the book that Serhiy Kudelia has published. In that conflict some 14,000 people died in total, amongst combatants from both sides and civilians.

We tend to analyse the past from the knowledge of the present, so it’s normal to see the events of 2014 as precursors to those of 2022. But I don’t think it was so linear, there wasn’t a master plan from Putin or anyone.

Some analysts point to Russia’s concern for its security due to NATO’s eastward expansion as one of the explanations for the invasion. Do you think this factor played a role in the Russian government’s decision?

I think NATO has had excessive prominence in the analyses. Of course this eastward expansion occurred, but it was many years ago. I find the way people like Mélenchon7 talk about the 2008 Bucharest Summit striking. I covered it as a journalist and I have a totally different memory. The Ukrainian delegation arrived with great hopes of obtaining a Membership Action Plan8 for NATO. And they were rejected. They were told the typical polite phrases of yes, of course, later on, maybe if so, come on, goodbye.

Now those phrases are quoted as proof that NATO was very interested in Ukraine, but NATO supporters at that time were absolutely outraged. There had been public discussions, protests against it, but after that the debate was closed. Until 2014, when the war in Donbas began, with foreign troops present on the territory.

What has happened from 2022 onwards is that NATO has added thousands more kilometres of border with Russia because Finland has joined. And nobody in Russia seems very concerned, the troops aren’t there.

If I’m not mistaken, the far right has never obtained relevant representation in Ukraine’s Parliament, but they have made themselves noticed in the streets and it seems the war has strengthened them. What’s the situation?

Yes, it’s a paradox. In elections they usually obtain ridiculous results, 1% or 2% of the vote. The maximum they reached (the far-right nationalist party Svoboda9) was 10% in the 2012 elections, when Yanukovych considered that such an opposition suited him. But it’s not honest to cite those data and say that nothing’s happening with the far right.

As you’ve said, they’re strong in the streets. I call them “entrepreneurs of political violence”. They’ve accumulated resources and know how to deploy them.

We can go back to the Maidan or Euromaidan of 2014.10 There were hundreds of thousands of people gathered in that large square. The majority were like the people I describe in the book, without a very formed ideology. They rejected corruption and the oligarchs and wanted to live like Europeans, that is, with money. Only a small minority belonged to far-right organisations. But they were the most prepared, they weren’t afraid to attack the police, they had combat skills, they knew how to prepare Molotov cocktails.

They built political capital in Maidan and in the war in Donbas, where they were the most motivated fighters in a disorganised army. And now they reinforce their reputation in this new war, although this time the government has done a better job of limiting their influence.

Unfortunately, they’re over-represented in the media. To begin with, by themselves, who are the first interested in promoting themselves. But also by Russian media and those who sympathise with Putin in the West. And sometimes the Ukrainian government also does stupid things.

The war has already lasted three years. I get the impression it’s been longer than many people thought at the beginning. I know this question is impossible to answer rigorously, but, according to what you perceive, what do people want? Can it be different from what the government wants?

My direct experience is with refugees in France. In 2023, when we started working with them, they were all very optimistic, they thought victory was near. And at the beginning they must have been even more optimistic because many people left their homes in Ukraine thinking it would be a matter of two weeks, like a holiday. Obviously, this is no longer the case. Now they understand they are refugees.

The same has happened in Ukraine. The initial reaction was total mobilisation, for better and for worse. I think the government made a mistake in fostering exaggerated optimism, that idea that they were going to recover Crimea, well... By the end of 2023, spirits began to change, when the counter-offensive didn’t produce results.

Then Trump returned to the presidency of the United States. The government and intellectuals in Ukraine perceived it as a disaster. But amongst ordinary people, from what I’ve been told, there was that implicit hope that a bad ending would be better than this horrible situation without end. Even if concessions had to be made. However, when Trump announced his proposal, even people who were very unpatriotic, so to speak, found it too much. Leaving Russia territories it hasn’t occupied for now, ceding natural resources to Trump...

Now everyone wants the war to end. This doesn’t form part of the Ukrainian government’s official discourse, but I think they too would be willing to make territorial concessions, provided stable peace conditions were guaranteed.

This is what’s missing from all the proposals so far. Some guarantee that they won’t start again in a couple of years. This would be catastrophic because if you sign an agreement now and in two years the invasion starts again, it’s assumed you won’t be able to count on the same support from the United States and the European Union.

Then, if you look at the European elites, there are people who say they’re willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. It’s true that all parties have their own interests. It doesn’t seem to me that the European Union is guided by hatred of Russia or fanaticism in favour of Ukraine. I think they’re readjusting their policies, they want to increase their military capabilities for the next decade, they talk about a plan for 2030... and for that, meanwhile they sacrifice Ukraine, they let it bleed.

It looks bleak.

Yes. Bad outlook. I was a left-wing activist in Ukraine and I still consider myself a left-wing activist. When I talk with leftists here, in Western Europe, it strikes me as odd because they tend to reject the subject. They say it’s all propaganda. And yes, it is, which is why I miss more analysis from a socialist perspective. It’s all slogans. Right, you love peace. You hate war. Of course, we all love peace but...

Did you expect something different from the left?

The thing is I don’t have answers myself either. But it would be good to have a real debate about what to do beyond simple repetition of slogans. What I see most is a desire to put up a wall and ignore everything that’s happening in the east. And many people don’t realistically evaluate their own political positions.

If everything is already fascism, we don’t have to worry about it getting worse. Do you really think the political regimes in the European Union are exactly the same as Russia’s? Or would you prefer to live under a regime more like that one?

On the other hand, if you’re such an activist that you want everything to explode because then revolution will be possible, think about it a bit. Imagine a real scenario of war and chaos. Is it likely that your sector of the left will grow and obtain political power? Or might there be some fascist group in your country that’s better positioned? What will emerge from this chaos that you hope will arrive?

• 1

  Leonid Kuchma, President of Ukraine 1994-2005

• 2

  Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine 2014-2019

• 3

  Canadian author and activist whose book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) analyses how economic crises and disasters are exploited to implement free-market policies

• 4

  Mass protests in Ukraine in 2004-2005 following disputed presidential elections, leading to a revote that brought Viktor Yushchenko to power.

• 5

  Major industrial city in north-eastern Ukraine, the country’s second-largest city.

• 6

  November 2013 EU Eastern Partnership summit in Lithuania where Ukraine was expected to sign the Association Agreement.

• 7

  Jean-Luc Mélenchon, French left-wing politician and leader of La France Insoumise.

• 8

  NATO programme designed to assist aspiring member countries.

• 9

  Ukrainian nationalist party founded in 1991, originally called the Social-National Party of Ukraine.

• 10

  Mass protests in Kyiv from November 2013 to February 2014, initially sparked by the government’s decision not to sign the EU Association Agreement, leading to President Yanukovych’s removal.