Socialists and the national question in Ukraine, yesterday and today

It is common on the left to hear Ukraine referred to as a “neo-Nazi state” or “nation of reactionaries”, hellbent on oppressing Russian speakers and left-wing ideas. In reality, the former Soviet republic has a rich tradition of socialist and progressive thinkers who helped shape Ukrainian national consciousness.

Andriy Movchan is a left-wing Ukrainian and a former activist of several left-wing organisations in Ukraine. He now lives in Catalonia, where he devotes himself to issues of media activism, art and journalism. 

In this wide-ranging conversation with Victor Osprey for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Movchan explores the influence of progressive thinkers and the Soviet Union on Ukrainian national consciousness, the tense debates among Bolsheviks on Ukrainian independence, how the history of Great Russian chauvinism helps us understand the current war, and the thorny issue of language discrimination.

The second part of this interview discusses the current state of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the role of the far right in both countries, and the challenges Ukraine’s left forces face in building solidarity with their struggles internationally.

Could you start by explaining why you left Ukraine in 2014?

My biography is interesting because I started my political activism as a right-wing Ukrainian nationalist. Language discrimination contributed to my radicalisation. However, I revised my views towards socialism. My former comrades from the radical right-wing camp did not like this; I was repeatedly attacked in the street by these radicals. In the end, this is what made me leave Ukraine.

In exile, I settled in Madrid. For the first year-and-a-half I lived there illegally — without documents,  money, almost any friends, or knowledge of foreign languages. Later, I was officially granted political asylum and moved to Barcelona, where I live now.

Can you explain the influence of progressive thinkers and socialists to the emergence of a Ukrainian national consciousness in the 19th and early 20th century, from the democratic pan-Slavism of Ukrainian writer and poet Taras Shevchenko to the anarcho-socialist Mykhailo Drahomanov, and figures such as the translator of the Communist Manifesto into Ukrainian, Lesya Ukrainka?

When I was at school in the 1990s, all these historical figures were taught to us as classics of Ukrainian literature and fighters for Ukraine’s independence. But their political views, which were deeply rooted in socialist and democratic traditions, were silenced. I learned much later, when I became interested in left-wing ideas, that Ukrainka and [Ukrainian poet and writer] Ivan Franko were ardent socialists.

The ideology of the ruling class in modern Ukraine tries to avoid talking about these aspects of our history. However, the founding fathers of the modern Ukrainian nation were, for the most part, supporters of egalitarian ideas. 

Paradoxically, portraying Ukrainians as a “nation of reactionaries” whose “mentality is opposed to the ideas of socialism” is beneficial to both the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and Western “tankies” [who support Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine]. Yet, a detailed look at the history of Ukraine allows us to assert the exact opposite: the ideas of national and social liberation of the Ukrainian people have always been inextricably linked.

What was the relationship like between Ukrainian and Russian socialists in the era of the tsarist empire? How much cooperation was there?

Ukrainian and Russian socialists of the time closely cooperated as they shared a common enemy: the tsarist autocracy. Ukrainians understood that political changes in Ukraine — which was under tsarist rule — would be difficult to implement without changes in Russia itself. Similarly, Russian revolutionaries realised that peoples oppressed by the Russian empire were a powerful revolutionary resource. 

However, these relations were not easy. In particular, when it came to the issue of Ukraine’s secession. In this context, the debate between the Ukrainian socialist Lev Yurkevych and Vladimir Lenin is interesting. Yurkevych suggested Ukrainians should focus on their own national struggle, while Lenin appealed for close cooperation, without which the struggle against tsarism could not be won.

In that debate, Lenin said: “Given united action by the Great-Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, a free Ukraine is possible; without such unity, it is out of the question.” This quote was inscribed on the pedestal of the monument to him in Kyiv. However, it should be noted that by the time the Soviet authorities decided to decorate the pedestal in Kyiv with this quote in the 1950s, it had acquired a completely different meaning. 

Taken out of context, it had been incorporated into the Great Russian chauvinism rehabilitated by Josef Stalin. Its new interpretation was that only under the rule of Soviet Moscow could the Ukrainian people be “free”, while any dreams of political independence from Moscow would only harm Ukrainians.

It is important to say that this Leninist phrase has gained new relevance in the context of the war. It is extremely difficult for Ukraine to fend off the invasion of a much stronger enemy — neo-tsarist Russia. The only chance for a just end to the war is not victory on the battlefield, but political change in Russia itself. Thus, cooperation with Russian opposition, anti-war and revolutionary movements should be a priority for Ukrainians. After all, we have a common enemy: the Putin regime. 

However, the logic of the nationalism of the Ukrainian elites prevents such international cooperation. On the other hand, the weakness of the Russian opposition under the Putin dictatorship, and the arrogant attitude of a large part of the Russian left to Ukraine, are also not encouraging.

While Lenin’s writing before and after the 1917 revolution clearly advocated for self-determination and upheld Ukrainian national rights against Russian chauvinism, it was sacrificed at times for the sake of extracting resources, particularly during the civil war. Other Bolsheviks held a more “Luxemburgist” view [a reference to Rosa Luxemburg] that regarded specifically “national” demands as irrelevant or reactionary. 

Eventually, a radical socialist party in Ukraine called the Borotbists merged with the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, organised in the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine in 1921. Bolshevik policy then shifted to one of “Ukrainisation”, where Ukrainian language and culture was promoted, leading to a linguistic and artistic renaissance in the 1920s. However, this was largely abandoned under Stalin. How do you understand this process, and what were the consequences of its abandonment?

The processes of national revival in the 1920s, and the reverse process of rehabilitation of Russian chauvinism in the 1930s followed by Russification, are key to understanding Russia’s current invasion. The lack of knowledge about the Ukrainian national question at this crucial period among the Russian and global left prevents us from understanding the true context of the war.

Even Putin, in his February 21, 2022, speech ideologically justifying the invasion, refers to the 1917 revolution as the “root of the problem” — that is, the existence of an independent Ukraine. Putin is nostalgic for the days of the Russian empire, when Ukraine did not exist as a political entity. He accused Lenin of having granted the peoples of the empire the right to self-determination, which Ukraine and other republics exercised in 1991.

Lenin was an extremely progressive politician of his time, and understood that the struggle of the peoples oppressed by tsarism was a powerful revolutionary force. At the same time, as an advocate of building socialism within the framework of great powers, he did not welcome the separation of peoples. While proclaiming slogans of self-determination, in practice he opposed them.

As a result, after victory in the Civil War, the Bolsheviks found a compromise formula: while denying Ukrainians independence (which they were forced to grant to Poland and Finland), they granted Ukraine formal autonomy within the framework of the Soviet Union. At the same time, they launched a process of indigenisation, which involved positive discrimination in favour of the Ukrainian language and culture to overcome the effects of tsarist Russification and make the Ukrainian masses understand that the revolution was their project, not something foreign. Indigenisation was accompanied by an unprecedented surge in Ukrainian revolutionary culture. We have never had better examples of world-class literature, cinema, and art before or since. 

This did not last, however. By 1932, with the beginning of collectivisation, Stalin flipped this policy 180 degrees. If Russian chauvinism had been considered the main enemy, now “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism” was proclaimed the main enemy. Ukrainian schools and magazines were closed, and hundreds of the best representatives of the Ukrainian revolutionary intelligentsia were killed — they would later be called the “Executed Renaissance”. Ukrainian culture was relegated to a formal, decorative place. Russification, and even the rehabilitation of Russian imperial chauvinism in the late 1930s, followed.

Due to the assimilation processes at the end of the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was in a very poor state. Large cities in Ukraine (except in the western regions) became almost entirely Russian-speaking. Dissidents’ attempts to criticise this state of affairs were repressed. Linguistic assimilation and the fact Ukraine continued to be de facto ruled by Moscow during the Soviet era made many people from Moscow or Leningrad believe Ukraine was part of Russia and that its independence was an unfortunate mistake. Putin is among them.

What was the social status of those who only or mostly spoke Ukrainian in Soviet Ukraine, compared to Russian speakers? Was it a barrier to social mobility, or a sign of “backwardness” and being from a rural background where Ukrainian was more widely spoken?

The real situation of Ukrainian speakers in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) is really important for understanding the context of the war. It is a pity that very few people know about this issue.

After the policy of indigenisation was abandoned in the early 1930s, the situation of the Ukrainian language deteriorated significantly. The number of Ukrainian schools gradually decreased, and the proportion of books and magazines in Ukrainian fell. Russian dominated higher education, science and popular culture. In the 1970s, targeted Russification took on catastrophic proportions.

Worst of all, Ukrainian had a reputation as a village language. In large cities, Ukrainian speakers were perceived as “unwashed peasants”, “backward”, and “collective farmers”. It was believed that those who were cultured, educated and “progressive” should speak Russian. Domestic bullying of Ukrainian speakers in public places (queues, public transport, workplaces) was extremely common. For children and young people, it was simply impossible to speak Ukrainian without facing ridicule and social exclusion in cities such as Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipro. Villagers who came to the cities (and even more so their children) developed an inferiority complex and preferred to switch to Russian.

The state left a certain niche for the Ukrainian language: official literature, some cinema, philology faculties, and some media and TV. But against the backdrop of a total decline in the prestige of the Ukrainian language, these areas were no longer taken seriously by society. At the same time, any attempts to problematise the status of the Ukrainian language by intellectuals and dissidents were considered by the state as “Ukrainian nationalism” and punished by repression. During the Leonid Brezhnev era, there were several campaigns to combat “nationalism”. Meanwhile, manifestations of Russian chauvinism were not punished at all.

The situation of language inequality persisted even after Ukraine gained independence. In my childhood and teenage years in Kyiv, there was not a single native Ukrainian speaker in my neighbourhood. Ukrainian speakers were bullied. When I was 18, I switched from Russian to Ukrainian on purpose, in protest against discrimination. Even my friends laughed in my face and called me a “collective farmer”. It was an interesting challenge. For hundreds of people around me, I was the first person to show that it was not a shame to speak Ukrainian.

Despite the existence of Ukrainian publications and language schools, the language was relegated to a secondary status, which went against official promotion of “bilingualism” and the full equality of peoples in the Soviet Union. Were those who spoke up about wanting greater promotion of Ukrainian language and culture in the form of magazines, books, films — many of them Communists such as Ukrainian literary critic Ivan Dzyuba — regarded as “nationalists”, as opposed to the automatic assumption that reading and speaking the lingua franca of the Soviet Union, Russian, was “internationalist”?

Ivan Dziuba, in his work Internationalism or Russification?, quite correctly addressed the position of the Ukrainian language and argued for a Leninist perspective. Formally, the Ukrainian language in post-Stalinist times had equal status with Russian. However, from the point of view of Marxism, practice is the criterion of truth. Could a person who spoke Ukrainian expect to be treated in the same way and similarly climb the same social ladder as Russian speakers? Absolutely not. 

Moreover, institutional discrimination (such as against Russian speakers in independent Ukraine) may be more visible than everyday discrimination, but normalised domestic discrimination — bullying — is much more socially painful. If a person runs the risk of being subjected to humiliating remarks every day, of being called a “collective farmer” or being asked to “speak a normal language”, it is as much or more painful. Especially when there is no way to defend oneself against it.

Such discrimination could not only break people down and force them to assimilate, but also radicalise them. For example, the dissident [Ukrainian poet] Vasyl Stus took the path of fighting for language rights after he was humiliated for speaking Ukrainian in a canteen queue in Donetsk. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the party saw dangerous nationalism in defence of the Ukrainian language. If someone like Dziuba or other dissidents began their criticism as committed Communists, the party’s repression left them disillusioned with socialist ideas.

Were Russians regarded, officially or not, as the “leading people” of the Soviet Union, and the embodiment of and “rightful” leaders of progressive pan-Slavic aspirations, albeit in a formally Communist guise?

In the late 1930s, Stalin’s doctrine officially established a hierarchy of nations in the Soviet Union, with Russians playing a leading role. It was argued that Russians had carried out the revolution, leading the rest of the nations. In addition, Stalin’s ideologues began to present the Soviet Union as the heir to Russia's “millennial” statehood. 

The foundations of the Russian national myth and Russian nationalism as a mass ideology were laid in the 1930s. Even the Soviet Union’s anthem, written in 1943 by Sergei Mikhalkov, has the opening words: “The union of indestructible republics of the free was forever united by the great Russia.” What do these words have to do with internationalism?

Stalin relied on Russian nationalism to facilitate the patriotic mobilisation of the masses in the event of war. The ideas of internationalism were too complex to provide that mobilisation potential, as they were based on a belief in national exclusivity and superiority. This is a very important detail that is often misunderstood by the Western left. In almost any war for independence, nationalism is a decisive driving force. World War II was won by the Red Army, not under the slogans of a global revolution but of defending the Russian homeland. “We fought not for Communism, but for Russia,” as participants of the war confessed. 

Is it any wonder then that nationalism is also becoming a driver of Ukraine’s defence? This is absolutely natural.

Can you speak about the current language policy of the Ukrainian state? Are speakers of Russian or Surzhyk [Ukrainian–Russian pidgin] discriminated against?

Throughout the existence of independent Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian languages have faced discrimination. Russian was subject to institutional discrimination because it was not the official language. In practice, however, Russian remained dominant for a long time even in institutions such as national TV and schools in the southeastern regions, while Ukrainian was subject to discrimination in everyday life in large cities and Russian-speaking regions.

In 2022, there was a huge surge of patriotism. Many Russian-speaking people joined the army to defend the country, and even more people switched to speaking Ukrainian in civilian life. It seemed solidarity was uniting the country after a long time. Unfortunately, however, the state’s language policy has begun to radicalise. Discrimination against the use of Russian in public space has become more frequent. Everyday life discrimination against the Russian language, which used to be rare, has emerged.

However, the talk from tankies about repression of the Russian language or its prohibition are fiction. Cities such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and even Kyiv continue to be predominantly Russian-speaking. These Russian-speaking citizens are under constant attack from Putin’s missiles, which is why they sincerely hate the “liberators” from the north.

Can you break down some of the views on the international left towards Ukraine and their assumption that Russian-speaking region automatically implies pro-Russian sentiment? Kharkiv, for example, is a city where most people speak Russian and the vast majority stand against the Russian invasion…

Kharkiv is an excellent example of the fact that Russian-speaking people, who are the absolute majority there, are not waiting for Russia to “liberate” them. It is one of the regional centres most affected by Russia’s aggression. It is 40 kilometres from the border, so Russian missiles, drones and heavy aircraft bombs shell the city almost daily. Kharkiv has become a symbol of the resilience of the Ukrainian people, as its residents have been heroically rebuilding their city for more than three years. 

The same can be said about Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro — all have a majority of Russian-speakers, but they are Ukrainians.

How severe is the repression and Russification of Ukrainians in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine? 

Russification and assimilation of the population in the occupied territories is a priority for the occupation administrations. All references to Ukraine are being eliminated. The Ukrainian language is being eradicated. The very use of the Ukrainian language is considered disloyalty to the occupiers. For this, people can be fired from their jobs, kidnapped and even tortured.

But the main thing is the education system and indoctrination of children. All schools have been switched to the Russian language. Students are brainwashed with Russian chauvinistic propaganda and taught to hate Ukraine. Tens of thousands of children are involved in the chauvinistic scouting organisation Yunarmiya (All-Russian Military Patriotic Social Movement “Young Army”), where they undergo ideological indoctrination and military training. This is simply terrible: Putinists are training Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to fight against other Ukrainians!

Also, settler colonisation is being carried out on occupied lands. Russia does not even trust local collaborators with serious positions, so it sends teachers, doctors, officials and security officers from Russian regions instead. There are favorable loan and mortgage programs for Russians to resettle in the occupied territories. Through colonisation and assimilation, Russia is deliberately carrying out a gradual ethnic cleansing.

Is there any effective Ukrainian resistance in the occupied territories?

As for Ukrainian partisan resistance, it is not widespread. The most active opponents of the occupation managed to leave those territories. The activities of guerrilla groups are also complicated by the strength of Russian security services, which has easily exposed such groups. Even Ukraine’s military leadership has called on Ukrainians in the occupied territories not to take risks and wait for liberation. Guerrillas mostly act by passing on intelligence information, missile strikes on occupiers’ military targets and committing acts of sabotage. 

There is a movement of women from the occupied territories called the Angry Mavkas [a reference to a virtuous nymph from Ukrainian folklore who lures young men to their deaths in the woods], which reminds the occupiers through posters and graffiti that they are not welcome here. The Tatar guerrilla movement Atesh also operates in Crimea.

You manage the social media page Socialist Art on Facebook and Instagram. What sparked your interest in historical socialist art? And how do you relate this to the contradictory legacy of the Soviet Union, particularly in Ukraine?

I have long been interested in the aesthetic legacy of revolutionary movements and socialist regimes. Back in Ukraine, I wrote a lot about art as an art critic and read about art history. Sometimes I posted examples of Soviet art on my Facebook page. 

Later, I had the opportunity to run a Socialist Art page, and discovered tens of thousands of followers from all over the world who had a great thirst for learning about this art. My knowledge could meet this demand. The Socialist Art page really gained a lot of popularity. There were thousands of followers from different countries: India, Brazil, United States, Germany, Turkey, Britain, Mexico. Most were from Kolkata, West Bengal, which is considered the “red state” of India.

However, at some point, I lost my enthusiasm. The most interesting pieces of art, such as the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s, were not gaining popularity. At the same time, primitive and recognisable images of propaganda, such as the hammer and sickle or portraits of leaders, instantly gained thousands of likes and reposts.

I was even sadder to find that hundreds of thousands of left-wing activists from around the world who love Soviet art were absolutely sincere in their support for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. To convince my followers otherwise, I tried to promote the art of the 1920s indigenisation period, the avant-garde repressed by Stalin and Russian anti-war art. However, these efforts were in vain.

If a person is convinced that any aggressor who opposes the West has the right to invade and occupy other countries, this is not socialism. This is campism [which sees the world as simply divided into a pro-US imperialism and an anti-US imperialism camp, and automatically supports any force in the latter camp]. It is a religious belief and no art can help.