Myths concocted by Putin shills, but widely believed even by well-intentioned peace activists, anti-imperialists and fence-sitters. This is a compilation of the various Myths in my Ukraine Myth series, all with their own links.

by Michael Karadjis

Below are a series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014. All of them are complete myths, as this review will demonstrate. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better. Because although they may have been invented by apologists for Putin’s war of neo-Tsarist conquest, unfortunately many of them are believed by a large number of western leftists, peace activists and fence-sitters, including many who are well-intentioned and who oppose Putin and simply want the war to end; believing myths that show that ‘both sides’ are at fault often provides some kind of psychological sustenance to these positions. While the Ukrainian government can certainly be criticised for many things, like any government can, there is simply no ‘two sides’ story in a blatant and horrifically brutal act of 19th century style imperialist conquest.

This list of myths is an ongoing project and new ones will be added as time permits. All suggestions welcome. To date, this is the list of myths that will be dealt with below, along with their specific links on this site:

Myth 1. The Maidan uprising of 2014 was a “US-orchestrated coup” – https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-1-the-maidan-uprising-of-2014-was-a-us-orchestrated-coup/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 2 – The new government in 2014 “banned the Russian language” https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-2-the-new-government-in-2014-banned-the-russian-language/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 3 – The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was an act of national self-determination, and Crimea rightfully belonged to Russia historically https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-3-the-crimean-people-voted-in-a-referendum-to-join-russia-which-was-an-act-of-self-determination-and-it-rightfully-belonged-to-russia-historically/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 4: There were popular uprisings of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas, who established their own republics in an act of national self-determination https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-4-there-were-popular-uprisings-of-the-ethnic-russian-population-of-the-donbas-who-established-their-own-republics-in-an-act-of-national-self-determination/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 5: “The Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.” https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-5-the-ukrainian-army-bombed-the-donbas-for-8-years-before-the-russian-invasion-killing-14000-ethnic-russians-between-2014-and-2022/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 6: The Minsk Accords offered a just way out of the crisis, Russia wanted to implement them, but the Ukrainian government refused to implement them, encouraged by the US – https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-6-the-minsk-accords-offered-a-just-way-out-of-the-crisis-russia-wanted-to-implement-them-but-the-ukrainian-government-refused-to-implement-them-encouraged-by-the/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 7: Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace agreement in April 2022 whereby Ukraine would not join NATO, but then British prime minister Boris Johnston visited Kyiv and told Zelensky not to go ahead with it, after which Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, scuttling this chance for peace. https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-7-russia-and-ukraine-were-ready-to-sign-a-peace-agreement-in-april-2022-whereby-ukraine-would-not-join-nato-but-then-british-prime-minister-boris-johnston-visited/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

_{Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protesting in the streets against a malignant government is described, incredibly, as a ‘coup’}

Myth 1: The Maidan uprising of 2014 was a “US-orchestrated coup.”

There was no “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, except in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians marched in the streets in a sustained mobilisation over many months from November 2013 through February 2014 – against the uber-corrupt ruler, Victor Yanukovych – this is not the conventional definition of a ‘coup’, which normally refers to a conspiratorial action of a small but powerful group (eg, a section of the armed forces or other state forces) carrying out a rapid and violent ousting of a government; there are dozens of examples to choose from, for example the US-backed coups that ushered in bloody dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah in Iran and the list is virtually endless – none of which look remotely like the popular uprising that took place in Ukraine.

Incidentally, since I called Yanukovych’s regime ‘uber-corrupt’, let’s just make an aside to back this up; we read that after his overthrow, “Ukrainian citizens who stormed his Mezhyhirya mansion discovered a palace of cartoonish opulence with guilded bathrooms, a private zoo, and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship. A good illustration of this extravagance is the $11 million he allegedly paid for a chandelier and his seven tablecloths worth a staggering $13,000.” Interesting the kinds of thieving capitalist rulers that some ‘socialists’ have come to defend in this era of ‘geopolitical’ rather than class analysis.

Yanukovych, like many unpopular despots, reacted first by bashing protestors with iron bars, then with a raft of anti-democratic anti-protest laws, then with guns, and hundreds were shot – but of course each upturn in repression only made the popular movement more determined to get rid of him, despite attempts by some of the opposition leadership in January-February 2014 to do a deal to allow him to stay as president until December 2014. In the end he made their deals pointless anyway, when he fled to Russia with his stolen billions (some estimates as high as $37 billion), following which on February 22 the entire Ukrainian parliament – every member, including every member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – voted to oust him as president.

If such a profoundly democratic process involving mass popular uprising and unanimous votes by a democratically-elected parliament constitute a “coup,” then logically we should be in favour of more ‘coups’.

For an excellent blow by blow account of the Ukrainian popular uprising of 2013-14, ‘Ukraine Diaries’ by Andrey Kurkov is a must. Some of it can be accessed at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fbuUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false but buying the book would give you a fuller picture. Or better still, watch the amazing film, Winter on Fire at https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80031666,  which covers the full 3 months of the uprising, the enormity of the demonstrations, the ongoing brutal repression – if after watching it you still think the events were a ‘coup’ rather than truly massive genuine revolution, then we’re speaking a different language.

It is a sad moment when “leftists” decide that massive popular street protests against reactionary capitalist rulers are a bad thing; they thereby reject everything they have claimed to stand for throughout their lives. Unless they think that people have no agency (and no rights to agency) and that these kinds of numbers can all be manipulated the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Hunter Biden etc. Were all these hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and every member of parliament, personally bribed? That the US (or others) will always attempt to influence, to co-opt, a movement, is of course a given, but that is not a reason to oppose a popular uprising or mass mobilisation and hence essentially give support to a corrupt and repressive regime being overthrown.

‘Coup’ in this case seems to be just an updated version of the infamous term ‘colour revolution’, a nonsense concept invented by tankies who did not like watching the heroic Serbian working class overthrow bourgeois-nationalist butcher Milosevic in 2000, and so then extended its use to entirely different circumstances in Georgia in 2003 and different again in Ukraine in 2004. It is simply a term used for ‘popular uprising’ when it is one disapproved of by this sub-set of western lefties who assume they know what’s best for other peoples, and/or when the regime it is directed against is allied to Russian or Chinese (rather than US) imperialism or otherwise engages in some hollow “anti-imperialist” bluster.

The idea that the popular uprising was “US-orchestrated” stems from attempts by US rulers to co-opt it. One might say, ‘what business do US leaders have turning up to meet with protest leaders in another country?’ I agree – they should keep their noses out of it, just as should the Russians – but the point here is not the political morality of this – it is naïve to think powerful states don’t always try to coopt movements – but rather the fact that they had remarkably little to do with what eventuated, and simply did not have this power.

The main charge is that US advisors like Victoria Nuland played some role in choosing the caretaker who would temporarily become prime minister, after Yanukovych’s prime minister from his Party of Regions, Mykola Azarov, resigned on January 28 amidst the upsurge. Whether or not US advice was decisive in this choice of caretaker is hard to say; the idea is based on leaked correspondence involving Nuland and US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, where they did say they preferred the candidate (of three options), Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was indeed the one subsequently chosen by the Ukrainian parliament as interim prime minister. Is it not possible that the Ukrainian parliament made its own decision that they preferred him of the three options?

Just out of interest though, for those with short attention spans who think jumbling together “coup”, the US, “fascists” and “banning Russian language” explains anything, it is worthwhile briefly looking at the interim leaders chosen. It is clear from Nuland’s leaked correspondence that that candidate she preferred as prime minister, Yatsenyuk, was one of the more liberal ones, as opposed to Oleh Tyahnybok, from the far-right fringe; as Pyatt notes, “we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys.” For some reason, they also prefer Yatsenyuk over the other “moderate democrat,” Vitaly Klitschko; Nuland says “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. … I don’t think it’s a good idea,” and “what he (Yatsenyuk) needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.” Clearly, they want to keep the far-right out, but as for ‘Yats’ over ‘Klitsch’, the only clue is that Yatsenyuk was probably seen as more of a compromise candidate by Moscow, because Yanukovych had offered Yatsenyuk the prime-ministership on January 25 (before his own pm resigned!).

Indeed, in the same leak, Nuland and Pyatt also speak of the need for “some kind of outreach to Yanukovych.” So, far from the Nuland chat being part of a far-right, anti-Moscow coup, it appears that they preferred as interim pm the candidate who could best build bridges with Moscow. The only way I can read all this is that the famous ‘Nuland leak’ is about Nuland and the US government preferring to hatch a deal with Yanukovych, some kind of compromise government. After all, what most left conspiracists miss in all this is that Ukraine has both a president and a prime minister: Yanukovych was the president; the Nuland discussion did not concern his position at all, but rather who was going to be HIS interim prime minister! Unfortunately for Nuland, the US and the ‘moderate democrats’, the deal stitched together to keep Yanukovych in power till December with a new prime minister was rejected by the Ukrainian masses. US interference! Nuland advocates same interim prime minister for Yanukovych as does Yanukovych to aid the deal to him in power!

As for the interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed by the Ukrainian parliament on February 23 after it ousted Yanukovych the previous day, and there is no ‘Nuland story’ about this appointment. But did the ‘coup’ leaders (ie, the entire elected parliament) choose some rabid Russophobe to heighten tension with Moscow and with Russian-speakers in Ukraine? Well, when the post-Maidan interim government attempted to overturn the language law which Yanukovych had introduced in 2012, which gave Russian equal status to Ukrainian, this was vetoed by none other than interim president Turchynov. So, very much the moderate, the bridge-builder, trying to hold back the more virulent strains of west Ukrainian nationalism raising their head. Really, these pieces are not falling together very well for tankie fiction stories.

After all, the brief interim period was followed by presidential elections in May in which Ukrainians freely elected Petro Poroshenko; and parliamentary elections in October, in which a government was freely elected by Ukrainians, and chose Yatsenyuk, once again, to continue as prime minister (his party, the Peoples Front Party, received the highest number of popular votes, so I don’t think Victoria Nuland had anything to do with that). Tankies thus can make up stories about the US choosing the Ukrainian government, but what they really mean is that these fine people living in faraway lands disapprove of the choices democratically made by Ukrainians, and believe they have a right to demand they choose otherwise.  

Regarding the parliamentary elections, the parties of Yatsenyuk and of Poroshenko received nearly half the votes between them and the majority of seats; the Opposition Bloc (ie, the renamed Party of Regions, which tankies will tell you was banned from standing) received 9.43 percent of the vote and 27 seats; while neither the fascist right (Svoboda and Right Sector, with 4.71 percent and 1.8 percent of votes respectively), nor the Communist Party of Ukraine (with 3.8 percent of votes) cleared the electoral threshold and thus got no seats. 

As for Yanukovych, MPs from his own Party of Regions released a statement asserting “Ukraine was betrayed and people were set against each other. Full responsibility for this rests with Yanukovych and his entourage;” as for the allegedly ‘pro-Yanukovych’ populations of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, on the question of whether they consider Yanukovych “to be a legitimate President of Ukraine,” in an April 2014 survey only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said “rather” or “certainly yes” (and these were by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said “rather” or “certainly no.” Western tankies are well alone on this one, of defending the born-to-rule rights of a murderous, hyper-corrupt multi-billionaire oligarch.

Myth 2: The new government in 2014 banned the Russian language

This is quite an entrenched myth. Claiming that Ukraine changed its language law to downgrade Russian language in 2014, or more colourfully that it banned the language, is a common tankie claim used to justify the Russian quasi-annexation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Of course, the Russian language was not banned in 2014 nor any time since, and further, there was zero change in the language law in 2014; that did not occur until 2019.

_{Maps showing that Ukrainian president Zelensky was elected by Russian-speakers, whose language, we are told, he wants to ban (if not commit genocide against them). Source: Zoltan Grossman, Counterpunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/ukraine-maps-tell-a-different-story-than-putins-claims}

As background, Ukrainian president Zekensky is a Russian-speaker, as are a significant proportion of Ukrainians, and indeed Zelensky was elected in 2019 largely on the votes of Russian-speakers. Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been the main victims of Russian mass-killing since February 2022, and have dominated the resistance to it. The famous/infamous Azov Regiment of the National Guard (often confused with the fascistic Azov Battalion which existed in 2014) is largely composed of Russian-speakers. According to a 2017 poll, 67.8% of Ukrainians “consider Ukrainian to be their native language, 13.8% claimed it to be Russian, whereas 17.4% declared that both languages are their native tongues.” However, while in western Ukraine, 92.8% are Ukrainian speakers and only 1.9% are Russian speakers, in eastern Ukraine 36.1% consider Ukrainian their language compared to 24.3% who declare Russian to be; in central regions, the figures are somewhat in between, but generally much closer to the western figures.

The 1996 constitution makes Ukrainian the only state language, indeed it says “state ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.” However, there were strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, which can play an official role alongside Ukrainian in regions where these minorities are prominent. The constitution thus also states “the free development, use and defence of Russian and other languages of national minorities is guaranteed in Ukraine.”

All the language laws until 2012 were based on this well-balanced constitution. But in 2012, Yanukovych introduced a new language law which made Russian a ‘regional language’ with equal administrative status to Ukrainian wherever Russian was the language of at least 10 percent of the population, and other minority languages could have the same status. Since Russian is the language of over 10 percent in half the regions of Ukraine, this was quite wide-ranging. Many Ukrainians felt this tipped the balance too far.

So what did happen in 2014? Initially, after the fall of Yanukovych, the parliament attempted to rescind this new language law that Yanukovych had introduced just two years earlier, in 2012. The parliament’s aim in overturning this was to return to the previous law which had held sway ever since Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s, based on the 1996 constitution. As we saw, returning to the 1994-2012 linguistic framework was hardly a radical anti-Russian language step; it was merely the reversal of a recent radical change in the other direction. However, even this change did not take place, because it was vetoed by the caretaker president. Yanukovych’s radically pro-Russian 2012 law thus remained the law until 2019.

Therefore, leaving aside the blatant lie that Ukraine banned the Russian language and thus provoked a reaction from Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, in fact nothing at all happened to the rights of Russian-speakers in 2014, making the lie even worse. Now, of course, it may well be that just the attempt to change the law back to the original could have been a factor promoting mistrust of the new government by many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine; often it is not the actual content of a proposed change but the broader context, and this was the context of the newly assertive Ukrainian nationalism post-Maidan in reaction against Russian backing of Yanukovych and the immediate Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention into Donbas straight after his fall; this Ukrainian nationalism did include a virulent strain which was indeed alienating to many in the east. However, this point can be made without blatantly dishonest lies about what did happen.

It could well be argued that the Yanukovych law of 2012-14 was a better one, based on an abstract notion of complete equality of languages – even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and possibly for the wrong reasons. As a non-Ukrainian, I prefer not to get into that debate. The Ukrainian argument is based on the fact that Ukraine was a colony of Russia for hundreds of years, and the Ukrainian language was actively suppressed and discriminated against throughout that period (both under Tsarism and under Stalinism). There is also an important class aspect: Russian, the language of the colonial administration, came to dominate urban centres, even Kiev, while the villages were overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking; it was even considered shameful to speak Ukrainian in late Tsarist Russia, being a sign one was from the village, as rural-dwellers crowded into cities during industrialisation in the early 20^th century. Therefore, Ukraine now has a right to promote its language as the national language; Russian-speakers should have the right to use their language, but it is the language of the coloniser which became dominant via colonisation and suppression. Which argument is correct? Both arguments have validity, and much depends on context and manner in which such laws are introduced and implemented. What can be said for certain, however, is that the Ukrainian constitution, and the pre-2012 law, are hardly unusual by global standards; on the contrary, they are the norm. They are even less unusual for former colonies – what of the attempts over many decades in Ireland to promote the Irish language at the expense of English, for example?

The new Language Law of 2019 did partially downgrade Russian, at the time against Zelensky’s opposition (Zelensky was just elected in 2019 with votes of Russian-speakers). This new law was pushed by the outgoing Poroshenko government as it more and more turned opportunistically to the nationalist right (ironically in 2014 Poroshenko, elected then with the votes of Russian-speakers and appealing to unity, claimed the parliament’s attempt to rescind the 2012 law was a grave mistake). This new language law made Ukrainian the only language of state throughout Ukraine. While the law is consistent with the Ukraine constitution which makes Ukrainian the official language, the constitution also has strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, especially in areas where they are the majority. The new law arguably downgrades the status of some of those protections. In schools, for example, Ukrainian is the language of instruction throughout the country; Russian can be learned in school as a language subject. However, in pre-school and primary school, Russian or other minority children can study in their own language, as the language of instruction, in addition to Ukrainian, but they cannot in high school. From an internationalist standpoint, this change is certainly regressive, but it is hardly unique for most of the world.

The new law makes Ukrainian the language of all official communication, ie in government operations, including local government. In itself, this is hardly unusual by world standards. Regarding the media, however, the law is highly regressive and certainly can be seen to violate the Ukrainian constitution. The law stipulates that any publications in Russian or other languages must be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content and volume, a draconian and impractical regulation. There are exceptions for Crimean Tatar language, and for languages of the EU, but not for Russian. While a former colony certainly has the right to promote the national language, doing so in a way that makes everyday life more difficult for speakers of other languages at a practical level violates their rights and divides the working classes.

However, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for Putinite shills to try to use this argument, even after 2019. What they miss is that this law only came in after years of its implementation in reverse in Russian-annexed Crimea. In 2015, Crimea made only Russian the language of school instruction, while allowing students to learn Ukrainian or Tatar as elective languages; in pre-school and primary school, instruction could also be in Ukrainian or Tatar in addition to Russian, but not in high school. It is almost as if the Ukrainian government plagiarised the Russian occupation government of Crimea’s law four years later! But the reality in Crimea is much worse than even this official downgrading; in reality, Ukrainian has been comprehensively eliminated from all Crimean schools and from all official society. One of the first acts of Russian-owned rulers in both Crimea and the Donbas was to replace multilingual signs with Russian only ones.

Likewise, in the Russia-owned Donbas statelets, almost immediately following their quasi-annexation in 2014, “the curricula have been altered to exclude the teaching of Ukrainian language and history, which makes it problematic to obtain State school diplomas,” according to a November 2014 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights; in 2015, the curriculum was overhauled, with Ukrainian language lessons decreased from eight hours to two hours a week, while Russian language and literature lessons increased. Russia’s five-point grading system replaced Ukraine’s 12-point scheme. School leavers from then received Russian certificates with the Russian emblem, the two-headed eagle. In 2020, Russian was declared the only state language.

That does not justify the Ukrainian law of 2019 (which current president Zelensky opposed), but it is important to recognise that the chronology is in reverse: no change in 2014 in Ukraine, regressive change in late 2014 and 2015 in Donbas and Crimea under Russian occupation, followed years later by copy-cat regressive change in Ukraine – which however in no way ‘bans’ the Russian language’.

Myth 3: The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was an act of self-determination, and it rightfully belonged to Russia historically

_{Indigenous Crimean Tatars – victims of centuries of Russian colonialism and genocide – protest annexation by Russia in 2014}

Russia’s flagrant annexation of the sovereign Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 was the first annexation inside Europe since the (globally unrecognised) Turkish quasi-annexation of northern Cyprus, and in a league with only very few outright annexations globally – Israel’s annexation of Palestinian Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara, Indonesia’s annexation of Irian Jaya and later east Timor (until 1999) spring to mind. Yet Putin apologists have attempted to justify this act of Russian imperial expansionism as an act of self-determination by the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea (which frankly reminds one of Hitler’s claim to Sudetenland), or claim it was ‘always Russia’ and so on. 

On February 27, 2014, just five days after the Ukraine parliament’s vote to oust Yanukovych, masked Russian troops invaded Crimea – sovereign Ukrainian territory – attacked government buildings, raised the Russian flag over them, forced out the democratically-elected Crimea autonomous state government, replaced it with stooges from the ultra-right ‘Russian Unity’ party, which had received 4 percent of the vote in the previous elections – surely all this is a coup, isn’t it? It is a textbook coup, combined with invasion. This foreign-installed junta in Crimea then carried out, under Russian military occupation, the illegal “referendum” to leave Ukraine and join Russia, within ten days after calling it. Only two options were presented in the fake “referendum,” neither of which included the status quo. Ukrainian media was closed down.

Of course, the junta declared that 97 percent had voted for joining Russia – the usual figure plucked out of the air by dictators who throw “election” circuses. Yet Putin’s own Human Rights Council claimed the real turnout was 30-50% of voters, and that only 50-60% of those voted to join Russia. Notably, in a February 8-18 2014 Ukraine-wide poll, only 41 percent of people in Crimea favoured joining Russia – and that was far higher than anywhere else in Ukraine; we are supposed to believe that this jumped from 41% to 97% in a month!

International observers – of course, the Russian-installed junta invited various far-right/fascist parties from Europe for this show, indeed the invitees list – the French National Front, Jobbik (Hungary), Attaka (Bulgaria), Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right. Fascist parties throughout Europe declared their support for Crimea being “reincorporated” into Russia, its rightful place in their view, believers in the restoration of empires after all.

In contrast, the Mejils (parliament) of the Crimean Tatar nation, internationally recognised as the Indigenous people of Crimea (and likewise recognised as such in Ukraine), and a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, declared the referendum illegitimate and called for boycott, just in case anyone on the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ left happens to think the views of Indigenous peoples should count for something. The Russian occupation regime of post-referendum Crimea then banned the Mejils, their representative body first set up by the Crimean Tatars after the Russian revolution, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented ongoing human rights violations, including detention and torture, against the Tatar population. Today, the Mejils, in exile, demands the return of Crimea to Ukraine as an essential condition in any peace talks with Russia.

_{From 100% of the population at Russian conquest in 1783, the Crimean Tatars became a minority 100 years later, but then were 100% deported by Stalin in 1944}

The Crimean Tatars were the majority population of Crimea since the 11^th century, and remained so long after Russian settler-colonialism began with Catherine the Great’s invasion in 1783. Not until around 1900 did these Russian settlers begin to outnumber the indigenous Tatar population, who also fled Russian oppression in their hundreds of thousands. However they remained some 40 percent of the population until 1944 when Stalin expelled every man, woman and child Tatar from Crimea – hundreds of thousands of people – into central Asia, a torturous journey during which one in three died along the way. While they have been allowed to return in recent decades, such mass displacement tends to have a semi-permanent effect, and numbers were only re-growing slowly,  but continually, before this process was halted by annexation. In other words, the “left” (and far-right) assertion that, since 58 percent of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians, annexation by Russia is an act of self-determination, is a declaration of support for the results of centuries of Tsarist colonialism and the Stalinist genocide.

An interesting comparison could be made to the current debate in Australia about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament, which will be subject to referendum later this year. While the tepid and powerless ‘voice’ on offer can well be criticised for its limitations, and indeed many Indigenous leaders prefer a ‘treaty-first’ approach which would recognise their sovereignty and cede some actual power to the Indigenous nations, the main opposition is coming from the right who are vigorously opposed to any even symbolic increase in Indigenous representation. From being once the sovereign owners of the whole of Australia, Indigenous Australians have been reduced, through colonisation and genocide, to only a few percent of the population.

So, using the same simple ‘majoritarian’ principles that many Putin apologists are now using to justify the result of the staged Crimea ‘referendum’ (even if we pretend for a moment that it was legitimate and not staged under military occupation) – that 58 percent of the Crimean population are ethnic Russians and so, if that’s what they want, so it should be – what would we say if the large Anglo-Australian majority here one fine day voted to be re-annexed to ‘Great’ Britain, and the 3 percent Indigenous Australian population were opposed? Should we say, well, the (former colons) Anglo-Australians are the majority, so it should be, like the (former colons) Russians in Crimea? Or would we say that Indigenous Australians should have some special constitutional right to not have their lands returned to some foreign colonial power? I suggest that the kind of constitutionally empowered real Indigenous voice via treaty that most on the Australian left are in favour of would indeed empower the Indigenous minority to reject such a move, and rightly so.

And, more generally, when there exists more than one constituent nation in a mixed region – in this case Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – is ‘winner take all’ the democratic solution? Take Cyprus (a place I know something about …), with its 80 percent Greek Cypriot majority and 20 percent Turkish Cypriot minority. So if the majority of the majority Greek Cypriot community vote to be united with Greece, so that should be, right? Oh, wait a minute, they tried that, with the movement against British colonialism led by the right-wing and the Orthodox church, calling for ‘Enosis’ (union) with Greece (rather than an independent bi-national federation) … thereby alienating the Turkish minority, driving them into the hands of Turkey’s military regime which eventually invaded in 1974 and the rest is history. No solution in the divided island 50 years later. Or take Bosnia, with its 44 percent Bosniak (‘Muslim’), 30 percent Serb, 18 percent Croat and 8 percent ‘Yugoslav’ (ie too mixed to be anything else) population – no majority, but if the Serbs and Croats voted together for Bosnia to be divided between Serbia and Croatia and got a slight majority of votes, so that should happen despite the views of the other communities? Indeed, since Serb and Croat fascist leaders actually tried to do that militarily in 1992-95, they were in the right, were they? The Crimea ‘solution’, in other words, is the most utterly reactionary solution possible.   

On a minor point, one of the justifications often heard from Putin shills is that Russia had to seize Crimea because it has a naval base in Sevastopol (and heaven forbid that an imperialist power should lose a military base in another country, say many on the western ‘left’). Yet the Russian military’s lease on Sevastopol does not expire until 2042.

Myth 4: There were popular uprisings of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas, who established their own republics in an act of national self-determination

_{Putin offering to save Russian-speakers in Ukraine from the barbaric assault he is carrying out against them}

In answering this, I just want to clarify where I’m coming from: I support the right of nations and peoples to self-determination, and see this as superior to any obsession with “sovereign borders,” which have always changed throughout history, both for good and bad reasons. For example, I support the struggle of the Chechen people for self-determination, including independence, from Russia if that is their choice; I don’t care about the “sovereign” borders of the inheritance of the Russian colonial empire. Ditto for Puerto Rico or Hawaii if they chose to break up the US empire’s “sovereign” borders. I supported the national liberation struggle of the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian oppression, of the Kurds against oppression in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and so on: so why don’t I support the same self-determination of “the Russian people in Donbas”? Well, apart from the fact that even if there were such a struggle, it would currently be an irrelevant pawn for Russian imperial conquest, the more fundamental problem is that no such reality exists.

As we saw, almost immediately after Yanukovych fled to Russia (February 22, 2014), Russian forces invaded Crimea (February 27). Just as quickly after this, the first Russian forces, from the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party, turned up in Donbas, alongside other far-right Russian paramilitary forces who had just helped conquer Crimea; the seizures of government buildings began almost immediately, launching coup d’etats against the very governments Donbas residents had recently elected, bringing to power Russian stooges and fascists in the two oblasts (provinces) Donetsk and Luhansk; indeed, the first coup was the six-day seizure of the Donetsk State Administration Building on March 1, when “a group of activists bestowed the titled of ‘People’s Governor of Donetsk’ on a local nationalist-socialist activist named Pavel Gubarev,” an RNU leader. Such a rapid march of events in itself belies the idea that Russia was only responding to grass-roots movements in these regions staging a popular movement against the new post-Maidan authorities in Ukraine; it looks much more like a planned Russian conquest.

_{The swastika of the Russian National Unity Party, the first fascist mob to seize power in the coup in Donetsk in March 2014}

Let’s look at the three connected myths that make up this grander myth narrative.

Sub-Myth 1: ‘Ethnic Russian Donbas’

First, it is difficult to establish exactly what an ‘ethnic Russian’ is, as opposed to a Ukrainian who speaks Russian as a first language. Think of Irish, Welsh and Scottish who speak English as their first language, and try calling them ‘English’. See what happens. This is what occurs after centuries of colonialism, in both cases. Which in terms of ruthless Russification and physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was probably even worse under Stalin than under the Tsars, though there is not much to choose from between them.

If we go by people’s identity, according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians formed 58 percent of the population of Luhansk Oblast and 56.9 percent of Donetsk Oblast. Those identifying as ethnic Russians formed the largest minority, accounting for 39 percent and 38.2 percent of the two oblasts respectively. In other words, Ukrainians were the same size majority in Donbas as Russians were in Crimea – yet this (post-colonisation and genocide) Russian majority in Crimea is given as a reason by the same Putin apologists to justify Russian annexation there! Furthermore, much evidence suggests a marked decline in the population identifying as ethnic Russians rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians: in a 2019 survey carried out by the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, only 12 percent and 7 percent of the residents of the Russia-owned and government-controlled parts of Donbas respectively identified as ‘ethnic Russians’, while 21 percent and 12 percent respectively declared themselves ‘mixed Ukrainian and Russian’. The impact of Russian aggression since 2014 is likely the cause of this declining identification as ‘Russian’ – how ironic given that this Russian intervention is falsely justified as protecting these ‘ethnic Russians’! Indeed, the impact of the current war seems to be even greater, with even use of Russian language among many Ukrainians markedly declining as a political choice due to revulsion against the aggression. 

Therefore, to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance. The population of Donbas is divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.

Before moving on we should clarify: from 2014 to 2022 the Russian-owned forces only controlled some 40 percent of ‘Donbas’ (approximately the same in both Donetsk and Luhansk) while some 60 percent remained under Ukraine government control. So Russia has not just annexed the parts it formerly controlled, but the entire two oblasts, plus two others that it never had any control of (Kherson and Zaporizhzhya) and where there was never any support for Russia.

Sub-Myth 2: The population of Donbas, regardless of ethnicity, wanted self-determination for the region and were oriented more to Russia than to Ukraine

It is certainly true that neither ethnicity nor language tells us anything necessarily about the views of the Donbas residents; neither being an ethnic Russian nor Russian or Ukrainian speaking does not equal a particular political opinion; the opinions of people in all three groups, in both government-controlled and Russia-controlled parts of both oblasts, are mixed. But the data does not support the myth, but rather the opposite.

Two surveys carried out in April 2014 reveal very important information, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and by the Pew Research Centre. In the KIIS survey, to the question ‘Do you support the idea, that your region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia?’, 27 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk answered either ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ yes – while some 52 percent in both oblasts answered ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ no. These minority ‘yes’ votes in Donetsk and Luhansk were the only of any significance in all of Ukraine. The Pew research showed similar results, with the question whether regions should be allowed to secede answered in the positive by only 18 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 4 percent in west Ukraine), and only 27 percent of Russian-speakers. The KIIS survey also asked if they were in favour of Russian troops entering the region, to which under 20 percent in both oblasts said yes while substantial majorities said no.

On the question ‘Do you consider Viktor Yanukovych to be a legitimate President of Ukraine?’, only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said rather or certainly yes (by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said rather or certainly no. So much for the idea that the people of Donbas were angry that “their president” was deposed.

Larger numbers support some kind of autonomy or ‘special status’ within Ukraine, but with sharp differences in the two parts of Donbas. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies found that in the Russia-owned regions, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia. Of the majority opposed, 30% supported some kind of autonomy and a quarter no special status. But in the government controlled two-thirds, while a similar 30% favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just Ukraine with no special status; hardly any supported joining Russia. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the overall majority necessarily even favour autonomy. Even this does not necessarily mean that the chunks seized are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation; given the dispossession of half the Donbas population (some 3.3 of the original 6.6 million people), it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones, while the millions in refuge simply don’t get a say in such surveys.

Therefore, both in Donetsk and Luhansk, in both government and Russian-controlled regions, and among the dispossessed, both ‘ethnicity’ and political opinion are very mixed, there is no ‘Russian’ region or specifically even ‘pro-Russia’ region; so the regions violently seized are entirely arbitrary and correspond to no movement for ‘self-determination’ or necessarily for anything.

Truth 1. There was a degree of alienation from the new government in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014

This is not to deny that there was broadly a sense of alienation among many in eastern Ukraine from the direction taken by the new post-Yanukovych government, regardless of ‘ethnicity’ or language; there were also geographic and other factors, including more economic connection to Russia in the east. Specifically, the new Ukraine authorities, and even more so the empowered far-right minority, projected an assertive Ukrainian nationalism, and various largely symbolic actions drove this alienation. According to the Pew survey, while 60 percent in western Ukraine thought the new government had “a good influence on the way things are going in the country,” only 24 percent in eastern Ukraine agreed, and 67 percent there assessed this influence as “bad.” Similarly, 66 percent in western Ukraine thought only the Ukrainian language should have legal standing, while 73 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 86 percent of Russian-speakers) said both Russian and Ukrainian should be official languages, underlining the centrality of the language question – my Myth 2 details the comically false assertion that Russian language was downgraded or “banned” in 2014, but even the unsuccessful attempt to revise the language law in this context would have been a factor in this alienation.

But in itself, this is not remarkable: the dominance of certain political tendencies in different regions of a country due to complex combinations of history, culture, economics etc is not uncommon: think of northern and southern England, northern and southern Italy, regions of the US, Aegean Turkey and Anatolia etc. That does not mean that the peoples of such regions would welcome a foreign military intervention because a party perceived to favour a different region’s political proclivities were in power.

Sub-Myth 3: The Russian-backed seizure of power in parts of Donbas represented this alienation of the region’s population from the new government

There was certainly a valid political struggle that could have been waged by many people in the region against certain policies of the new government; the fact that the Maidan was initially confronted by an ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east was in itself a valid expression of popular dissent. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed, funded, trained and armed militia and direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries, tanks and other heavy weaponry, political operatives and fascists, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine. Simon Pirani argues that while neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary, in fact the “social aspirations” of the two were similar, “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”

The idea that this militarisation, seizing of buildings and coup d’etats were a natural reflection, extension, of the civil ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east is belied by the 2014 KIIS survey. On the question ‘Do you support actions of those, who with arms capture administrative buildings in your region?’, only 18 percent in Donetsk and 24 percent in Luhansk answered rather or certainly yes, while 72 percent and 68 percent respectively in those two allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ oblasts answered rather or certainly no!

I have heard it claimed that Donbas residents were alienated because the government they elected had been overthrown in Kyiv (as if the parliament, which deposed the president – one person – wasn’t also elected by them). But how does this sit with small armed groups launching coup d’etats in Donbas overthrowing the very regional government that Donbas residents had elected?

Nor can militarisation be justified as an act of self-defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan, as nothing of the sort had taken place: the coup d’detats, took place immediately after the deposing of Yanukovych; the armed conflict later. 

John Reiman, in his excellent review of the Ukraine Diaries, cites some passages describing this very early intervention (ie, months before the generalised war):

“On March 9 for the first time Kurkov reports on the entry of Russian agents in Ukraine. And not just any Russians – members of the fascist Russian Unity Party (RNE). ‘The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums…’ … On April 4, Kurkov reports that 15 Russian citizens had been arrested in Donetsk with 300 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a grenade launcher, ammunition and other military equipment. … On April 7, Kurkov reports the arrest of a Russian GRU agent, Roman Bannykh. The Ukraine government seized his telephone records, which revealed that he had been coordinating the actions of the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk. … pro-Russian activists … walk around in combat uniform, with no badges or other signs of identification, carrying AK-100 assault rifles. The Ukrainian army does not possess those rifles but the Russian army does … Of the 117 Russian citizens arrested for having taken part in disturbances, at least ten are Russian secret service agents. … On April 21 … the separatists in Slovyansk attacked and pillaged the homes of gypsies in that city. Simultaneously, Nelya Shtepa was kidnapped. She was the former mayor of that city and had originally supported the separatists but broke with them because they were being manipulated by Russian secret service agents’.”

Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, admitted that he pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”

Finally, regarding the so-called “referendums” that the coup authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk carried out in May 2014, Cathy Young writing in The Bulwark provides a useful anecdote which, as she says, by itself pretty much “tells the tale”:

“On May 7, Ukrainian intelligence released the audio of an intercepted phone call between Donetsk insurgent leader Dmytro Boitsov and far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Barkashov (the head, as it happens, of the aforementioned Russian National Unity). In the obscenity-laden exchange, Boitsov complains that the rebels are “not ready” to hold the referendum on May 11 as planned. Barkashov responds testily: “Just put in whatever you want. Write 99 percent. What, you’re going to fucking walk around collecting papers? Shit, are you fucked in the head or something?” “Ah. All right, I got it, I got it,” replies an audibly relieved Boitsov as it dawns on him that he and his pals are not expected to hold an actual referendum, just to produce results. Barkashov continues: “Just write that 99 percent—no, let’s say 89 percent, fuck it, voted for the Donetsk Republic. And that’s it, shit, we’re fucking done.”

I mean, it may as well have been a discussion between blood-drenched Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and some ‘election’ henchman who thought the ‘election’ circus had to be taken at least partly seriously; hell, some western ‘lefties’ are so thick they even agree with their far-right allies that those ‘elections’ were genuine!

Young continues:

“By amazing coincidence, on May 11, the separatist “election commission” of Donetsk announced that 89 percent of the voters had chosen self-rule. As I have noted earlier, the first prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “political consultant” Aleksandr Borodai, was not only a citizen of Russia but a reputed officer in the FSB (the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) with a long history of involvement in far-right, ultranationalist circles.”

Conclusion

By intervening and militarising a movement, swamping it from the get-go, forcibly seizing territory, Russia completely changed the nature of Ukrainian politics. From a Ukrainian perspective, Russia, the former colonial power and neighbouring superpower had engineered a violent military conflict, slicing up Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, thereby completely overwhelming whatever democratic voices could have arisen among Russians or Russian-speakers and supporters, while likewise hardening the right-wing nationalist views of many Ukrainians now seeing a fight for their country’s very existence. This militarisation also strengthened far-right forces in Ukraine at the time because the Ukrainian armed forces were in disarray, and the far-right took the initiative on the military front.

Whatever original support the civil anti-Maidan may have had, it is hard to know what survived the Russian-led military intervention and coups. We know that 3.3 million people of the original 6.6 million have fled Donbass since then, the majority into other areas of Ukraine. We also know that many of the irregular Ukrainian militia on the frontlines in the Ukraine-government controlled two-thirds of Donbas are residents uprooted as a result of the conflict and blame the Russian intervention. The more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any expression of opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies.   

Finally, one might rightly ask, does this even have any relevance now, with Russia heavily bombing and destroying Russian-speaking towns and cities in Donbas, including the complete decimation of Russian speaking Mariupol, and the massive rejection of Russian rule by these populations – has anyone seen a single welcoming party in eastern Ukraine for conquerors in the last year? It is almost certain that whatever lingering pro-Russia feeling that may have existed before 2022 has now largely collapsed. Indeed, the problem with this entire discussion, even as I write it, is the danger of implying that Russia’s monstrous war has anything to do with the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers in Donbas: if that were the case, there would have been no reason for Russia to advance an inch from the control it already exerted over 40 percent of Donbas where they perhaps had more support – what would have been the purpose of annexing the more anti-Russian parts of Donbas that had been in government control, let alone annexing the other two oblasts, let alone invading and savagely bombing the whole of Ukraine?

_{Before February 2022: Russian-backed forces only controlled about 40 percent of each of the two Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.}

_{What Russia controlled in Ukraine by October 2022}

Myth 5: The Ukrainian army bombed the Donbas for 8 years before the Russian invasion, killing 14,000 ethnic Russians between 2014 and 2022.”

As I have already fully dealt with this before, this will merely be a summary of main points; the article provides the detail.

The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have overreacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.

Is any of this true?

Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?

“The Ukrainian army killed.”

Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.

For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?

“ethnic Russians”

Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.

But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians – after all, when you are fighting a military force, you don’t usually describe the ethnicity of the troops killed. For example, now, when the Russian and Ukrainian armies are in combat, no-one refers to the numbers of ‘ethnic Russians’ or ‘ethnic Ukrainians’ dying, when referring to military deaths. So it clearly means ‘ethnic Russian civilians’.

In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:

4,400 Ukrainian troops

6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops

3,404 civilians (of whatever ethnicity)

So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021. And these 3,404 civilians would have included ‘ethnic Russians’ and ‘ethnic Ukrainians’, who both live in Donbas.

However, what about the last part:

“between 2014 and 2022.”

Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.

But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.

In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. According to the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides, here are the numbers of deaths in the years before the Russian invasion:

2016 – 88 deaths

2017 – 87 deaths

2018 – 43 deaths

2019 – 19 deaths

2020 – 23 deaths

2021 – 16 deaths, including:

– 11 deaths (Jan-June)

– 4 deaths (June-Sep)

– 1 death (Sep-Dec)

2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).

As we can see, the rate of death continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.

The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.

But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.

_{Up to half of civilian deaths in Donbas in 2014-22 were from landmines}

Myth 6: The Minsk Accords offered a just way out of the crisis, Russia wanted to implement them, but the Ukrainian government refused to implement them, encouraged by the US.

These assertions are entirely fictional as will be shown, but they also raise a number of sub-points; first, there were two Minsk agreements, so what happened to the first?; what is the actual content of the Minsk II agreement?; how was it imposed on Ukraine?; and what is the evidence that it was Ukraine that blocked its implementation?

Following the first few months of armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed militia in Donbas in mid-2014, the first Minsk agreement was signed between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as by the Russian-backed junta leaders who had seized power in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), on 5 September 2014.

The main provisions were for

• an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by OSCE,

• “decentralisation of power, including through the adoption of the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,”

• the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border by OSCE,

• release of all hostages and illegally detained persons,

• a law preventing the prosecution and punishment of people in connection with the conflict,

• “early local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,” and

• the withdrawal of “illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian government immediately carried out its side of the bargain by adopting the “Law on the Special Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” on September 16. According to this law, this special status of self-government will be implemented in the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk controlled by the separatists at the time of the ceasefire. The law provides for the freedom of any language to be used and cross-border cooperation with Russia. Local elections were scheduled for the region in December.

However, the Minsk I Protocol was almost immediately violated in a massive way by the Russian-orchestrated ‘separatist’ militia, which launched an attack aimed at seizing the Donetsk airport, which was in the government-controlled part of Donetsk at the time of the ceasefire. This led to a 5-month battle in which the side launching the aggression was in open violation of the Protocol, and as it was a battle to control infrastructure, cannot in any way be excused as a battle to protect hypothetically endangered pro-Russian communities. They further violated the Minsk Protocol by holding their own “elections” in November outside the new Ukrainian special status law, under Russian military occupation, and without any of the other provisions of Minsk adhered to (eg, withdrawal of illegal armed groups, OSCE monitoring of the border etc). In January, the separatists took control of the airport, and also launched attacks on other government-controlled regions, including Mariupol, Debaltseve and Krematorsk, killing dozens of civilians.

So there is no ambiguity regarding Minsk I: Ukraine carried out the political requirements, but the Russia-owned militia massively violated both the political and above all the military agreements.

With large-scale support from direct intervention by Russian forces, the separatists and Russia were able to force a new Minsk agreement, Minsk II, on Ukraine. Minsk II, mediated by France and Germany, was signed on February 12 by Russia, Ukraine, OSCE and the separatist leaders.

Again, it was immediately violated by the Russian-orchestrated militia, who continued their attack on Debaltseve, unilaterally declaring it to be outside the agreement! Hundreds of Ukrainian troops had been holed up and besieged in the town for weeks. It fell to the separatists on February 18, a week after the agreement.

Was Minsk II a good agreement for Ukraine? Well, the first thing that must be noted is that it was imposed on Ukraine by military force, given the large scale and relatively open intervention of Russian forces (as opposed to just Russian-backed forces and Russian heavy weaponry) in the second phase of the Donbas war. Therefore, the way Ukraine “agreed” to it was an act of international injustice, imperialist imposition, so those blaming Ukraine for not implementing it are in effect siding with imperialist bullying.

That said, was Minsk II so much worse than Minsk I for Ukraine, and was it a fair and just agreement anyway, despite the way it was imposed?

Let’s again look at the main points of the Minsk II agreement:

1, 2, 3 ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons by both parties at equal distances, security zones for heavy weaponry, monitoring and verification by OSCE

4. On the first day after the withdrawal, to begin a dialogue on the procedures for holding local elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and the Law of Ukraine “On a temporary order of local government in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” … no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, to adopt a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the specification of a territory subject to the special regime in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in some regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” based on the line set in a Minsk memorandum of September 19, 2014

5, 6 Pardons and amnesties, law prohibiting prosecution and punishment in connection with the conflict, release and exchange of hostages and illegally detained persons

9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by Ukraine’s government throughout the whole conflict area, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine, and a constitutional reform) by the end of 2015, on condition of implementation of paragraph 11.

10. The withdrawal of all foreign armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions

12. On the basis of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in individual areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” the questions regarding local elections shall be discussed and agreed with the individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in compliance with the relevant standards of the OSCE with the monitoring by the OSCE ODIHR.

Minsk II appears more comprehensive than Minsk I, but in certain respects can be considered more disadvantageous to Ukraine; after all, Russia and its proxies did not continue the war for another 6 months for no gain. In addition, there is arguably confusion in the timeline, which allowed both sides to stall. It is generally thought that Ukraine stalled on the political aspects of Minsk, while Russia and proxies stalled on the military-security aspects.

For example, while Ukraine had already agreed to the special status provisions in Minsk I and had immediately passed the relevant legislation (and again, following Minsk II, the Rada (parliament) voted in the ‘special status’ laws for Donbas, Minsk II goes beyond in mandating Ukraine bring into force a “new constitution,” with “decentralisation as a key element.” Understandably, Ukrainians may well wonder why Russia, via military intervention inside Ukraine, has the right to impose a “new constitution” of a specific nature on Ukraine as a whole, as opposed to the provisions already agreed to regarding Donetsk and Luhansk.

If the United States had sent troops into Russian territory to “aid” the Chechens during Putin’s grizzly slaughter in Chechnya over 1999-2001, and then forced Russia to sign a ‘Minsk’ agreement according to which, not only would Chechnya have special status, but Russia had to write a whole new constitution based on the ‘decentralisation’ of the entire territory of Russia, I wonder how many of today’s ‘leftist’ Putin apologists would be demanding Russia ‘sign Minsk, the only road to peace’, and be praising the US for its desire for peace?

In addition, Minsk II says that Ukraine can only regain control over its sovereign border after the local elections have been held in Donbas, and can only be completed after this imposed “new constitution” comes into being. There is nothing remotely as sweeping as this in Minsk I.

However, Minsk II also says that all foreign armed forces, military equipment and mercenaries must leave Ukraine “under the supervision of the OSCE” and that all “illegal groups” must be disarmed. Yet this manifestly never happened. It definitely never happened “under the supervision of OSCE,” because OSCE continually reported over the years ahead evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine.

Indeed, at this point, we should probably demolish this particular sub-myth, because any reasonable person would have to admit that Ukraine could not carry out acts of ‘local self-governance’ in a region occupied by the army of a hostile neighbouring superpower; yet Russia denies its troops were there.

Sub-Myth: There were no Russian troops in Ukraine between the 2015 ceasefire and the 2022 invasion

OSCE had become quite open about its evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine by 2016. By the end of that year, the OSCE observer mission had observed “more than 30,000 individuals in military-style dress crossing just at the two checkpoints to which it has access. … Twenty uniformed persons crossed the border in a single bus with tinted windows in mid-October, according to Observer Mission reports. … On at least 27 different occasions, the Observer Mission has reported seeing funerary vehicles returning to Russia with a sign reading “Cargo 200” or “200,” a well-known code for Russian military casualties. … on June 10 [the Mission] observed the exhumation of a soldier in a Russian military uniform. … On October 17, at the Uspenka border crossing point, the SMM saw one black minivan with tinted windows and black military license plates enter separatist-held Ukraine from Russia, with two men in military-style dress on board.” In 2018 an OSCE drone even recorded footage of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine.

Indeed, the evidence is simply overwhelming. For example, Paul Gregory writes that as of September 2016, the organization Cargo 200 had published “names, photos, addresses, and military records” of 167 troops “killed,” 187 “MIA,” 305 mercenaries “killed” and 796 “MIA.” But these are likely underestimates, as, for example, he continues, the Committee of [Russian] Soldiers’ Mothers “gather information from grieving families to arrive at casualty figures of up to 3,500 KIA [killed in action]” by 2016; the Committee was labelled a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Justice Ministry.  Furthermore, “Young Russian soldiers in Ukraine routinely post pictures on vKontakte (a Russian version of Facebook) of themselves in Ukraine and identify their unit.”

Bellingcat further demolished the myth by demonstrating “that thousands of Russian soldiers have been awarded the highest honors of the Russian Federation for bravery/distinction in combat,” by gathering images of these medals that the soldiers posted on social media. “Bellingcat’s analysis shows 4,300 medals “For Distinction in Combat” awarded between July 11, 2014 and February 2016,” but this is only one of four kinds of medals awarded.

Unlike the issue of Ukraine regaining control of its border, there is no prior condition in Minsk II for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, mercenaries, equipment etc; therefore, Ukraine quite understandably interprets this refusal by Russia and its proxies to implement these provisions of Minsk as reason not to implement the local elections, despite having passed the legislation for it. Because no sovereign state would be prepared to hold local elections in a region of its country under the control of a hostile foreign military power, which also controls the local militia running the region.

_{Russian soldiers and their medals for fighting in Ukraine, from Inform Napalm (https://informnapalm.org/en/identified-servicemen-of-19th-mrb-awarded-for-fighting-in-ukraine/)}

………………………………………………….

Furthermore, how do we define “illegal groups” as described in this same article of Minsk II? To the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed and financed and often staffed armed militia in control of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk not in its control are “illegal groups,” but they obviously don’t consider themselves to be, which is a problem of the text. Not that Ukraine has used this as a pretext, however.

The text also says that the regions where this ‘special status’ and hence local elections would be held would correspond to the ceasefire lines of September 2014, ie, when Minsk I was signed. But now the Russian proxies were in control of more territory, including the airport, Debaltseve etc. So while Minsk II calls for immediate ceasefire (ie, on the lines of February 2015), these lines are beyond those of September 2014, on which special status is to be based. So how does Ukraine carry out local elections when the separatist militia control areas beyond the assigned region?

Furthermore, Minsk II says that the local elections are to be held “with the monitoring of OSCE,” but it is unclear how OSCE can monitor a situation in which OSCE itself says a key provision of Minsk, namely withdrawal of all foreign forces and weapons, has not been carried out. In addition, it is unclear how Ukraine can carry out these local elections under its new special status law, as required by Minsk II, when both Russia and its proxy leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk rejected this new law. Finally, just two months after Minsk II was signed, the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk under Russian control held their own local “elections” anyway, neither under Ukrainian government law nor with OSCE monitoring, in outright violation of Minsk II.

For all these reasons, Ukraine not proceeding with the political side of Minsk (local elections under its special status legislation) is arguably completely justified; local elections carried out in such conditions would result in Russia essentially having a permanent place inside the Ukrainian polity. Or, at the very least, even if one accuses Ukraine of not carrying out Minsk II, they must at the same time accuse Russia of also not carrying out Minsk II. For its part, Russia simply claims it is not a signatory to Minsk II and is therefore not bound to it, claiming only the separatist leaders were signatories, but this is simply a lie: the signature of Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, can be clearly seen on the Minsk agreement, indeed on the Russian version of it. Check the last page with the signatures.

So, while both sides arguably stalled, and, in my view, the Ukrainian side justifiably so for the reasons above, what of anti-Ukrainian or pro-Putin writers who claim either that Zelensky began with a peace platform to implement Minsk II when elected in 2019 but “backed down” due to intimidation from the Ukrainian far-right, or that, even more blandly, Ukraine ultimately “rejected” it (often with the very colourful addition that Russia “wanted to implement it”)?

According to the first charge, after being elected in 2019 on a peace platform, Zelensky signed an agreement for the mutual pull-back of armed forces in order to facilitate the conditions for proceeding with Minsk (based on the new Steinmeier formula which Zelensky had signed onto), but when confronted by the refusal of the far-right and the Azov Regiment to pull back, so the story goes, he “backed down.”

Yet actually, the opposite occurred. As Taras Billous explains:

“There had been an agreement [in late 2019] that there would be a troop disengagement at three points of what was then the line between Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces in Donbas. Then people from around the Azov movement, and from the National Corps Party, staged a campaign there, at one of these points, presenting this disengagement as if it represented some kind of gain for the Kremlin, as if Ukrainian troops alone were called upon to withdraw and leave their positions. But this wasn’t what the disengagement required; it required both sides to pull back. But even in this case, which was so crucial for the right, where they tried to achieve their maximum mobilization for this activity, they didn’t succeed in achieving their point of view because Zelensky intervened personally. He traveled to that line of forces and engaged in heated discussions with some Azov members, and eventually Ukraine did carry out this disengagement, which was a prerequisite for resuming the meeting in the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. So even in this case the right was unable to block governmental policy.”

Curiously, the pro-Putin voices often show a video of Zelensky being confronted by the far-rightists at the disengagement lines as evidence of him “backing down” and that the far-right call the shots in Ukraine despite their tiny size. In this video tweet, the pro-Putin clown Denis Rogatyuk writes “The fighter refuses [to lay down arms]. Zelensky is NOT running the show. The neo-nazis are.” I say curiously because the video shows the complete opposite: it shows Zelensky stood his ground. They backed down; as Billous explains, Zelensky did carry out the disengagement; and on December 19, the Ukrainian parliament yet again extended the Donbas special status legislation for another year.

Furthermore, if Zelensky had “backed down” to the far right, and instead decided on “NATO-backed” war to reclaim the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas as the tankie discourse goes, then wouldn’t we have seen an upturn in the fighting? Yet, as I demonstrated in my ‘Myth 5’, the numbers of people dying on the Donbas front quite sharply declined in 2019-2021 under Zelensky (and of course it was already well down in 2016-2018 compared to the hot war of 2014-15 when nearly all the 14,000 deaths (including 3404 civilian deaths) occurred. The total deaths in this conflict dropped to 19 in 2019 (from 43 in 2018) then 23 in 2020, 16 in 2021 (11 in the first half year and 5 in second half) and zero in 2022 before the invasion – and all this taking into account that the Russian-backed side are also responsible for these deaths, and that around half these figures are from landmines rather than shooting and shelling – the evidence suggests Zelensky did largely carry out his peace program. Sure doesn’t suggest much of a ‘NATO-backed offensive’.

On the final charge, that Ukraine actually “abandoned” or “rejected” the Minsk agreement, it is unclear if those making this common charge are simply saying the same, that Ukraine has yet to carry out certain provisions of it, for the reasons described above, but saying it in a more colourful and dishonest way; or if they really are claiming that at some point Ukraine formally renounced the agreement. Since I wouldn’t want to accuse Putin apologists of dishonesty, I will read it to mean what it does mean in English.

In which case, they should provide the source of the statement by the Ukrainian government. Anyone that watches or reads the news might remember that the ‘Normandy’ framework discussions between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany had continued right up till the eve of Russia’s recognition of the “independence” of the two ‘republics’ it controlled just a few days before the invasion; these were discussions based on trying to negotiate Minsk II. Russia’s recognition and invasion buried the accords. So in its literal meaning, this continual charge is simply a lie.

In order to seem less of a liar, Jacques Baud, the former NATO military analyst turned Putin troll who was widely cited by the tankie left around the time of the invasion, put it this way: “But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accords of Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States.” As “evidence” for this claim, he “cites” this article. But of course the article “cited” says no such thing; it reads “Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.”

Baud, in other words, just made it up. Those of us who are used to this are not surprised; those who are not, try to understand that pretty much all pro-Putin propaganda is of this level.

Finally, this simple description of the reality inside the Russia-owned parts of Donbas in the years before the 2022 invasion should suffice to demonstrate how comprehensively Minsk II was already fully violated in spirit and letter there:

“The “People’s Republics” also formally adopted constitutions which claimed sovereignty over areas under Kiev’s control – again, in breach of Minsk 2. Over 800,000 inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” have been issued with Russian passports, i.e. Russian citizenship. Higher education institutions have adopted the curricula used in Russia. The Ukrainian language has been banned in schools. In addition to the replacement of Ukrainian television broadcasting by state-controlled Russian television channels, the Kremlin version of current affairs (and world history, in the form of the “Russian world”) is promoted by outlets of the Russian Centre organisation (Russian-state-funded) and the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee (also Russian-state-funded). Russian political parties are now active in the “People’s Republics” and contest elections there, especially the Just Russia Party, the Russian Communist Party, and Putin’s United Russia Party. Those inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” who have Russian citizenship also take part in Russian elections. Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 are dead.”

Myth 7: Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace agreement in April 2022 whereby Ukraine would not join NATO, but then British prime minister Boris Johnston visited Kyiv and told Zelensky not to go ahead with it, after which Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, scuttling this chance for peace.

This myth has taken on such a life of its own it has probably been re-published in almost every conceivable left and alt-right publication, not only the anti-Ukrainian ones. The tankie and conspiracist etherworld has been full of it, for example Jacobin’s pro-Putin propagandist Branco Marcetic here. Yet there is not an ounce of truth to it.

Of course, the Ukrainians have no agency; they just jump to the alleged commands of some foreign leader that shows up. Yet we don’t even know for sure what Johnston said; it was just a claim by one Ukrainian newspaper, allegedly from some unnamed sources close to Zelensky. Hell, anyone can say anything.

It is certainly true that there was a peace proposal on the table that involved Ukraine scrapping its bid to join NATO. In fact, that proposal was already on the table before the war even began. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Putin rejected it, because, after all, Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire, as he openly stated that Ukraine had no right to exist as a separate entity to Russia; the NATO stuff as just a smokescreen, so he saw Ukraine’s acceptance of no NATO as a threat rather than an opportunity.

It is also true that there was a more detailed peace proposal on the table in late March-early April 2022, about a month into the war. Importantly, this was Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal to Russia on March 29 2022; it was not just some ‘proposal’ floating around in the atmosphere, that some are accusing Ukraine of rejecting (rejecting its own proposal).

The 10 points included that Ukraine would no longer seek to join NATO, would not join any military alliance, that instead it would get sovereignty guarantees from a number of nations instead (including Russia), the statement that there was no military solution to the question of Crimea and the 40 percent of Donbas already occupied by Russia before February 2022, and therefore Russia would withdraw to these pre-February lines, the sovereignty guarantees would not even cover these regions until a solution was eventually arrived at via negotiations, and in the case of Crimea, the negotiations could last 15 years!

For what happened next, I am going to cite US Greens Party leader Howie Hawkins who put together a very clear outline based on easily available sources; above all what this shows is that Russia had already rejected the proposals two days before Johnston’s visit, and that despite horrific Russian massacres in the meantime, Zelensky remained open for negotiations. These facts may not fit with lots of peoples’ favourite conspiracy theory, but they are clearly on the record, so please argue against the facts, not against me or Howie Hawkins. Here is Howie:

…………………………………………………..

“The peace settlement on the table at the end of March provided for Russia to return to the pre-February 24 lands it held in the Donbass and Crimea, for Ukraine to be a neutral non-NATO country without nuclear weapons or foreign troops (the latter two provisions are already in the Ukrainian constitution) in return for a security guarantee treaty signed by the big powers, and for the status of the Donbas and Crimea to be determined over a number of years diplomatically, not militarily.

“According to a Reuters report, that basic proposal was on the table in the days before and just after the invasion, but Putin rejected it because he wanted to annex Ukraine, not just make it militarily neutral.

“On April 7, two days before Johnson’s visit to Zelensky on April 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the proposed settlement was “unacceptable.”

“Whether Johnson’s April 9 no negotiations message, attributed to unnamed sources in the Zelensky administration only by a single Ukrainian news source, represented the Collective West, as the report said he claimed, has never been confirmed by the US or other Western countries.

“In any case, three days later on April 12, Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end.” “On April 27, the Financial Times reported in a story entitled, “Vladimir Putin abandons hopes of Ukraine deal and shifts to land-grab strategy,” that Putin had “lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war,” citing sources briefed on conversations with Putin.

“Meanwhile, Zelensky remained open to peace talks. At an April 25 press conference, Zelensky had said he is ready to hold peace talks and wishes to do so face-to-face with Putin. “He followed up on May 12, again calling for negotiations. “And again on June 8: Asked about talks with Russia which have been suspended since late March, Zelensky said that Ukraine has not changed his position. He said he maintains the view that war should be ended at the negotiating table. The Ukrainian President also stated that he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president, news agency AFP reported.
 

“I think these statements by Putin and Lavrov show it was Russia that didn’t want a peace agreement that would make them retreat to the pre-Feb 24 contact line in late March. Russia was at its peak of territory held, although it was being defeated and about to retreat from Kiev and other northern oblasts.”

…………………………………………………

I would also add another aspect: even though it is clear from this that Zelensky didn’t abandon Ukraine’s own plan, but Lavrov and Putin rejected it, Ukraine would have been fully in its rights to reject it by mid-April, because Russia had given its own response to Ukraine’s generous offer in practice: by organising the Bucha massacre of some 400 Ukrainian civilians as it withdrew from the Kyiv region, and by continuing to besiege and level the city of Mariupol, from where it was then deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Yet, amazingly enough, the sources here suggest it still remained open to a negotiated settlement.

It is also worth noting that in the months ahead, Zelensky continually insisted Ukraine would fight on until Russian forces were forced back to the pre-February 2022 (ie pre-invasion) lines, and then negotiate. For example, here in May he is still saying there can be negotiations, if Russia withdraws “from areas that it seized during the invasion,” as well as intends to negotiate on Crimea and Donbas, while noting that:

“With each new Bucha, with each new Mariupol, with each new city where there are dozens of dead people, cases of rape, with each new atrocity, the desire and the possibility to negotiate disappears, as well as the possibility of resolving this issue in a diplomatic manner.”

“To stop the war between Russia and Ukraine the step should be regaining the situation as of 23 February,” Zelensky told the BBC on May 7.  

If by later in 2022 Zelensky’s statements hardened – since then Ukraine has insisted that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, must be liberated before a ceasefire – then this seems to me to be a sensible negotiating position after continuous Russian rejection, both on paper and more importantly in practice, of all and every Ukrainian proposal before then, including the March-April 2022 peace process.

As for Russia, since illegally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts (as well as Crimea) later in 2022, including two where there was never any support for joining Russia, its ‘negotiating position’ has been that Ukraine must first recognise this theft of five oblasts, of a fifth of its territory!

A further Ukraine Myth to be dealt with next is the big NATO question, ie, the idea that Russia was ‘provoked’ into a genocidal invasion of its neighbour, a non-NATO member, due to its ‘provocative’ unrequited wish to join NATO. But for now, it is obvious from Russia’s rejection of both the pre-invasion proposal for Ukraine to quit its NATO ambitions, and Ukraine’s more developed proposals for the same and more one month into the war, that Russia invaded Ukraine not because of any fear of NATO but rather, as Putin tells us himself, because he believes Ukraine has no right to exist.

Besides, imperialism is a real thing; Russian imperialism wants strategic control of the Black Sea, its resources and its sea lanes; ‘NATO’ is just a good excuse (and useful to bullshit gullible western leftists with), while restoration of the Russian Empire is the ideology to bullshit the Russian masses and consolidate the ruling class with.     

To be continued.

By Michael Karadjis

This myth has taken on such a life of its own it has probably been re-published in almost every conceivable left and alt-right publication, not only the anti-Ukrainian ones. The tankie and conspiracist etherworld has been full of it, for example Jacobin’s pro-Putin propagandist Branco Marcetic here. Yet there is not an ounce of truth to it.

Of course, the Ukrainians have no agency; they just jump to the alleged commands of some foreign leader that shows up. Yet we don’t even know for sure what Johnston said; it was just a claim by one Ukrainian newspaper, allegedly from some unnamed sources close to Zelensky. Hell, anyone can say anything.

It is certainly true that there was a peace proposal on the table that involved Ukraine scrapping its bid to join NATO. In fact, that proposal was already on the table before the war even began. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Putin rejected it, because, after all, Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire, as he openly stated that Ukraine had no right to exist as a separate entity to Russia; the NATO stuff as just a smokescreen, so he saw Ukraine’s acceptance of no NATO as a threat rather than an opportunity.

It is also true that there was a more detailed peace proposal on the table in late March-early April 2022, about a month into the war. Importantly, this was Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal to Russia on March 29 2022; it was not just some ‘proposal’ floating around in the atmosphere, that some are accusing Ukraine of rejecting (rejecting its own proposal).

The 10 points included that Ukraine would no longer seek to join NATO, would not join any military alliance, that instead it would get sovereignty guarantees from a number of nations instead (including Russia), the statement that there was no military solution to the question of Crimea and the 40 percent of Donbas already occupied by Russia before February 2022, and therefore Russia would withdraw to these pre-February lines, the sovereignty guarantees would not even cover these regions until a solution was eventually arrived at via negotiations, and in the case of Crimea, the negotiations could last 15 years!

For what happened next, I am going to cite US Greens Party leader Howie Hawkins who put together a very clear outline based on easily available sources; above all what this shows is that Russia had already rejected the proposals two days before Johnston’s visit, and that despite horrific Russian massacres in the meantime, Zelensky remained open for negotiations. These facts may not fit with lots of peoples’ favourite conspiracy theory, but they are clearly on the record, so please argue against the facts, not against me or Howie Hawkins. Here is Howie:

…………………………………………………..

“The peace settlement on the table at the end of March provided for Russia to return to the pre-February 24 lands it held in the Donbass and Crimea, for Ukraine to be a neutral non-NATO country without nuclear weapons or foreign troops (the latter two provisions are already in the Ukrainian constitution) in return for a security guarantee treaty signed by the big powers, and for the status of the Donbas and Crimea to be determined over a number of years diplomatically, not militarily.

“According to a Reuters report, that basic proposal was on the table in the days before and just after the invasion, but Putin rejected it because he wanted to annex Ukraine, not just make it militarily neutral.

“On April 7, two days before Johnson’s visit to Zelensky on April 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the proposed settlement was “unacceptable.”

“Whether Johnson’s April 9 no negotiations message, attributed to unnamed sources in the Zelensky administration only by a single Ukrainian news source, represented the Collective West, as the report said he claimed, has never been confirmed by the US or other Western countries.

“In any case, three days later on April 12, Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end.” “On April 27, the Financial Times reported in a story entitled, “Vladimir Putin abandons hopes of Ukraine deal and shifts to land-grab strategy,” that Putin had “lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war,” citing sources briefed on conversations with Putin.

“Meanwhile, Zelensky remained open to peace talks. At an April 25 press conference, Zelensky had said he is ready to hold peace talks and wishes to do so face-to-face with Putin. “He followed up on May 12, again calling for negotiations. “And again on June 8: Asked about talks with Russia which have been suspended since late March, Zelensky said that Ukraine has not changed his position. He said he maintains the view that war should be ended at the negotiating table. The Ukrainian President also stated that he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president, news agency AFP reported.
 

“I think these statements by Putin and Lavrov show it was Russia that didn’t want a peace agreement that would make them retreat to the pre-Feb 24 contact line in late March. Russia was at its peak of territory held, although it was being defeated and about to retreat from Kiev and other northern oblasts.”

…………………………………………………

I would also add another aspect: even though it is clear from this that Zelensky didn’t abandon Ukraine’s own plan, but Lavrov and Putin rejected it, Ukraine would have been fully in its rights to reject it by mid-April, because Russia had given its own response to Ukraine’s generous offer in practice: by organising the Bucha massacre of some 400 Ukrainian civilians as it withdrew from the Kyiv region, and by continuing to besiege and level the city of Mariupol, from where it was then deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Yet, amazingly enough, the sources here suggest it still remained open to a negotiated settlement.

It is also worth noting that in the months ahead, Zelensky continually insisted Ukraine would fight on until Russian forces were forced back to the pre-February 2022 (ie pre-invasion) lines, and then negotiate. For example, here in May he is still saying there can be negotiations, if Russia withdraws “from areas that it seized during the invasion,” as well as intends to negotiate on Crimea and Donbas, while noting that:

“With each new Bucha, with each new Mariupol, with each new city where there are dozens of dead people, cases of rape, with each new atrocity, the desire and the possibility to negotiate disappears, as well as the possibility of resolving this issue in a diplomatic manner.”

“To stop the war between Russia and Ukraine the step should be regaining the situation as of 23 February,” Zelensky told the BBC on May 7.  

If by later in 2022 Zelensky’s statements hardened – since then Ukraine has insisted that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, must be liberated before a ceasefire – then this seems to me to be a sensible negotiating position after continuous Russian rejection, both on paper and more importantly in practice, of all and every Ukrainian proposal before then, including the March-April 2022 peace process.

As for Russia, since illegally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts (as well as Crimea) later in 2022, including two where there was never any support for joining Russia, its ‘negotiating position’ has been that Ukraine must first recognise this theft of five oblasts, of a fifth of its territory!

A further Ukraine Myth to be dealt with next is the big NATO question, ie, the idea that Russia was ‘provoked’ into a genocidal invasion of its neighbour, a non-NATO member, due to its ‘provocative’ unrequited wish to join NATO. But for now, it is obvious from Russia’s rejection of both the pre-invasion proposal for Ukraine to quit its NATO ambitions, and Ukraine’s more developed proposals for the same and more one month into the war, that Russia invaded Ukraine not because of any fear of NATO but rather, as Putin tells us himself, because he believes Ukraine has no right to exist.

Besides, imperialism is a real thing; Russian imperialism wants strategic control of the Black Sea, its resources and its sea lanes; ‘NATO’ is just a good excuse (and useful to bullshit gullible western leftists with), while restoration of the Russian Empire is the ideology to bullshit the Russian masses and consolidate the ruling class with.     

by Michael Karadjis

These assertions are entirely fictional as will be shown, but they also raise a number of sub-points; first, there were two Minsk agreements, so what happened to the first?; what is the actual content of the Minsk II agreement?; how was it imposed on Ukraine?; and what is the evidence that it was Ukraine that blocked its implementation?

Following the first few months of armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed militia in Donbas in mid-2014, the first Minsk agreement was signed between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as by the Russian-backed junta leaders who had seized power in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), on 5 September 2014.

The main provisions were for

• an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by OSCE,

• “decentralisation of power, including through the adoption of the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,”

• the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border by OSCE,

• release of all hostages and illegally detained persons,

• a law preventing the prosecution and punishment of people in connection with the conflict,

• “early local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,” and

• the withdrawal of “illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian government immediately carried out its side of the bargain by adopting the “Law on the Special Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” on September 16. According to this law, this special status of self-government will be implemented in the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk controlled by the separatists at the time of the ceasefire. The law provides for the freedom of any language to be used and cross-border cooperation with Russia. Local elections were scheduled for the region in December.

However, the Minsk I Protocol was almost immediately violated in a massive way by the Russian-orchestrated ‘separatist’ militia, which launched an attack aimed at seizing the Donetsk airport, which was in the government-controlled part of Donetsk at the time of the ceasefire. This led to a 5-month battle in which the side launching the aggression was in open violation of the Protocol, and as it was a battle to control infrastructure, cannot in any way be excused as a battle to protect hypothetically endangered pro-Russian communities. They further violated the Minsk Protocol by holding their own “elections” in November outside the new Ukrainian special status law, under Russian military occupation, and without any of the other provisions of Minsk adhered to (eg, withdrawal of illegal armed groups, OSCE monitoring of the border etc). In January, the separatists took control of the airport, and also launched attacks on other government-controlled regions, including Mariupol, Debaltseve and Krematorsk, killing dozens of civilians.

So there is no ambiguity regarding Minsk I: Ukraine carried out the political requirements, but the Russia-owned militia massively violated both the political and above all the military agreements.

With large-scale support from direct intervention by Russian forces, the separatists and Russia were able to force a new Minsk agreement, Minsk II, on Ukraine. Minsk II, mediated by France and Germany, was signed on February 12 by Russia, Ukraine, OSCE and the separatist leaders.

Again, it was immediately violated by the Russian-orchestrated militia, who continued their attack on Debaltseve, unilaterally declaring it to be outside the agreement! Hundreds of Ukrainian troops had been holed up and besieged in the town for weeks. It fell to the separatists on February 18, a week after the agreement.

Was Minsk II a good agreement for Ukraine? Well, the first thing that must be noted is that it was imposed on Ukraine by military force, given the large scale and relatively open intervention of Russian forces (as opposed to just Russian-backed forces and Russian heavy weaponry) in the second phase of the Donbas war. Therefore, the way Ukraine “agreed” to it was an act of international injustice, imperialist imposition, so those blaming Ukraine for not implementing it are in effect siding with imperialist bullying.

That said, was Minsk II so much worse than Minsk I for Ukraine, and was it a fair and just agreement anyway, despite the way it was imposed?

Let’s again look at the main points of the Minsk II agreement:

1, 2, 3 ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons by both parties at equal distances, security zones for heavy weaponry, monitoring and verification by OSCE

4. On the first day after the withdrawal, to begin a dialogue on the procedures for holding local elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and the Law of Ukraine “On a temporary order of local government in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” … no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, to adopt a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the specification of a territory subject to the special regime in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in some regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” based on the line set in a Minsk memorandum of September 19, 2014

5, 6 Pardons and amnesties, law prohibiting prosecution and punishment in connection with the conflict, release and exchange of hostages and illegally detained persons

9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by Ukraine’s government throughout the whole conflict area, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine, and a constitutional reform) by the end of 2015, on condition of implementation of paragraph 11.

10. The withdrawal of all foreign armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions

12. On the basis of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in individual areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” the questions regarding local elections shall be discussed and agreed with the individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in compliance with the relevant standards of the OSCE with the monitoring by the OSCE ODIHR.

Minsk II appears more comprehensive than Minsk I, but in certain respects can be considered more disadvantageous to Ukraine; after all, Russia and its proxies did not continue the war for another 6 months for no gain. In addition, there is arguably confusion in the timeline, which allowed both sides to stall. It is generally thought that Ukraine stalled on the political aspects of Minsk, while Russia and proxies stalled on the military-security aspects.

For example, while Ukraine had already agreed to the special status provisions in Minsk I and had immediately passed the relevant legislation (and again, following Minsk II, the Rada (parliament) voted in the ‘special status’ laws for Donbas, Minsk II goes beyond in mandating Ukraine bring into force a “new constitution,” with “decentralisation as a key element.” Understandably, Ukrainians may well wonder why Russia, via military intervention inside Ukraine, has the right to impose a “new constitution” of a specific nature on Ukraine as a whole, as opposed to the provisions already agreed to regarding Donetsk and Luhansk.

If the United States had sent troops into Russian territory to “aid” the Chechens during Putin’s grizzly slaughter in Chechnya over 1999-2001, and then forced Russia to sign a ‘Minsk’ agreement according to which, not only would Chechnya have special status, but Russia had to write a whole new constitution based on the ‘decentralisation’ of the entire territory of Russia, I wonder how many of today’s ‘leftist’ Putin apologists would be demanding Russia ‘sign Minsk, the only road to peace’, and be praising the US for its desire for peace?

In addition, Minsk II says that Ukraine can only regain control over its sovereign border after the local elections have been held in Donbas, and can only be completed after this imposed “new constitution” comes into being. There is nothing remotely as sweeping as this in Minsk I.

However, Minsk II also says that all foreign armed forces, military equipment and mercenaries must leave Ukraine “under the supervision of the OSCE” and that all “illegal groups” must be disarmed. Yet this manifestly never happened. It definitely never happened “under the supervision of OSCE,” because OSCE continually reported over the years ahead evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine.

Indeed, at this point, we should probably demolish this particular sub-myth, because any reasonable person would have to admit that Ukraine could not carry out acts of ‘local self-governance’ in a region occupied by the army of a hostile neighbouring superpower; yet Russia denies its troops were there.

Sub-Myth: There were no Russian troops in Ukraine between the 2015 ceasefire and the 2022 invasion

OSCE had become quite open about its evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine by 2016. By the end of that year, the OSCE observer mission had observed “more than 30,000 individuals in military-style dress crossing just at the two checkpoints to which it has access. … Twenty uniformed persons crossed the border in a single bus with tinted windows in mid-October, according to Observer Mission reports. … On at least 27 different occasions, the Observer Mission has reported seeing funerary vehicles returning to Russia with a sign reading “Cargo 200” or “200,” a well-known code for Russian military casualties. … on June 10 [the Mission] observed the exhumation of a soldier in a Russian military uniform. … On October 17, at the Uspenka border crossing point, the SMM saw one black minivan with tinted windows and black military license plates enter separatist-held Ukraine from Russia, with two men in military-style dress on board.” In 2018 an OSCE drone even recorded footage of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine.

Indeed, the evidence is simply overwhelming. For example, Paul Gregory writes that as of September 2016, the organization Cargo 200 had published “names, photos, addresses, and military records” of 167 troops “killed,” 187 “MIA,” 305 mercenaries “killed” and 796 “MIA.” But these are likely underestimates, as, for example, he continues, the Committee of [Russian] Soldiers’ Mothers “gather information from grieving families to arrive at casualty figures of up to 3,500 KIA [killed in action]” by 2016; the Committee was labelled a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Justice Ministry.  Furthermore, “Young Russian soldiers in Ukraine routinely post pictures on vKontakte (a Russian version of Facebook) of themselves in Ukraine and identify their unit.”

Bellingcat further demolished the myth by demonstrating “that thousands of Russian soldiers have been awarded the highest honors of the Russian Federation for bravery/distinction in combat,” by gathering images of these medals that the soldiers posted on social media. “Bellingcat’s analysis shows 4,300 medals “For Distinction in Combat” awarded between July 11, 2014 and February 2016,” but this is only one of four kinds of medals awarded.

Unlike the issue of Ukraine regaining control of its border, there is no prior condition in Minsk II for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, mercenaries, equipment etc; therefore, Ukraine quite understandably interprets this refusal by Russia and its proxies to implement these provisions of Minsk as reason not to implement the local elections, despite having passed the legislation for it. Because no sovereign state would be prepared to hold local elections in a region of its country under the control of a hostile foreign military power, which also controls the local militia running the region.

_{Russian soldiers and their medals for fighting in Ukraine, from Inform Napalm (https://informnapalm.org/en/identified-servicemen-of-19th-mrb-awarded-for-fighting-in-ukraine/)}

………………………………………………….

Furthermore, how do we define “illegal groups” as described in this same article of Minsk II? To the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed and financed and often staffed armed militia in control of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk not in its control are “illegal groups,” but they obviously don’t consider themselves to be, which is a problem of the text. Not that Ukraine has used this as a pretext, however.

The text also says that the regions where this ‘special status’ and hence local elections would be held would correspond to the ceasefire lines of September 2014, ie, when Minsk I was signed. But now the Russian proxies were in control of more territory, including the airport, Debaltseve etc. So while Minsk II calls for immediate ceasefire (ie, on the lines of February 2015), these lines are beyond those of September 2014, on which special status is to be based. So how does Ukraine carry out local elections when the separatist militia control areas beyond the assigned region?

Furthermore, Minsk II says that the local elections are to be held “with the monitoring of OSCE,” but it is unclear how OSCE can monitor a situation in which OSCE itself says a key provision of Minsk, namely withdrawal of all foreign forces and weapons, has not been carried out. In addition, it is unclear how Ukraine can carry out these local elections under its new special status law, as required by Minsk II, when both Russia and its proxy leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk rejected this new law. Finally, just two months after Minsk II was signed, the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk under Russian control held their own local “elections” anyway, neither under Ukrainian government law nor with OSCE monitoring, in outright violation of Minsk II.

For all these reasons, Ukraine not proceeding with the political side of Minsk (local elections under its special status legislation) is arguably completely justified; local elections carried out in such conditions would result in Russia essentially having a permanent place inside the Ukrainian polity. Or, at the very least, even if one accuses Ukraine of not carrying out Minsk II, they must at the same time accuse Russia of also not carrying out Minsk II. For its part, Russia simply claims it is not a signatory to Minsk II and is therefore not bound to it, claiming only the separatist leaders were signatories, but this is simply a lie: the signature of Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, can be clearly seen on the Minsk agreement, indeed on the Russian version of it. Check the last page with the signatures.

So, while both sides arguably stalled, and, in my view, the Ukrainian side justifiably so for the reasons above, what of anti-Ukrainian or pro-Putin writers who claim either that Zelensky began with a peace platform to implement Minsk II when elected in 2019 but “backed down” due to intimidation from the Ukrainian far-right, or that, even more blandly, Ukraine ultimately “rejected” it (often with the very colourful addition that Russia “wanted to implement it”)?

According to the first charge, after being elected in 2019 on a peace platform, Zelensky signed an agreement for the mutual pull-back of armed forces in order to facilitate the conditions for proceeding with Minsk (based on the new Steinmeier formula which Zelensky had signed onto), but when confronted by the refusal of the far-right and the Azov Regiment to pull back, so the story goes, he “backed down.”

Yet actually, the opposite occurred. As Taras Billous explains:

“There had been an agreement [in late 2019] that there would be a troop disengagement at three points of what was then the line between Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces in Donbas. Then people from around the Azov movement, and from the National Corps Party, staged a campaign there, at one of these points, presenting this disengagement as if it represented some kind of gain for the Kremlin, as if Ukrainian troops alone were called upon to withdraw and leave their positions. But this wasn’t what the disengagement required; it required both sides to pull back. But even in this case, which was so crucial for the right, where they tried to achieve their maximum mobilization for this activity, they didn’t succeed in achieving their point of view because Zelensky intervened personally. He traveled to that line of forces and engaged in heated discussions with some Azov members, and eventually Ukraine did carry out this disengagement, which was a prerequisite for resuming the meeting in the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. So even in this case the right was unable to block governmental policy.”

Curiously, the pro-Putin voices often show a video of Zelensky being confronted by the far-rightists at the disengagement lines as evidence of him “backing down” and that the far-right call the shots in Ukraine despite their tiny size. In this video tweet, the pro-Putin clown Denis Rogatyuk writes “The fighter refuses [to lay down arms]. Zelensky is NOT running the show. The neo-nazis are.” I say curiously because the video shows the complete opposite: it shows Zelensky stood his ground. They backed down; as Billous explains, Zelensky did carry out the disengagement; and on December 19, the Ukrainian parliament yet again extended the Donbas special status legislation for another year.

Furthermore, if Zelensky had “backed down” to the far right, and instead decided on “NATO-backed” war to reclaim the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas as the tankie discourse goes, then wouldn’t we have seen an upturn in the fighting? Yet, as I demonstrated in my ‘Myth 5’, the numbers of people dying on the Donbas front quite sharply declined in 2019-2021 under Zelensky (and of course it was already well down in 2016-2018 compared to the hot war of 2014-15 when nearly all the 14,000 deaths (including 3404 civilian deaths) occurred. The total deaths in this conflict dropped to 19 in 2019 (from 43 in 2018) then 23 in 2020, 16 in 2021 (11 in the first half year and 5 in second half) and zero in 2022 before the invasion – and all this taking into account that the Russian-backed side are also responsible for these deaths, and that around half these figures are from landmines rather than shooting and shelling – the evidence suggests Zelensky did largely carry out his peace program. Sure doesn’t suggest much of a ‘NATO-backed offensive’.

On the final charge, that Ukraine actually “abandoned” or “rejected” the Minsk agreement, it is unclear if those making this common charge are simply saying the same, that Ukraine has yet to carry out certain provisions of it, for the reasons described above, but saying it in a more colourful and dishonest way; or if they really are claiming that at some point Ukraine formally renounced the agreement. Since I wouldn’t want to accuse Putin apologists of dishonesty, I will read it to mean what it does mean in English.

In which case, they should provide the source of the statement by the Ukrainian government. Anyone that watches or reads the news might remember that the ‘Normandy’ framework discussions between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany had continued right up till the eve of Russia’s recognition of the “independence” of the two ‘republics’ it controlled just a few days before the invasion; these were discussions based on trying to negotiate Minsk II. Russia’s recognition and invasion buried the accords. So in its literal meaning, this continual charge is simply a lie.

In order to seem less of a liar, Jacques Baud, the former NATO military analyst turned Putin troll who was widely cited by the tankie left around the time of the invasion, put it this way: “But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accords of Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States.” As “evidence” for this claim, he “cites” this article. But of course the article “cited” says no such thing; it reads “Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.”

Baud, in other words, just made it up. Those of us who are used to this are not surprised; those who are not, try to understand that pretty much all pro-Putin propaganda is of this level.

Finally, this simple description of the reality inside the Russia-owned parts of Donbas in the years before the 2022 invasion should suffice to demonstrate how comprehensively Minsk II was already fully violated in spirit and letter there:

“The “People’s Republics” also formally adopted constitutions which claimed sovereignty over areas under Kiev’s control – again, in breach of Minsk 2. Over 800,000 inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” have been issued with Russian passports, i.e. Russian citizenship. Higher education institutions have adopted the curricula used in Russia. The Ukrainian language has been banned in schools. In addition to the replacement of Ukrainian television broadcasting by state-controlled Russian television channels, the Kremlin version of current affairs (and world history, in the form of the “Russian world”) is promoted by outlets of the Russian Centre organisation (Russian-state-funded) and the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee (also Russian-state-funded). Russian political parties are now active in the “People’s Republics” and contest elections there, especially the Just Russia Party, the Russian Communist Party, and Putin’s United Russia Party. Those inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” who have Russian citizenship also take part in Russian elections. Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 are dead.”

by Michael Karadjis

As I have already fully dealt with this before, this will merely be a summary of main points; the article provides the detail.

The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have overreacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.

Is any of this true?

Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?

“The Ukrainian army killed.”

Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.

For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?

“ethnic Russians”

Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.

But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians – after all, when you are fighting a military force, you don’t usually describe the ethnicity of the troops killed. For example, now, when the Russian and Ukrainian armies are in combat, no-one refers to the numbers of ‘ethnic Russians’ or ‘ethnic Ukrainians’ dying, when referring to military deaths. So it clearly means ‘ethnic Russian civilians’.

In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:

4,400 Ukrainian troops

6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops

3,404 civilians (of whatever ethnicity)

So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021. And these 3,404 civilians would have included ‘ethnic Russians’ and ‘ethnic Ukrainians’, who both live in Donbas.

However, what about the last part:

“between 2014 and 2022.”

Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.

But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.

In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. According to the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides, here are the numbers of deaths in the years before the Russian invasion:

2016 – 88 deaths

2017 – 87 deaths

2018 – 43 deaths

2019 – 19 deaths

2020 – 23 deaths

2021 – 16 deaths, including:

– 11 deaths (Jan-June)

– 4 deaths (June-Sep)

– 1 death (Sep-Dec)

2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).

As we can see, the rate of death continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.

The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.

But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.

_{Up to half of civilian deaths in Donbas in 2014-22 were from landmines}

by Michael Karadjis

_{Putin offering to save Russian-speakers in Ukraine from the barbaric assault he is carrying out against them}

In answering this, I just want to clarify where I’m coming from: I support the right of nations and peoples to self-determination, and see this as superior to any obsession with “sovereign borders,” which have always changed throughout history, both for good and bad reasons. For example, I support the struggle of the Chechen people for self-determination, including independence, from Russia if that is their choice; I don’t care about the “sovereign” borders of the inheritance of the Russian colonial empire. Ditto for Puerto Rico or Hawaii if they chose to break up the US empire’s “sovereign” borders. I supported the national liberation struggle of the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian oppression, of the Kurds against oppression in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and so on: so why don’t I support the same self-determination of “the Russian people in Donbas”? Well, apart from the fact that even if there were such a struggle, it would currently be an irrelevant pawn for Russian imperial conquest, the more fundamental problem is that no such reality exists.

As we saw, almost immediately after Yanukovych fled to Russia (February 22, 2014), Russian forces invaded Crimea (February 27). Just as quickly after this, the first Russian forces, from the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party, turned up in Donbas, alongside other far-right Russian paramilitary forces who had just helped conquer Crimea; the seizures of government buildings began almost immediately, launching coup d’etats against the very governments Donbas residents had recently elected, bringing to power Russian stooges and fascists in the two oblasts (provinces) Donetsk and Luhansk; indeed, the first coup was the six-day seizure of the Donetsk State Administration Building on March 1, when “a group of activists bestowed the titled of ‘People’s Governor of Donetsk’ on a local nationalist-socialist activist named Pavel Gubarev,” an RNU leader. Such a rapid march of events in itself belies the idea that Russia was only responding to grass-roots movements in these regions staging a popular movement against the new post-Maidan authorities in Ukraine; it looks much more like a planned Russian conquest.

_{The swastika of the Russian National Unity Party, the first fascist mob to seize power in the coup in Donetsk in March 2014}

Let’s look at the three connected myths that make up this grander myth narrative.

Sub-Myth 1: ‘Ethnic Russian Donbas’

First, it is difficult to establish exactly what an ‘ethnic Russian’ is, as opposed to a Ukrainian who speaks Russian as a first language. Think of Irish, Welsh and Scottish who speak English as their first language, and try calling them ‘English’. See what happens. This is what occurs after centuries of colonialism, in both cases. Which in terms of ruthless Russification and physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was probably even worse under Stalin than under the Tsars, though there is not much to choose from between them.

If we go by people’s identity, according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians formed 58 percent of the population of Luhansk Oblast and 56.9 percent of Donetsk Oblast. Those identifying as ethnic Russians formed the largest minority, accounting for 39 percent and 38.2 percent of the two oblasts respectively. In other words, Ukrainians were the same size majority in Donbas as Russians were in Crimea – yet this (post-colonisation and genocide) Russian majority in Crimea is given as a reason by the same Putin apologists to justify Russian annexation there! Furthermore, much evidence suggests a marked decline in the population identifying as ethnic Russians rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians: in a 2019 survey carried out by the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, only 12 percent and 7 percent of the residents of the Russia-owned and government-controlled parts of Donbas respectively identified as ‘ethnic Russians’, while 21 percent and 12 percent respectively declared themselves ‘mixed Ukrainian and Russian’. The impact of Russian aggression since 2014 is likely the cause of this declining identification as ‘Russian’ – how ironic given that this Russian intervention is falsely justified as protecting these ‘ethnic Russians’! Indeed, the impact of the current war seems to be even greater, with even use of Russian language among many Ukrainians markedly declining as a political choice due to revulsion against the aggression. 

Therefore, to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance. The population of Donbas is divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.

Before moving on we should clarify: from 2014 to 2022 the Russian-owned forces only controlled some 40 percent of ‘Donbas’ (approximately the same in both Donetsk and Luhansk) while some 60 percent remained under Ukraine government control. So Russia has not just annexed the parts it formerly controlled, but the entire two oblasts, plus two others that it never had any control of (Kherson and Zaporizhzhya) and where there was never any support for Russia.

Sub-Myth 2: The population of Donbas, regardless of ethnicity, wanted self-determination for the region and were oriented more to Russia than to Ukraine

It is certainly true that neither ethnicity nor language tells us anything necessarily about the views of the Donbas residents; neither being an ethnic Russian nor Russian or Ukrainian speaking does not equal a particular political opinion; the opinions of people in all three groups, in both government-controlled and Russia-controlled parts of both oblasts, are mixed. But the data does not support the myth, but rather the opposite.

Two surveys carried out in April 2014 reveal very important information, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and by the Pew Research Centre. In the KIIS survey, to the question ‘Do you support the idea, that your region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia?’, 27 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk answered either ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ yes – while some 52 percent in both oblasts answered ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ no. These minority ‘yes’ votes in Donetsk and Luhansk were the only of any significance in all of Ukraine. The Pew research showed similar results, with the question whether regions should be allowed to secede answered in the positive by only 18 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 4 percent in west Ukraine), and only 27 percent of Russian-speakers. The KIIS survey also asked if they were in favour of Russian troops entering the region, to which under 20 percent in both oblasts said yes while substantial majorities said no.

On the question ‘Do you consider Viktor Yanukovych to be a legitimate President of Ukraine?’, only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said rather or certainly yes (by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said rather or certainly no. So much for the idea that the people of Donbas were angry that “their president” was deposed.

Larger numbers support some kind of autonomy or ‘special status’ within Ukraine, but with sharp differences in the two parts of Donbas. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies found that in the Russia-owned regions, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia. Of the majority opposed, 30% supported some kind of autonomy and a quarter no special status. But in the government controlled two-thirds, while a similar 30% favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just Ukraine with no special status; hardly any supported joining Russia. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the overall majority necessarily even favour autonomy. Even this does not necessarily mean that the chunks seized are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation; given the dispossession of half the Donbas population (some 3.3 of the original 6.6 million people), it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones, while the millions in refuge simply don’t get a say in such surveys.

Therefore, both in Donetsk and Luhansk, in both government and Russian-controlled regions, and among the dispossessed, both ‘ethnicity’ and political opinion are very mixed, there is no ‘Russian’ region or specifically even ‘pro-Russia’ region; so the regions violently seized are entirely arbitrary and correspond to no movement for ‘self-determination’ or necessarily for anything.

Truth 1. There was a degree of alienation from the new government in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014

This is not to deny that there was broadly a sense of alienation among many in eastern Ukraine from the direction taken by the new post-Yanukovych government, regardless of ‘ethnicity’ or language; there were also geographic and other factors, including more economic connection to Russia in the east. Specifically, the new Ukraine authorities, and even more so the empowered far-right minority, projected an assertive Ukrainian nationalism, and various largely symbolic actions drove this alienation. According to the Pew survey, while 60 percent in western Ukraine thought the new government had “a good influence on the way things are going in the country,” only 24 percent in eastern Ukraine agreed, and 67 percent there assessed this influence as “bad.” Similarly, 66 percent in western Ukraine thought only the Ukrainian language should have legal standing, while 73 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 86 percent of Russian-speakers) said both Russian and Ukrainian should be official languages, underlining the centrality of the language question – my Myth 2 details the comically false assertion that Russian language was downgraded or “banned” in 2014, but even the unsuccessful attempt to revise the language law in this context would have been a factor in this alienation.

But in itself, this is not remarkable: the dominance of certain political tendencies in different regions of a country due to complex combinations of history, culture, economics etc is not uncommon: think of northern and southern England, northern and southern Italy, regions of the US, Aegean Turkey and Anatolia etc. That does not mean that the peoples of such regions would welcome a foreign military intervention because a party perceived to favour a different region’s political proclivities were in power.

Sub-Myth 3: The Russian-backed seizure of power in parts of Donbas represented this alienation of the region’s population from the new government

There was certainly a valid political struggle that could have been waged by many people in the region against certain policies of the new government; the fact that the Maidan was initially confronted by an ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east was in itself a valid expression of popular dissent. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed, funded, trained and armed militia and direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries, tanks and other heavy weaponry, political operatives and fascists, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine. Simon Pirani argues that while neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary, in fact the “social aspirations” of the two were similar, “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”

The idea that this militarisation, seizing of buildings and coup d’etats were a natural reflection, extension, of the civil ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east is belied by the 2014 KIIS survey. On the question ‘Do you support actions of those, who with arms capture administrative buildings in your region?’, only 18 percent in Donetsk and 24 percent in Luhansk answered rather or certainly yes, while 72 percent and 68 percent respectively in those two allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ oblasts answered rather or certainly no!

I have heard it claimed that Donbas residents were alienated because the government they elected had been overthrown in Kyiv (as if the parliament, which deposed the president – one person – wasn’t also elected by them). But how does this sit with small armed groups launching coup d’etats in Donbas overthrowing the very regional government that Donbas residents had elected?

Nor can militarisation be justified as an act of self-defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan, as nothing of the sort had taken place: the coup d’detats, took place immediately after the deposing of Yanukovych; the armed conflict later. 

John Reiman, in his excellent review of the Ukraine Diaries, cites some passages describing this very early intervention (ie, months before the generalised war):

“On March 9 for the first time Kurkov reports on the entry of Russian agents in Ukraine. And not just any Russians – members of the fascist Russian Unity Party (RNE). ‘The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums…’ … On April 4, Kurkov reports that 15 Russian citizens had been arrested in Donetsk with 300 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a grenade launcher, ammunition and other military equipment. … On April 7, Kurkov reports the arrest of a Russian GRU agent, Roman Bannykh. The Ukraine government seized his telephone records, which revealed that he had been coordinating the actions of the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk. … pro-Russian activists … walk around in combat uniform, with no badges or other signs of identification, carrying AK-100 assault rifles. The Ukrainian army does not possess those rifles but the Russian army does … Of the 117 Russian citizens arrested for having taken part in disturbances, at least ten are Russian secret service agents. … On April 21 … the separatists in Slovyansk attacked and pillaged the homes of gypsies in that city. Simultaneously, Nelya Shtepa was kidnapped. She was the former mayor of that city and had originally supported the separatists but broke with them because they were being manipulated by Russian secret service agents’.”

Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, admitted that he pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”

Finally, regarding the so-called “referendums” that the coup authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk carried out in May 2014, Cathy Young writing in The Bulwark provides a useful anecdote which, as she says, by itself pretty much “tells the tale”:

“On May 7, Ukrainian intelligence released the audio of an intercepted phone call between Donetsk insurgent leader Dmytro Boitsov and far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Barkashov (the head, as it happens, of the aforementioned Russian National Unity). In the obscenity-laden exchange, Boitsov complains that the rebels are “not ready” to hold the referendum on May 11 as planned. Barkashov responds testily: “Just put in whatever you want. Write 99 percent. What, you’re going to fucking walk around collecting papers? Shit, are you fucked in the head or something?” “Ah. All right, I got it, I got it,” replies an audibly relieved Boitsov as it dawns on him that he and his pals are not expected to hold an actual referendum, just to produce results. Barkashov continues: “Just write that 99 percent—no, let’s say 89 percent, fuck it, voted for the Donetsk Republic. And that’s it, shit, we’re fucking done.”

I mean, it may as well have been a discussion between blood-drenched Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and some ‘election’ henchman who thought the ‘election’ circus had to be taken at least partly seriously; hell, some western ‘lefties’ are so thick they even agree with their far-right allies that those ‘elections’ were genuine!

Young continues:

“By amazing coincidence, on May 11, the separatist “election commission” of Donetsk announced that 89 percent of the voters had chosen self-rule. As I have noted earlier, the first prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “political consultant” Aleksandr Borodai, was not only a citizen of Russia but a reputed officer in the FSB (the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) with a long history of involvement in far-right, ultranationalist circles.”

Conclusion

By intervening and militarising a movement, swamping it from the get-go, forcibly seizing territory, Russia completely changed the nature of Ukrainian politics. From a Ukrainian perspective, Russia, the former colonial power and neighbouring superpower had engineered a violent military conflict, slicing up Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, thereby completely overwhelming whatever democratic voices could have arisen among Russians or Russian-speakers and supporters, while likewise hardening the right-wing nationalist views of many Ukrainians now seeing a fight for their country’s very existence. This militarisation also strengthened far-right forces in Ukraine at the time because the Ukrainian armed forces were in disarray, and the far-right took the initiative on the military front.

Whatever original support the civil anti-Maidan may have had, it is hard to know what survived the Russian-led military intervention and coups. We know that 3.3 million people of the original 6.6 million have fled Donbass since then, the majority into other areas of Ukraine. We also know that many of the irregular Ukrainian militia on the frontlines in the Ukraine-government controlled two-thirds of Donbas are residents uprooted as a result of the conflict and blame the Russian intervention. The more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any expression of opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies.   

Finally, one might rightly ask, does this even have any relevance now, with Russia heavily bombing and destroying Russian-speaking towns and cities in Donbas, including the complete decimation of Russian speaking Mariupol, and the massive rejection of Russian rule by these populations – has anyone seen a single welcoming party in eastern Ukraine for conquerors in the last year? It is almost certain that whatever lingering pro-Russia feeling that may have existed before 2022 has now largely collapsed. Indeed, the problem with this entire discussion, even as I write it, is the danger of implying that Russia’s monstrous war has anything to do with the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers in Donbas: if that were the case, there would have been no reason for Russia to advance an inch from the control it already exerted over 40 percent of Donbas where they perhaps had more support – what would have been the purpose of annexing the more anti-Russian parts of Donbas that had been in government control, let alone annexing the other two oblasts, let alone invading and savagely bombing the whole of Ukraine?

_{Before February 2022: Russian-backed forces only controlled about 40 percent of each of the two Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.}

_{What Russia controlled in Ukraine by October 2022}

by Michael Karadjis

This is the third in an ongoing series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014, all of which are complete myths. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better; and I just felt I needed my own so that I can easily grab one as an easy whenever I see each piece of nonsense once again repeated on social media.

_{Indigenous Crimean Tatars – victims of centuries of Russian colonialism and genocide – protest annexation by Russia in 2014}

Russia’s flagrant annexation of the sovereign Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 was the first annexation inside Europe since the (globally unrecognised) Turkish quasi-annexation of northern Cyprus, and in a league with only very few outright annexations globally – Israel’s annexation of Palestinian Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara, Indonesia’s annexation of Irian Jaya and later east Timor (until 1999) spring to mind. Yet Putin apologists have attempted to justify this act of Russian imperial expansionism as an act of self-determination by the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea (which frankly reminds one of Hitler’s claim to Sudetenland), or claim it was ‘always Russia’ and so on. 

On February 27, 2014, just five days after the Ukraine parliament’s vote to oust Yanukovych, masked Russian troops invaded Crimea – sovereign Ukrainian territory – attacked government buildings, raised the Russian flag over them, forced out the democratically-elected Crimea autonomous state government, replaced it with stooges from the ultra-right ‘Russian Unity’ party, which had received 4 percent of the vote in the previous elections – surely all this is a coup, isn’t it? It is a textbook coup, combined with invasion. This foreign-installed junta in Crimea then carried out, under Russian military occupation, the illegal “referendum” to leave Ukraine and join Russia, within ten days after calling it. Only two options were presented in the fake “referendum,” neither of which included the status quo. Ukrainian media was closed down.

Of course, the junta declared that 97 percent had voted for joining Russia – the usual figure plucked out of the air by dictators who throw “election” circuses. Yet Putin’s own Human Rights Council claimed the real turnout was 30-50% of voters, and that only 50-60% of those voted to join Russia. Notably, in a February 8-18 2014 Ukraine-wide poll, only 41 percent of people in Crimea favoured joining Russia – and that was far higher than anywhere else in Ukraine; we are supposed to believe that this jumped from 41% to 97% in a month!

International observers – of course, the Russian-installed junta invited various far-right/fascist parties from Europe for this show, indeed the invitees list – the French National Front, Jobbik (Hungary), Attaka (Bulgaria), Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right. Fascist parties throughout Europe declared their support for Crimea being “reincorporated” into Russia, its rightful place in their view, believers in the restoration of empires after all.

In contrast, the Mejils (parliament) of the Crimean Tatar nation, internationally recognised as the Indigenous people of Crimea (and likewise recognised as such in Ukraine), and a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, declared the referendum illegitimate and called for boycott, just in case anyone on the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ left happens to think the views of Indigenous peoples should count for something. The Russian occupation regime of post-referendum Crimea then banned the Mejils, their representative body first set up by the Crimean Tatars after the Russian revolution, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented ongoing human rights violations, including detention and torture, against the Tatar population. Today, the Mejils, in exile, demands the return of Crimea to Ukraine as an essential condition in any peace talks with Russia.

_{From 100% of the population at Russian conquest in 1783, the Crimean Tatars became a minority 100 years later, but then were 100% deported by Stalin in 1944}

The Crimean Tatars were the majority population of Crimea since the 11^th century, and remained so long after Russian settler-colonialism began with Catherine the Great’s invasion in 1783. Not until around 1900 did these Russian settlers begin to outnumber the indigenous Tatar population, who also fled Russian oppression in their hundreds of thousands. However they remained some 40 percent of the population until 1944 when Stalin expelled every man, woman and child Tatar from Crimea – hundreds of thousands of people – into central Asia, a torturous journey during which one in three died along the way. While they have been allowed to return in recent decades, such mass displacement tends to have a semi-permanent effect, and numbers were only re-growing slowly,  but continually, before this process was halted by annexation. In other words, the “left” (and far-right) assertion that, since 58 percent of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians, annexation by Russia is an act of self-determination, is a declaration of support for the results of centuries of Tsarist colonialism and the Stalinist genocide.

An interesting comparison could be made to the current debate in Australia about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament, which will be subject to referendum later this year. While the tepid and powerless ‘voice’ on offer can well be criticised for its limitations, and indeed many Indigenous leaders prefer a ‘treaty-first’ approach which would recognise their sovereignty and cede some actual power to the Indigenous nations, the main opposition is coming from the right who are vigorously opposed to any even symbolic increase in Indigenous representation. From being once the sovereign owners of the whole of Australia, Indigenous Australians have been reduced, through colonisation and genocide, to only a few percent of the population.

So, using the same simple ‘majoritarian’ principles that many Putin apologists are now using to justify the result of the staged Crimea ‘referendum’ (even if we pretend for a moment that it was legitimate and not staged under military occupation) – that 58 percent of the Crimean population are ethnic Russians and so, if that’s what they want, so it should be – what would we say if the large Anglo-Australian majority here one fine day voted to be re-annexed to ‘Great’ Britain, and the 3 percent Indigenous Australian population were opposed? Should we say, well, the (former colons) Anglo-Australians are the majority, so it should be, like the (former colons) Russians in Crimea? Or would we say that Indigenous Australians should have some special constitutional right to not have their lands returned to some foreign colonial power? I suggest that the kind of constitutionally empowered real Indigenous voice via treaty that most on the Australian left are in favour of would indeed empower the Indigenous minority to reject such a move, and rightly so.

And, more generally, when there exists more than one constituent nation in a mixed region – in this case Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – is ‘winner take all’ the democratic solution? Take Cyprus (a place I know something about …), with its 80 percent Greek Cypriot majority and 20 percent Turkish Cypriot minority. So if the majority of the majority Greek Cypriot community vote to be united with Greece, so that should be, right? Oh, wait a minute, they tried that, with the movement against British colonialism led by the right-wing and the Orthodox church, calling for ‘Enosis’ (union) with Greece (rather than an independent bi-national federation) … thereby alienating the Turkish minority, driving them into the hands of Turkey’s military regime which eventually invaded in 1974 and the rest is history. No solution in the divided island 50 years later. Or take Bosnia, with its 44 percent Bosniak (‘Muslim’), 30 percent Serb, 18 percent Croat and 8 percent ‘Yugoslav’ (ie too mixed to be anything else) population – no majority, but if the Serbs and Croats voted together for Bosnia to be divided between Serbia and Croatia and got a slight majority of votes, so that should happen despite the views of the other communities? Indeed, since Serb and Croat fascist leaders actually tried to do that militarily in 1992-95, they were in the right, were they? The Crimea ‘solution’, in other words, is the most utterly reactionary solution possible.   

On a minor point, one of the justifications often heard from Putin shills is that Russia had to seize Crimea because it has a naval base in Sevastopol (and heaven forbid that an imperialist power should lose a military base in another country, say many on the western ‘left’). Yet the Russian military’s lease on Sevastopol does not expire until 2042.

by Michael Karadjis

This is the second in an ongoing series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014, all of which are complete myths. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better; and I just felt I needed my own so that I can easily grab one as an easy whenever I see each piece of nonsense once again repeated on social media.

_{Maps showing that Ukrainian president Zelensky was elected by Russian-speakers, whose language, we are told, he wants to ban (if not commit genocide against them). Source: Zoltan Grossman, Counterpunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/ukraine-maps-tell-a-different-story-than-putins-claims}

This is quite an entrenched myth. Claiming that Ukraine changed its language law to downgrade Russian language in 2014, or more colourfully that it banned the language, is a common tankie claim used to justify the Russian quasi-annexation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Of course, the Russian language was not banned in 2014 nor any time since, and further, there was zero change in the language law in 2014; that did not occur until 2019.

As background, Ukrainian president Zekensky is a Russian-speaker, as are a significant proportion of Ukrainians, and indeed Zelensky was elected in 2019 largely on the votes of Russian-speakers. Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been the main victims of Russian mass-killing since February 2022, and have dominated the resistance to it. The famous/infamous Azov Regiment of the National Guard (often confused with the fascistic Azov Battalion which existed in 2014) is largely composed of Russian-speakers. According to a 2017 poll, 67.8% of Ukrainians “consider Ukrainian to be their native language, 13.8% claimed it to be Russian, whereas 17.4% declared that both languages are their native tongues.” However, while in western Ukraine, 92.8% are Ukrainian speakers and only 1.9% are Russian speakers, in eastern Ukraine 36.1% consider Ukrainian their language compared to 24.3% who declare Russian to be; in central regions, the figures are somewhat in between, but generally much closer to the western figures.

The 1996 constitution makes Ukrainian the only state language, indeed it says “state ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.” However, there were strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, which can play an official role alongside Ukrainian in regions where these minorities are prominent. The constitution thus also states “the free development, use and defence of Russian and other languages of national minorities is guaranteed in Ukraine.”

All the language laws until 2012 were based on this well-balanced constitution. But in 2012, Yanukovych introduced a new language law which made Russian a ‘regional language’ with equal administrative status to Ukrainian wherever Russian was the language of at least 10 percent of the population, and other minority languages could have the same status. Since Russian is the language of over 10 percent in half the regions of Ukraine, this was quite wide-ranging. Many Ukrainians felt this tipped the balance too far.

So what did happen in 2014? Initially, after the fall of Yanukovych, the parliament attempted to rescind this new language law that Yanukovych had introduced just two years earlier, in 2012. The parliament’s aim in overturning this was to return to the previous law which had held sway ever since Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s, based on the 1996 constitution. As we saw, returning to the 1994-2012 linguistic framework was hardly a radical anti-Russian language step; it was merely the reversal of a recent radical change in the other direction. However, even this change did not take place, because it was vetoed by the caretaker president. Yanukovych’s radically pro-Russian 2012 law thus remained the law until 2019.

Therefore, leaving aside the blatant lie that Ukraine banned the Russian language and thus provoked a reaction from Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, in fact nothing at all happened to the rights of Russian-speakers in 2014, making the lie even worse. Now, of course, it may well be that just the attempt to change the law back to the original could have been a factor promoting mistrust of the new government by many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine; often it is not the actual content of a proposed change but the broader context, and this was the context of the newly assertive Ukrainian nationalism post-Maidan in reaction against Russian backing of Yanukovych and the immediate Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention into Donbas straight after his fall; this Ukrainian nationalism did include a virulent strain which was indeed alienating to many in the east. However, this point can be made without blatantly dishonest lies about what did happen.

It could well be argued that the Yanukovych law of 2012-14 was a better one, based on an abstract notion of complete equality of languages – even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and possibly for the wrong reasons. As a non-Ukrainian, I prefer not to get into that debate. The Ukrainian argument is based on the fact that Ukraine was a colony of Russia for hundreds of years, and the Ukrainian language was actively suppressed and discriminated against throughout that period (both under Tsarism and under Stalinism). There is also an important class aspect: Russian, the language of the colonial administration, came to dominate urban centres, even Kiev, while the villages were overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking; it was even considered shameful to speak Ukrainian in late Tsarist Russia, being a sign one was from the village, as rural-dwellers crowded into cities during industrialisation in the early 20^th century. Therefore, Ukraine now has a right to promote its language as the national language; Russian-speakers should have the right to use their language, but it is the language of the coloniser which became dominant via colonisation and suppression. Which argument is correct? Both arguments have validity, and much depends on context and manner in which such laws are introduced and implemented. What can be said for certain, however, is that the Ukrainian constitution, and the pre-2012 law, are hardly unusual by global standards; on the contrary, they are the norm. They are even less unusual for former colonies – what of the attempts over many decades in Ireland to promote the Irish language at the expense of English, for example?

The new Language Law of 2019 did partially downgrade Russian, at the time against Zelensky’s opposition (Zelensky was just elected in 2019 with votes of Russian-speakers). This new law was pushed by the outgoing Poroshenko government as it more and more turned opportunistically to the nationalist right (ironically in 2014 Poroshenko, elected then with the votes of Russian-speakers and appealing to unity, claimed the parliament’s attempt to rescind the 2012 law was a grave mistake). This new language law made Ukrainian the only language of state throughout Ukraine. While the law is consistent with the Ukraine constitution which makes Ukrainian the official language, the constitution also has strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, especially in areas where they are the majority. The new law arguably downgrades the status of some of those protections. In schools, for example, Ukrainian is the language of instruction throughout the country; Russian can be learned in school as a language subject. However, in pre-school and primary school, Russian or other minority children can study in their own language, as the language of instruction, in addition to Ukrainian, but they cannot in high school. From an internationalist standpoint, this change is certainly regressive, but it is hardly unique for most of the world.

The new law makes Ukrainian the language of all official communication, ie in government operations, including local government. In itself, this is hardly unusual by world standards. Regarding the media, however, the law is highly regressive and certainly can be seen to violate the Ukrainian constitution. The law stipulates that any publications in Russian or other languages must be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content and volume, a draconian and impractical regulation. There are exceptions for Crimean Tatar language, and for languages of the EU, but not for Russian. While a former colony certainly has the right to promote the national language, doing so in a way that makes everyday life more difficult for speakers of other languages at a practical level violates their rights and divides the working classes.

However, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for Putinite shills to try to use this argument, even after 2019. What they miss is that this law only came in after years of its implementation in reverse in Russian-annexed Crimea. In 2015, Crimea made only Russian the language of school instruction, while allowing students to learn Ukrainian or Tatar as elective languages; in pre-school and primary school, instruction could also be in Ukrainian or Tatar in addition to Russian, but not in high school. It is almost as if the Ukrainian government plagiarised the Russian occupation government of Crimea’s law four years later! But the reality in Crimea is much worse than even this official downgrading; in reality, Ukrainian has been comprehensively eliminated from all Crimean schools and from all official society. One of the first acts of Russian-owned rulers in both Crimea and the Donbas was to replace multilingual signs with Russian only ones.

Likewise, in the Russia-owned Donbas statelets, almost immediately following their quasi-annexation in 2014, “the curricula have been altered to exclude the teaching of Ukrainian language and history, which makes it problematic to obtain State school diplomas,” according to a November 2014 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights; in 2015, the curriculum was overhauled, with Ukrainian language lessons decreased from eight hours to two hours a week, while Russian language and literature lessons increased. Russia’s five-point grading system replaced Ukraine’s 12-point scheme. School leavers from then received Russian certificates with the Russian emblem, the two-headed eagle. In 2020, Russian was declared the only state language.

That does not justify the Ukrainian law of 2019 (which current president Zelensky opposed), but it is important to recognise that the chronology is in reverse: no change in 2014 in Ukraine, regressive change in late 2014 and 2015 in Donbas and Crimea under Russian occupation, followed years later by copy-cat regressive change in Ukraine – which however in no way ‘bans’ the Russian language’.

by Michael Karadjis

This is the first in an ongoing series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014, all of which are complete myths. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better; and I just felt I needed my own so that I can easily grab one as an easy whenever I see each piece of nonsense once again repeated on social media.

Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protesting in the streets against a malignant government is described, incredibly, as a ‘coup’

There was no “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, except in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians marched in the streets in a sustained mobilisation over many months from November 2013 through February 2014 – against the uber-corrupt ruler, Victor Yanukovych – this is not the conventional definition of a ‘coup’, which normally refers to a conspiratorial action of a small but powerful group (eg, a section of the armed forces or other state forces) carrying out a rapid and violent ousting of a government; there are dozens of examples to choose from, for example the US-backed coups that ushered in bloody dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua and the list is virtually endless – none of which look remotely like the popular uprising that took place in Ukraine.

Incidentally, since I called Yanukovych’s regime ‘uber-corrupt’, let’s just make an aside to back this up; we read that after his overthrow, “Ukrainian citizens who stormed his Mezhyhirya mansion discovered a palace of cartoonish opulence with guilded bathrooms, a private zoo, and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship. A good illustration of this extravagance is the $11 million he allegedly paid for a chandelier and his seven tablecloths worth a staggering $13,000.” Interesting the kinds of thieving capitalist rulers that some ‘socialists’ have come to defend in this era of ‘geopolitical’ rather than class analysis.

Yanukovych, like many unpopular despots, reacted first by bashing protestors with iron bars, then with a raft of anti-democratic anti-protest laws, then with guns, and hundreds were shot – but of course each upturn in repression only made the popular movement more determined to get rid of him, despite attempts by some of the opposition leadership in January-February 2014 to do a deal to allow him to stay as president until December 2014. In the end he made their deals pointless anyway, when he fled to Russia with his stolen billions (some estimates as high as $37 billion), following which on February 22 the entire Ukrainian parliament – every member, including every member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – voted to oust him as president.

If such a profoundly democratic process involving mass popular uprising and unanimous votes by a democratically-elected parliament constitute a “coup,” then logically we should be in favour of more ‘coups’.

For an excellent blow by blow account of the Ukrainian popular uprising of 2013-14, ‘Ukraine Diaries’ by Andrey Kurkov is a must. Some of it can be accessed at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fbuUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false but buying the book would give you a fuller picture. Or better still, watch the amazing film, Winter on Fire at https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80031666,  which covers the full 3 months of the uprising, the enormity of the demonstrations, the ongoing brutal repression – if after watching it you still think the events were a ‘coup’ rather than truly massive genuine revolution, then we’re speaking a different language.

It is a sad moment when “leftists” decide that massive popular street protests against reactionary capitalist rulers are a bad thing; they thereby reject everything they have claimed to stand for throughout their lives. Unless they think that people have no agency (and no rights to agency) and that these kinds of numbers can all be manipulated the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Hunter Biden etc. Were all these hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and every member of parliament, personally bribed? That the US (or others) will always attempt to influence, to co-opt, a movement, is of course a given, but that is not a reason to oppose a popular uprising or mass mobilisation and hence essentially give support to a corrupt and repressive regime being overthrown.

‘Coup’ in this case seems to be just an updated version of the infamous term ‘colour revolution’, a nonsense concept invented by tankies who did not like watching the heroic Serbian working class overthrow bourgeois-nationalist butcher Milosevic in 2000, and so then extended its use to entirely different circumstances in Georgia in 2003 and different again in Ukraine in 2004. It is simply a term used for ‘popular uprising’ when it is one disapproved of by this sub-set of western lefties who assume they know what’s best for other peoples, and/or when the regime it is directed against is allied to Russian or Chinese (rather than US) imperialism or otherwise engages in some hollow “anti-imperialist” bluster.

The idea that the popular uprising was “US-orchestrated” stems from attempts by US rulers to co-opt it. One might say, ‘what business do US leaders have turning up to meet with protest leaders in another country?’ I agree – they should keep their noses out of it, just as should the Russians – but the point here is not the political morality of this – it is naïve to think powerful states don’t always try to coopt movements – but rather the fact that they had remarkably little to do with what eventuated, and simply did not have this power.

The main charge is that US advisors like Victoria Nuland played some role in choosing the caretaker who would temporarily become prime minister, after Yanukovych’s prime minister from his Party of Regions, Mykola Azarov, resigned on January 28 amidst the upsurge. Whether or not US advice was decisive in this choice of caretaker is hard to say; the idea is based on leaked correspondence involving Nuland and US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, where they did say they preferred the candidate (of three options), Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was indeed the one subsequently chosen by the Ukrainian parliament as interim prime minister. Is it not possible that the Ukrainian parliament made its own decision that they preferred him of the three options?

Just out of interest though, for those with short attention spans who think jumbling together “coup”, the US, “fascists” and “banning Russian language” explains anything, it is worthwhile briefly looking at the interim leaders chosen. It is clear from Nuland’s leaked correspondence that that candidate she preferred as prime minister, Yatsenyuk, was one of the more liberal ones, as opposed to Oleh Tyahnybok, from the far-right fringe; as Pyatt notes, “we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys.” For some reason, they also prefer Yatsenyuk over the other “moderate democrat,” Vitaly Klitschko; Nuland says “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. … I don’t think it’s a good idea,” and “what he (Yatsenyuk) needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.” Clearly, they want to keep the far-right out, but as for ‘Yats’ over ‘Klitsch’, the only clue is that Yatsenyuk was probably seen as more of a compromise candidate by Moscow, because Yanukovych had offered Yatsenyuk the prime-ministership on January 25 (before his own pm resigned!).

Indeed, in the same leak, Nuland and Pyatt also speak of the need for “some kind of outreach to Yanukovych.” So, far from the Nuland chat being part of a far-right, anti-Moscow coup, it appears that they preferred as interim pm the candidate who could best build bridges with Moscow. The only way I can read all this is that the famous ‘Nuland leak’ is about Nuland and the US government preferring to hatch a deal with Yanukovych, some kind of compromise government. After all, what most left conspiracists miss in all this is that Ukraine has both a president and a prime minister: Yanukovych was the president; the Nuland discussion did not concern his position at all, but rather who was going to be HIS interim prime minister! Unfortunately for Nuland, the US and the ‘moderate democrats’, the deal stitched together to keep Yanukovych in power till December with a new prime minister was rejected by the Ukrainian masses. US interference! Nuland advocates same interim prime minister for Yanukovych as does Yanukovych to aid the deal to him in power!

As for the interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed by the Ukrainian parliament on February 23 after it ousted Yanukovych the previous day, and there is no ‘Nuland story’ about this appointment. But did the ‘coup’ leaders (ie, the entire elected parliament) choose some rabid Russophobe to heighten tension with Moscow and with Russian-speakers in Ukraine? Well, when the post-Maidan interim government attempted to overturn the language law which Yanukovych had introduced in 2012, which gave Russian equal status to Ukrainian, this was vetoed by none other than interim president Turchynov. So, very much the moderate, the bridge-builder, trying to hold back the more virulent strains of west Ukrainian nationalism raising their head. Really, these pieces are not falling together very well for tankie fiction stories.

After all, the brief interim period was followed by presidential elections in May in which Ukrainians freely elected Petro Poroshenko; and parliamentary elections in October, in which a government was freely elected by Ukrainians, and chose Yatsenyuk, once again, to continue as prime minister (his party, the Peoples Front Party, received the highest number of popular votes, so I don’t think Victoria Nuland had anything to do with that). Tankies thus can make up stories about the US choosing the Ukrainian government, but what they really mean is that these fine people living in faraway lands disapprove of the choices democratically made by Ukrainians, and believe they have a right to demand they choose otherwise.  

Regarding the parliamentary elections, the parties of Yatsenyuk and of Poroshenko received nearly half the votes between them and the majority of seats; the Opposition Bloc (ie, the renamed Party of Regions, which tankies will tell you was banned from standing) received 9.43 percent of the vote and 27 seats; while neither the fascist right (Svoboda and Right Sector, with 4.71 percent and 1.8 percent of votes respectively), nor the Communist Party of Ukraine (with 3.8 percent of votes) cleared the electoral threshold and thus got no seats. 

As for Yanukovych, MPs from his own Party of Regions released a statement asserting “Ukraine was betrayed and people were set against each other. Full responsibility for this rests with Yanukovych and his entourage;” as for the allegedly ‘pro-Yanukovych’ populations of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, on the question of whether they consider Yanukovych “to be a legitimate President of Ukraine,” in an April 2014 survey only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said “rather” or “certainly yes” (and these were by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said “rather” or “certainly no.” Western tankies are well alone on this one, of defending the born-to-rule rights of a murderous, hyper-corrupt multi-billionaire oligarch.

By: Michael Karadjis

Summer 2022 (New Politics Vol. XIX No. 1, Whole Number 73)

Is China Socialist Because It Reduced Poverty?

Amid China’s emergence as a major economic power and an increasingly tense U.S.-China rivalry, the debate over whether China is now a full-fledged capitalist state, some kind of socialist state, or something in-between has become a major issue within the global left, with important theoretical and political implications. Opinions, unsurprisingly, vary on this question, given the difficulty of establishing clear criteria on what constitutes a socialist or non-capitalist state. 

In this essay, I engage with and critique the argument that China’s momentous social and economic achievements can be adequately explained by viewing it is a partially socialist or non-capitalist country. I do so by challenging the key assumptions underlying this argument both on empirical and theoretical grounds, and placing China in historical and comparative perspectives to better understand both its real achievements and many shortfalls.

The Economic Success and Poverty Reduction Argument

Headlines in recent years that report China’s achievement in lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty seem to serve as evidence that China has a different, superior economic system. A relatively sophisticated argument along this line was recently advanced by Marxist economist Michael Roberts: 

If China were just another capitalist economy, how do we explain its phenomenal success in economic growth, taking 850m Chinese off the poverty line?; and avoiding any economic slumps that the major capitalist economies have suffered on a regular basis?¹ 

While the current Evergrande crisis calls into question the idea that China can avoid capitalist crisis,² Roberts is correct that it has largely done so for decades. But the implication that China must be socialist because capitalism simply cannot deliver massive economic growth and poverty reduction is a reversal of materialist method. 

To be fair to Roberts, his view is less crude than this. However, the conclusions he thinks we need to draw are highly exaggerated: 

If it has achieved this with a population of 1.4bn and yet it is capitalist, then it suggests that there can be a new stage in capitalist expansion based on some state-form of capitalism that is way more successful than previous capitalisms and certainly more than its peers in India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia or South Africa. China would then be a refutation of Marxist crisis theory and a justification for capitalism.³

There is a kind of “clutching at straws” hopefulness about many leftist pro-China arguments: given few good stories about socialism in today’s world, at least we can have one fifth of the world ruled by a kind of socialism, whatever its faults, with more economic and social dynamism than Western-led capitalism.

If China is capitalist, and if it is this capitalism that has produced these levels of economic growth and poverty reduction, then we should acknowledge that fact and use it to inform our analysis of the dynamics of global capitalism. However, this can be done without needing to draw Roberts’ wildly exaggerated conclusions. There are better ways to understand China’s impressive achievements than arguing they prove that it is socialist, a view which mirrors the pro-capitalist response that China’s achievements stem from adopting the “market economy.”

It is questionable how unique China’s achievements actually are, particularly when one takes a hard look at World Bank-led concepts of economic growth and poverty reduction, combined with the tendency to ignore inequality. This does not mean China’s achievements are either unimportant or not highly impressive. They are. However, since many capitalist countries in the Global South have also achieved massive economic growth and poverty reduction, some dissection of these concepts, and of some of the claims about China’s uniqueness, aids a more nuanced understanding.

Problematizing Poverty Reduction

“Economic growth” and “poverty reduction” have been the twin ideological slogans of the World Bank for decades. Many leftist critics of IMF-World Bank programs in the Global South criticize the monomaniacal focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, for their disregard of how this wealth is distributed, whether or not it leads to human development, how it is created, and its environmental impacts. Yet when China does it, some 10 percent per year for decades, it becomes a plus.

Despite this lopsided obsession with growth at all costs, growth is not necessarily bad, and poorer countries in particular need growth to at least reach a certain level of industry and technology; socialism cannot be based on sharing underdevelopment. And despite the World Bank obsession with growth, its programs have often led to slow or even negative growth in many parts of the developing world. China’s sustained growth for decades remains unique—even if it is not all good—something few capitalist developing countries have achieved, and its uniqueness must be explained.

But it is problematic to argue that being highly successful at what capitalism and its global agencies push for is evidence of non-capitalism. Doesn’t this growth include pumping record amounts of coal into the atmosphere, helping destroy the planet and workers’ lungs? Doesn’t it include the proceeds from the super-exploitation of workers in massive numbers of sweatshops? This is without even touching the vexed question of the internal colony of Xinjiang and its exploitation by global capital in collaboration with the forced assimilation policy of the regime. All of this is part of China’s “growth.” 

Pointing out that poverty reduction is a key World Bank ideological slogan, alongside economic growth, does not make it a bad thing. China is among the group of countries that has been by far the most successful in the Global South. Let us look at the raw data.

Between 1981 and 2008, China lifted 622 million people out of extreme poverty of under $1.25 a day. However, the global net reduction in $1.25 a day poverty was only 606 million, meaning that if we omit China from the calculations, there was a net increase in extreme poverty of 56 million. Even this does not tell the full story because a great many of those escaping $1.25 poverty remained in under $2-a-day poverty. So, while over the 1981-2008 period China lifted 577 million people above $2-a-day poverty, the global net reduction was only 68 million—meaning that leaving out the China figures here results in a net increase in global $2 poverty of 509 million people!⁴

We need to be careful, however. China accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population, so its figures overwhelm; these “net” increases in poverty when omitting China do not mean that only China experienced poverty reduction. Many countries experienced significant poverty reduction, others little or none, and some went into reverse. The countries that have experienced rapid poverty reduction include⁵:

It is clear that China’s poverty reduction stands out, especially when compared to other large populous countries like India and Indonesia, which, despite massive poverty reduction, still show very high levels of poverty—India contains about one third of the world’s extreme poor within its borders.⁶ 

Vietnam’s achievement is even more impressive than China’s. While the scale of poverty reduction is similar, Vietnam in 1990 underwent full-scale systemic collapse, following decades of war and blockade and the collapse of its East bloc subsidy-based trading partners, whereas China had already experienced a decade of high economic growth. Given that Vietnam also boasts a China-style “market economy with a socialist orientation,” this tends to back up claims about China and socialism.

At the same time, however, the table shows that income poverty reduction, often on a large scale, does take place under capitalism. Some of these figures seem hardly believable, for example the zero figures in Malaysia and Thailand, given what we know about the realities; likewise, Mexico’s appear unrealistic given well-documented harsh realities. Nevertheless, these discrepancies point to the fact that measuring income poverty cannot tell us everything. 

This official “poverty reduction” is based on the World Bank’s income poverty lines ($1.90-a-day for extreme poverty, $3.20-a-day for moderate poverty), the emphasis on which obscures the massive inequality that have risen everywhere, including China.

These lines were only recently updated from $1.25 and $2-a-day where they had remained almost unchanged since the World Bank adopted its $1-a-day line in 1985, based on the then national poverty lines in thirty-three of the least developed countries,⁷ indicating the absurdity of applying them to the entire South for decades. Earning over $1.90 or $3.20-a-day tells us little about what needs to be spent on housing, health, education, power, and other necessities.

According to Prof. Peter Edwards, an “ethical poverty line,” based on the income required to raise a country’s average life expectancy to seventy should be set at $7.40-a-day.⁸ Even the World Bank has come to see that its measures are absurdly low and has added a $5.50-a-day category for comparison.

Based on $5.50-a-day, in India, Botswana, and Indonesia, the numbers living under this figure in 2018 were a very high 77 percent, 59 percent, and 53 percent respectively; for China, Mexico, Vietnam, and Brazil, a middling 17 percent, 23 percent, 23 percent, and 20 percent respectively; in Thailand and Malaysia, a low 7 percent and 3 percent.⁹

While this gives us a more realistic picture of poverty, it is unclear what it tells us about China. It certainly shows that China (and Vietnam) have done far better than India and Indonesia; but it is unclear what being on a par with highly unequal capitalist states like Brazil and Mexico tells us, or why capitalist Malaysia and Thailand are far out in front.

As with economic growth, leftists have constantly criticized official “poverty reduction,” yet when China excels in these measures, the criticisms are forgotten by pro-China leftists. Certainly, the fact that China has been phenomenally successful by global standards on the World Bank’s own measures is an important contrast to most of the capitalist South. Guarded celebration is understandable, but it is hardly evidence of non-capitalism.

To be fair, China’s success against poverty is not only about income poverty. According to the World Bank, only 3.9 percent of China’s population are living in “multidimensional poverty,” a measure covering ten health, education and living standard indicators, an excellent figure.¹⁰ 

However, looking around the world again at the social indicators of some of the more successful countries reveals surprises if we assume the entire capitalist Global South has not changed in half a century¹¹ (see table below).

Of course, many other capitalist countries in the Global South have much lower indicators, so China is in the league of the better off. However, we are still left with the reality that a range of capitalist countries outside the imperialist core boast relatively high social indicators, making this an insufficient reason to claim China could not possibly be a capitalist country.

In fact, even many of the poorer countries not listed here have seen steady progress over time on life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy rates under late imperialism. Virtually every country in the world has seen a sharp fall in infant and child mortality since 1990.¹² For the Least Developed Countries as a whole, child mortality (i.e., the number of children who die before their fifth birthday) has dropped from an average of 174.3 in 1990 to 62.7 today.¹³ This is still very high, but dramatic progress is undeniable.

Does this mean “capitalism” is responsible for this? The neo-liberal world order? Hardly. Overwhelmingly, this has resulted from UN-led programs, i.e., global state intervention. Above all, mass childhood vaccination campaigns have dramatically cut infant and child mortality. This is easy for capitalism: it can continue hideously exploiting hundreds of millions in the South, but help fund this extremely cheap and effective campaign and demonstrate progress. In turn, reductions in infant and child mortality raise average life expectancy.

Indeed, 45 percent of child deaths have historically been caused by infectious diseases, so “the success of vaccination campaigns and antibiotic availability has done a great deal to reduce mortality.” For example, the number of measles cases “has shrunk by 86 percent since 1990.” WHO estimates that measles vaccination “prevented 21.1 million deaths across Africa” from 2000 to 2017.¹⁴

We also need to take into account simple capitalist “development” involving industrialization and urbanization. In 1960, two-thirds of the world lived in rural areas; following the cross-over point about a decade ago, the world’s urban population is now 20 percent higher than the rural. Nearly all the increase has been in developing countries. While living conditions are often cramped and unsanitary and the industries are sweatshops where workers work in Victorian conditions, just living in urban areas means easier access to health clinics, schools, clean water, and so on, compared to the spartan situation in rural areas in the Global South. 

Against Chinese Exceptionalism

The fact that capitalist countries have made significant achievements challenges the dogma that capitalism can only create absolute poverty and underdevelopment. Of course, it is widely understood that capitalism created the sharpest economic growth in history following the industrial revolution, and that the working classes in the West were later lifted out of the Dickensian stage of poverty. However, Western Marxists concluded that imperialism had decided who would and would not prosper in its world-system about one century ago. 

Capitalism creates winners and losers, so the “developing world” of mostly former colonies would remain the super-exploited quarry for hegemonic Western capitalism, denied development under capitalism. There is much truth in this as a general contention; the map of highly developed versus poor and “developing” countries has barely changed over the last century. However, to see it as an iron rule defies materialism and implies that the law of uneven development under capitalism has ceased to apply.

While China’s economic growth is significant, countless other countries in the Global South have experienced long periods of high economic growth; the depiction of the South as three continents of chronic underdevelopment is extraordinarily outdated. This imaginary stems from a left-binary view of the world as composed of the imperialist countries of developed capitalism, and the rest of the world, the underdeveloped capitalist countries that the former exploit and keep poor and backward. 

This picture only remains valid in the most simplistic and general sense, and ignores the fundamental Marxist law of uneven development of capitalism. Lenin’s assertion in 1920 that the world is now divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations¹⁵ is mistakenly understood to mean that these oppressed nations remain forever underdeveloped under imperialist rule, and that the countries at top and bottom never change, whereas in reality he continually stressed the opposite. 

For example, in Imperialism, Lenin writes that “the export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported,” indeed “capitalism is growing with the greatest rapidity in the colonies and in overseas countries,” and “is growing far more rapidly than before.” However, under imperialism this growth is “becoming more and more uneven,” to the point that some powerful imperialist countries, such as Britain, go into decline, while entirely new ones, such as Japan, arise. Lenin gave data showing that “the development of railways has been most rapid in the colonies and in the independent (and semi-independent) states of Asia and America.”¹⁶ Of course, these railways served the colonial master rather than the colony, but it would be absurd to deny that this constituted “economic growth.”

While this uneven growth had brought about relatively little change by the 1960s, when the dependency theorists could claim, with some empirical support, that imperialism was actively “underdeveloping” the neo-colonial world, change in the fortunes of different developing countries has been far more dramatic in the half-century since. 

From this perspective, China has been the biggest “winner” in this uneven and combined development of world capitalism. But let’s consider some other experiences of rapid economic growth over the last few decades¹⁷:

We can exclude South Korea (and Taiwan), due to the gigantic level of U.S. support throughout the Cold War, as well as Singapore. These advantages cannot tell us everything, however; for example, the extremely high level of state regulation of the economy, and significant state-owned enterprises, in South Korea and Taiwan, mirrors the heavily state-led form of capitalism in China.

The others on this list have had both periods of extremely rapid growth and periods of slower growth; those chosen have achieved either close to 5 percent (or greater) growth during any one of these periods, or overall. 

We can make a number of observations. First, none of these countries come near China in terms of either the sheer level or consistency of growth over so many decades; China’s growth has been outstanding. Second, this short list is about it—almost no other country in the South meets the criteria of this list, an indictment of the “winners and losers” character of global capitalism. Third, however, we do need to recognize that significant periods of high economic growth are a feature of this uneven development of capitalism. It is problematic to argue that China’s greater level and consistency of doing what capitalism aims to do is evidence of non-capitalism. Now, let us turn to the impacts of growth, principally “poverty reduction,” held up as a major achievement of the Chinese system.

Deepening Inequality

If China were a socialist country, how do we explain its phenomenal success in producing 698 billionaires,¹⁸ second in the world after the 724 the United States boasts? (In fact, according to China’s Hurun Report, China already had 598 billionaires in 2016, surpassing the United States’ 535;¹⁹ and the 2021 report claims 1,185 Chinese billionaires, the first country to pass 1,000.²⁰) If it has achieved this and yet it is socialist, China would then be a refutation of Marxist theory, because it means socialism creates billionaires among paupers.

Unlike capitalism, socialism is not a current reality, but a vision we strive for, of a system which abolishes capitalists. Marx did not call on workers in the Communist Manifesto to struggle to remain exploited, make their exploiters richer, and create record numbers of capitalists.²¹ By contrast, there is no iron law that says capitalism cannot create economic growth and reduce income poverty. It did this, after all, in the imperialist West. 

In other words, the Chinese social formation, whatever one calls it, has both produced 698 (or 1,185) billionaire capitalists and lifted 850 million people above the income poverty line.

If China is neither capitalist nor socialist, then what is it? One argument is that China is not yet socialist, and the “elements of capitalism” in China are the compromises it must make on the road to future socialism; to co-exist in a capitalist world. As a country rising out of underdevelopment, the productive forces are not yet at a level to create socialism; there remains a role for market mechanisms and elements of capitalism within a semi-socialist system to boost the productive forces. Hence, progress towards socialism requires a significant period analogous to the Soviet “New Economic Policy” (NEP) introduced by Lenin in 1921.

If that is the argument, I agree completely. Yes, China needed some kind of NEP when it embarked on market reform in 1978 (especially following decades of Maoist bureaucratic adventurist economic policy); and Vietnam needed it even more when it did likewise in 1986, in conditions more similar to the USSR in 1921 than to China. Nevertheless, there is an inevitable question of where the line is drawn. 

There will be disagreements about where we draw this line and declare “at this point the NEP has gone over to outright capitalism.” However, we must be able to assess direction in the meantime: has China been taking anti-capitalist steps within this framework, empowering workers, reducing inequality and so on? What makes it a “socialist-oriented” mixed-market economy? Or has the capitalist class grown stronger? Is producing the second largest number of billionaires in the world a feature of a socialist-oriented NEP, or a product of the relentless march of capitalism, of the NEP going in the wrong direction? 

Presumably, a socialist-oriented NEP would aim to see reduced levels of inequality compared to “normal” capitalism. China’s Gini inequality score at 38.5 is relatively high, better than the United States (41.1) and much better than Brazil, South Africa, Philippines, Columbia, and Mexico; but higher than famously unequal countries like Russia, Indonesia, Thailand, and India (all 35-37) and much higher than anywhere in Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the like.²²

Gini cannot tell us everything though. In fact, one key reason that it is often higher in rapidly developing countries is that it measures the sharp differences between urban areas, where the development is taking place, and rural areas, which gets left behind. While the starkness of this urban-rural gap, caused by capitalism’s lopsided allocation of resources to where profit can be made, is a bad thing, the gap itself is not all bad; to some extent a gap demonstrates that industrialization and urbanization are actually taking place.

There has been some decline in inequality in China over the last decade. The Gini score of 38.5 is down from 43.7 in 2010 (after having risen from 32.2 in 1990). Before we go celebrating a victory for socialism, however, we should note that Mexico’s score fell to 45.4 in 2018 from 50.1 in 2005 (and 53.6 in 1996), and that of Thailand as of 2019 is down to 34.9 from 42.5 in 2004 (and 47.9 in 1992). India’s, by contrast, has risen from 31.7 to 35.7 since the 1990s, but is still below China’s.²³ It is therefore difficult to place too much significance on relatively small declines in Gini.

According to The Economist, this alleged decline in inequality is not apparent to many Chinese. The reason, quoting scholars Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, is that “the decline in Chinese inequality since 2008 does not reflect softer divisions within cities” but “results instead from a narrower gap between urban and rural China.”²⁴ 

Thus, while the decline in Chinese inequality in the last decade may have some positive aspects, on the whole it reflects a shift from the inevitable inequality of the “modernization process” to the straight-out inequality of capitalism, between worker and capitalist “within cities.” 

According to the China-based Hurun Report, “the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament and its advisory body that it deems ‘super rich’ amounts to $650 billion,” which is “up by nearly a third from a year ago.”²⁵ Indeed, the list of people with wealth of $310 million and over grew by 520 (22 percent) to 2,918, triple a decade ago, and 100 times more than 20 years ago, while their wealth rose 24 percent to $5.3 trillion, six times that of a decade ago.²⁶ In 2018, “China added 210 billionaires—about four a week—40 percent more than the United States.”²⁷ This tells us more about real capitalist inequality than a slight decline in the Gini index.

Therefore, the Chinese social formation has produced a level of inequality similar to many highly unequal capitalist countries, the largest or second largest number of billionaires, and an explosive growth of the capitalist class. This looks a lot like capitalism. So let’s now examine the claims and realities of economic growth and poverty reduction.

The Reality of Capitalist Exploitation

Playing up poverty reduction while ignoring increased inequality, whether in China by hopeful leftists or by World Bank influenced development agencies elsewhere, essentially equates to being apologists for capitalism.

Quite simply, it is not that difficult for monetary incomes to show improvement under capitalism; and it is incredibly difficult to really establish what people can buy with these rising wages. It tells little about the atrocious conditions hundreds of millions of the “non-poor” live and work in. Sweatshop wages may be just over the income poverty line, and their children may survive childhood due to mass vaccination. The living conditions of these “non-poor,” however, are like night-and-day when compared to the gigantic middle-class in China,²⁸ not to mention the multi-million strong capitalist class, whose wealth is rising at a much faster rate than poverty incomes as demonstrated by rising inequality indicators. They live in entirely different worlds: decent social indicators do not indicate socialism.

Ignoring China’s gigantic “floating population” of semi-rural, semi-urban migrant workers, estimated to number some 285 million people²⁹ or one-fifth of China’s 1.4 billion population, demonstrates this graphically. It is on the backs of these poor rural workers who have little or no security and migrate to the cities to work as laborers in the informal sector or as factory workers in sweatshops, that China’s “miracle” has been built.

Their lives remain fundamentally insecure; the household registration (hukou) system assigns them to their hometown for whatever social and welfare rights they are entitled to, meaning that many work for years or decades without even the minimum of social protection and access to health care and education that other workers get.³⁰ According to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in 2017 “only 22 percent of migrant workers had a basic pension or medical insurance, 27 percent had work-related injury insurance, and just 17 percent had unemployment insurance,” while only 14.3 percent had joined trade unions. On average, migrant workers in cities work eleven hours-a-day.³¹ Their permanent insecurity was highlighted in 2017, when the government began uprooting tens of thousands of migrant workers from their homes on the outskirts of Beijing, destroying their “illegal” shanties with little notice.³²

While the hukou system may have played an organizing role when China was still largely agricultural and the health and education infrastructure was being developed in the 1950s and 1960s, maintaining it decades into the market economy and following massive urbanisation simply makes the migrant workforce highly exploitable by Chinese capital, with little bargaining power, resulting in a kind of social apartheid. 

There are some 100 million children of the migrant labor workforce, one third of whom live with their parents and hence suffer the lack of social security enshrined in the hukou system, with the other two-thirds remaining in the villages, suffering from greatly reduced quality of and access to educational and health facilities that characterize rural China, but without one or both parents.³³ Some 27 percent of rural children suffer from anemia and other health problems.³⁴ While China has expanded various kinds of medical insurance schemes in recent years, they are incomplete, patchy, often include some kind of payment, and do not cover the full cost. Only 22 percent of migrant workers had employee medical insurance in 2017, and cost of treatment can be prohibitive.³⁵ Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported in 2016 that only 48.6 percent of toilets in rural areas were sanitary.³⁶ 

Most rural children who graduate middle-school do not proceed to high school, while 90 percent of urban children do, and the school drop-out rate is 24 percent, compared to only 2 percent in urban China³⁷ (only in 2005 did China again make primary and junior high tuition free as it had been before “market reform,” but still not high school³⁸). A 2007 survey showed that middle-school drop-outs were the major source of child labor.³⁹ While the strong health and education network had been an inheritance of the 1949-1980 “socialist” period, between 2001 and 2009 300,000 village primary and middle schools were closed down, and “students were forced to either go to boarding schools or endure long, arduous journeys every day to attend school in the nearest town.”⁴⁰ As of 2010, some 10 million primary school students, and half the rural secondary school students, were attending boarding schools far from home.⁴¹

Yet by migrating all over China for insecure, exploiting work and leaving behind children, migrant workers often earn enough to rise above the World Bank poverty lines. While not irrelevant in a developing country, these facts need to be taken into account when all focus is on reduction of “poverty” at the expense of inequality. 

Despite all this, China’s gains remain impressive for a developing country rising out of poverty by global standards; we cannot judge by Global North standards, as the inheritance of colonialism remains a dominant factor in world development. And this means that China, alongside a number of other developing countries, has either been doing something different, or has been on the lucky side of uneven global capitalist development, or both. And it is a useful point to make when apologists for capitalism point only at China’s positives while managing to ignore the horrific health, educational, and social situation in most of the capitalist Global South, under governments carrying out neo-liberal advice from Western governments and financial institutions. 

However, a system that relies on this highly exploited, informal, and insecure migrant workforce of one fifth of the population, and that leaves rural areas behind, with high costs for health care, while billionaires sprout like mushrooms, is called capitalism, not socialism. 

This is not only about China; rather, this is a general point about the economic growth, “poverty reduction,” and even rising social indicators in many parts of the South. 

For example, Thailand’s impressive poverty, health, and education indicators do not show us the significant role played by sex work over decades in that country’s “development” strategy; sex work produces income. While estimates vary greatly, in 1999, “a study by a Thai university estimated the sex sector at around $25 billion, or 12% of the country’s gross domestic product.”⁴² While this has declined, it underlines how significant its role was from the Vietnam War era. While extreme poverty was 0.03 percent in 2017, this is based on an income equivalent to 26 baht/person per day, “which is inconceivable for many Thais to be sufficient for an acceptable life.”⁴³ Using $5.50-a-day (75.7 baht), the poverty rate rises to 8 percent. Likewise, Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, reported that even highly successful Malaysia’s zero poverty level was the result of massive undercounting and did not represent that country’s reality.⁴⁴ 

The Fallacy of State Ownership

We need to ask, What are the socialist elements of the mixed-market economy in today’s China? It is clear enough what the capitalist elements are: the multimillion strong, rapidly growing, Chinese national capitalist class, a great many of whom are members of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).⁴⁵ This fact, and the nexus between economic and political power, militates against the idea that the “Communist” name of the ruling party ensures some socialist element in the country’s direction.

For Roberts, he does not need to claim capitalism can be enormously successful, thereby refuting Marxism because, “fortunately, we can put China’s success down to its dominant state sector for investment and planning, not to capitalist production for profit and the market.” 

This is a valid argument; the state-owned economic sector is enormous and prominent—though whether or not it is “dominant” is debatable—and is an important instrument through which the state regulates the economy.

What, however, makes a state-owned economic sector socialist? After all, since Roberts rejects the idea that “some state-form of capitalism” can make these achievements, he is distinguishing between prominent state enterprises under capitalism, and state enterprises leading a mixed economy marching towards socialism. 

Some forms of socialism require control of the state, the economy, and its surpluses by the working-class and greater community. The workers and community do not democratically control the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. They are run by the CPC regime, which regularly carries out police repression against striking workers and other forms of popular protest,⁴⁶ complicating claims of “socialism.” 

Others call this a form of “state-capitalism” (which may well be superior to private capitalism, to the extent that such a thing exists). While the state can use SOEs for state and social goals—as do capitalist governments elsewhere to a lesser extent—these SOEs also strive to make profit in the market. What kind of anti-social activities do they engage in to make this profit? What kinds of market-driven salaries do its CEOs boast? To what extent do these trends effectively “privatize” the SOEs from within, both at a legal and an illegal level?

China is not the only country that has had a dominant state sector for a prolonged period. Despite neoliberal myths, the state has always played a prominent role in the development of capitalism. And in many post-colonial states in the Global South, from the 1950s onwards, there have been varying degrees of state regulation and intervention, and also state ownership of large parts of the economy, in capitalist countries. 

Whether such prominent “state sectors” in market economies are a feature of non-capitalism or “socialism” are issues that can be debated. However, leftists extolling China’s state sector as evidence of socialism tend not to see the same in the dominant state sectors in Ataturk’s Turkey, Nasser’s Egypt, Ne Win’s Burma, the PRI regime in Mexico, Brazil from the 1960s (including under the military dictatorship), the mullah regime in Iran, or countless other examples. In most cases, the primarily “modernizing” role of these state sectors gave way over time to a role as breeding ground for the new capitalist class, a reasonable description of what has been happening in China.⁴⁷ 

Taiwan offers a particular challenge, given its image as the capitalist alternative to “socialist” China: SOEs dominated its economy for decades, as late as 1986 controlling some 60 percent of economic assets.⁴⁸ That is, state enterprises dominated during virtually its entire transition from poverty to Global North status. 

This question of the state sector and “socialistic” elements connects to a further question: is it correct to see the entire post-1978 period as much the same? We need a position on when “NEP-reform” within non-capitalism became capitalism, because this relates to the question of whether most of China’s heralded progress occurred before or after capitalism. Arguing that capitalist restoration took place around the mid-1990s, it will be shown that most of China’s achievements took place before full-scale capitalism, which therefore eliminates labeling China today “socialist,” even for those who believe that these achievements are impossible under capitalism.

In fact, many of China’s achievements go back to before market reform began in 1978, to the “bureaucratic state-socialist” decades,⁴⁹ which are often written off as a period of stagnation. While the negatives of this period—particularly the catastrophic adventurist campaigns of the Mao regime—are also huge, the achievements can be attributed to the depth of the Chinese Revolution that culminated in 1949; the fact that capitalist China today was built on the inheritance of this immense social revolutionary process better explains its ongoing social achievements than imagining Chinese capitalism remains somehow socialist.

The Forgotten Poverty Reduction and Economic Growth Before Market Reforms

There is a more fundamental problem with the “China lifted 850 million people out of poverty since 1980” discourse. According to economist Martin Ravallion, in 1980, some 90 percent of China’s population lived in absolute poverty of under $1.90-a-day.⁵⁰ The claim that China lifted 850 million out of poverty since 1980 is based on accepting that 30 years after the Chinese Revolution, 90 percent of the population still lived in absolute poverty, a higher proportion than in most countries in the Global South today. The Revolution, apparently, achieved little. 

How true is this?

Before the onset of Deng’s market reforms of 1978-81, while people were, generally speaking, poor, they did not pay for housing, health care, education, and social security, and prices of goods, including agricultural inputs for the peasantry, were highly subsidized. Cash incomes were less of a useful indicator of their quality of life. Can we compare its “poverty” to capitalist countries of the South based purely on income?

In one sense, the market reforms—including the introduction of small fees for health and education—began by making Chinese workers and peasants poorer, and those low incomes now began to mean something. However, because the agricultural reforms did boost the productivity of the small peasants who now had more control over the product of their labor, they made up much of the difference. Moreover, significant subsidies remained throughout the system, health and education costs remained low, much of the protective infrastructure of the socialist period remained and allowed these early market reforms to prosper within that protective shell.

Therefore, even after this limited “reform” began it still seems problematic to compare Chinese workers or peasants on low monetary incomes to millions on similar incomes around the capitalist world. Yet, by accepting the claim that China has lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of the world combined since 1980, we are accepting the unlikely idea that 30 years of the Chinese Revolution and bureaucratic “state-socialism” bequeathed a country with the greatest number of poor in the world. 

In fact, China’s human development indicators in 1980 further militate against the idea that 90 percent of Chinese lived in extreme poverty by Global South standards. Life expectancy stood at 66, adult literacy at 65 percent (79 percent male), primary school enrolment at 93 percent and infant mortality at 44 per thousand live births. These were outstanding figures for the South at the time; consider, for example, that life expectancy in India todayis only 69.

This raises the question of when these social advances, so crucial to understanding poverty, began; which in turn points to further questions: when did China’s economic take-off begin? When did most of the post-1980 poverty reduction take place? And related to all this: when did China’s NEP turn to capitalism? The answers lead to a more nuanced analysis than either that which says China’s achievements are due to capitalism, or alternatively that its achievements mean it must be socialist. 

Life expectancy in China today is a healthy 77, high by South standards. But most of the rise took place before “reform”: it rose from 43 in 1950 to 68 by 1980,⁵¹ i.e., it grew during the “socialist” period, “one of the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history.”⁵² It took only 50 years for China to raise its life expectancy from 40 years to 70 years, in comparison to a century in Western countries, almost all of it before 1980.⁵³ In the 40 years since “reform” began, it has risen only an extra 9 years. 

Similarly, the infant mortality rate fell from 195 in 1950 to 55 in 1980;⁵⁴ since then it has dropped to 6.8, an impressively low level, but three quarters of this reduction took place before reform. In fact, China’s 1980 figure of 55 is rather common throughout the South today (and lower than in many countries). 

The literacy rate has surged from 65 percent in 1980 to 97 percent today,⁵⁵ certainly impressive; while 65 percent is not as high as other 1980 indicators (having been set back by the Maoists’ “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” chaos of the 1960s), nevertheless, as literacy stood at some 20 percent in 1949, the majority of the rise again took place before “reform.” Net primary school enrolment today stands at 99 percent, but was already 93 percent in 1980,⁵⁶ far higher than almost anywhere in the South, having risen from a mere 20 percent in 1950⁵⁷: 90 percent of the rise took place pre-reform.

In other words, the bulk of China’s impressive gains in social indicators took place as a result of the 1949 Revolution during the “socialist” period before the onset on “market reform” (and despite catastrophic Maoist campaigns). The more modest subsequent gains over the last 40 years have been built on that established base.

It is ironic that those arguing that the billionaire-producing regime is “socialist” because of the amount of human progress it presides over can only really make this argument if they ignore the fact that most of the human development gains were made before 1980 under state-socialism.

While most would understand that at least some social progress took place before 1980, it is almost a given that economic take-off only began after “market reforms,” previous to which China was “stagnant.” However, a closer look reveals a less marked demarcation. The standard view imagines there was nothing between the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GCPR) disaster and growth following market reforms, managing to omit the entire 1970s.

China’s average annual GDP per capita growth rate in the 1970s was 4.29 percent,⁵⁸ which, while well below growth rates in the 1980s and beyond, was already high by world standards.

According to professors Ben Kerkvliet and Mark Selden,

The gains may be traced back a decade to the 1970 North China Conference, which initiated a process of “conservative modernization” associated with Zhou Enlai. This led to accelerated rural industrialization and state investment in irrigation, and a comprehensive green revolution package that was implemented under collective auspices.⁵⁹

In sharp contrast to Vietnam when it began its market reforms, facing systemic collapse, China “had a rate of accumulation as a share of total output of around 33-35 percent in 1978-79, compared with Vietnam’s 12-13 percent … the Chinese economy was already generating large investible surpluses before the transition started.”⁶⁰ 

Some China experts, such as Susan Shirk, claim “it was by no means obvious that market reforms were the only solution. Economic performance and living standards could have been improved by upgrading the technical capacity of Chinese planning, raising agricultural prices and improving material incentives.”⁶¹

We then come to the question of when the greatest post-reform gains were made. World Bank data,⁶² shows the numbers living under $1.25-a-day between 1981 and 2011 dropped from 850 million to 150 million people, some 700 million people over 30 years. But more than one third of this drop, of some 250 million people, occurred in just the first 5 years, between 1981 and 1986. It took another 25 years for another 450 million to escape extreme poverty. 

Indeed, the rise in agricultural incomes and productivity peaked between 1978 and 1984; per capita rural incomes rose two-and-a-half times within those six years, after which incomes and productivity levelled off or rose much more gradually.⁶³ 

The point here is that the reforms of the 1978-84 period were very mild; other than those who already classified Maoist China as “state-capitalist,” no-one suggests that China was plunged into capitalism at this stage. The initial reforms consisted of better state purchasing prices for peasant produce, allowing peasants to sell their above state-quota produce on the market, and the beginnings of de-collectivization, making the household the primary unit. According to Kerkvliet and Selden, “in most areas, decollectivization and a return to family farming were not widely implemented until 1982-83, suggesting that the prior gains in agricultural productivity and rural incomes were the product of a complex package of which household farming was only one component.”⁶⁴ 

This was largely tampering with the state-socialist model. As Joseph Fewsmith explains, when China’s state price for compulsory deliveries in this period is combined with the higher price the state paid for above-quota produce (to compete with the market), the overall state price was higher than the market price. Thus the success of early Chinese reforms involved a six-fold rise in state subsidies to peasants from 1978 to 1984, indeed, “while agricultural subsidies had only been 4.5 percent of state revenues in 1978, they were a whopping 20 percent of state revenues in 1984.”⁶⁵ Hardly the capitalist free market! 

So, following this 1978-84 mild NEP stage, we can broadly divide China’s “market reform” into two further stages:

From around 1984-85 foreign companies were invited into joint ventures with state companies, but only in Special Economic Zones; SOEs elsewhere gained more autonomy to partially operate on the market; and private capital was allowed to set up small enterprises. Therefore, the structure of the economy did not change fundamentally; while we should not underestimate the impacts the rising market economy had in practice, it would be a bold statement to declare China “capitalist” in the 1980s. 

The establishment of the stock exchange in 1991 heralds the third stage, followed by the rapid conversion (“equitization”) of thousands of small and medium SOEs into share companies, open to private investors while keeping a “controlling” state share (which may be less than 50 percent). In 1997, massive “equitization” or sale of large and strategic SOEs began, and tens of millions of workers were retrenched. Size restrictions were removed on private enterprises and the national capitalist class began growing at a dizzying speed. Only at this stage can we begin talking of the restoration of capitalism in China.

This final stage relates to the above discussion on the nature of the dominant state enterprises; regardless of one’s answer before equitization, how does a significant state share within a shareholding company still equal a socialist state enterprise? 

To conclude, not only had the bulk of the increases in social indicators taken place before any market reform, but even record post-reform poverty reduction made its biggest gains in the first half of the 1980s, under the least radical economic changes, still within a bureaucratic state-socialist framework. Since the mid-1990s, capitalism has led to even higher economic growth, but the rate of poverty reduction and improvement of social indicators tended to slow down. 

Therefore, regardless of what we call the system in 1949-78, or from 1978 to the 1990s, since the bulk of China’s poverty reduction and social achievements took place before anyone would argue China became capitalist, then why the pressure to label the post-1990s China “socialist” to account for advances largely made before that era? 

Capitalism with Revolutionary Inheritance 

While I have argued against exaggerated views regarding China’s economic growth, poverty reduction, and social indicators, they are nevertheless highly significant and do somewhat stand out. And though I have shown that vast social gains were made before the advent of capitalism in the 1990s, and even before the market reforms in 1978, major economic and social achievements have continued to be made since the 1990s. 

One may argue, therefore, that if not socialist, China’s capitalism is not a “normal” capitalism. However, few countries have “normal” capitalism, a system that takes different forms. 

Today’s capitalist China arose on top of the mighty social revolution of 1949, in which millions upon millions of peasants overthrew the ancient regime and shattered the centuries-old ruling classes. China’s (and Vietnam’s) impressive achievements are better understood as partially due to the inheritance of such dynamic revolutions, rather than trying to argue that a country with the largest number of capitalists in the world, with very high levels of inequality, and where workers struggles are confronted by state repression, is somehow socialist.

A major aspect of the Chinese Revolution was the thoroughness of land distribution to hundreds of millions of peasants. Much can be said about the tremendous and often irrational violence as brutalized peasants turned the tables after centuries of oppression and decades of catastrophic war; even more can be said of the grossly opportunist manipulation of small-peasant grievance by the Maoist cadres, where absurd classifications led to violent politically-directed “class struggle” within the peasantry; real revolutions are raw and messy, especially following decades of war. Regardless, the end result was one of the most radical land distributions in history, something that has only rarely occurred in modernizing capitalist countries, ironically, key exceptions being South Korea and Taiwan.

The thoroughness of land reform has been a key factor in development success, or lack thereof, in the Global South, hence it is unsurprising that these two capitalist countries have been the most successful, and that China made great strides following the Revolution. The subsequent adventurist form of collectivization led both to great gains and massive setbacks, but whatever the balance sheet, the break-up of these collectives after 1978 returned land to the peasants on the basis of these earlier radical land reforms and this was a powerhouse of subsequent growth and poverty reduction.

The gigantic gains before 1980 also reflect the huge expansion of the basic health and education infrastructure (e.g., primary schools, communal health clinics) in villages all over China from the 1950s onwards,⁶⁶ and this state socialist-era infrastructure was bequeathed to the “reform” era in China, providing a solid basis for further development. 

Development theorist Amartya Sen discussed this in relation to preparedness for market reform:

While pre-reform China was deeply skeptical of markets, it was not skeptical of basic education and widely shared health care. When China turned to marketization in 1979, it already had a highly literate people, especially the young, with good schooling facilities across the bulk of the country. … In contrast, India had a half-illiterate adult population when it turned to marketization in 1991, and the situation is not much improved today. The health conditions in China were also much better than in India because of the social commitment of the pre-reform regime to health care as well as education. Oddly enough, that commitment, while totally unrelated to its helpful role in market-oriented economic growth, created social opportunities that could be brought into dynamic use after the country moved toward marketization. The social backwardness of India, with its elitist concentration on higher education and massive negligence of school education and its substantial neglect of basic health care, left that country poorly prepared for a widely shared economic expansion.⁶⁷

While our focus here is not on “preparedness for the market economy,” Sen’s points are relevant, because these socialist-era gains did not just mean that China could “do market economy better” than India, but also that it could do it with far more social cushioning and less “market” impact on social indicators.

On a slightly different note, Jake Warner, writing in Dissent, makes the point that

… the developmental achievements of the Revolution—levels of literacy, education, health, industry, and infrastructure highly unusual for such a poor country—combined with the Mao era’s extreme urban—rural inequality, perfectly positioned China to dominate low-wage exports starting in the 1990s. Incomes in the former Soviet bloc, though ravaged by shock therapy, were still too high to be competitive with the enormous numbers of impoverished rural migrants in China, while most other poor countries could not match China on the quality of infrastructure or the capacity of the state to suppress workers’ demands.⁶⁸

The point here is less flattering from a socialist point of view. The fact that the developmental achievements made China infrastructurally more attractive to foreign investors chasing “low-wage exports” is not what pro-China Western socialists want to write about; China is a “winner” within the uneven development of global capitalism.

Attributing much of China’s success to the Chinese Revolution and the state-socialist period, should not be read as romanticizing this era and its Maoist leadership. Massive bureaucratic-led projects like the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution unleased enormous disaster on China; it was not these deeds that led to development success, it was despite them, highlighting how dynamic the underlying process of social revolution was. 

Rather than a strange “socialism,” the secret to China’s success has been a peculiarly dynamic cocktail of three key elements: the inheritance of the Chinese Revolution and the gains of the state-socialist era; the particular way China was able to leverage its advantages within the uneven development of world capitalism; and the significant role for state-owned enterprises in the state’s regulation of its economy, which however effective remains capitalist. 

None of these elements are evidence of socialism. Being clear about this point is not only important for understanding the nature of the Chinese system and capitalism, but also for envisioning what kind of future the global left would like to build.

Notes

1. Michael Roberts, “IIPPE 2021: imperialism, China and finance,” Sept. 30, 2021, The Next Recession.

2. Daniel Morley and Dao Feixiang, “Evergrande crisis: capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” International Marxist Tendency, (Nov. 1, 2021).

3. Roberts.

4. John Ross, “China accounts for 100% of the reduction in the number of the world’s people living in poverty,” Key Trends in Globalisation (2013).

5. World Bank Open Data, “Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90-a-day (2011)” (Purchasing Power Parity, PPP); China Power Team. “Is China Succeeding at Eradicating Poverty?” China Power. Oct. 23, 2020.

6. Max Roser & Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, “Global Extreme Poverty,” Our World In Data (2013).

7. Peter Edward, “The ethical poverty line as a tool to measure global absolute poverty,” Radical Statistics, No. 89 (2005), 53-66.

8. Edward, 53-66.

9. Roser & Ortiz-Ospina.

10. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2020, Statistical Annex, p.365.

11. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2020, 343-344, 365-366

12. Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie & Bernadet Dadonaite, “Child and Infant Mortality,” Our World In Data (2013).

13.Roser, Ritchie, Dadonaite.

14.Roser, Ritchie, Dadonaite.

15. V. I. Lenin, “The Second Congress of the Communist International,” Collected Works (1920),4th English Ed., (Moscow,Progress Publishers, 1965), Vol. 31, 213-263.

16. V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” Selected Works (1916), (Progress Publishers, 1963), Vol. 1, 667-766 [Sections IV, VII, X].

17. World Bank Open Data, GDP per capita (constant 2015 US$).

18. “Forbes World Billionaires List, The Richest in 2022.”

19. Hurun Research Institute, “Hurun China Rich List 2016,”
Oct. 14, 2016.

20. Hurun China Rich List 2021, Oct. 27, 2021.

21. Sui-Lee Wee, “China’s Parliament Is a Growing Billionaires’ Club,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 2018.

22. World Population Review 2022, Gini Coefficient by Country 2022. The Gini coefficient ranges from zero (perfect equality) to 100, the maximum possible inequality. 

23. World Bank Open Data, The Gini Index (by country).

24. “Just how Dickensian is China?” The Economist, Oct. 2, 2021.

25. Sui-Lee Wee.

26. Hurun China Rich List 2021.

27. Sui-Lee Wee.

28. China Power Team, “How Well-off is China’s Middle Class?” China Power (Apr. 26, 2017).

29. “Migrant Workers and Their Children,” China Labour Bulletin (2002). 

30. Yunting Zheng,Ying Ji, Chun Chang, Marco Liverani, “The evolution of health policy in China and internal migrants: Continuity, change, and current implementation challenges,” Asia & The Pacific Policy Studies, Vol. 7: 1 (2020), 81-94.

31. Yunting Zheng,Ying Ji,,Chun Chang, Marco Liverani.

32. Chris Buckley, “Why Parts of Beijing Look Like a Devastated War Zone,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 2017.

33. China Labour Bulletin (2002).

34. Chengchao Zhou, Sean Sylvia, Linxiu Zhang, Renfu Luo, Hongmei Yi, Chengfang Liu, Yaojiang Shi, Prashant Loyalka, James Chu, Alexis Medina & Scott Rozelle, “China’s Left-Behind Children: Impact Of Parental Migration On Health, Nutrition, And Educational Outcomes,” Health Affairs, Vol. 34: 11 (2015), 1964-1971.

35. China Labour Bulletin (2002).

36. Li Huang, Meijun Qiu & Mi Zhou, “Correlation between general health knowledge and sanitation improvements: evidence from rural China,” npj Clean Water, Vol.4:21 (2021).

37. China Labour Bulletin (2002).

38. Martin Chorzempa and Tianlei Huang, “China Will Run Out of Growth if It Doesn’t Fix Its Rural Crisis,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 8, 2021.

39. “Small Hands: A Survey Report on Child Labour in China,” China Labour Bulletin (2007), Research Report No. 3.

40. China Labour Bulletin (2002).

41. “China’s grim rural boarding schools,” The Economist, Apr. 12, 2017.

42. “GDP: The sex sector,” Forbes, June 14, 1999.

43. Judy Yang, “Reducing poverty and improving equity in Thailand: Why it still matters,” World Bank Blogs, Oct. 17, 2019.

44. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Malaysia vastly undercounting poverty, says UN rights expert,”United Nations,Aug. 23, 2019.

45. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights .

46. Stefan Schmalz, Brandon Sommer & Hui Xu, “The Yue Yuen Strike: Industrial Transformation and Labour Unrest in the Pearl River Delta,” Globalizations (2017), 14:2, 285-297.

47. Chris Slee, “Green Left Wealth, Power and Corruption in China,” Green Left, Nov. 11, 2021.

48. Ming-sho Ho, “Manufacturing Loyalty: The Political Mobilization of Labor in Taiwan, 1950–1986,” Modern China (2010), 36:6, 559–588. 

49. In this piece I will use the highly unsatisfactory term ‘bureaucratic state-socialist’ to refer to the system that existed in China from 1949 through to around 1978-80, shorthand for a mostly nationalized economy centrally controlled by a bureaucratic and repressive state rather than by the working-class and broader community. This is in order to avoid buying into the disputes between whether it should be called state-capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, a bureaucratically-deformed workers’ state etc, which is beside the point of the essay. My own view is closest to the third term here, but I find the terminology of ‘workers’ state’ even with the modifiers, even less satisfactory than use of the term ‘socialist’ as part of the label.

50. Martin Ravallion, “A historical perspective on China’s success against poverty,” VoxEU, Feb. 4, 2021.

51. Macrotrends, “China Life Expectancy 1950-2022.”

52. Kimberly Singer Babiarz, Karen Eggleston, Grant Miller, and Qiong Zhang “An exploration of China’s mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950-80,” Popular Studies (2015), Vol. 69:1, 39-56.

53. Yanhua Xu, Weifang Zhang, Rulai Yang, Chaochun Zou & Zhengyan Zhao, “Infant mortality and life expectancy in China,” Medical Science Monitor (2014) 20: 379–385.

54. Aaron O’Neill “Infant mortality in China 1950-2020,” Statista, June 21, 2022.

55. C. Textor “Adult literacy in China 1982-2018,” Statista, May 10, 2022.

56. UNICEF “Net enrolment rate in primary education, 1980–2017.”

57. Babiarz, Eggleston, Miller and Zhang.

58. World Bank Open Data, GDP per capita (constant 2015 US$).

59. Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and Mark Selden, “Agrarian Transformations in China and Vietnam,” in Anita Chan, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and Jonathon Unger (eds.), Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared, (MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999), 110.

60. Adam Fforde “From Plan to Market: The Economic Transitions in Vietnam and China Compared,” in Chan, Kerkvliet and Unger (eds.), 51.

61. Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform, (Berkeley: U. of California Press 1993), 23, 34.

62. Ross.

63. Joseph Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform in China, (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 153.

64. Kerkvliet and Selden, 110.

65. Fewsmith, 153-154.

66. Babiarz, Eggleston, Miller and Zhang.

67. Amartya Sen, Development as freedom (Oxford University Press, 1999), Chapter 2.

68. Jake Werner, “China’s Market Reformers,” Dissent, (Fall, 2021).

Posted China, Political Economy, Socialism, Understanding China

About Author

Michael Karadjis teaches social sciences and international development at Western Sydney University. He has been involved in solidarity organizing, including the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Syria Solidarity Australia, and Agent Orange Justice. He blogs on Syria at mkaradjis.wordpress.com

by Michael Karadjis

Tuesday, June 12, 2018 – (originally from June 2014; posted now due to similar disturbances four years later)

A number of key points need to be understood about recent Sino-Vietnamese clashes in the East Sea (also known as the “South China Sea”) and the mass reactions of Vietnamese workers.

First, the “disputed ” islands that China has placed its oil rig near – the Paracels – were not “disputed” before being seized by China from Vietnam in an act of armed aggression in 1974. At the time, China carried out this action in agreement with Kissinger. In 1988, in further naked armed aggression, China seized about a quarter of the Spratly Islands, which are much further south (and thus much further from China), which had also, till then, been simply Vietnamese sovereign territory.

I certainly don’t support war, ie, I don’t think any Vietnamese worker in uniform should have to get killed just to defend uninhabited islands. However, that is different to being “neutral” in low-level conflict that inevitably does occur. If leftists want to call the Paracel Islands “disputed”, then they should call the Golan Heights, which Israel similarly seized from Syria via armed aggression during that era, “disputed.” If they want to call the Paracels “Chinese” because after all, Americans/Australians etc speaking on behalf of the Vietnamese don’t want to be “nationalists”, then kindly be consistent and declare the Golan “Israeli.”

The bigger picture, of course, is that China has claimed the entire East Sea as its own, with the famous “dotted line” going right up to the borders of neighbouring countries, including Vietnam, the new Monroe Doctrine of the new imperial colossus.

Second, regardless of the Paracels – for argument’s sake let’s call them (and the Golan) “disputed” – the oil rig has been placed in what is indisputably Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), based on what is indisputably Vietnamese territory on the mainland.

Third, the mass reaction against Chinese aggression by thousands of Vietnamese workers cannot be written off either as a chauvinist outburst (though it certainly has elements of that), as a government-orchestrated provocation, or as an act of mass ignorance (since so many attacked factories were Taiwanese rather than from the PRC). Rather we need to look at it in all its complexity.

Mass revulsion against the Chinese regime in Vietnam is widespread (and an obvious problem for “anti-imperialist” analysts). It has a historical aspect (not just 1000 years of Chinese rule, but the 1988 attack which seized much of the Spratleys, 1979 invasion, and being knifed by Mao in late Vietnam war, including the seizure of the Paracels); it has economic aspects, with Chinese companies operating a gigantic environmentally destructive bauxite-aluminium operation in VN’s Central Highlands, and seizing the lion’s share of contracts for projects of similar size and of similar strategic importance; it has an aspect of moral revulsion and solidarity, as the Chinese navy regularly kidnaps large numbers of Vietnamese dirt-poor fisher-folk from around the two “disputed” island archipelagos, and holds them for massive ransoms for months at a time.

To blame the VCP government for “provoking nationalism” is a statement of ideology (whether Trotskyist or otherwise), based on the idea that as a Stalinist-turned capitalist regime it “must be” doing so. It is also a statement of breathtaking ignorance about the actual facts. The VCP government of course vigorously defends its own view of the islands. However, it also holds the view that only diplomatic means can be used, that war is out of the question. However, most of the Vietnamese dissident opposition (whether genuinely democratic, right-wing, Buddhist, Catholic etc) have found the idea of anti-China nationalism a good horse to ride on, *precisely because the VCP government is seen to have a “too moderate” strategy and opinion*. So they denounce the VCP government as being “communists betraying the nation to China” (which, while they don’t often say so openly, can mean little more than advocating war, since the VCP does everything but this). In fact, anti-China, defend the islands, actions have become the most prominent issue in anti-VCP regime dissidence for some 5 years now.

The way the dissident movement pushes the issue is wrong, of course; but it cannot be denied that there is justice to the side overall which is resisting a new mega-capitalist superpower (whether one wants to call it imperialist or not at this stage is frankly besides the point in this instance).

Does this mean the nationalistic dissidents have secretly orchestrated the workers? Again, I think that is unlikely. Most of these dissidents are rabid supporters of foreign capital (curiously, they think there isn’t enough in Vietnam!), and are horrified by the effects these riots will have on investors’ confidence; but more generally, workers are quite capable of leading themselves, both in good class struggle activities and also in making bad chauvinistic errors – no need to romanticise raw class struggle by having to explain its negative aspects by orchestration by the government, the opposition, or China itself (another theory floating around).

The simple facts of the matter are:

Workers have acted due to a mixture of mass revulsion against China’s bullying actions and raw class hatred of bosses – Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and even Vietnamese factories have been attacked and burnt.

More have been Taiwanese than Chinese, because more Taiwanese investors invest in these sweatshops than Chinese. The Taiwanese, Chinese (often Hong Kongese) and Korean bosses are famous, not only in Vietnam, for running brutal capitalist regimes in their factories, which openly violate Vietnam’s labour laws, and are generally much harsher than what is tolerated by workers from Vietnamese bosses (let alone Vietnamese state industries, where workers’ conditions are far superior). Unleashing their class hatred against all these bosses, due to a pretext, is not difficult to understand at all.

But to understand the particular revulsion against the Taiwanese bosses, two things need to be considered.

First, China’s claims to the Paracels and Spratleys were only made by the Kuomintang regime that ruled China in the late 1940s before the 1949 revolution (at the time both island groups were part of France’s Vietnam colony and were thus handed over to Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Accords, where *China* and the USSR betrayed Vietnam by agreeing to partition). The CCP simply inherited these chauvinistic claims against its smaller and weaker “brother” nation from the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang still rules in Taiwan, still supports these claims to the islands (like China, it claims all of them), and in practice has been supporting the PRC in the island issues (so far has the capitalist integration of Taiwan and the PRC gone).

Second, even more surprising (for “anti-imperialists”, and those who see China as some kind of “socialist” state): As explained by Taiwanese researcher Wang Hongzen: “Almost all Taiwanese factories hire PRC people as “cadres” [Yes, that is also how Taiwanese call their supervisors: “cadres”]; inside the factories, there is a glass ceiling that blocks Vietnamese from being promoted. There is also everyday confrontation between Chinese supervisors with Vietnamese workers under the so-called suppressive management style with “Chinese characteristics” (Hongzen’s article, “Beating up Taiwanese is not a Misunderstanding,” for anyone who reads Chinese, is at http://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/new/20140516/398528/).

One needs to take this into account when we read reports of Vietnamese workers beating up Chinese workers, in some cases killing them. From where I am, I cannot tell how targeted these attacks are: are they specifically targeting these repressive Chinese supervisors and “cadres”, or are these simply ugly chauvinist attacks on Chinese workers as a whole? I don’t know, but I suspect there is probably a bit of both. However, to explain it as simply some kind of latent mindless chauvinism in Vietnamese workers coming out, rather than in the class terms as explained by Hongzen, is just plain wrong. That of course should not be read to mean any justification to the real chauvinist acts that may be occurring.

Of course, more generally, regarding labour, some have written that workers all around the world often attack foreign workers for “taking their jobs” etc. In my opinion, this again is too narrow. This usually refers to immigrants from poorer countries trying to get jobs in richer countries, being opposed by more privileged local workers. But here it is reversed, and I don’t only mean the “joint-venture” CCP/KMT “cadres”; more generally, China tends to bring in masses of Chinese workers with its investments in Vietnam, as in Cambodia, Papua-NG, African countries etc. Bringing your workforce is not “immigration”; what it normally means is 2 things.

First, since the capitalist regime inside the factory is significantly harsher in China than in Vietnam, Chinese investors bring a workforce so as to not have to put up with too much “trouble;” they are well-known to see Vietnamese workers as more strike-prone and “lazy,” ie, refusing to take as much shit. In any case, the Chinese workers often have no work visas; their jobs there are completely tied to their bosses.

Second, the Chinese investors use Chinese workers for better-skilled and higher paid positions (ie not only the supervisors), leaving Vietnamese with the least skilled and lowest paid positions. Just how different this is from the position of immigrant workers vis-a-vis locals in imperialist countries is rather obvious.

So all this also adds to the antipathy to Chinese workers.

Naturally, that does not mean that the attacks on Chinese workers are in any way justified, except perhaps in cases when there is an issue of clear class revulsion against slave-driving “cadres”; even in these cases, mob violence, up to and including lynching, will have the tendency to spread an atmosphere of terror among ordinary Chinese workers, even if they are not the target. Clearly, masses of Chinese workers see themselves as in danger, and have fled; the VCP has been able to use the outbreaks as a cover to crack down on other peaceful forms of protest and has made hundreds of arrests; the riots have allowed the opposition to claim that the chaos is an inevitable result of the VCP not being hard enough on China, of “abandoning the nation”; China has scored some propaganda points by pointing these events as Vietnamese anti-China aggression. Vietnamese and Chinese workers need to see each other as allies against intensified capitalism in both countries.

However, when Marxists analyse what causes events like this, it is also important to understand who is the oppressor, both the national oppressor in the big picture, and the class oppressor – including its “cadre” agents and screws – in the factories.