Autonomous Workers’ Union, Kiev: Statement on the Current Political Situation

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The laws which were passed on January 16th showed that the faction of the ruling class which now controls the government is ready to install a reactionary bourgeois dictatorship on the model of the Latin American regimes of the 1970s. The “dictatorship laws” criminalize any protest and limit the freedom of speech; also, they establish responsibility for “extremism”. Parliamentary mouthpieces of the class dictatorship of corrupted bureaucracy and monopolist bourgeoisie are the Party of Regions and the so called “Communist” Party of Ukraine which has long ago become a political force serving interests of capital.

 

The Ukrainian repressive system leans on the police apparatus and street gangs of pro-government stormtroopers. Sometimes such paramilitary structures are commanded by retired police officers. Death squads are also in action. According to confirmed information, two people were kidnapped from a hospital and tortured. One of them died in a forest. Special forces use pinpoint firing against protesters, and not only from traumatic guns. One of the killed, according to a photo of his body, was shot in his heart. According to all indications he was a victim of a sniper. In the morning of January 23 the number of the killed constituted from 5 to 7 persons. And we don’t know the real scale of violence.

 

The ideology of the ruling regime is a mixture of Putin-style nationalism, conspiracy theories and conviction in their right, as elite, to rule over stupid populace. Groups of support to Berkut (the main riot police force) in social networks are full of anti-Semitic articles which claim that the opposition leaders are Jews and want to vitiate the people by legalizing same-sex marriages. This hardly differs from the rhetoric of Ukrainian right radicals.

 

Over the last days not only the far right confront the government, but also people of more moderate views. And they constitute the majority of the protesters. Many of them are indifferent to nationalism or negatively predisposed to it. Many of them don’t support integration into the EU. People go into the streets to protest against police violence. And a significant part of them is unenthusiastic or even skeptical about the clashes in the Grushevskogo street. Often one can hear that right radicals are a “Trojan horse” of Yanukovych and special services, designed to discredit the protest. Certainly there would be many more Kievites participating in the protests if there was a way to take those idiots useful to the government out of the streets. Top of their demands is to give them jobs in the Security Service of Ukraine after the “victorious revolution”.

 

Anarchists ought to participate in demonstrations and pickets which are dedicated to defense of the rights and freedoms usurped by the laws of January 16th. It makes sense to take action at one’s workplace or neighborhood and to help sabotage the dictatorship’s decisions. There’s not much sense in participating in the activities in Grushevskogo street, which were meaningless from the very beginning. These activities only give the government pretty picture for television and enable it to identify radical elements by locating mobile phones and videotaping.

In the case of the opposition’s victory, as well as in the case of the government’s victory we’ll have to wage long and hard war against any of those regimes. This should be understood. We need to gather forces in order to start propagating our own libertarian and proletarian agenda in Ukrainian politics.

 

No gods, no masters! No nations, no borders!

 

Autonomous Workers’ Union, Kiev local

January 23, 2014

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The struggle between different groups of the big capital – of power and of “opposition” – led to implement of tightened laws which transformed Ukraine in a police state. The extreme right forces from “Right Sector of Maydan”, no more controlled by the “opposition”, went to attack against Cabinet of Ministers on the Grushevsky Street in Kiev. This resulted in a brutal confrontation with the special repressive forces of “Berkut”, “Yaguar” etc., and it resulted in the causalities among protesters: several people were killed. The authorities crossed the line, showing the real essence of bourgeois democracy. The situation in the Ukrainian capital becomes tenser.

 

Now the wage workers facing the eternal question: What is to do? Whether to support the opposition or support the government? To go to “Maydan” – or to stay at home? To support these or others politicians? Or perhaps to strive for the happiness of whole working people?
There is only one answer to this question: to begin with the defending of our own class interests: interests of wage workers.

 

Some people can justly ask: What is the problem? Why neither government nor owners of enterprises not busy themselves with bettering of people`s life? The answer is that the government and the owners – bourgeoisie want to receive enormous profits moved by their greed, cupidity, individualism and egoism and exploiting the wage workers. They want to expend as less as possible and to get as many as possible. And therefore they haven`t interest in any betterments of working people`s life.

 

Because no one will better the life of working people, the liberation of workers must be the work of the workers themselves.

What is to do? First of all, it is to unite themselves in the struggling unions (revolutionary syndicates) for collective and organized struggle for own class interests. It is necessary to organize strikes for obtain the salary increase to the real cost of labor force (minimal wage no less than 500 Euro monthly), the reduction of working time to 6 hours daily, the control of workforce over the enterprise – to go on the offensive against the yoke of power and capital.

 

How this will affect the situation in the country?

 

Firstly, it does not give the flame of armed confrontation of “power” and the "opposition" to flare up and will not allow the big masses to be drawn into this conflict. Secondly, the fight for better working conditions and higher wages will increase human well-being. Thirdly, wage growth will increase the purchasing power of citizens and thus give new impetus for producers: the production of goods and services will increase, and it will in turn influence the modernization of equipment, tools, machines and other means of production. Fourthly it will contribute to the expansion of production capacity, which in turn will provide a real incentive to create new jobs for the development of education, medicine, science and culture.

 

Therefore, the fate and welfare of Ukraine is primarily in the hands of the working people. And first of all it depends on the awareness and willingness of wage workers to collectively defend their class interests and not the interests of big business, tycoons, and politicians. This is the real way out of the political and economic crisis.

 

One Anarchist from Ukraine

 

Quelle

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