Ukraine. Introduction

The following articles appeared originally in our Italian press and deal with events over the last year in the Ukraine, a country uncomfortably situated between two imperialist blocs both of whom are competing to increase their share of the Ukrainian market, i.e. to extract a greater share of the surplus value extorted from the Ukrainian working class.

In the current situation of global crisis, this struggle between imperialisms tends to move ever more quickly onto the military front, an increasingly alarming phenomenon as capitalism looks more and more to another world war to resolve its crisis: smashing everything up, infra-structure and ‘surplus population’ included, in order to create a ‘fresh’ cycle of capitalist growth, based on the misery and death of billions of people.

As any article written about the Ukraine at present tends to be quite quickly overtaken by events, we will just mention here that the first two articles, Preparations for a future World War: the imperialist machinations in Ukraine and The working class in Ukraine has to fight against both the Russian and Western imperialist fronts were written in March and April 2014, with the Russian annexation of the Crimea imminent; whilst the third article Ukraine: war manoeuvres in Europe, brings together further writings taken from our Italian press, supplemented by further observations, taking us up to September 2014.

No doubt by the time Communist Left goes to press events would have moved on although our fundamental message will remain the same: it is in the interests of the working class in the Ukraine to concentrate on the interests of its own class, that is, organising to defend its immediate economic interests, and rediscovering the genuine communist programme which truly represents its ultimate interest, opposed to all nationalisms and imperialist intrigues, in whatever form they may manifest.