Alexey Blyuminov: Ukraine - Oligarchic Renaissance
“I don’t know why and who needs this. Who sent them to death with an unshaking hand. Only so mercilessly, so evilly and unnecessaryly, they were lowered into eternal peace,” wrote Alexander Vertinsky at the beginning of the last century about the victims of that Civil War. In today's Ukraine, this question: “Why and who needs this” has again become relevant.
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Indeed. People have been dying for three months now. Combat aircraft and heavy artillery are shelling cities. Mothers of conscript soldiers are blocking highways in Western Ukraine, trying to prevent their children from being sent to Donbass. The moat separating the two Ukraines from each other is growing every day.
It is not surprising that more and more people on both sides of the front are asking the question: why is all this happening in a country that just two years ago at this very time hosted Euro 2012 and, in one impulse, from Lvov to Lugansk waved its national flag at football stadiums? flag.
For whose interests do people die? Who needs the current bloody bacchanalia? The country is divided on this question. Some blame everything on the “insidious Putin”, who is afraid of Ukrainian democracy and is waging war on it for this reason. Others point to the socio-economic background of what is happening.
And indeed. Lenin also taught us to see politics as a concentrated expression of economics. And our economy is oligarchic, that is, monopolized by half a dozen of the richest citizens who, through their wealth, influence decision-making, parliament and government, and public opinion (through their private media).
These names are on everyone's lips. Kolomoisky, Taruta, Akhmetov, Poroshenko. There are others, smaller in caliber. For example, Odessa governor Palitsa. The February Maidan, which ended with the overthrow of Yanukovych, seemed to be directed, among other things, against their omnipotence. In any case, this was the rhetoric of the Maidan leaders, and its ordinary supporters convinced society of this. However, in practice something completely different happened.
When the first euphoria of the winners passed, a hangover came to the realization of the following sad fact: the choice of the Maidan was not at all the choice of the entire country. A significant part of it saw this Maidan in a coffin and was not at all eager to meekly accept the Maidan power that had fallen on them. When the confrontation took place in the “Maidan vs Yanukovych” format, these people had no motivation to take one side.
It was this circumstance that explained the weakness, fictitiousness and simulative nature of the majority of anti-Maidan movements. The very concept of “anti-Maidan” is devoid of its own subjectivity and is built on the denial of the subjectivity of others. Like the notorious “Not So!” block 2006 model. It is clear that this is a failed strategy in advance.
But when the disposition changed, and the confrontation turned into the “Maidanov power vs. South-East” format, the situation changed radically. This time, significant masses of people felt that they suddenly woke up in a state hostile to them, with an ideology built on the denial of their usual identity. Naturally, there was a return. She couldn't help but go.
But this is all lyrics. Prelude. Let's return to economics. Contrary to expectations and illusions, the omnipotence of the oligarchy in post-Maidan Ukraine has not disappeared anywhere. On the contrary, it has reached unprecedented heights. The oligarchs of the first echelon became the heads of the regions, receiving them into almost unlimited fiefdom. They were allowed to create legal private armies, only nominally subordinate to the National Guard or the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I mean the so-called "territorial defense battalions".
Faced with resistance in the southeast, the dysfunctional state tried to rely on the oligarchs in its fight against internal opposition, entrusting them with the functions of protecting state integrity. A previously unimaginable combination of state and private interests arose when oligarchs like Kolomoisky, having privatized the state, began to protect it in the same way as they would protect some factory belonging to them from the encroachments of raiders. The only difference is that they considered as raiders a people who did not agree with the right of the oligarchy to exercise sovereignty on its behalf.
So the Ukrainian civil war initially, from the very first days, took on the character of a war between the oligarchy and part of the people for the right of ownership of the state of Ukraine. Moreover, in this war, another part of society - the one that six months earlier took to the Maidan under anti-oligarchic slogans - suddenly “fell ill” with oligarchophilia in the most severe form. Social networks are filled with eulogies about Kolomoisky, who is helping the “progressive public” fight the “Russian threat.”
And the calls addressed to Akhmetov to “finally come to his senses” and use his influence in order to “roll the separatists into asphalt” were striking in their frankness. After all, “progressive publicists and bloggers,” quite openly and without hiding, justified their calls by the fact that Akhmetov should maintain his status as “the main person in the Donbass.”
In other words, the fetish of unitarity at any cost was placed above even the hypothetical possibility of liberating the same Donbass from the shackles of oligarchic omnipotence. And this despite the fact that the same “progressive publicists and bloggers” have been practicing accusatory sarcasm against the residents of Donbass for years, contemptuously calling them “slaves of Akhmetov.” When the “slaves” rebelled, the progressive public turned to the slave owner with a demand to take all possible part in suppressing the uprising.
Thus, the oligarchs turned from opponents into valuable allies of Maidan supporters. The circle is closed.
And this entire oligarchic renaissance was crowned by the election of one of the richest oligarchs as President of Ukraine. Thus, the oligarchic republic was finally formalized. Now, after the victory of the “democratic revolution”, all power in the country has been concentrated in the hands of a few of the richest families, and they are no longer constrained in realizing their interests and ambitions by the factor of the “Papa” - a super president a la Kuchma or Yanukovych.
So why do soldiers of the Ukrainian army and contract soldiers of various volunteer battalions risk their lives and die? This is what they take risks for. In particular, for multi-billion dollar loans issued by the NBU to Kolomoisky’s private bank. For Akhmetov to retain power and influence in the Donbass in exchange for help from the central government in strangling the front. So that the same Kolomoisky could take control of not only the Dnepropetrovsk region, but also Zaporozhye and Odessa.
And the oligarchic media are one of the central elements in inciting enmity and hatred between regions, further spinning the flywheel of the civil war. After all, by banning Russian television channels in March, the current regime provided the oligarchs with a monopoly in controlling the minds of their fellow citizens.
The oligarchy benefits from war. Not only for the banal reason that it allows you to make money from “helping the army,” as the owner of the Dnepropetrovsk region successfully did by refueling army units with gasoline from the Kremenchug plant he owns. Naturally, not “for that.”
The war is also beneficial for them because it allows them to divert the attention of voters who are keen on finding the next “Putin saboteurs” from the austerity policy pursued in the interests of the rich according to IMF recipes. Thus, behind the events in Slavyansk and Lugansk, a 40% increase in electricity tariffs from June 1 of this year went unnoticed. d. And if someone suddenly doubts the social justification of such measures, he will immediately be silenced with references to the “difficult times” in which the country finds itself. Everything for the front, everything for victory.
In general, the Ukrainian situation is not unique. In the history of many countries, it has happened more than once that people, maddened by propaganda, entrusted their fate into the hands of the true culprits of the crisis in order to deal with those who were not involved.
But, no matter how the oligarchic media divides us into warring camps, today Volyn and Lviv mothers blocking highways in protest against the ATO and residents of Lugansk and Slavyansk falling asleep in fear of shelling of their homes have common interests. And they consist in stopping this crazy war being waged so that Ukraine, God forbid, does not become a federal state.
Standing in the way of ending the war are the interests of the oligarchs, who are vitally interested in preserving the hyper-centralized model of the state, in which it is enough to seize power in the capital and thereby guarantee their monopoly on the share of the budget pie.
In the meantime, a war will be waged under primitive tribalist slogans, a war for the color of ribbons, the people will always lose in it, since such a war will inevitably preserve the power of the oligarchic elites, who, with their own benefit, exchange money from the wallets of ordinary people for genuine pride from the fact that that you are not a Muscovite.
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