Green Left’s Victor Osprey spoke to left-wing Ukrainian Andriy Movchan about Ukraine’s long and complex relationship with Russia, and how this history can help us better understand the nature of the current war. This is part one of a two-part interview.
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Can you explain the influence of progressive thinkers and socialists to the emergence of a Ukrainian national consciousness in the 19th and early 20th century, from the democratic pan-Slavism of Ukrainian writer and poet Taras Shevchenko to the anarcho-socialist Mykhailo Drahomanov, and figures such as the translator of the Communist Manifesto into Ukrainian, Lesya Ukrainka?
When I was at school in the 1990s, all these historical figures were taught to us as classics of Ukrainian literature and fighters for Ukraine’s independence. But their political views, which were deeply rooted in socialist and democratic traditions, were silenced.
The ideology of the ruling class in modern Ukraine tries to avoid talking about these aspects of our history. However, the founding fathers of the modern Ukrainian nation were, for the most part, supporters of egalitarian ideas.
A detailed look at the history of Ukraine allows us to assert that the ideas of national and social liberation of the Ukrainian people have always been inextricably linked.
What was the relationship like between Ukrainian and Russian socialists in the era of the tsarist empire?
Ukrainian and Russian socialists of the time closely cooperated as they shared a common enemy: the tsarist autocracy.
Ukrainians understood that political changes in Ukraine — which was under tsarist rule — would be difficult to implement without changes in Russia. Similarly, Russian revolutionaries realised that peoples oppressed by the tsarist empire were a powerful revolutionary resource.
However, these relations were not easy. In particular, when it came to the issue of Ukraine’s secession. In this context, the debate between the Ukrainian socialist Lev Yurkevych and Vladimir Lenin is interesting.
Yurkevych suggested Ukrainians should focus on their own national struggle, while Lenin appealed for close cooperation, without which the struggle against tsarism could not be won.
In that debate, Lenin said: “Given united action by the Great-Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, a free Ukraine is possible; without such unity, it is out of the question.”
It is important to say that this Leninist phrase has gained new relevance in the context of the war.
It is extremely difficult for Ukraine to fend off the invasion of a much stronger enemy — neo-tsarist Russia. The only chance for a just end to the war is not victory on the battlefield, but political change in Russia itself.
Thus, cooperation with Russian opposition, anti-war and revolutionary movements should be a priority for Ukrainians. After all, we have a common enemy: the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia.
However, the logic of the nationalism of the Ukrainian elites prevents such international cooperation.
On the other hand, the weakness of the Russian opposition under the Putin dictatorship, and the arrogant attitude of a large part of the Russian left towards Ukraine, are also not encouraging.
After 1921, Bolshevik policy shifted to promoting Ukrainian language and culture. However, this was largely abandoned under Stalin. How do you understand these processes?
These processes of national revival in the 1920s, and the reverse process of rehabilitation of Russian chauvinism in the 1930s followed by Russification, are key to understanding Russia’s current invasion.
The lack of knowledge about the Ukrainian national question among the Russian and global left prevents us from understanding the true context of the war.
Even Putin refers to the 1917 revolution as the “root of the problem”. He is nostalgic for the days of the Russian empire, when Ukraine did not exist as a political entity, and accuses Lenin of having granted Ukraine the right to self-determination.
Lenin was an extremely progressive politician of his time, and understood that the struggle of the peoples oppressed by tsarism was a powerful revolutionary force.
At the same time, as an advocate of building socialism within the framework of great powers, he did not welcome the separation of peoples. While proclaiming slogans of self-determination, in practice he opposed them.
As a result, after victory in the Civil War, the Bolsheviks found a compromise formula: while denying Ukrainians independence (which they were forced to grant to Poland and Finland), they granted Ukraine formal autonomy within the framework of the Soviet Union.
At the same time, they launched a process of indigenisation, which involved positive discrimination in favour of the Ukrainian language and culture to overcome the effects of tsarist Russification and make the Ukrainian masses understand that the revolution was their project, not something foreign.
This did not last, however. By 1932, with the beginning of collectivisation, Stalin flipped this policy. If Russian chauvinism had been considered the main enemy, now it was “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”.
Ukrainian schools and magazines were closed, and hundreds of the best representatives of the Ukrainian revolutionary intelligentsia were killed — they would later be called the “Executed Renaissance”.
Ukrainian culture was relegated to a formal, decorative place. Russification, and even the rehabilitation of Russian imperial chauvinism in the late 1930s, followed.
Linguistic assimilation and the fact Ukraine continued to be de facto ruled by Moscow during the Soviet era made many people from Moscow or Leningrad believe Ukraine was part of Russia and that its independence was an unfortunate mistake.
Putin is among them.
What was the social status of those who only or mostly spoke Ukrainian in Soviet Ukraine?
After the policy of indigenisation was abandoned, the situation of the Ukrainian language deteriorated significantly. The number of Ukrainian schools gradually decreased, and the proportion of books and magazines in Ukrainian fell.
In the 1970s, targeted Russification took on catastrophic proportions.
Worst of all, Ukrainian had a reputation as a village language. In large cities, Ukrainian speakers were perceived as “unwashed peasants”, “backward” and “collective farmers”.
Domestic bullying of Ukrainian speakers in public places (queues, public transport, workplaces) was extremely common. Villagers who came to the cities (and even more so their children) developed an inferiority complex and preferred to switch to Russian.
The state left a certain niche for the Ukrainian language, but against the backdrop of a total decline in the prestige of the Ukrainian language, these areas were no longer taken seriously by society.
At the same time, any attempts to problematise the status of the Ukrainian language by intellectuals and dissidents were considered by the state as “Ukrainian nationalism” and punished by repression.
The situation of language inequality persisted even after Ukraine gained independence.
Can you speak about the current language policy of the Ukrainian state?
Throughout the existence of independent Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian languages have faced discrimination.
Russian was subject to institutional discrimination because it was not the official language.
In practice, however, Russian remained dominant for a long time, even in institutions such as national TV and schools in the southeastern regions, while Ukrainian was subject to discrimination in everyday life in large cities and Russian-speaking regions.
In 2022, there was a huge surge of patriotism. Many Russian-speaking people joined the army to defend the country [against Russia’s invasion], and even more people switched to speaking Ukrainian in civilian life. It seemed solidarity was uniting the country after a long time.
Unfortunately, however, the state’s language policy has begun to radicalise. Discrimination against the use of Russian in public space has become more frequent. Everyday life discrimination against the Russian language, which used to be rare, has emerged.
However, the talk about repression of the Russian language or its prohibition is fiction. Cities such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and even Kyiv continue to be predominantly Russian-speaking.
These Russian-speaking citizens are under constant attack from Putin’s missiles, which is why they sincerely hate the “liberators” from the north.
How severe is the repression of Ukrainians in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine?
Russification and assimilation of the population in the occupied territories is a priority for the occupation administrations. All references to Ukraine are being eliminated.
The Ukrainian language is being eradicated. The very use of the Ukrainian language is considered disloyalty to the occupiers. For this, people can be fired from their jobs, kidnapped and even tortured.
But the main thing is the education system and indoctrination of children. All schools have been switched to the Russian language. Students are brainwashed with Russian chauvinistic propaganda and taught to hate Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of children are involved in the chauvinistic scouting organisation Yunarmiya (All-Russian Military Patriotic Social Movement “Young Army”), where they undergo ideological indoctrination and military training.
This is simply terrible: Putinists are training Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to fight against other Ukrainians!
Also, settler colonisation is being carried out on occupied lands. Russia does not even trust local collaborators with serious positions, so it sends teachers, doctors, officials and security officers from Russian regions instead.
Through colonisation and assimilation, Russia is deliberately carrying out a gradual ethnic cleansing.
[Read the full version of this interview at links.org.au.]