10 years since the heroic Donbass uprising

Dimitrios Patelis | Revolutionary Unification (Greece)

Contents

It is impossible to understand the character, position and role of the Donbass 2014 spring uprising in the subsequent developments of the escalation of WWIII without scientifically approaching the escalation of the counter-revolutionary processes in the countries that emerged after the capitalist restoration and the dissolution of the USSR, as well as the changes in the global balance of power during these events.

A brief review of the events leading up to the 2014 nazi coup

On 21 November 2013, an acute political crisis (“Euromaidan”) erupted in Ukraine, triggered by the Yanukovych government’s decision to suspend preparations for an accession agreement with the EU. The opposition, led by the USA, the UK, NATO and the EU, organised large-scale demonstrations in Kiev, which then escalated into mass riots with weapons, arson, murder, provocations by using sniper attacks in order to force an escalation, etc.

On 21 February 2014, President Viktor Yanuko-vych and opposition leaders reached an agreement, mediated by Russia and guaranteed by the governments of Germany, Poland and France, to resolve the political crisis by calling snap elections. However, despite the agreement, on the night of 22 February, at the behest of Western officials (Victoria Nuland, the US and British embassies, the CIA, etc.), Euromaidan activists seized the government complex, taking control of the parliament, presidential administration and government buildings. As a result of the coup, power was forcibly transferred to the opposition. The new speaker of parliament (the Verkhovna Rada), Oleksandr Turchynov, became chairman of the Kiev junta, while Arseniy Yatsenyuk became head of government.

On 23 February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada re-pealed the law “On the Basic Principles of State Language Policy” (2012), which granted the Russian language the status of a regional language alongside the official language, Ukrainian. Russians and Russian speakers make up at least half of Ukraine’s population, with their populations highly concentrated in the more industrially developed South-Eastern half of the country. Historically, “Kievan Rus” is the cradle of Russian history and culture. The term “Ukraine” itself means “the country’s frontier region” and/or a region inhabited by frontiersmen, guards of the border.

The abolition of this law, which practically banned the use of the Russian language in education and everyday life, accompanied by a series of ideological measures (heroisation and glorification of the nazis as “national heroes”, crude anti-Sovietism/anti-communism, which practically overlaps with anti-Russianism, Russophobia etc.), provoked violent protests in the east of the country, the Russian-speaking regions such as Donbass, Crimea, Odessa, Kharkov and more. The inhabitants of the regions demanded the legitimisation of the Russian language and education, as well as constitutional reform towards the federalisation of Ukraine.

Following the atrocities committed by the secret services and the nazi deep state/paramilitary assault battalions, a people’s militia was formed in Donbass. The rebellious ex-Soviet people/Russians, the language and culture of which, along with all references to the USSR, the anti-fascist victory, whose most basic rights were banned by the fascist junta, are called “pro-Russian separatists”, “instruments of Moscow” and “national traitors, collaborators of the occupier” (the entire Soviet period is officially described by the junta as a “regime of occupation by the USSR/Russia”).

What were they demanding? Their main slogan: “Down with fascism”. They did not recognise the Kiev junta regime that emerged through the unconstitutional armed fascist coup in February, they were demanding negotiations and a referendum on broad economic and political autonomy as part of the federalisation of the country, the recognition of the Russian language as equal to the official Ukrainian language, withdrawal from the IMF, EU, USA and NATO, decent wages, education, health, insurance and so on.

On 6 April 2014, protesters occupied several administrative buildings in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov regions. In particular, the regional state administrations of Donetsk and Kharkov were blockaded, as well as the Lugansk branch of the Ukrainian Security Service.

On 7 April 2014, acting President Turchynov announced the creation of a “crisis management task force” and the launch of “counter-terrorist operation against those who have taken up arms”.

On 13 April 2014, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council decided to “launch a large-scale counter-terrorism operation with the participation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” in the east of the country. The junta demanded that the protesters evacuate the occupied buildings and lay down their arms by 14 April. The rebels rejected the ultimatum, and on 15 April 2014 the “active phase” of the “counter-terrorist operation” (CTO) was launched in the northern part of Donbass.

On 7 April 2014, the People’s Soviet (Council) of the Republic was established in Donetsk, declaring the sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR); the same process took place for the founding of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).

The ban in Ukraine of the celebration of the 9 May anniversary of the anti-fascist victory in 1945, the intention to establish in its place a “day of remembrance of the Soviet occupation” and the official designation of the nazi collaborators during the WWII as “national heroes of Ukraine” foreshadowed the new plans of the junta. On 2 May 2014, the state and deep state instruments of the Kiev regime launched two coordinated “counter-terrorist” murderous operations 1. against the “hostile population” in Odessa and 2. against the people’s uprising of the Donbass.

The arson of the Odessa House of Trade Unions

At midday, young people from outside the city began to arrive in the centre of Odessa, at Greek Square, where the anti-Kiev junta protest movement had set up tents. In Ukraine, as in almost every capitalist country, circles of the oligarchy of capital make sure that they control (under their “gracious patronage”…) political personnel, the mainstream media, armies of “influential journalists” and football teams with their respective gangs of football fanatics. The latter are prime recruiting and mobilisation grounds of extreme right-wing, nationalist and fascist groups tied to deep state operations.

The fascist assault battalions were ordered to take part in this operation in civilian clothes. Many of them brandished weapons, not only crowbars, clubs, stun grenades, knives and so on, but also firearms. Some were drunk and/or under the influence of drugs. Under the slogans “Glory to Ukraine”, “Death to the enemies” and “Slaughter the Russians (“Moskali”)”, they began to attack an obviously unarmed small group of anti-fascist demonstrators who were demanding the federalisation of Ukraine and the legalisation of the Russian language.

The armed right-wing extremists (around 1,500) forced the unarmed demonstrators (less than 500) to take shelter inside the House of Trade Unions, while they burned and looted their tents and began to methodically set fire to the building with a barrage of firebombs, shooting anyone who tried to escape from the upper floors of the burning building, beating and publicly humiliating the bloodied & wounded victims who fell from the windows. 

Shortly before the nazi attack, the police—who had initially tried to prevent the clash—were ordered to withdraw. As the multi-storey building burns, the survivors jump from the upper floors to save themselves,—while armed fascists are shooting at them for sport—, or take refuge on the roof. The fire brigade, prevented by the fascist arsonists from reaching the burning building, is delayed for over half an hour, and when it arrives the first fire engines have no water in the pumps and no ladders! All the survivors (including many women, minors and elderly people), covered in blood and with multiple burns and injuries, are lynched by the fascist mob, mercilessly beaten in front of the cameras, and finally the survivors (more than 130 demonstrators) are arrested by the “discreet” police to be charged with “premeditated murder”, incitement to arson (yes, they themselves are accused of being responsible for the arson that burned them alive) and treason (since they are considered “foreign agents and separatists”)!

From that moment on, the Euro-Atlantic axis that instrumentalises fascism, that burns alive and executes en masse those who resist (Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Lugansk, Konstantinovka and elsewhere) has revealed its true form!

The protagonists of the massacre post photos and videos of their atrocities on the internet, the desecration of charred corpses and looting with “nationalist pride”, interspersed with calls for “blood and honour”[1], for beneficial ethnic cleansing, “Ukraine for Ukrainians”, “natural selection of the powerful” and hell for “foreign worms, beetles and reptiles”! The US and the EU provocatively announce that the criminal actions of their pet junta are justified as their “right and duty of self-defence”.

The “Western world” legitimises and gifts the “state monopoly on the use of force” to organisations and individuals who proudly claim to be the successors of the collaborators of the nazi occupation during WWII, the security battalions, Bandera and the “Galician” division of the Waffen-SS (formed in April 1943 on the personal orders of Himmler). The involvement of division “Galician” in large-scale genocidal extermination operations against guerrillas and civilians in Western Ukraine, Belarus and a number of European countries (Slovakia and Yugoslavia) was also condemned in the Nuremberg Trials.

These are not isolated incidents. They are coordinated strategic decisions by Washington, Brussels and their chosen ones in the Kiev junta. Moreover, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, stated with disarming cynicism: “Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure, prosperous, and democratic Ukraine.”

The operation to crush the Donbass rebels

At the same time, on 2 May 2014, at 4:30 a.m., a large-scale military operation was launched by the forces loyal to the Kiev junta against the rebellious people in the South-Eastern part of the country. The operation is carried out with live fire, involving air, armoured, parachute, special forces and infantry units.

On 11 May 2014, referendums were held in Donbass on the status of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. 89.7% of voters in the Donetsk region and 96.2% in the Lugansk region voted for self-determination. On 12 May the sovereignty of the people’s republics was declared, and on 14 and 18 May the constitutions of the DPR and the LPR were adopted.

The military operation against the popular uprising continued under the next junta president, Petro Poroshenko (who took power in May 2014). In the summer of that year, full-scale hostilities began in Donbass with the use of battle tanks, armoured vehicles and aircraft. It was led by armed nationalist battalions of Nazi murderers, including Azov, who committed a series of mass atrocities against civilians.

On 27 January 2015, the junta designates the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as “terrorist organisations”. On 18 January 2018, the junta president’s powers of generalised use of the military against the people without accountability are strengthened, while the areas outside Kiev’s control are called “temporarily occupied territories” and Russia is labelled an “aggressor/invader state”.

Fighting the enemy with minimal means, the people’s militias wrote some of the most brilliant pages of revolutionary history. With surprise asymmetric manoeuvres, they gained the strategic initiative, encircled the enemy and won proud victories, culminating in the Battle of Debaltsevo. The momentum of the armed rebels was halted under the pressure of the leadership of the Russian Federation, which prevented them from liberating Mariupol and the entirety of the territories of the Donbass region and dragged them into the Minsk Agreements 1 & 2, allowing the USA-NATO-EU axis to enormously strengthen and reinforce the armed forces of the Kiev junta.

A genocide unknown to the West

The armed conflict in Donbass lasted for eight years and bore the hallmarks of genocide. According to UN figures (which clearly underesti-mate the scale of the losses), some 14,000 people on both sides, including 3,500 civilians, died in South-Eastern Ukraine during those years, while more than 30,000 were injured. Some 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes (including refugees and internally displaced persons). The war in Donbass has already resulted in millions of victims (dead, wounded, refugees) since 2015, a fact which has been suppressed by the controlled media.[2]

During its recent visit to Donbass, the delegation of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform witnessed evidence of large-scale atrocities committed by the nazis of the Kiev junta and NATO, torture and murder of prisoners and civilians, of the use of populated areas as “human shields” for heavy weapons, the total destruction of infrastructure and cities, mass graves and endless cemeteries, ghost towns with all buildings destroyed, without water, electricity and sanitation, etc.

The people of Donbass continue to fight heroically after the launch of the “special military operation”, paying a heavy price in blood for more than 10 years.

Imperialist propaganda and the reality of the coup

In mainstream propaganda there is a complete inversion of the meaning of words. The media speak of the Maidan “revolution”. In reality, what happened on the night of 21-22 February 2014 was an armed coup methodically organised under the leadership and with the full economic, political, propagandistic and military cover of the imperialist Euro-Atlantic axis and carried out by its political puppets of the Kiev junta with the armed fascist assault battalions as their “vanguard” and strike force. This clearly marked the shift of the battlefield of the ongoing WWIII to the heart of the former Soviet space.

In its content, this coup is at the same time an act of aggression, first of all against Russia—the most powerful remnant of the former USSR—against all the peoples who are not completely subordinated to the USA, the EU and NATO, but also a preventive terrorist attack against those who question the monocracy of the Euro-Atlantic axis, against the upcoming liberation and revolutionary movements.

When did WWIII begin?

According to the current dominant narrative of the imperialist propaganda, the war in Ukraine started with Russia’s “unprovoked attack” on “innocent and democratic Ukraine” because of the latter’s Euro-Atlantic orientation…

Many people reasonably and more soberly believe that the war in Ukraine began with the above events of the armed imperialist coup in Kiev in 2014.

A more thorough and rounded approach reveals that WWIII begins with the end of the “Cold War”, with the escalation of bourgeois counter-revolution and the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the countries of early socialism in Europe, from the infamous “First Gulf War”, the 1990-1991 imperialist armed campaign waged by a military coalition of 39 countries in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It escalated into a series of civil wars in the region of the former USSR and the “Black October” of 1993 (armed repression of the uprising in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation in Moscow with thousands of dead and missing), with the imperialist wars to break up Yugoslavia, with the “War on Terror” & the “2nd Gulf War”, with the US-NATO-EU invasion of Afghanistan, with the “Arab Spring” operations etc. until the beginning of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” on 24 February 2022, after having its ultimatums on the non-expansion of NATO and its military infrastructure to the East ignored (15 December 2021).

The class dimension of the conflict as a de facto manifestation of the Donbass uprising

Crisis and war bring deeper social contradictions to the surface. Historical experience has shown that after the prolonged turmoil of a major war, class struggle, insurrection and civil war (“civil” revolutionary class war, as in the Paris Commune, the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, after WWII, the anti-colonial struggle, etc.) come to the fore. However, as the example of Ukraine shows, the current crisis and WWIII, unlike the previous ones, activate the class element more directly, provoking armed insurrection and new forms of revolutionary civil war, not as an afterthought, but as an internal, intrinsic and direct component of a confrontation which, after Yugoslavia, has brought the active front of WWIII back to the heart of Europe, to Ukraine, with unique ferocity.

In summary, we can say that with the decay of imperialism the civil class war becomes an internal element of the transnational war, while the world war takes on increasingly, the distinct characteristics of a global class war. 

Since 2014 two camps are clearly defined in Ukraine:

1. The one unleashed by the US-NATO-EU axis in a war instrumentalising the fascist Kiev junta against the insurgent people of Novorossiya and Donbass in particular is an integral part of the escalation of WWIII and of counter-revolution in the “post-Soviet space”. 

2. The armed uprising of the overwhelming majority of the people of Donbass, who were victorious and took power in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

It is in Donbass that 75% of the industry on the territory of Ukraine (Soviet legacy) is concentrated: mining, metallurgy, machining, aerospace, rocketry, components of the military-industrial complex… Thanks to its location and mineral wealth, Donbass has been the main cradle of Russian industry since the 18th century. Soviet industrialisation, with the systematic use of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, made the region one of the most industrially developed parts of Europe in the 20th century. Thousands of workers of different ethnicities, and nationalities from all over the territory of the USSR flocked to Donbass to meet the needs of rapid socialist industrialisation. It is here that the historical experience of the populous working class, the collectives of hundreds of thousands of workers in mining, heavy industry of various types and scales, and strategic technological processes has been concentrated for generations.

Industrial development is organically linked to the development of collectivised agricultural production in large-scale units of collective and state-owned land, with technical means of cultivation (“kolkhoz” and “sovkhoz”) on vast areas of extremely fertile “blackland”.

The rebelling people have realised through their anti-fascist struggle during these years that those who are subjecting them to genocide—the “regular Ukrainian army”, mercenary regiments and fascist assault battalions—are acting with the kind sponsorship and under the guidance of Euro-Atlantic imperialism and the local agents of the oligarchy of capital. The main force joining the militias are the industrial workers, especially the miners.

On the historical significance of the uprising and the role of the Russian bourgeoisie

Thus, we have the first armed people’s/workers’ uprising with a clear socialist and pro-Soviet orientation, directed against imperialism, fascism and the oligarchy of capital. This content is clear in the official founding documents of the People’s Republics.

The Declaration of Independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic (7 April 2014) reads in part: “The Republic shall ensure conditions for the free development and protection of constitutionally recognised forms of property, which exclude the appropriation of the results of foreign labour and consider collective forms of property to be of primary importance”. 

According to the testimony of Boris Alexeyevich Litvinov[3] (during the recent visit of a Platform’s delegation to Donbass), the Communists were the pioneers of the uprising and of its socialist orientation. However, they could not take a leading role in it, they could not prevent it from being manipulated by the bourgeois forces both in Russia and in Donbass.

As F. Engels wrote: “Now, insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them. Those rules, logical deductions from the nature of the parties and the circumstances one has to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the short experience of 1848 had made the Germans pretty well acquainted with them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organization, discipline, and habitual authority: unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering, prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral ascendancy which the first successful rising has given to you; rally those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impulse, and which always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known, de l’audace, de l’audace, encore de l’audace!”[4]

The Russian bourgeoisie then used its political, diplomatic and military influence, the apparatus and state bureaucracy of the “Party of Regions” (of Yanukovych) which was gravitating towards joining the ruling party “United Russia”, humanitarian aid to the starving population of Donbass, etc., to obstruct, manipulate and subvert the revolutionary spirit of this uprising.

They understood that the class and pro-Soviet characteristics of the uprising constituted a threat to themselves and to the regime of their oligarchy of capital. This turn of events was facilitated by the absence of a consolidated communist party, which could consciously, ideologically and organisationally lead the spontaneous front of the forces of the uprising.

The Russian bourgeoisie forced the rebels into a “ceasefire” and a “truce” when it was clear that they had the initiative and were crushing the enemy, in September 2014, when the insurgent militias were advancing tirelessly to liberate Mariupol, and in February 2015, after the defeat of the most capable forces of the Kiev junta in the encirclement of Debaltsevo. Invoking the so-called “state of emergency”, it banned political parties (only the Communist Party was not dissolved) and allowed only “social organisations” to take part in elections. In 2016, it proceeded to withdraw the parliamentary status of 3 Communist deputies, two years after their election in the slate of the social organisation “Republic of Donetsk”, due to “loss of confidence”!

Since then, they have been delusional. They used double standards: they integrated Crimea into the Russian Federation, leaving the Donetsk and Lugansk regions exposed, despite their triumphant referendums (which they had also tried to prevent). They did not want to spoil their relations as comprador intermediaries in the sale of raw materials and energy to imperialism, which was their main field of parasitism. That is why they tried to create another “frozen conflict” like that of Transnistria in Moldova with the blatantly unfounded and unfeasible Minsk agreements.

They did everything they could to control and manipulate the rebels to serve their own interests, to nullify their revolutionary claims and conquests, to put their own people at the head of the political and military leadership, and so on.

This attitude, confirmed by the public opinions of the bourgeois politicians of the imperialist countries, enabled the US-led imperialist axis to over-equip and train the army of the Kiev junta to NATO standards, transforming it into the most capable Axis army in Europe, the most combat-ready army of a protectorate country, formally not a NATO member, ready to completely annihilate the people of the rebellious Donbasss in 2022.

The legacy of the uprising and the tasks of communists

In any case, every bourgeoisie seeks to protect and promote its own interests. 

However, the question arises: what are the duties of the left, the progressives, the anti-imperialists and the communists in this context? 

The communists, since the time of Marx, have always maintained a specific attitude whenever a revolutionary situation, an armed uprising, broke out (however undefined and vague the objectives, declarations and motives of the popular masses supporting it may have seemed).

They never adopted the attitude of “equal distances” against the two warring sides, of the highly resentful sceptic who expresses his dissatisfaction in every way, and criticises the “capricious people”, who dare and fight in a way that is not written in the textbooks, that does not conform to their “pure” idealised and beloved dogmas and schemes. The attitude of so-called “equal distances” is the one adopted since 2014 by the opportunist leadership of the KKE towards the Donbass uprising.

When the fateful question of “who (kills) whom?” is placed on the agenda, there is no room for “waiting in neutrality”. The latter is nothing but a hypocritical cover for the opportunists’ siding with the forces of aggressive imperialist reaction, counter-revolution and fascism.

The attitude of speculative and/or contemplative detachment when the blood of the rebellious people is being shed is not a characteristic of revolutionary forces, it is incompatible with elementary morality. In practice, this attitude is nothing but bourgeois (in its current fascist-like to overtly fascist version of neo-liberalism).

This attitude has nothing to do with the stance of Marx and Engels towards the revolutionary wave that shook Europe in 1848-1849, or towards the Paris Commune of 1871, whose leadership, far from being Marxist-communist, was dominated by the confusion and illusions of the neo-Jacobins, Proudhonists and so on.

This opportunist stance has not the slightest connection with that of the revolutionaries/internationalists of the Third International during the Spanish conflict of 1936, when they rushed to give their lives by the tens of thousands in the international brigades, defending not a socialist proletarian revolution, but the result of bourgeois parliamentary elections, in favour of the Popular Front and against fascism. 

It has nothing to do with the attitude of the Third International during WWII.

The tasks of the time demand the creative development of classical Marxism, the dialectical sublation of its acquis. However, this need in no way means that the precious experience of revolutionary internationalist struggles should be discarded, especially when it comes to an armed emancipatory uprising, a civil/class war with a clear anti-imperialist and anti-fascist content.

Any delay, any obstacle to the formation of this front de facto facilitates the victory of the fascist black front.

In conclusion

The anti-imperialist, anti-fascist uprising for national liberation in South-Eastern Ukraine is the first revolutionary act of the 21st century.[5] It was an uprising with a clear socialist and class orientation. Despite the insurmountable internal contradictions and manipulations, despite the concessions they were and are forced to make for existential reasons, the Donbass rebels have written glorious pages in the history of the global anti-imperialist and revolutionary movement, a legacy for the victorious battles to come. Today, the armed forces of the rebels have been organically integrated into the army of the Russian Federation and continue to fight heroically against the USA-NATO-EU axis.

Therefore, international solidarity with this uprising and with its logical and historical continuation on the Ukrainian front of WWIII is the duty of all internationalists, of all progressive humanity. 

We in the World Anti-Imperialist Platform consider the heroic Donbass uprising, the 10th anniversary of which we commemorated with the visit of our delegation there, as a beacon showing the way to the next uprisings and victories of the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism.

[Notes]

[1] A German nazi political slogan (Blut und Ehre) used by the Hitler Youth and by several different neo-nazi organisations. 

[2] Based on modest estimates by German intelligence sources, at the beginning of February 2015, the death toll alone was over 50,000. According to the rebels, it was well over 70,000. 

[3] B. Litvinov was the leader of the Communist Party of the P.R.D., the author of the P.R.D.’s founding declaration of independence, its constitution and other basic official documents, the first chairman of the P.R.D. Council and the current secretary of the Donetsk organisation of the CPRF.

[4] F. Engels, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany” 1852

[5] Manifesto of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Ukraine